Esteemed members of the exclusive men-only Melbourne Savage Club have their cravats in a granny knot over a proposed change to the height of the club’s internal balustrade, with dissidents accusing President Jerry Ellis of declaring war on a heritage-listed building.
In a stinging spray relayed to Crikey by Ellis’ internal enemies, members have expressed their displeasure with the former BHP director and Monash University Chancellor after he moved to raise the height of the hand rail at the club’s Bank Place headquarters by four inches to avoid bumbling drunks from toppling to their death.
The move followed a near fatal fall last year, after one over-sauced Savage went sailing over the balustrade, plunging four flights of stairs and narrowly avoiding paraplegia.
The irate Savage mole told Crikey: “Ellis thinks raising a handrail by 4 inches (pulling out the old balusters in the process) to grind his personal axe will stop drunken imbeciles launching themselves over the railing. A drunken moron who is sufficiently sentient to climb over a balustrade is unlikely to find Jerry’s four inches of protection particularly daunting.”
Sources say the Prez was keen to avoid a prospective six figure payout brought by members who found themselves sprawled on the floor following a repeat occurrence.
After the unfortunate incident, Ellis, who has a long history forcing through unpopular Occupational Health and Safety reforms during his corporate gigs, moved swiftly, engaging leading Melbourne architect John Briggs to oversee an application for the building works to Heritage Victoria — required because the construction of the clubhouse dates to the late 19th century.
Under 1993 amendments to the Building Code of Australia, buildings require a balustrade height higher than was originally mandated. However, under section 28 of the Act, Heritage listed buildings like the Savage Club are exempt.
Despite that, Ellis subsequently received approval for the works from Heritage Victoria last August — part of the Department of Planning and Community Development — and while the club’s internal Building Advisory Sub-Committee apparently ruled against the works, the boardroom veteran was keen to proceed forthwith.
According to Briggs, the ructions began in the lead-up to Christmas when a cancerous cell of aggrieved members began to arc up with some “fluff and bubble” over the alterations, which they say have the potential to destroy the club’s ambiance and casual but refined atmosphere.
“The whole thing’s a pretty interesting joke,” Briggs said, describing the dissidents’ case as “fundamentally flawed.”
They rebels claimed that because the staircase pre-dated the Savage’s arrival at the premises, it was therefore historically more “significant” than first thought and shouldn’t be touched. But Briggs says the members had failed to properly read the original heritage application, which listed the staircase as significant regardless of when it was built.
The “bohemian” club was established in 1894 for the appreciation of the finer things in life, including music, art, drama, science and literature. It moved into its current headquarters in 1925 and is regarded as a more sozzled alternative to the genteel Melbourne Club which has its headquarters at the Paris End of Collins Street. It attracted criticism alongside other men-only clubs when then-Attorney General Rob Hulls failed to ping it on s-x discrimination grounds.
But unlike the balustrade, the club’s profile could be receding with some members upping sticks for the more modern RACV edifice up the street.
According to one source: “I gather the Savage Club is just about deserted at lunchtime in comparison to the old days. Who’d want to go to a club where you get pilloried by “Committee Men” for daring to ask questions?”
Current members include pillars of the Melbourne establishment such as occasional Q and A panelist John Elliott. Another member is known to refer to himself as “esquire”, despite that honorific usually being bestowed by others.
In 2008, Ellis eerily foreshadowed the current stoush, telling the Safety at Work Blog: “Behaviour implies, in my mind, the soft stuff. The only way to achieve anything in the steel industry was just brutal. If you didn’t perform, you were out. And that changed behaviour…. It only had to be done once, but it had to be done. It was necessary to demonstrate that you would not tolerate people who would not take the subject [of OHS] seriously. This is a position that I favour, safety through enforcement.”
A spokesperson for Heritage Victoria told Crikey that while they had received more contextual information on the age of the staircase before Christmas, the permit remained valid:
“Works have not commenced yet. Heritage Victoria received further information in late December indicating the staircase was older than originally thought. However this is not an impediment to works proceeding.”
Savage member Peter Blomquist, who is understood to have assisted with the application, told Crikey that the issue was an “internal club matter that shouldn’t be out there”.
Jerry Ellis did not return calls before deadline.
A compromise of retaining the existing balustrades and using an unobtrusive glass additional piece to bring the stair into compliance with current code doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone yet.
this is a rediculous ‘non story’ – why was it written? why is it the number 4 story in the crikey newspaper.
apart from this keep up the good work.
I was working for BHP during the “heady” days of the 1990’s when Ellis went from head of the Iron Ore division to Chairman. This was also the time of the Maura mine disaster when 15 workers died.
The culture change that was imposed following the review into Maura was heavy handed, but in hindsight, I was impressed by it. Safety became the focus of the organisation, yearly performance reviews gave a double weighting to the safety category (the only category that had such a double weighting). Seemly silly things happened: I worked in an office building (not the most dangerous environment), and we had convex mirrors installed so you could see who was coming around a corner and we had windows put in wooden doors so you could see if someone was going to push it into you.
But after a couple of years I have to admit the culture of the place had changed significantly. When BHP sold off my part of the business as part of the heady 1990’s coming to an end with the installation of Paul Anderson and Jerry falling on his sword, many of us lamented the loss of the safety culture that by then permeated BHP.
I, for one, will take my hat off to Jerry for his safety crusade!
@ Michael Bowles Would’ve thought it contained all of the essential elements of a cracking yarn. Secretive male-only quaffing club declares war on a former BHP director over unwanted amendments to a heritage listed building. What’s not to love?
Err, yes it does seem a bit of a non-story. If a few sozzled bizoids earn a Darwin Award, by definition the world’s gene pool is improved.
But Holden Back’s suggestion and the whole story reminds me of Times Square in Wanchai Hong Kong. It’s a place one always goes to when passing through Honkers. It has a giant Galleria (though they call it The Void, see below) of 9 stories that looks down on a large open public space. It has glass balustrades and even without any innate vertigo, anyone approaching the edge on one of the upper floors would involuntarily pullback.
I always wondered, because it was not especially high.
Anyway sometime in the mid-2000s I think, they added a quite high glass extension which would have made it impossible to accidentally fall over and almost impossible to deliberately climb. (I kinda missed my little thrill because you cannot look over the edge.) I cannot find anything about deaths but I suspect there may have been some, especially with genY kids larking around in these spaces. This pic doesn’t really do justice to the void and it is pre-extension to the balustrade.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HK_TimeSquareVOID_20070824.jpg