The 2026 Ballarat Heritage Festival was held from 21-24 May. The local Vintage, Veteran & Classic car club always have a display and as usual I attended, taking the Monaro. It was here that I was alerted to a display in the Ballarat Town Hall of one of the former city architect’s drawings that had been found discarded in some dusty office. Herbert L Colburn worked in the city between 1930 and the mid 1950s producing mainly grand house plans along with watercolor drawings. Among them was a drawing and plan for Vic Wendt’s Motor Garage. Dated 21 July 1947 the plans featured a building on the corner of Doveton and Mair Streets, alongside what would become Ballarat’s Civic Centre.
Vic Wendt had been an agent for mostly English cars, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Wolseley, Riley and Packard. He moved from 8A Hotham Street to the new premises around 1950 and by the mid-1950s was selling Jaguar and Studebaker. Unfortunately, the Council acquired the site and tore down the garage in the late 1960s. Peter Valentine had purchased the site in1966, taking on Peugeot and Renault agencies. He relocated further north on Doveton Street and then the business, as Gardon Motors, moved to Howitt Street.
Ballarat has very few original motor garage buildings. The Sunshine Garage in Dana Street, former Holden dealer Coliseum Motors in Grenville Street and Wyres Brothers showroom on the corner of Sturt and Lyons Street. This was originally Sam Ellis & Sons, Oakland and Pontiac, then Wyres Bros with Rootes products and in 1948 Holden.
Artificial Intelligence
I have been a little wary of AI, however recently I began to try Microsoft’s ‘Copilot’. This arrived unannounced when I opened Word one day. It also runs in PowerPoint and Excel.
An issue with AI, particularly the one that returns your search result at the top of the results, is it’s accuracy. I often spend time correcting Facebook quotes from ‘keyboard warriors’ who contribute to anything and everything.
A worrying concern is the new Facebook pages created to attract views and clicks for advertising revenue and running stories purely developed using AI. An example is the page titled “Somebody tell some stories” which uses eye catching headings like “Banned Engine” or “Holden lied”. Mostly its utter garbage.
The problem is, every time an error is added to the internet AI finds it and builds an alternate history. An example is the date Alexander Holden arrived in Adelaide. Google finds either 1852 or 1856, while the actual date is 14 Feb 1855. This date is recorded in his diary and revealed on the Holden Retirees Club web page. Google has not found this entry with its source, so research will continue to state the error. See the highlighted text at the bottom which contains the first two AI entries in Google. The second one has five sources, all of which are wrong.
Back to Copilot
Copilot also runs in an app you download and allows you to “repair” images. It does a brilliant job of restoring old photographs, until you look closely. I ran a newspaper image of a 1931 Chevrolet Moonlight Speedster through Copilot, and the before and after views are below.
While the Copilot image is now full of clarity and contrast, the detail is wrong. Compare the grille, fender park lamps, cowl vents, they are all wrong. It would appear Copilot trawls the web for close-matching images and assumes any doubtful detail.1
With respect to a paper I am researching, I have to say Copilot provided worthwhile suggestions relating to the title, abstract, introduction and conclusion.
Copilot also made suggestions about the structure, which made sense. Then I asked it to do a grammar and spelling check. Fortunately, I made a duplicate copy as Copilot proceeded to wreck 40% of my references, deleted most of them and also changed the order in the footnotes. It appears this is a common occurrence. So take care. Read the Yale News article “Doing more, but learning less; The risks of AI in research.”
Incorrect AI-generated Information on J. A. Holden
Norm Darwin PhD
President