Trust Issue 5

Issue 5 2018

trust THE NAT IONAL TRUSTS OF AUSTR ALIA magazine

Issue No. 5 2018 $8.95

SAVING CULTURE

The Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre

T R U S T

BEAUMONT HOUSE’S COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE

NATI ONA LTRUST.ORG.AU

HISTORY LESSON Discover Tasmania’s Franklin House

JOIN and get involved

NATIONAL TRUST

You can help support the PLACES YOU LOVE by becoming a member or donating to the National Trust.

If you are a National Trust member you will enjoy discounted access to hundreds of PROPERTIES in Australia and more than 800 FABULOUS DESTINATIONS around the world.

You also receive three COMPLIMENTARY copies of TRUST magazine and opportunities to attend events at discounted rates.

DISCOVER more about the BENEFITS of membership by going to www.nationaltrust.org.au/membership

2 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PHOTOGRAPHS MARNIE HAWSON, KARA ROSENLUND, MICHAEL WEE

NATIONAL TRUST

Encourage a FRIEND or FAMILY member to SIGN UP or DONATE today and help us protect our special PLACES. Thank you!

The Mackinnon Nature Reserve at Mooramong, Victoria, is home to many native birds and animals.

See our story on page 16.

Welcome

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH MARNIE HAWSON THIS PAGE ALAMY EDITOR’S PORTRAIT MICHAEL WEE

W

hen the autumn leaves turn we have cause for celebration, thanks to the Australian Heritage Festival.

The Australian Government is a proud supporter of the Festival, which runs from April to May each year. Over almost 40 years, the Festival has done great work in promoting our heritage, and I congratulate the National Trust in extending its reach to new and different communities every year.

I live in Melbourne, where heritage, culture and sport come together like nowhere else. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, Flemington Racecourse and Sidney Myer Music Bowl are longstanding entries on our National Heritage List, alongside the stately Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton “The creation of Gardens. In February, I was pleased to add Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and government domains Memorial Precinct to this prestigious list. in the 19th century It is another much-loved and visited place.

All these sites are part of the fabric and left a lasting legacy of of their communities, and the large green spaces in our character city as a whole is a richer place for it. cities for generations of The Precinct takes in local landmarks such as the Victorian Government House, Australians to enjoy.” the Shrine of Remembrance and Melbourne Observatory, but it has outstanding value to the nation because of what it tells us about the history of Indigenous repatriation and of urban planning in Australia.

Included in the Precinct is Kings Domain Resting Place, where the remains of Aboriginal people from Victoria are buried and remembered. Over many years, Aboriginal people advocated for Aboriginal human remains and objects held in museums and other institutions to be returned to their own communities.

The Resting Place represents a positive and significant change in the national repatriation story. The precinct listing also recognises the significance of the wider parkland as a rare and outstanding example of a government domain. The creation of government domains in the 19th century left a lasting legacy of large green spaces in our cities for generations of Australians to enjoy.

Places such as these explain much about modern Australia, but they need support to tell their stories. All National Heritage Listed places with historic values are eligible for funding under our Protecting National A statue of Lord Historic Sites program.

Hopetoun, Australia’s The call for applications first Governor General, stands in Melbourne’s under this program went Domain Parklands and out in February, so watch Memorial Precinct. this space for details of the successful projects.

THE MACKINNON Nature Reserve which you can see on the opposite page is full of native wildlife. Wedge-tailed eagles, swamp wallabies and brolgas can all be regularly spotted, but its star resident is a little more elusive: the endangered eastern barred bandicoot.

Once common across Victoria’s grasslands, this nocturnal marsupial is thought to be extinct in the wild. One of its main chances of survival today is the Reserve, which may not have come about had a Hollywood actress not met and married an Australian grazier in London in 1937. Read the fascinating story on page 16 of Claire Adams and Donald ‘Scobie’ Mackinnon and their life at Mooramong in Victoria’s Western Distict.

Wildlife also rates a mention in our story about the Prelude Composer in Residence at Beaumont House on page 10. Gabriella Smart installed her grand piano in the music room earlier this year and looked out the window to see a local kangaroo grazing on the lawn — not a common occurrence. Her music has brought other new visitors to the house, which was exactly what Shane Simpson AM, the Chairman of Bundanon Trust and a driving force behind the project, had hoped for.

“Composers produce the raw material of Australian music... Without them, we are reliant on outside voices, songs and stories. Yet very few can make a living from composing alone. Then there are historic houses around the country, the preservation of which is essential for keeping us in touch with our heritage, and which are seeking a new and vibrant role in the community,” he explains.

It’s projects like these that help us discover our heritage in new and exciting ways. Enjoy the issue,

Josh Frydenberg Minister for the Environment and Energy

Victoria Carey Editor-in-chief Email editor@nationaltrust.org.au

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

5

Amazingly, during the period 1929–1969 when the house was used as a residence for nurses at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, many of the walls and ceilings were overpainted white. See our story on Ayers House on page 40.

Contributors

PHOTOGRAPHY MARNIE HAWSON, CLAIRE TAKACS, METTE KORTELAINEN, SIMON RICKARD

28

Patron His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd) Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia Editor Victoria Carey Creative director Jill Henderson Sub editors Melody Lord, Jennifer Stackhouse Writers Jane Alexander, Edwin Barnard, Hilary Burden, Victoria Carey, Steve Dow, Richard Ferguson, Jonathan Fisher, Billy Griffiths, Sue Hanson, Dr Darren Peacock, Christine Reid, Jennifer Stackhouse Photographers Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre, Marnie Hawson, Claire Takacs, Michael Wee Calendar and news editor Melody Lord

Billy Griffiths

Claire Takacs

Dr Darren Peacock

Soon after Billy joined his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he was hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarked on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent.

An extract from his powerful new book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia appears on page 60.

Currently a research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, he is also the author of The China Breakthrough and co-editor, with Mike Smith, of The Australian Archaeologist’s Book of Quotations.

A winner of the International Garden Photographer of the Year Award, Claire sees gardens as a work of art and is meticulous in her recording of them, often revisiting one several times to ensure she captures the best light.

With her work regularly appearing in the UK’s Gardens Illustrated and leading Australian magazines, she was our first choice to shoot Tasmania’s Frankin House garden on page 28. “It was a great privilege to be able to record the beauty and history of this special place,” she says. Follow her journey photographing the world’s most beautiful gardens on instagram @clairetakacs.

We persuaded National Trust of South Australia’s Chief Executive Officer to write not one but two stories for this issue — with more than 130 heritage properties to manage, Dr Peacock is a very busy man. Turn to page 40 for his Ayers House story and page 10 for his chat with composer-in-residence Gabriella Smart.

The pair work from Adelaide’s Beaumont House, which is now bought to life by Gabriella’s days at the piano in the music room. “Being surprised by the sound of her playing reminds me that this house was once a family home. We look forward to having more music in the house and garden,” he says.

Publication is coordinated by the Australian Council of National Trusts of Australia and is supported by the Australian Government through the National Trust Partnership Program. The views expressed in TRUST are not necessarily those of the National Trusts or the Australian Government. The articles in this magazine are subject to copyright. No article may be used without the consent of the National Trust and the author. Australian Council of National Trusts, PO Box 413, Campbell ACT 2612; admin@nationaltrust.org. au; nationaltrust.org.au. For advertising rates, contact: admin@nationaltrust.org.au For editorial submissions, contact editor@ nationaltrust.org.au. Printed by Blue Star Web, 83 Derby Street, Silverwater, NSW 2128 under ISO14001 Environmental Management Systems certification. TRUST is published by the Australian Council of National Trusts (ABN 54 008 444 684) for National Trust members. ISSN: 1835-2316

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

7

Visiting Mooramong today, you can only wonder what the newly married Mrs Mackinnon thought of her new home in March 1938.

The Mackinnons gifted their property to the people of Victoria in the 1970s and it is now administered by the National Trust. See the story on page 16.

Contents Issue No. 5 Issue 5 2018

28

trust THE NATIONAL TRUSTS OF AUS TR ALIA magazine

Issue No. 5 2018 $8.95

SAVING CULTURE

The Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre

T R U S T

BEAUMONT HOUSE’S COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE

NATIONALTRUST.ORG.AU

HISTORY LESSON Discover Tasmania’s Franklin House

TRUST05_COVER_final.indd 1

3/4/18 1:12 am

COVER STORY A walk around the grounds of Tasmania’s Franklin House is a must. See page 28.

