A kind gesture from a policeman saved the Wild Man of Nunawading

When a half-starved wanderer was found in Melbourne’s east, it took a stroke of luck and a touch of kindness to set him right.

Senior-Constable Tom Waldron cracked the case of the Wild Man of Nunawading.

When a poor half-starved, ragged man dubbed the “Wild Man of Nunawading” was found wandering the paddocks in the 1890s, his identity and country of origin were a mystery.

The wild-eyed man spoke no English, and police were no wiser about his “strange guttural jabbering” after a detective who spoke seven European languages was sent to crack the case.

The “Wild Man of Nunawading” is the subject of a new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, with Melbourne historian Dr Val Noone:

As Dr Noone explains, the man was charged with vagrancy for his own protection and kept in police custody.

After multilingual detective Alfred Burvett visited and confirmed the man didn’t speak French, Italian, German, Spanish or Norwegian, he suggested a Hungarian interpreter was needed.

In the meantime, the wild man was brought to the old city watch house in Melbourne.

It was then that a well-respected Irish-born policeman named Senior Constable Tom Waldron wandered in and overheard speculation about the wild man’s origins.

Police officers at Russell St Police Barracks Melbourne in 1896. Picture: State Library Victoria

Waldron grew up speaking only Gaelic, the Irish language, and had picked up English while completing his apprenticeship as an engineer in England.

Waldron wandered across to the wild man’s cell, proposing his own theory that he might be a “countryman of mine”.

“He says, ‘An dtuigeann tú Gaeilge?’ which means, ‘Do you speak Irish?’” says Dr Noone, author of a new book written entirely in Irish called Gaeilge Ghriandóite (Sunburnt Gaelic).

“There was a scamper across the room, the bloke rushes up to the grille and says, ‘I sure do’. ‘Thuigim go maith’, ‘I understand it very well.’”

He was thus identified as an Irishman, and his language as Irish, or Gaelic.

Victorian police officers working in Market St, Melbourne about 1900. Picture: State Library Victoria

The wild man tearfully grasped Waldron by the hand, and told him, in Irish, that he was “the only civilised man” he had met in Australia.

While the wild man’s name has been lost to history, it was reported that Waldron helped his new friend find work, and he went on to learn English and become a well-to-do farmer.

To learn more, listen to the interview about the Wild Man of Nunawading with Val Noone in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.