Most Australians have at some time or other glimpsed the grainy old Cinesound newsreel footage or the still pictures of the dramatic events of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932. What should have been a moment of glory for the NSW Premier, Jack Lang, declaring open Bradfield’s engineering wonder of a bridge, was turned into a minor public relations coup for a shadowy fringe paramilitary group called the New Guard through an audacious act by one of its members.

De Groot’s ‘coup’

Just as the Bridge ribbon was about to be cut by the NSW Premier, Captain Francis De Groot who had attached himself undetected to the escort cavalry, rode forward and pre-emptively slashed the ribbon. In doing so he declared the bridge open “in the name of all decent and respectable people of New South Wales”. De Groot, the Irish-born antique dealer, furniture restorer and part-time soldier, with one outrageous swipe of his sword, secured his “15 minutes of fame”, embarrassed the Lang Labor Government and thrust the New Guard deeply into the consciousness of Sydneysiders at large!

Primrose’s ceremony at the Northern Pylon

Now all this is well known, but what is largely not known is what was happening at the northern end of the Bridge whilst attention was focused on the high drama at Dawes Point. Soon after De Groot “opened the bridge” in unorthodox fashion at the southern pylon end, another member of the New Guard cut the ribbon at the northern pylon. Hubert Leslie Primrose, Mayor of North Sydney, was an assistant adjunct and quartermaster-general in the New Guard. Primrose as mayor had organised his own bridge-opening ceremony from the North Sydney side. Although NSW Police (and Premier Lang) had decided reservations about Alderman Primrose’s Northside celebration of the Bridge, because of his involvement in a suspect para-military movement that was under investigation (the New Guard), they ultimately made no attempts to stop the municipal representative going ahead with his act of public ceremony.

So, remarkable as it may seem to us today, the opening of both ends of that most iconic of Sydney symbols, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was accomplished by the New Guard. These deeds (one undertaken officially and the other without state sanction) were achieved by a small, para-military organisation that at best was only ever a marginal player in provincial Australian politics.

Harbour Bridge from Kirribilli

Primrose’s fascination with the New Guard, like many of its initial supporters, was short-lived. In June 1932 he was one of many New Guardsmen elected to the Legislative Assembly for the new conservative force in party politics, the United Australia Party (forerunner to the Liberal Party of Australia), later rising to the rank of UAP Minister for Health, and later Minister for National Emergency Services. Primrose Park in the northern Sydney suburbs of Cremorne and Cammeray is named in his honour, but clearly not for his activities on behalf of the New Guard!

Footnote: Apart from his right wing, para-military enthusiasms, Captain De Groot, the stealer of Premier Lang’s thunder on that illustrious day, had a respectable day job as the proprietor of a successful antique furniture business in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The plaque below stands on the site of the former shop in Rushcutters Bay.

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[Refs: Australian Dictionary of Biography (Vol 11) 1988, HL Primrose, ADB, (Supp. Vol) 2005, FE De Groot, both artls by Andrew Moore]