Writer HILARY BURDEN Photographer CLAIRE TAKACS

16 Cover stories 10 MAKING MUSIC Beaumont House’s composer in residence.

28

HISTORY LESSON Discover Tasmania’s Franklin House.

74 SAVING CULTURE The Goldfields Aboriginal Language OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTOGRAPH MARNIE HAWSON THIS PAGE PHOTOGRAPHS MARNIE HAWSON, CLAIRE TAKACS

Centre in Western Australia.

Heritage 70 A PLACE TO REMEMBER Explore Australia’s newest National Heritage place, the expansive Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct adjacent to Melbourne’s CBD.

People

74 LIVING HERITAGE The National Trust of Western Australia established the Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre in a Kalgoorlie shopfront in June 2016.

10 PRELUDE TO HISTORY Composer-in-residence Gabriella Smart is at Beaumont Cottage, South Australia.

Place 16

PRIVATE HOLLYWOOD Visit Mooramong, near Skipton in Victoria, once home to a leading silent film star who married an Australian grazier.

28 WHERE IT BEGAN Franklin House in Tasmania was

80

Travel 76

the starting point for the state’s National Trust.

40

50

THE HOUSE THAT COPPER BUILT The grand mansion that Henry Ayers built on North Terrace in Adelaide is the Trust’s flagship property in South Australia.

AT HER MISTRESS’S PLEASURE A new bride in 1881 made her first home in a slab hut, but soon demanded better from her hardworking husband.

Books 60

64

HAUNTED COUNTRY In Deep Time Dreaming, Billy Griffiths explores the work of Australian archaeologist Isabel McBryde.

SPINNING TOPS AND GUMDROPS A portrait of colonial childhood shows that children have always had the ability to make fun and find adventure.

STRIVING FOR BALANCE Queen’s Wharf Brisbane is Australia’s biggest single redevelopment project and incorporates many heritage places of significance.

THE COOK 250 PROJECT In 2020, some 250 years will have passed since James Cook and the crew of HMB Endeavour charted the east coast of Australia, with an enforced stay of 48 days on the shore of Wahalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River).

Regulars 2

MEMBERSHIP How to become a National Trust member.

Discover more about the benefits of membership by going to nationaltrust.org.au/membership

85 NEWS & EVENTS Your guide to keeping in touch with what the National Trust is doing around the country.

102 LAST WORD: WELCOME TO COUNTRY Marcia Langton’s travel guide to Indigenous Australia is essential reading.

SPECIAL NOTE: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that pages in this issue may contain images of, and written references to, people who have died.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

9

Prelude

TO HISTORY South Australia has JOINED the national Prelude Composer Residencies program with the residency of musician and composer GABRIELLA SMART at Beaumont Cottage. photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer DR DARREN PEACOCK

PEOPLE

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

11

W

hen Gabriella Smart took up the inaugural Prelude Composer in Residence at Beaumont House in Adelaide she moved her grand piano into the music room for daily use. “My piano is a C7 so it’s bigger than a domestic piano, but sits perfectly in the bay window in the music room,” says Smart.

“I practice every morning from about 7.30am and it is such a privilege seeing the garden and wildlife through the window as I play. I’ve been enjoying watching a big kangaroo grazing on the lawn; I am in one of the most beautiful locations in Australia!”

The Prelude Composer Residencies is a national program providing opportunities for Australian composers to create new works while living in a beautiful heritage home. Prelude is a unique collaboration between Bundanon Trust, Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers Trust, The National Trust, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), the Helpmann Academy, Arts South Australia and the Australian government through the Australia Council for the Arts.

“Prelude is the only program in Australia to provide long-term residencies to support and nurture composers and composition,” explains Shane Simpson AM, Chairman of Bundanon Trust.

“Composers produce the raw material of Australian music. They > THIS PAGE: Gabriella Smart at work with her grand piano, installed at Beaumont House for the duration of her residency. PREVIOUS PAGES: Smart is the recipient of the 2018 Prelude Composer Residency in SA.

PEOPLE

“My piano is a C7 so it’s bigger than a domestic piano, but sits perfectly in the bay window in the music room.”

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

13

PEOPLE

14 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

ADDITIONAL TEXT JENNIFER STACKHOUSE

Performances are planned for Beaumont House, Ayers House and the austere but acoustically sublime Z Ward. are essential. Without them, we are reliant on outside voices, songs and stories. Yet very few can make a living from composing alone.

“Then there are historic houses around the country, the preservation of which is essential for keeping us in touch with our heritage, and which are seeking a new and vibrant role in the community. Prelude was created to bring these two together: to support the contemporary and bring new life to the historic.”

Gabriella Smart, who began her Prelude residency in January, welcomes the opportunities that lie ahead. “I’m so grateful to receive the Beaumont Cottage residency. It will give me time out to seed ideas and develop collaborative projects that I’ve been too busy to give attention to, as a result of a busy career.”

She is also excited about the National Trust’s offer of several buildings for use as concert and workshop spaces: Beaumont House, Ayers House and Z Ward.

“I am a passionate advocate of new music in Australia, having commissioned many works by Australian composers over the past 30 years,” says Smart, who has experience as a pianist, curator, creator and producer. She has been recognised as a cultural leader with multiple awards and successfully conceived and realised dozens of original projects, collaborating closely with musicians, dancers, film-makers and video artists and in theatre and opera.

Smart is artistic director of Soundstream Collective, a new music ensemble at the University of Adelaide. In 2012 she established the Emerging Composers’ Forum, a national event supporting composers through the creation, workshopping, performance and recording of their works. In 2015 the Titjikala Project, an Arts for Health initiative by Titjikala Community (Northern Territory) in partnership with Soundstream, was established.

During her residency this year, Smart will continue the Soundstream improvisation performance series Blue Touch, collaborating with acclaimed Australian and international musicians, and she will continue to perform nationally.

Smart has begun her residency with a number of small performances and also curated the program for the March Summer Sunday events at Beaumont House.

More performances are planned for Beaumont House, Ayers House and the austere but acoustically sublime Z Ward, a former asylum in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs. In this way, the Prelude program continues to bring fresh music into remarkable old places, connecting composers, musicians and audiences to our heritage in new and surprising ways.

For more information about performances and the Residency, telephone: (08) 8202 9200; email: admin@nationaltrustsa.org.au.

To help us to continue to protect special places, please donate today.

Call 1800 650 093 or go to nationatrust.org.au/donate.

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: Smart’s Yamaha grand piano gets daily use in the music room; a colonial piano has beautiful detailing. OPPOSITE PAGE: A historic piece, this ruined instrument’s beauty has outlived its sound quality, though its unusual sound was harnessed as part of the Blue Touch series of performances earlier this year.

PLACE

Private Hollywood

When film star CLAIRE ADAMS married an Australian grazier in 1937 and took the long road to MOORAMONG, near Skipton in Victoria, she bought the glamour of Hollywood to her new home. photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer CHRISTINE REID

16 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PLACE

T

he long straight road north of Skipton in Victoria’s Western District shimmers in the heat of a February day, where the back drive into Mooramong is marked by a few straggly sugar gums and a couple of century-old Pinus radiata trees. It’s pretty quiet out on the windy basalt plains, with not much sign of activity: just a cloud of dust in a far-away paddock raised by someone driving to check on a mob of sheep.

Visiting Mooramong today, you can only wonder what the newly married Mrs Mackinnon thought of her new home on these very plains when she arrived in March 1938.

A year before, wealthy grazier Donald ‘Scobie’ Mackinnon — educated at Geelong Grammar School and Cambridge — had returned to England for a university rowing reunion that also centred on celebrations for the coronation of George VI. At a party he met the beautiful and talented Claire Adams, a widow,

18 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

who had been a Hollywood silent movie star as well as a nurse in World War I. Three weeks later they were married in Mayfair and then sailed for Australia.

It’s now nearly 80 years since Claire and Scobie Mackinnon called in Marcus Martin, a Melbourne architect with a well-off clientele centred on Toorak and South Yarra, to update the original Victorian homestead at Mooramong. Martin’s makeover was almost certainly made easier by the timber structure of the existing homestead. The weatherboards were rendered over and the swimming pool and cabana were built, sheltered behind high walls. Unusually for that era, the swimming pool was even heated by a coke-fired boiler.

However, the transition from Victorian gloom to bright and light 20th century modernity inside the homestead is even more startling, as property supervisor Charlie Robinson points out.

