a "National Heritage Place"
www.cerberus.com.au
Cerberus Newsletter No. 222
20 June 2025

Fantastic News for Cerberus

Since the $500,000 NHII grant that Friends of the Cerberus successfully applied for in 2008 was transferred to the City of Bayside, we have been in constant communication with the City of Bayside. Earlier this year we asked Heritage Victoria to chair a meeting between all of the relevant stakeholders whjich include us, Heritage Victoria, the City of Bayside, the National Trust and the Federal Heritage Department. At this meeting the representative of the Federal Heritage Department explained that the any grant funds not allocated to works with appropriate permits would be returned to Canberra in October this year. We left the meeting quite dejected and Gary Grimmer, one of our committee members, volunteered to continue communicating with Bayside in an attempt to achieve something beneficial with some of the funds before the looming October deadline. Although we were contacted by a large Australian engineering company seeking information about Cerberus, we did not hold out a lot of hope that much could be achieved in just a few months.

However, proving that perserverance pays off, we received an email from Bayside that the grant duration has been extended by ten years. What encouraged us even more than the grant extension is that obviously Bayside is keen to take action towards saving Cerberus. Naturally we are looking forward to further engaging with Bayside to achieve an outcome that will preserve Cerberus for future generations. Thank-you to Paul Gibbs, one of Bayside's corporate officers and who has worked with us since 2021, for his continuing patience and endeavours on behalf of HMVS Cerberus.

Thank-you to all of our members who have stood with us since Friends of the Cerberus was formed in 2003 and to those who have come aboard more recently. Thank-you also to our long serving committee members as well as to Peter Tully and Gary Grimmer who served on the Save the Cerberus Alliance which met every month at Bayside from late 2000 until about 2004. Who would have thought that all three of us would still be Saving the Cerberus 25 years later. All but one of the committee "newcomers" joined between 2003 and 2006.

Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service Medal (VVLESM)
(Issued 1881-1901)

"Victoria was the only Colony and State in Australia to provide a Long Service Medal of "strictly local content". All other states had medals mostly identical to the British issue, but with State names on the reverse. These medals were stuck by the Royal Mint in London. In fact NSW did not issue long service medals to its naval forces until 1912.

In 1871 the issue of a Long Service Medal was considered for ten years [later changed to 15 years] effective service, but it was not until 1875 that design and die costs of £150 were presented from England. This price being considered outrageous, samples of the then issued British Long Service Medals were presented to Messrs Stokes and Martin of Melbourne in 1880, who preceded with the design and die work at a cost of only £25, a considerable difference from the London quotation."¹

As royal sanction had not been obtained in time for the presenting of the first batch of medals in 1881, the Governor reluctantly declined to present the medals. To quote David Matthews⁸ "the first recipients were wearing the medal before Queen Victoria had given her approval for its award, an unusual and daring act in those days." Perhaps this was an indication of the young colony's growing self confidence.

The definitive text on this medal is the book The Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service Medal 1881-1901 by R. D. Williams, F.R.N.S. The Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1976. Our copy, donated by Frank Noonan, lists 471 recipes from the military Forces but only six recipients from the Naval Forces.

Our research of the Cerberus Log Books discovered two medal presentations in 1884 and in 1899. Newspaper articles listed 35 recipients for the 1884 presentation and 12 recipients for the 1899 presentation. A further sixteen medals have become known from either newspaper articles or from the recipients descendants contacting us. As the Argus newspaper of 3 April 1899 reported a Chief Petty Officer G. Camm as having received the medal and that we recently received photos of a 1899 medal that was presented to Chief Petty Officer George Cann, we suspect these two people are in fact the same person. We therefor have increased the known recipients of the Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service Medal from six to 62 or 63. (I am loathe to delete a possible duplicate name in case he is a real person.)

Below are two medals which we recently became aware of.

George Cann's Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service Medal.

Edge detail: GEORGE CANN, C.P.O. PERMT. NAVAL FORCES
photos courtesy of Michael Charteris

Hugh Auld's Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service Medal.

Hugh's medal was at some stage of its life was, like Philip Morone's medal which Friends of the Cerberus purchased about ten years ago, converted to a brooch/badge so that it could be more easily worn.



Photos by the medal's owner and proud descendant, Kelly Bagdon.

Recipients of the Victoria Volunteer Long & Efficient Service madal.

Pilot House Brass Sign

Because of the publicity surrounding our 2006 Cerberus Celebration Day at Half Moon Bay, Black Rock Yacht Club received a phone call regarding donating a Cerberus artifact. Unfortunately, as the caller did not leave his name and contact details, we were unable to contact him. Fortunately, a year or two later the caller dropped off a small brass sign that he had souvenired from Cerberus years earlier. Since then the brass sign has been displayed at Black Rock Yacht Club along with our Cerberus model, images, replica shot etc.

On checking on our Cerberus display earlier this week I noticed that the brass sign was missing. As an item from our display case was stolen a couple of years ago we are concerned that the same fate has befallen the brass sign. This is not the fault of Black Rock Yacht Club as their venue is occasionally booked for all manner of events. Naturally we and the Black Rock Yacht Club are keen to learn of the bass sign's whereabouts.

Entry from the Cerberus Relics SlideShow.