DE GARIS'S SUICIDE

Evening Post, Volume 50, Issue 50, 27 August 1926, Page 7

DE GARIS'S SUICIDE

STRANGE CAREER OF AN ERRATIC GENIUS

FINAL FINANCIAL BLOW.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, 20th August.

When the body of Clement John De Garis was found in a gas-filled room at a house in Mornington, near Melbourne, death had written '.'Closed" to the account of one of the most brilliant, erratic, and picturesque figures that ever were associated with Australian business. New Zealand came into touch with De Garis, for his arrest there last year as he left a steamer from Sydney, where he had been living in disguise for several days after leaving a note professing suicide, must be fresh in everyone's mind. For the last 18 years De Garie's name has been constantly before the public in relation to some business proposition. Few of these business enterprises were permanently successful, and many were failures, but they were failures because of some flaw in the character of their promoter. His suicide by turning on the taps of a gas oven after every aperture in the room had been sealed came as the result of a last blow to His hopes o£ making his greatest failure, the Kcndenup soldiers' settlement in Western Australia, a money-spinner. De Garis professed to believe that he had struck petroleum at Kcndenup, and though his statements were refuted by Governmental experts, he continued to Iry to interest his friends in this oil proposition. The blow to his hopes of making this his "bonanza" came in the refusal of an American syndicate to back him up. The son o£ a Methodist minister who left the pulpit to engage in farming at the Mildura irrigation settlement, De Garis was first connected with a real estate firm founded by his father and then with a fruit-packing company. His first rise to fame came in 1008 when he was appointed publicity director of the Australian Dried Fruits Association. His work in that position brought results. He spent tremendous sums in advertising, and his administration of publicity waß not always unanimously approved. He converted an estate in South Australia into a model irrigation settlement, but a similar attempt at Kendenup failed. , The concentration he put into trying to make that ill-fated venture a success led him to neglect his dozen and one other enterprises, which ranged from book-publish-ing to owning a newspaper. Yet at the height of all his activities, De Garis found time to write and produce a musical comedy. After he was brought back to Melbourne from New Zealand on a charge of passing a valueless cheque the proceedings were withdrawn, and many of his creditors again joined him in a real estate venture. That was a success, and most of them got their losses back, but the avalanche of debt was too much for him in the end, and like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, he found he could never reach the summit that meant clearance from debt.

De Garis's career and character must provide interesting material for the psychologist. His three main features were immense energy, greater initiative, and still greater optimism. If the man had been a little less . optimistic he might have been greater. It was a remarkable tribute to his powers of persuasion and convincing oratory that so many people remained loyal to him financially after they had burnt their fingers in previous financial pies of his recipe and making.