“The mantelpieces, ceiling roses and many other intricate >

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The bar, said to be modelled on one on the Cunard liner Queen Mary; Scobie and Claire Mackinnon; magazines in the library; the swimming pool and sunroom; one of Mackinnon’s racing mementos.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Horseshoe Swamp wetland nature reserve. PREVIOUS PAGES: The road into Mooramong; Claire Mackinnon, a former Hollywood star, loved animals.

PLACE

The Mackinnon’s FRIENDS IN THE DISTRICT came for drinks and often stayed to watch a movie...

20 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

details were removed; the interior was then redecorated with the clean lines of the Art Deco period and many of the emblematic features of the time; for example, the green wall-to-wall carpet, the blinds and many other furnishings, such as the elaborate bathroom fittings.”

The formal rooms reveal not only the wealth of the owners, but also the taste and interests of the Mackinnons. The drawing room, also known as the music room, houses a magnificent Steinway grand piano, handcrafted in walnut and marked with the date August 31, 1938. There’s even a wire recorder and microphone, equipment not usually found in a private home. “Claire used to record her singing,” Robinson explains. The dining room, with the polished table laid for a dinner party, showcases pretty glasses and a Spode dinner service of the Aviary pattern, which was popular in the 1930s.

But the most surprising features of the house are in the two entertainment rooms: the bar, supposedly modelled on one from the Cunard luxury liner the Queen Mary, and the library, where a film projector cupboard contains the original equipment. The Mackinnon’s friends in the district came for drinks and often stayed to watch a movie on a screen set up on the red-curtained walls of the library. In later years they watched television with an early example of a remote control, featuring a 10 metre lead.

Today, visitors to Mooramong wander around the chauffeur’s hut, stables and tack room, dairy, laundry and meat house as well as the kitchen, scullery and flower room. It’s easy for them to see why an establishment of this size needed the 54 staff who were employed to keep it ticking over. >

THIS PAGE: The library, with film projector set up in a cupboard, ready to roll. Below: A corner of the garden with the original Victorian verandah. OPPOSITE PAGE: Renowned garden designer Edna Walling drew plans for the garden, but little remains today.

PLACE Many farm buildings on this once prosperous and busy sheep station remain, offering a glimpse of life before World War II.

It’s easy to for them to see why an ESTABLISHMENT of this size needed the 54 staff who were employed to KEEP IT TICKING OVER.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

23

AN EDNA WALLING TOUCH When Scobie and Claire Mackinnon decided to redesign their Victorian homestead, they called in Melbourne architect Marcus Martin. Garden designer Edna Walling and Martin were friends; they had collaborated on a number of projects together and therefore it was no surprise that Walling was given the task of transforming the garden.

A wall at Mooramong is adorned with Walling’s 1940 plan for the garden around the homestead. Slightly faded, the plan is a fine example of the artist at her most expressive, says Jennie Churchill in The Vision of Edna Walling, published in 1998, a book she co-authored with photographer Trisha Dixon. Churchill says: “So evocative is this watercolour, it seems almost possible to walk along the

24 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

broad stone paths and reach out and touch the velvet petals of a full-blown rose; to listen to the bees and to turn and enjoy the views back to the house and distant garden.”

Sadly, little of Walling’s elaborate planting scheme remains at Mooramong; however, one feature reveals a distinctive Walling touch. A green-painted arched doorway leads to the intimacy of the swimming pool garden. It reflects Walling’s expertise in creating mystery and a sense of anticipation in her gardens: as Walling herself said: “Seclusion is a very important thing to be remembered when you are designing your garden.”

Today visitors can enjoy that sense of sheltered seclusion as they admire the pool’s turquoise waters hidden away behind the groves of trees surrounding the homestead.

THIS PAGE: The dining room is set for dinner with attractive glassware and the Spode Aviary dinner service, at left.

OPPOSITE PAGE: A green door evokes mystery and leads to the secluded swimming pool garden.

“The interior was redecorated with clean lines of the ART DECO PERIOD with many of the emblematic FEATURES of the time.”

PLACE

PLACE

Scobie Mackinnon died in 1974, aged 68, and Claire survived him by four years, passing away in 1978 — their ashes are in the walled garden, beneath a flowering peach tree. They left the property to the people of Victoria. Today it is in the hands of the National Trust, which leases out the 1200 hectares as a working sheep and cropping property.

The Mackinnons’ legacy lives on in other ways, too. In 1981 the 23 hectare Mackinnon Nature Reserve was created, a home for many native birds and animals, including the endangered brolga and the eastern barred bandicoot, which is extinct in the wild.

“The last colony of bandicoots was discovered living in a car at the Hamilton tip between 1972 and ’74,” Charlie Robinson says. “The grasslands here are a perfect home for these nocturnal creatures.”

26 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

Recent work, funded by the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority, has helped redevelop a major causeway bordering the Reserve, enabling the retention and release of water from the main Horseshoe Swamp wetland area. “When it’s full of water, it’s overrun with birds and is a valuable haven for wildlife,” Robinson says. The reserve is one of the largest actively protecting the precious grasslands of Victoria’s volcanic plains. It’s a less obvious legacy than the house and garden, but possibly one of even greater significance in the long term, adds Robinson.

Mooramong is at 635 Mooramong Road, 20 kilometres west of Skipton, Victoria. Three cottages are available as holiday accommodation. For further information, contact the National Trust booking office on (03) 9656 9889.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Mackinnon’s riding boots; the luxurious main bedroom was decorated in gold and turquoise; velvet upholstery is typical of the Art Deco style; personal touches on display in the house.

OPPOSITE PAGE: In a guest bedroom at the homestead, thick eiderdowns were a necessity for Skipton’s cold winter nights.

PLACE

28 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

Where it began

TASMANIA’S Franklin House was the starting point for the state’s National Trust. Once used as a school, today the house and GARDEN provide valuable conservation lessons. photographer CLAIRE TAKACS writer HILARY BURDEN

PLACE

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Spring blossoms; the croquet lawn has been the site of many a competition; the house’s front portico; the stables with their cobblestone floor; an original milestone from the nearby Launceston to Hobart highway, relocated to the property.

PREVIOUS PAGES: The central bed of cottage plants and the rear view of Franklin House with its English-style gardens.

I

n the elegant and protective shade of a magnificent 180-year-old oak tree at Franklin House, Launceston, building joists have been erected to help retain the original stable walls, awaiting conservation. Not so long ago, major conservation work to reconstruct the convictbrick, convict-built retaining garden wall was completed, after it showed signs of toppling onto the next door property. Both are striking visual reminders of the challenges met by the Trust in maintaining Australia’s important early colonial heritage.

The story of Franklin House is not just one of early European settlement, but also of how a group of passionate northern Tasmanians started the National Trust in Tasmania in 1960.

The house itself, in Franklin Village on the outskirts of Launceston, is modest for its day, built by pardoned convict Britton Jones in 1838 as a gentleman’s residence. From 1842 to 1866 it was the site of the Classical and Commercial School for

Boys, popularly known as ‘Mr Hawke’s Academy’. The school became one of the leading educational establishments in the colony, with names of many well known families appearing on its register: Archer, Bartley, Cox, Dowling, Dumaresq, Henty, Gatenby, Lawrence, Oakden, Parramore and Youl, to name a few.

Visitors can sit in the schoolroom where William Keeler Hawkes once taught Greek, Latin, Logic and Rhetoric.

For most of the 19th century a small, mixed farm was attached and every effort was made to turn the garden into a profitable venture. Records refer to eggs being greased and stored in the barn “for long keeping” and exchanged for groceries, while cherry, pear and apple trees provided fruit for the table and jam for the menu. The pear walk lasts to this day, a riot of blossom in spring.

In the 1850s, seeds “to make the garden look pretty” arrived from England, while nosegays were placed in the rooms to make them “sweet and cheerful”, something carried through today, > ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

31

32

PLACE The stables shelter under a 180-year-old oak tree, one of the original stand.

Garden volunteers bring fresh flowers from the cutting garden each Tuesday to cheer the rooms for the many visitors.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

33

PLACE

with garden volunteers bringing fresh flowers from the cutting garden each Tuesday to cheer the rooms for the many visitors.

“Franklin House is very important to the Trust in Tasmania,” says Managing Director Matthew Smithies, “as it was the founding building and advocacy cause that established the Trust in Tasmania. The Trust was specifically founded to purchase, restore and furnish the house, threatened at the time by demolition.”

