Arturo Comelli's King Neptune star of golden mile of service stations from 1960s at Adelaide's unregulated Darlington
The King Neptune statue, by Arturo Giobatta “Arthur” Comelli (bottom centre), was the star attraction at Doug Sheehan's Neptune, first of the service stations that sprung up in the 1960s along the golden mile on South Road, Darlington, outside the retail hours restrictions of the metropolitan district. Top right: Elephants from a visiting circus grazing on the banks of the Sturt Creek behind King Neptune. Bottom right: A bust of Don Bradman by Comelli.
Images courtesy Doug Sheehan and State Library of South Australia
King Neptune, created out of very South Australian circumstances, ruling the wonder of Adelaide youngsters from the 1960s,
The statue of King Neptune was ordered and installed by Doug Sheehan, owner of the Neptune, first of the “golden mile” of service stations that sprung up along South Road at Darlington, just outside the defined Adelaide metropolitan district. Within that district in the 1960s and 1970s, regulated retail shopping hours meant service stations had to close at noon on Saturday and not open until Monday morning. Those restricted hours didn’t apply to areas outside the metropolitan district including Darlington, on Adelaide’s southern outskirts, in Meadows rural council area.
Doug Sheehan was the first to take advantage of that with his Neptune service station near the banks of the Sturt Creek. Other service station brands – Shell, Mobil (with the hotdog kiosk), Amoco, Caltex, BP, Ampol and Esso – soon followed in a row and Sheehan looked for a point of difference. In the early 1960s, he got approval to build a pond near the Sturt Creek banks with a bust of King Neptune that became golden mile's main attraction, especially for children who played in the lawn in front of it.
King Neptune was the work of Arturo Giobatta “Arthur” Comelli, born in 1900 in Nimis from the Udine province, Fruili-Venezia Giulia in Italy. He was apprenticed as a monumental mason and later completed an art course at the Professional School in Nimis. Politically he was attracted to the charismatic proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who attempted to assert his authority over the Yugoslav port town of Fiume (later Rijeka in Croatia) in 1919.
After emigrating to Adelaide in 1926, Comelli studied sculpture at the South Australian School of Mines and made a living by taking on commissions for sculptures, decorations for churches and paintings. During World War II, Comelli was arrested with other Italian "enemy aliens" in 1940 and interned first at Adelaide’s Keswick, then Tatura in Victoria and Hay in New South Wales, He was transferred to Loveday internment camp in South Australia’s Riverland in 1941 and released in November that year.
After the war, Comelli opened his Wonderland Artworks business on Adelaide’s Anzac Highway, well known for the array of artworks on public display. Besides his best remembered King Neptune, Comelli’s s works included Christ on the Cross at St Francis Catholic Church at Newton, the capitals for columns on South Australia’s parliament house and a bust of Donald Bradman.
The Bradman bust was given by Comelli in 1971 to the trust committee running the appeal to save the ANZ Bank building (later Edmund Wright House in King William Street, Adelaide city ) to be auctioned to raise funds. The auction didn’t go ahead and Comelli died in 1975. The sculpture was transferred to the State Library of South Australia in 1996 and used in the Bradman Collection exhibition at the Institute Building (1998 to 2003) and later at Adelaide Oval.
The King Neptune statue suddenly disappeared from Darlington during the late 1980s when the Neptune service station was taken over by the Shell company. Doug Sheehan’s son Robert, who had moved interstate, took up a search for King Netptune and was assured by Shell Petroleum that, after being locked up in storage, he would be installed in the Shell Distribution Centre's garden at Largs Bay.
King Neptune disappeared again when the Shell centre was closed and demolished. After several more years in storage, he was rediscovered, given a fresh paint and put back on display at what became the Viva Energy Hot Bitumen plant at Birkenhead on Port Adelaide’s LeFevre Peninsula.