Directly from the Graceland Exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery

In conjunction with hundreds of elements, small and large, unassuming and diamond-studded in the new Elvis exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery, a handful stopped Priscilla Presley in her tracks on her pre-opening private tour, bursting with deep memories and emotions.

A set of bongos. A wedding dress. A crisp white suit. And an old, good thumb copy of The Propheta book of prose poems by Kahlil Gibran.

The bongos were their first Christmas present for Elvis: it was 1959 and 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, the daughter of an Air Force captain, fell in love with the 24-year-old singer, already a star who was. designed and based in the army in Germany.

She scoured Wiesbaden for a gift for the man who seemed to have everything he wanted, and settled on the $ 45 bongos (her father paid for them). “Bongos! Just what I always wanted,” Elvis said as he opened the gift.

The wedding dress, of course. It was 1967 and she had to shop quietly: “We did not want the publicity, we did not want the fanfare”, she recalls – there were some fans who were not happy to see the Elvis from the market. So she would go to out-of-the-way Los Angeles wedding dress shops with one of Presley’s retinues who would look like her boyfriend. “Finally I got one. I wanted it very simple, I did not want it to be shiny in any way.

Then there was the costume: the one he wore to sing If I can dreamthe heartbreaking finale of his ’68 Comeback Specialhis first performance in almost a decade after he tired of the Hollywood grind and shifted his passion for live music reignite.

Amazingly, it was the first time Priscilla saw Elvis live. She saw him in a new light at that moment, and in the Las Vegas shows that followed.

“I became a fan,” she says. “I could not believe what I saw and it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ This is what I loved about him … it was just a beautiful sight – how he performed, how he moved, how comfortable he felt.