Joan Green, co-founder with her late husband Dick Green (the Trust’s first chairman in Tasmania), recalls a series of fundraising balls and parties, where monies were raised to enable Franklin House to open officially in October 1961.

“The garden was a nonentity, very little was done,” Green explains, “and the house really needed doing up. From an historical point of view it was special that it came on the market.”

Green recalls how, in 1960, Biddy Craig approached her husband, then a lawyer, for advice on the possible purchase and restoration of the house. “Dick advised her that a National Trust would be a good start, and it was duly established and incorporated a few months later, the property was acquired, and restoration plans begun.”

Joan Green is the sole survivor of the 12 signatories to the Memorandum and Articles of the National Trust of Australia (Tasmania), registered in 1960, and has been an active member and volunteer for more than 50 years.

At least two generations of children have been welcomed by Franklin House on school visits: they come to see how boys sat in rows without computers and how the kitchen functioned without a microwave or fridge; how water was taken from the well, butter was churned and bacon and ham were hung in a cupboard.

The life of the house is generated by the many events and occasions it attracts. Imagine the delight of the modern bride who arrives at the front door and enters through the house before >

PLACE

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Plants grown from cuttings by volunteers are for sale, helping to raise funds for the upkeep of the house and garden; aquilegia flowers are an example of northern hemisphere woodland blooms brought to the antipodes; an espaliered pear spans the border between the cutting garden and the kitchen garden behind. OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM TOP: The restored Markree fountain was made by the Coalbrookdale Company in England circa 1870; ‘Shot Silk’ and ‘Ophelia’ climbing roses over the kitchen window.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

35

PLACE THIS PAGE: A quiet spot to sit in the extensive grounds.

OPPOSITE PAGE: The drive sweeps up to the house with its impressive portico.

Imagine the delight of the bride who meets her groom in the pretty English garden amidst a circle of swaying pink and white cosmos, fragrant lavender and roses.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

37

PLACE

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: the Markree fountain, brought to Franklin House from Devoren Cottage, Hobart; an abundance of forget-menots and alyssum in the cottage garden.

38 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

meeting her groom and guests in the pretty English garden amidst a circle of swaying pink and white cosmos, fragrant lavender and roses.

Gardening group coordinator Gill Forsyth says the garden is “very English”, kept strictly to the style of the time when the house was built. Geometrically shaped beds, lawn areas, an herbaceous border and centrepiece were designed by leading Tasmanian landscape designer Tim Barbour. “Hedging remains from the early garden,” says Forsyth, “as well as an old strawberry tree, bay trees and a row of oak trees, of which only two survive.”

You’ll find garden volunteers beavering in the garden every Friday afternoon, “come rain, hail or shine”, says Forsyth. The garden is maintained at its peak for the Franklin House Fair, held annually in March, and produce harvested from the garden is made into relishes for the little shop, or used on the menu and served in the Lady Jane Franklin tearoom.

While trying to maintain relevance to a technology-driven world, a team of 60 volunteer caretakers, led by long-time volunteer Julie Dineen, is driven to polish, prune and take loving care of its past. She says she is slowly receiving donated objects with direct provenance to the property, such as the portrait of Britton Jones’s mother, donated privately just 18 months ago.

“I am learning new things about the house all the time,” she says.

For Forsyth, it is important for future generations to know the history of the buildings and the convicts who built them. “They weren’t all murderers or thieves,” she says. “Some were very skilled artisans with amazing vision.”

As with many volunteer organisations the group relies on retirees who join the Franklin House team to stay active and sociable, many of whom are in their 70s and 80s. Forsyth says they’ve recently welcomed a 19-year-old chap into their group.

“Quite nice for all of us old girls”, she says with a smile.

Franklin House is at 413 Hobart Road, Youngtown, Tasmania.

Telephone: (03) 6344 7824. Email: franklin@nationaltrusttas. org.au. To help us to continue to protect special places, donate today. Call 1800 650 093 or go to nationatrust.org.au/donate.

27 April - 26 August 2018

Old Government House Parramatta NSW From Bombay to Parramatta.

Indian memories of the man who became New South Wales’ most celebrated early Governor. www.nationaltrust.org.au/whats-on-nsw/

The house that copper built The grand mansion that Henry Ayers built on North Terrace in Adelaide has been the Trust’s FLAGSHIP PROPERTY in South Australia for more than 50 years. photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer DR DARREN PEACOCK

40 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PLACE

PLACE

H

enry Ayers arrived in South Australia in 1840 as an assisted immigrant, just four years after the colony was established. He built enormous wealth through the phenomenal success of the Burra copper mine and later served in Parliament for 37 years, five times as Premier.

Henry Ayers was made a Knight of the British Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1872 for his service in the colony. By that time, he had been in South Australia for more than 30 years and had amassed a fortune through investments in the Burra ‘monster’ copper mine. He was the youngest member elected to the colony’s first parliament in 1857, becoming Premier (Chief Secretary) for the first time in 1863.

Ayers’s rise to prominence was confirmed 10 years later when the enormous monolith in central Australia — now known by its Pitjantjatjara name, Uluru — was named in honour of Henry by explorer William Gosse.

The home Ayers built in Adelaide has also had its own changes of name. The Ayers family knew it simply as the North Terrace house. After Henry’s death in 1897 and the subsequent sale of the home, it became known for the Palais Royal dance hall built beside it and later as Austral Gardens or Austral House.

Chemist William Paxton built the first house on the site in the 1840s and Henry leased the original nine-roomed home from Paxton in 1855, before finally purchasing it. The house grew in stages as Ayers’s own wealth and importance grew and he completed the house we know today in 1876.

The final stage, including the magnificent State Dining Room, was designed by one of the colony’s leading architects, George Strickland Kingston. The north-facing façade presents an elegant Georgian-style symmetry with two bow-fronted grand public rooms at the eastern and western ends of the building.

Regrettably, parts of the full 43-room structure were demolished in the 1920s. What remains is a three-level home of grand proportions and ingenious design, beautifully decorated with some of the finest painted finishes in Australia. Completed by the firm Lyon, Cottier and Co — one of the leading design houses of the era — the decorative paintwork in Ayers House is most likely that of Scotsman Charles Gow, who learned his craft in Glasgow, where the shipbuilding industry sought painters to decorate the cabins and public spaces of their long-haul passenger vessels.

The painted ceilings and walls in a number of the rooms display a level of skill that is difficult to match today. Amazingly, during the period 1929–1969 when the house was used as a residence for nurses at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, many of the walls and ceilings were overpainted white. During the Trust’s tenure in the building since, the decorative works have been recovered and carefully restored by master painters using many of the traditional skills employed by artists such as Gow. Ayers also enjoyed adding to the house some of the best and most beautiful lighting money could buy. In London in 1870 he purchased two 3000-piece crystal chandeliers from the famous house of Osler. He wrote home: “Spent the greater part of [the day] in Osler’s beautiful showroom in Oxford Street, making purchases of Glass and Ornaments and helping Fred (Ayers’s son) and Evelyn (his daughter-in-law) to do the same.” >

THIS PAGE: The house that Ayers (whose portrait hangs below) built on North Terrace served as an office, a family home and a place for civic and social events. OPPOSITE PAGE: Personal touches bring the rooms at Ayers House back to life for visitors; Henry’s letters reveal a man of diverse interests with a taste for luxury.

PREVIOUS PAGES: The western entrance hall features one of two magnificent 3000-piece crystal chandeliers that Henry Ayers purchased in London from the famous house of Osler.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

43

THIS PAGE: The mantelpiece in the dining room where the family gathered. OPPOSITE PAGE: Each of the rooms had its own daily rhythm in the interweaving of Ayers’s public and private lives.

The drawing room was the principal social and leisure space for female members of the family.

44 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PLACE

Ayers also enjoyed adding to the house some of the best and most BEAUTIFUL LIGHTING money could buy.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The grand State Dining Room features painted decoration on the ceiling and walls, believed to the work of Charles Gow; detail of painted decoration in the elegant summer sitting room located in the basement; a marble bust silhouetted against a window; detail of the ceiling paintwork. OPPOSITE PAGE: A guest room furnished for a female traveller.

PLACE

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

47

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Lace and silk fabrics add opulence to some of the soft furnishings; Minton fine china basins and pitchers on a bedroom washstand; upholstery detail on a chair. OPPOSITE PAGE: A guest room with a decidedly feminine bent.

Osler’s crystal creations became famous after the Napoleonic Wars, attracting high-profile customers including Queen Victoria.

