That the status of the couple who assembled it are near royalty in Australiana circles helped, as did a delayed respect from the Federation centenary for Australia's coat of arms, the mark of the nation, which featured on some of the keener sought lots. (Could it be that a bit of jingoism is entering the market?)
The two passionate collectors had been together for more than 40 years during which they pursued Australiana relentlessly. Their separate recent demises are among the genre's and the collecting fraternity's greatest losses.
Rich in scrimshaw, as sailors' carvings on whale bone are known, 493 or 98% of the 506 lots on offer found buyers.
Because the estimates were so widely off the market, the percentage sold by value was an impressive if absurd 309 per cent.
Australia's leading collector of scrimshaw who knew their collection well and had handled it on visits to the couple's boatshed at Palm Beach was almost certainly the buyer of about 50 lots starting at lot 2, an engraved scrimshaw whale's tooth for $1342.
However, it was not possible to button hole him. It is believed to be Mr Colin Thomas who lives in Tasmania, and who has published definitively on the subject and also exhibited his collection.
The offering revived Australiana's ability to produce a six figure lot. This was achieved for a plain cedar sideboard while other lesser priced pieces of brown furniture and various oddities like rugs made from skins of national fauna were keenly sought after.
The auction was what Sydney dealer Mr Bill Bradshaw used to call a faint-making sale both literally and rhetorically when a man fainted during the auction and an ambulance was called to take him to hospital.
This was fortunately towards the end of the sale which went until 9.30 pm and when blood sugar was running low.
The faint only briefly disturbed the auction, so it was not as worrying for the auctioneers as the famous faint several years ago when at a Sotheby's auction a man sitting in the seat usually taken by big spender Dr Joseph Brown fell off his chair.
Mr Bradshaw used the expression when a sale went over the top.
A room packed with 120 people many of them old timers but some new buyers, a busy phone and strong Internet bidding, returned Australiana some of the way towards the prices to the boom years leading up to the 1988 Bicentennial.
After buyer 114 kicked off the proceedings there followed a long run of buys including a corset busk which sold for $9150 against the estimate of $800 to $1200 to the prominent bidder
A narwal tusk estimated at $6000 to $8000 made $35,380.
The big spender did not appear to be interested in a chair made entirely of whalebone.
It realised $34,160, more than three times the estimate of $10,000 to $15,000 which do not of course include buyers premium. This was still a fair bit less than the $84,000 paid at Bonhams and Goodman in 2008.
On the phone from his base at Mole Creek Mr John Hawkins unsuccessfully sought a quoll skin rug which made $19,520. It was obvious it was going to go over his $20,000 limit.
However was able to secure a very early cedar chiffonier sideboard for $18,300 which had been estimated only $1500 to $2800.
He plans to show kit with other early related pieces in an exhibition at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston later in the year.
The important early colonial cedar six legged sideboard sold to a phone bidder for $122,000 including buyers premium against estimates of $20,000 to $30,000.
The price appeared to recognise the catalogue endorsed earliness of the item as made in Hobart around 1815.
The interest was despite a suggestion that collectors fond of veneer would have not have been overly impressed with it because it had none of that fancy work being made entirely from solid wood, rather than veneered.
It did have some fine string inlay, however, to enhance it decoratively.
The piece does not appear to have had much of a past market run, the couple having an enormous capacity to ferret out good objects.
It was known however, having been illustrated in Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary, 1788-1938, by Kevin Fahy and Andrew Simpson, published by Casuarina Press Pty. Ltd.
Mr Thomas did not have to pay over the top for a Tasmanian boat hull carved wall panel at $915 given it had sold at Gowans in Hobart 10 years ago for about $1800.
Caressa who died some years after Carl, was like him, well liked and respected among Australiana buffs because of her sheer zeal and commitment.
This included her relentless pursuit of fakery even in her last days. She is said to have pressed the send button on an eye opening expose of the same for publication in Australiana, the journal of the Australiana Society, as one of her very last acts.
There appears to have been little if any museum buying although most institutions likely to be interested, such as the Allport Library in Hobart which has a big scrimshaw collection and was excited by a piece engraved with the ship Tasmania.
When investigated the Tasmania turned out to be a ship that had never gone there. NSW, yes, but no further.
Scrimshaw is a very idiosyncratic collectable, with pieces hard to source geographically as sailors of many nations and whalers in the northern hemisphere engraved.
Even more generalised Australiana buffs took heart from the sale because scrimshaw occupies an important corner of this faculty and the art is a little compromised by post 1980 legislation protecting of the whale in Australia. Certificates are needed for its export on grounds of its age.