The famous crystal fountain of London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 came from the same factory as Ayers’s chandeliers. Later, his was the first home in Adelaide to be lit by gas.

The Osler chandeliers were sold with the house in 1927, and one found its way to Martindale Hall in the mid-north region of South Australia; however, through a generous gift to the Trust by Mrs Dorothy Mortlock, that chandelier was returned to its original home at Ayers House and holds pride of place in the western entrance hall. The other hangs in the Adelaide Town Hall.

While the original bedrooms used by the Ayers family have been lost, the guest bedrooms that remain on the upper level reveal much about how people travelled and the gendering of spaces, with designated male and female guest rooms.

The formal reception rooms on the ground floor include an intimate drawing room, principally occupied by women of the family, where tea, music, needlework, writing and the receiving of guests were major pastimes.

Behind the grand public spaces, almost invisible to the view of the visiting guests are the working spaces, discreet stairs and corridors that reveal the parallel universe of the servant world.

Their shadowy presence is everywhere but kept out of public sight through the careful design of access and visibility.

Visitors to Ayers House can experience both the luxury of the house built with Ayers’s wealth and see how the labour to support its sparkle was organised behind the scenes to keep the household performing its many public and private roles.

The exhibition The Age of Elegance is on at Ayers House until July 29. For details, go to ayershousemuseum.org.au/events/ageofelegance.

288 North Terrace, Adelaide. Telephone (08) 8223 1234.

PLACE

The guest bedrooms that remain on the UPPER LEVEL reveal much about how people TRAVELLED and the gendering of spaces.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

49

PLACE Saumarez Homestead in Armidale, NSW, boasts an eclectic mixture of Edwardian and Art Nouveau styling, reflecting the demands of its owner for a more luxurious style of living.

50 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

At her MISTRESS’s pleasure

A NEW BRIDE in 1881 made her first home in a slab hut, but soon DEMANDED better and BETTER accommodation from her hardworking husband. photographer MICHAEL WEE writer STEVE DOW

PLACE

S

aumarez Homestead at Armidale in the New England region of New South Wales, is a mansion built over two decades, designed by an architect but determined by a grazier family’s fluctuating luck and the exacting standards of the lady of the house. Set on a 10 hectare portion of a 19th century sheep run, it is a curious combination of Edwardian curves downstairs and Art Nouveau flourishes upstairs.

A cedar staircase connects the two levels, and 30 rooms are filled with original matching timber furniture that recalls life in a pastoral idyll. These items were all gifted to the National Trust in 1984 with the property and homestead — built for the White family between 1888 and 1906 — as well as farm outbuildings, tools from the era, the picking garden and Mary’s garden.

“It started off as a single-storey Edwardian gentleman’s bungalow, with lovely verandahs, but no large entertaining rooms on a budget of £2500 in 1888,” explains Les Davis, Property Manager at Saumarez. “The architect was commissioned years later to more than double the size of the house and put an extra floor on.”

52 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

The Saumarez story begins in the 1830s, when the land became a squatter’s run. Henry Dumaresq, a British army officer with a bullet lodged in his lung, had come to Australia in 1825 to work as private secretary to his brother-in-law, Ralph Darling, who was the Governor of NSW at the time. Dumaresq obtained 40,000 hectares and named the land after his prominent Jersey and Guernsey relatives.

The next Governor, Richard Bourke, created a licensing system.

For £10 a year, Dumaresq could operate the land, traditionally the country of the Anaiwan (there is evidence of toolmaking pits at Saumarez). Dumaresq and his brother named a local creek after themselves. “That’s where Commissioner MacDonald plonked a new town he called Armidale,” says Davis.

Wool grazier and magistrate Henry Arding Thomas bought the land licence in 1857 and converted 2830 hectares to freehold in 1861. In 1874, grazier and parliamentarian Francis White bought the property for £80,000, but died of pneumonia within a year, leaving debt and dilemma: his eldest son, Francis James (F.J.) White, was only 18 and needed prompt training >

THIS PAGE: Family portraits adorn the Edwardian mantelpiece in F.J. White’s office.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Property Manager Les Davis.

ABOVE: The dining room with its suite of cedar wood furniture. BELOW: The sitting room has a pressed metal ceiling and an eclectic mix of slipcovered furniture from the 1880s and 1900s, as well as several metal embellished Art Nouveau picture frames. OPPOSITE PAGE: A close-up view of the desk in the drawing room gives a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the growing family.

PLACE

“It started off as a single-storey Edwardian gentleman’s bungalow, with LOVELY VERANDAHS, but no large entertaining rooms.”

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

55

PLACE THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Some bedrooms are located upstairs in the newer part of the house; the ornate wardrobe shown here is part of five-piece furniture suite from David Jones that was a wedding present from Maggie’s parents; a collection of family knick-knacks that came with the house. OPPOSITE PAGE: The main staircase is made of local cedar and was handcarved on site.

to manage the property. By the age of 22, F.J. had moved into an old slab hut the Dumaresqs had built for workers, managing the merino sheep stud from there. He courted and married Margaret Fletcher. The newlyweds moved into the slab hut, now featuring a brick extension built by Arding Thomas.

F.J. paid off the property’s debt, with enough left over to build a single-storey house. This triple-brick Edwardian bungalow was built on solid rock, but “It was never good enough for Maggie,” says Davis. White’s diary records the ensuing pressure when, in 1904, Margaret had visited her twin brother at his newly completed two-storey mansion.

“That was it for poor old F.J.,” says Davis, “because in his diaries, which we’ve got from 1874 through to when he died in 1934, it basically says, ‘Maggie home from brother’s housewarming, tells me living at Saumarez is like living in servitude’.

“She was independently wealthy from her own family, so in 1905 she grabbed her favourite daughter [of seven children] Joan and went off to the European continent. F.J. was left back at Saumarez and told to fix the house.”

F.J. turned to Scottish-born builder John Wiltshire Pender, the architect of the bungalow. Pender added a new floor in Art Nouveau style. The master bedroom was moved upstairs and the chimney moved to create a much larger drawing room.

No attempt was made to match the original Edwardian style.

The original 1888 bricks had been made from clay dug on site, but the upstairs was built from much stronger ‘Armidale blue’ bricks fired at a higher temperature at a brickworks in town. >

56 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PLACE

A cellar was dug deep into the solid rock with hammer and chisel.

The cedar timber for the staircase was harvested east of Armidale.

Saumarez Homestead, its contents and 10 hectares of land was gifted to the National Trust after the passing of Elsie, who was the last of F.J. and Margaret White’s children to die, at the age of 97 in 1981.

The real key to Saumarez Homestead is its collection of furniture. The matching sets give a strong sense of life here a century ago: original wardrobes, dressing tables and marble-top washstands in several rooms. In the double guest bedroom, there is a furniture set made of Queensland maple, with pewterware made in Birmingham. In other rooms, furniture sets are made from mountain ash, hoop pine, oak and western red cedar.

In the master bedroom, double bevelled mirrors, cedar and blackwood on the inside of the wardrobes, and mountain ash on the outside, reveal a lovely dichromatic effect. The exact design has recently been discovered in an 1880 David Jones catalogue.

The ensemble was a wedding gift for F.J. White and Margaret Fletcher’s nuptials, in 1881.

Saumarez Homestead is at 230 Saumarez Road, Armidale.

Telephone (02) 6772 3616. Email: saumarez@nationaltrust.com. au. To help us to continue to protect special places, donate today.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The top of the main staircase, looking out through acid-etched Art Nouveau glass panels; a collection of porcelain miniatures collected on the family’s overseas tours; visitors can imagine F.J. White writing in his diary at this desk: ‘Maggie tells me Saumarez is like living in servitude’.

58 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

A FASHION

tickets at comofashionquarter.com.au #comofashionquarter #nationaltrustvic

AT COMO HOUSE 6 APRIL TO 1 JULY

EXHIBITION IN FOUR PARTS

Haunted COUNTRY

Isabel McBryde’s conservative demeanour belied her innovative and often SUBVERSIVE IDEAS in 20th century Australian archaeology. BILLY GRIFFITHS looks at how she transformed the way we relate to Indigenous history.

M

ist billows up the cliff face, merging with the low cloud and shrouding the valley in a thick white blanket. This is often the view from Point Lookout, a high spur of the New England tableland, northeast of Armidale, near the headwaters of the Styx and Serpentine rivers. On a clear day, the view stretches over the high country in the west and eastwards out to sea, and sharp rays of light pierce the canopy of the rainforest below, setting the wet understorey of moss and ferns and staghorns aglow. Today, as the clouds heave across the granite escarpment, the snow gums become lost in the white.

I am here on the trail of the archaeologist Isabel McBryde, who roamed the landscape of northern New South Wales in the 1960s in search of rock art and ceremonial grounds, scarred trees and surface scatters, middens and massacre sites, rock shelters and quarries. “We aim at a complete, systematic and objective record of all archaeological features in an area,” McBryde wrote of her survey team in 1962, “not only the most spectacular.” Her study area extended from the high plateau country of the tablelands,

which slopes gently to the black soil plains of the Darling Basin, to the broad rivers of the subtropical coastal valleys in northern New South Wales.

But as I make my way through the undergrowth on this cool, damp May morning, I am haunted by the words of the great Australian poet Judith Wright, who came here often as a child.

She lived on the tablelands and camped at Point Lookout with her father, as he had with his mother. She remembered being mesmerised by the splendour of the cliffs, the mystery of the thickly forested valley and “the great blue sweep of the view from the Point to the sea”. But she saw a darkness here, too. To the north of Point Lookout, jutting out from the plateau and dropping in sheer cliffs into the thick rainforest below, is a place once known as Darkie Point. Wright’s father told her the story of how it got its name: how, “long ago”, a group of Aboriginal people were driven over those cliffs by white settlers as reprisal for spearing cattle. Their sickening plunge was inscribed with Gothic flair in one of Wright’s early poems, ‘Nigger’s Leap, New England’ (1945). The story was later revealed to be an “abstracted and a-historicised” account of a documented event.

Through her poetry, and especially in her later histories, Wright sought to confront the violence in Australian settler history and to reimagine it through the eyes of the first Australians. Her words breathed sorrow and compassion into the early encounters between settlers and Indigenous people, evoking the tragedy of the Australian frontier. Her love of the New England highlands was bound to a creeping uneasiness about its past. She lived in “haunted country”. In another early poem, ‘Bora Ring’ (1946), she mourned the passing of a dynamic world: The hunter is gone; the spear is splintered underground; the painted bodies a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.

The nomad feet are still.

When Isabel McBryde came to New England in 1960, she expected to encounter the haunted landscape of Wright’s early poems: a land stripped from its first inhabitants, their culture and tradition “splintered underground”. She had been led to believe that her study would be a “matter of archaeology and the distant past”. But as she searched for traces of Aboriginal culture in the landscape of New England, her views began to change. She found a series of stone arrangements to the southwest of Point Lookout, near the Serpentine River, and recorded the cairns, walls and standing stones that protruded from the steadily encroaching bush. Across the tablelands she found carved trees and surface

BOOKS

scatters; she mapped axe quarries on the ridge lines and excavated campsites under towering granite boulders; she recorded ancient middens on the coastal plains and wandered through old bora grounds in the river valleys. She formed relationships with locals, absorbing their intimate knowledge of the history and traditions of the country, and worked with landholders, teachers, historians, field naturalists and Indigenous people. And as she surveyed this vast region, and imbibed the lore of the land, she stopped thinking of the Aboriginal past as “a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot” and started seeing it as a living heritage, maintained through powerful connections to country, “preserved faithfully by a small community” and “now the focus of a revival of interest in traditional culture and values”.

This quiet revelation, experienced by many researchers throughout the 1960s, would forever alter the course of Australian Aboriginal archaeology. As McBryde reflected in 2004, “It gave a whole new dimension [to the field] and also made new demands”: no longer were academic priorities the only priorities. The story of Australian archaeology — and Isabel McBryde’s career — is inextricably entwined with that seismic shift in Australian historical consciousness.

Isabel McBryde is an enigmatic character in Australian archaeology. She is at once conservative and radical, gentle and passionate, modest and visionary. She has quietly, patiently transformed the way we relate to the Aboriginal history of Australia. The significance of her early contributions to Australian archaeology remains understated. If John Mulvaney is the so-called father of Australian archaeology, then McBryde is undoubtedly its mother.

McBryde had no direct contact with Aboriginal people as a child. She grew up in a seafaring family and moved constantly, living in Fremantle, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne before the age of nine. She was used to her father, a merchant seaman from Scotland, being away at sea, and she took great comfort in his steady stream of letters.

She and her older sister were cared for by their mother, who had worked as a secretary before her marriage. Occasionally her mother talked of the Aboriginal people she had known when she lived in Kalgoorlie, but, for the most part, the not-too-distant past was obscured. “Why,” McBryde reflected in her 70s, “didn’t I pick up that dissonance in the reporting of Australian history?”

Her experience of growing up in white, middle-class Australia in the 1930s and ’40s speaks to the heart of “the great Australian silence”.

McBryde recalled a childhood of writing and reading poetry, practising the violin and ‘devouring’ books on the train as she commuted to school. She developed a fascination with the classical world at an early age, especially ancient Rome, and when she matriculated in 1952, she enrolled in Latin and history at Melbourne University. Like Mulvaney, she envisaged a career in school teaching and, also like Mulvaney, her first glimpse of another career path came under the tutelage of the historian John O’Brien. In his lectures on the classical world, delivered in a precise, even style, he urged his students to query accepted wisdom; to return to the primary sources and develop their own

interpretations of the past. It was an empowering approach and it encouraged an inquisitive eye and a broad understanding of the range of historical evidence available. McBryde wrote her honours thesis on the Roman poet Lucan, who raised questions of liberty and power in his epic on civil war before falling foul of his friend, the mad emperor Nero; she pursued similar themes in her master’s thesis on expressions of resistance to the Roman government at the end of the first century. Spurred on by her passion for the ancient world and the encouragement of her teachers, McBryde decided to pursue a career in the academy.

When she graduated in 1957, the possibility of a career in archaeology seemed no more than a dream. As curator Frederick McCarthy put it drily in 1959, archaeology remained “a noncareer course” in Australia: there were no jobs in the universities, no funds to finance excavations and no institutional support for the lone researcher. But McBryde had heard of Mulvaney’s work at Fromm’s Landing in South Australia, and as enamoured as she was with the classical world, she could see the importance of his pursuit of Australia’s ancient past. Australian archaeology, she decided, would be “more worthwhile and realistic than classical archaeology”. But the only way to study prehistoric archaeology was to travel abroad, and all the scholarships of the day were designated for ‘young men’. She would have to pay her own way.

Cambridge University seemed an obvious choice. It had a strong archaeology department under the guidance of Grahame Clark, and postgraduates had the privilege of small classes, fieldwork opportunities and ready access to leading intellectuals. Clark’s interest in world prehistory made Cambridge especially attractive.

His desire to fill in the gaps of global knowledge — to gain an outline of the diverse “cultural endowment of mankind” — led him to encourage and facilitate research abroad and to equip his students with the expertise necessary to pioneer a new field. In his office he had a map of the world covered in colourful pins, a physical manifestation of his vision for Cambridge’s international role. Each pin represented an archaeologist from the Cambridge diaspora, from Louis Leakey’s groundbreaking excavations in Kenya and the Rift Valley to Jack Golson’s pioneering efforts in New Zealand. When McBryde arrived in 1958, a lone pin pierced the heart of Melbourne, representing John Mulvaney’s Australian contribution to the ‘Cambridge archaeological empire’.

McBryde gained firsthand experience with geographically oriented methods in the last few months of 1959, when she took a scholarship to work in the British School of Archaeology in Athens. There she studied sites across a whole landscape, asking why they were where they were, what connections they had with other sites, and exploring the relationships between history and landscape. It was a fusion of two of her longest-held passions, classics and geography. It was also her introduction to understanding the sacred and the mythic in landscape.

Her EXPERIENCE of growing up in white, MIDDLE-CLASS Australia in the 1930s and ’40s speaks to THE HEART of “the great Australian silence”.

Isabel McBryde’s return to Australia in 1959, after a year abroad, doubled the number of professionally trained Australian archaeologists. She dived immediately into fieldwork, joining John Mulvaney in excavating rock shelters at Glen Aire, Cape Otway, in January 1960. By that stage, Mulvaney already had > ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

61

Unless archaeology, in the present, addresses social questions, unless it is ‘peopled’ archaeology, its representations will lack dimensions of meaning as pasts, as history. If it fails to interact with other groups within society, it is not accessible to their poetics, it denies to them aspects of their past.

The landscape of northern New South Wales lent itself to field survey. The thin soils of the tablelands meant that deep, layered sites were few and far between, while the coastal plains were dominated by recent shell middens: the cultural artefacts, in Australian archaeologist Sandra Bowdler’s words, of “the unremitting efforts of woman the gatherer.” But McBryde was also eager to establish a regional chronology and she searched for older, stratified sites, where evidence of human occupation had built up over millennia. On her initial survey in February 1960 she came across a series of overhangs in a low outcrop overlooking the Clarence River at Seelands near Grafton. The sandstone walls bore clusters of cryptic engravings, the roof of the main shelter was stained by smoke and animal bones, shell fragments and debris from tool-making lay scattered on the sloping sandy floor. She returned to Seelands to excavate in August, and again the next year, uncovering a dynamic history of occupation over the past 6000 years. She also continued to survey the surrounding area, finding axe-grinding grooves and rock art nearby, and collecting the stories and stone tools amassed by the landowner, Mr O’Grady, during his time in the area.

In this slow, thorough way she progressed across the coastal plains, excavating middens, recording rock art, and mapping stoneworking sites at Evans Head, Station Creek and Moonee, before taking the survey onto the tablelands and western slopes, where she dug sites at Bendemeer, Graman and Moore Creek. She could be ambitious about the scope of the study as she intended it to be an open-ended, collaborative departmental program. A year in she took it on as her PhD under the supervision of John Mulvaney and Russel Ward.

Excavation and survey work took place during university vacations and on weekends. McBryde relied on her students and her colleagues (especially Mary Neeley) as field assistants, and marvelled at their intellectual and physical ability: “They could drive trucks, mend fences and dissuade curious bulls from exploring the trenches ... All this, of course, provided there was a transistor radio between the sieves and the trenches so no-one missed an episode of [American soap opera] Portia Faces Life.”

McBryde gained a reputation amongst her students for her warmth and kindness, as well as her “nerve and nous”. She was hands-on and hardworking, with the uncanny ability to emerge from a day in a dusty trench, in Sharon Sullivan’s words, “clean, well groomed, with lippy in place and radiating energy and goodwill”. Her field notebooks are similarly immaculate, with detailed observations and ideas executed in impeccable handwriting. She was organised, precise and thorough, and she understood that good food was essential to the success of any fieldwork. She purchased a Rice Bros horse float and refitted it as a mobile field lab with a sink, a stove, a cupboard, a drawing board, water tanks and material to transform it into a darkroom for developing photos. It became known as ‘the soup kitchen’ and she towed it along the small, winding New England roads behind

PHOTOGRAPH ARMIDALE NEWSPAPER LTD, COURTESY OF ISABEL MCBRYDE

a vision of the key questions in Australian archaeology. The best way to approach them, he believed, was through careful, systematic excavation of deep stratified sites: “The cornerstone of prehistory is stratigraphy, and in this pioneering phase of Australian research, precedence must be given to the spade (or preferably the trowel).”

In her new role as lecturer in prehistory and ancient history at the University of New England, McBryde began to articulate a different vision. She argued that regional field surveys, in combination with stratigraphic excavation, should form the backbone of any archaeological program. Her head of department, historian Mick Williams, shared her regional vision and had already established connections with local historical societies and field naturalists. McBryde was the first female lecturer in the Department of History, and she was alone amongst her colleagues in using material culture as a historical source.

When introduced as an ‘archaeologist’, she was often asked by those outside the university: “What is there for you to do here?”

She sensed the same question on the lips of her colleagues. Due to the lack of awareness of Indigenous history, she devoted much of her time to community outreach.

She advertised the potential of the field, giving public talks at schools and regional societies across northern New South Wales and introducing concepts such as ‘antiquity’ and ‘cultural change’ to lay understandings of Aboriginal Australia.

Through these talks, and in an early film on archaeological techniques, she joined Mulvaney’s Isabel attempts to rein in the McBryde persistent culture of in 1972. surface collecting and educate the broader public on the importance of protecting Aboriginal sites: “Occupation sites in Australia (middens, rock shelters and open stations) are not so numerous that we can afford to be prodigal with them, to allow them to be destroyed ... to be dug carelessly by treasure-hunters whose sole interest is the collection of curious relics for the family mantelpiece.”

Over time, her views on site protection became more inclusive: “If we argue for conservation of sites, for protective legislation, and acknowledge the very real concerns of the Aboriginal people, then we should also argue for Aboriginal involvement in decisions of site management, on conservation policy and on research.” If the deep past was a living heritage, then engaging with Indigenous communities, and making the insights of archaeology accessible to them, seemed to be fundamental to any research program:

BOOKS

her Land Rover, ‘Telemachus’. She called on a colleague, Professor Ian Turner, to look up the rations for the British Army in Mesopotamia in World War I, and used that as a catering guide.

Alongside the field survey, McBryde and her students pored over regional historical records, analysed early photographs and trawled through word lists for insights into Aboriginal culture and traditions. She was haunted by the collision of cultures captured in the colonial archive and later wrote about some of the witnesses to this transformative period, such as early anthropologist Mary Bundock and photographers John William Lindt and Thomas Dick. As she reflected in 1978, “It seemed unwise when attempting to reconstruct culture history to ignore the evidence of observers of tribal life at the time of its passing, in the last few decades of its prehistory.” While she found such documentary sources illuminating, she also acknowledged their limitations as a lens through which to view the deep past: “The ethnographic present may always haunt the archaeologist in this continent, both inspiring and constraining interpretation.”

What emerged from her study was a clear, cultural distinction between the societies that lived in the coastal river valleys and those that roamed the tablelands and western slopes over the last 9000 years. The differences in rock art, ethnography and artefact groupings — or ‘assemblages’ — underlined the isolation of two cultural groups, with the steep escarpment of the plateau and the poor high country of the tablelands acting as a ‘barrier’ between them. It showed that while Australia may be a continent, it is made up of many countries.

raised this point in 1982 when reviewing Josephine Flood’s survey of the southeastern highlands. “Are only women sufficiently tough, conscientious and foolhardy to collect and analyse such a mass of trivia, and hammer it into meaning and shape?”

In 1974 McBryde moved to the ANU, where she became increasingly concerned with promoting an inclusive approach to Indigenous heritage. She saw an urgent need to empower Aboriginal people to tell their own stories and to create mechanisms through which they could control their own heritage.

Through her roles on the Australian Heritage Commission, the World Heritage Committee and the UNESCO advisory body, she argued for legislation that recognised the significance of whole landscapes, the inseparability of natural and cultural heritage and the intangible values of connections to country. McBryde’s proudest achievement, however, is the number of Aboriginal students she has helped become archaeologists.

In 1991 McBryde returned to New England and walked the land as she once had done. She revisited familiar places on the tablelands and across the coastal plains, and met and talked with residents, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. As she moved across the landscape, wandering through rich subtropical valleys and densely forested steep terrain, she was followed by a story.

Helpful locals told her of a woman who had come to look at the archaeology in the region long, long ago, “maybe last century”.

She gradually identified the woman as herself. Her work had merged in local memory with that of another pioneer: 19th-century anthropologist Mary Bundock. She had entered the lore of the land.

McBryde first encountered Bundock’s name in 1968 while trawling through the Australian ethnographic collection at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden: “With intense excitement I began to realise, working through registers and cabinets, that its collection included a comprehensive regional group of artefacts from my own research area of north-eastern New South Wales.” The carefully documented artefacts, donated to the museum between 1885 and 1892, led her to their collector, the little-known Mary Bundock.

Information about Bundock’s life was sparse, yet McBryde was intrigued by one surviving fragment of her writing: an 11-page document titled ‘Notes on the Richmond River Blacks’. Bundock’s ethnographic notes bore the stamp of someone who had formed close bonds with the Indigenous community on the upper Richmond River and had a knowledge of the local dialect of Bandjalang. “The Aborigines in her account are people,” McBryde noted, “not exemplars of a stage of human existence long past in the civilised European world.” She also detected in the modest, non-judgmental observations what she has described as: “a response to the challenges of living on the pastoral frontier, of facing the responsibility of being dispossessors”. That same inheritance has shaped McBryde’s life and values; it underwrites the inclusive, social approach to archaeology she has advocated since the 1960s. Her routes across the landscape linger today, sustained in fragments of text and memory, casting light upon the shadows of a haunted country.

Edited extract from Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, by Billy Griffiths, Black Inc., $34.99.

McBryde’s PROUDEST ACHIEVEMENT, however, is the number of Aboriginal students she has HELPED BECOME archaeologists.

By the time McBryde finished her thesis in 1966, archaeological investigations were being carried out in every Australian state and Aboriginal archaeology was being taught as a university subject in Melbourne, Armidale, Sydney and Brisbane. “Miss McBryde’s vigorous one-woman band” was gradually gaining the attention of this growing archaeological community. As Mulvaney announced in 1964: “I feel that the model for us to follow is provided by Miss McBryde’s patient survey and record of all aspects of New England prehistory.”

But although Mulvaney and his colleague Jack Golson fostered a strong program of regional research at the ANU, McBryde lamented that archaeology in Australia continued to be “based on the evidence of a small number of excavated sites, widely separated in both space and time”. Why, we must wonder, did large-scale regional surveys not take on in Australia, considering the insights into land use that McBryde had demonstrated with her work on New England? The changing political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s had a part to play. With the dramatic shift in control that followed the rise of the Aboriginal land rights movement, archaeologists faced new challenges negotiating access to sites on Aboriginal land, let alone surveying large swathes of country.

Gender was also undoubtedly a factor. Although men also mapped landscapes and women led grand stratified excavations, these activities carried gendered assumptions, attitudes and behaviours, which changed the way they were valued. There was little prestige in survey work, while the search for the oldest and most spectacular finds was caught up in the machismo of ‘cowboy archaeology’. Sylvia Hallam, another pioneer of the regional model,

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

63

Spinning Tops and Gumdrops Climbing trees, playing jacks and building rafts — children from colonial days certainly didn’t lack an imagination, as this new National Library book, Spinning Tops and Gumdrops: A Portrait of Colonial Childhood reveals.

HERITAGE

Misty Morning in Bright, Victoria, circa 1900, photograph by Nicholas Caire.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

65

HERITAGE

M

any Australian colonial children experienced extreme childhoods — poverty, being assigned to dangerous jobs at a tender age, lack of education and insecure domestic situations.

The streets were the children’s playground: they improvised, flirted with danger, got into ‘scrapes’ and sometimes suffered the consequences.

Until the 1870s and even beyond, there were large tracts of bushland close to the centre of most cities and towns where children could play unseen and unsupervised. In the 1840s and ’50s, the area behind Sydney’s Australian Museum — now a busy inner-city suburb — was part of the Riley Estate, then a “furze-covered paddock of pathless wilds”, where boys from nearby Sydney College could escape to play, picnic or settle disputes. James Chisholm, a pupil at Sydney College, remembered boys with a grievance gathering on what became known as “the convincing ground” after school with a few of their friends to decide matters with their fists. “No serious consequences ever followed,” Chisolm recalled, “beyond an occasional black eye or the loss of a little claret; and after a few

rounds honour was thought sufficiently vindicated, the combatants were satisfied and peace restored.”

Further afield, around the harbour, tracts of lonely bush fringing Double Bay and Rose Bay were visited in summer by children collecting ‘fives’ and ‘gees’. ‘Fives’ are small berry-like fruit, prized for their sweet taste and sold “for a penny a wineglass full” on market stalls in Sydney. ‘Gees’ or ‘geebungs’ are slightly larger and not quite as tasty as fives, and were known in some places as ‘snottygobbles’. According to one old Sydney resident, on Saturdays and Sundays, “troops of boys of all ages and sizes could always be met with … on their way out to gather the luscious fruit”. Snakes were a danger, but “the greatest trouble the boys had was being waylaid on their way homewards, laden with their bags of ‘fives’. It was customary for gangs of youths, who were too lazy to go out themselves, to lie in wait on the Sydney side of Rushcutters Bay bridge, where there was no means of escape …. This was called ‘spicing’, and invariably led to some severe fighting.”

Away from the capitals, in the larger country towns, life was much the same as it was for city children. The streets may not >

“Troops of boys of all ages and sizes could be met with on their way out to gather the LUSCIOUS FRUIT.”

66 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

PHOTOGRAPHS NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE: Children on Horseback off to School, 1880s, photograph by C.H. Kerry; Boys in Bourke Street, Melbourne (detail), circa 1900, photograph by Nicholas Caire; Children on Adelaide Street, Maryborough, Queensland (detail), 1897.

“No SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES ever followed, beyond an occasional black eye or the loss of A LITTLE CLARET.”

HERITAGE

have been so crowded, but isolation encouraged self-reliance and local industry, so most towns were busy, go-ahead places with plenty to see and do. Eight-year-old Gordon Young, living a carefree life in Grafton on the NSW north coast, was particularly fascinated by the sailing ships that came up the Clarence River to load timber from local forests.

“Those ships were such happy, friendly things,” he fondly recalled, “with their bowsprits pointed into the green rushes lining the river banks downstream … the ship’s decks were more than a playground; one could learn a lot of seamanship climbing the rigging and clambering out along the yardarm, helping the sailors to dry the sails, or getting in the ship’s boat and learning how to scull with one long oar.” Nowadays, health and safety regulations would put a stop to such fun.

Girls are only rarely mentioned as taking part in juvenile escapades, but they were certainly among the mischief makers on occasions. When Jonathan Bear “played the wag” from his Melbourne school on the late 1850s it was with “half a dozen or so of both sexes”. Far from being mere hangers-on, it was the girls, Bear claimed, who were generally the instigators. The conspirators would make their way separately to Richmond Paddock (now Yarra Park) where “a small cave in a bank by the river … afforded an excellent hiding-place for the tell-tale school bags …. With the whole day before us, we lingered for a time in the paddock collecting and sucking sticky gum [from wattle trees], smoking a certain porous root abounding there a la cigars [dry gum roots] and catching and cruelly storing in old … match boxes the elusive but prismatically-coloured cockshaver [sic] beetles.”

From Richmond Paddock, the truants’ eventual destination was Cremorne Gardens and its “variety of novel entertainments”.

Opened in 1853 on the banks of the Yarra, the pleasure gardens offered adults and children an enjoyable day out. It cost 2s 6d to get in, but boys and girls in the know could avoid that tiresome formality thanks to a convenient hole in the fence. There was plenty to see and do: the bowling alley, menagerie, elaborate water features and the popular cosmorama, which used lighting and optical effects to display views from exotic destinations.

The truants were no doubt viewed with suspicion by many respectable Melbourne householders as they passed in the street, and with some justification. In his memoirs, Bear admitted to being a member of “a band of impishly mischievous boys of respectable parentage … who, being cooped up in the city, found vent for their nervous energy in perpetual warfare against the peace and comfort of the professional residents …. The pranks we indulged in were as multifarious as they must have been distressing to our victims, one of the most popular being an organised and concerted assault on the doctor’s bells.”

The problem was that for many urban Australian children the streets were their only playground. At least there they were out of the house and out from under the feet of their mothers, who could still keep an eye on them as they struggled to manage large families in often cramped conditions. Many of the games played

Far from being mere HANGERS-ON, it was the girls who were generally the INSTIGATORS.

68 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

on the streets would be familiar to children today: among them rounders, cricket, hopscotch, skipping and marbles, while others, such as hoops, spinning tops, quoits, knucklebones and chivy (Chevy Chase — a game of tag and chase) have long since gone out of fashion.

Some games had crazes. When, in July 1869, marbles were ‘in’, a writer in the Launceston Examiner complained that “shoeless and ragged urchins join with the well-dressed school boy, and girls ... in the endless variety of knock-em-abouts that bewitch the ardent street triflers!”

This is an edited extract from Spinning Tops and Gumdrops: A Portrait of Colonial Childhood by Edwin Barnard, NLA Publishing, $44.99.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: De Salis Children in Fancy Dress, circa 1900; the book’s cover; Three De Salis Family Children, circa 1890.

A place to remember In the HEART of the city, explore MELBOURNE’S newest National Heritage place, the expansive DOMAIN PARKLAND and MEMORIAL PRECINCT.

HERITAGE

PHOTOGRAPHY ALAMY; AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY

SPECIAL NOTE: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story may contain images of, or references to, people who have died. THIS PAGE: The Kings Domain Resting Place, right, is the site of reburial of Indigenous ancestral remains; below, the flag flies over Government House, a symbol of Melbourne’s civic power. OPPOSITE PAGE: An avenue of trees shows why the Domain Parklands are considered the ‘lungs of the city’.

T

he Domain Parklands are the lungs of Melbourne, an oasis of restful green space situated just south of the beating, frenetic heart of the city’s CBD. The Parklands are also part of its soul. In February this year, part of this area — Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct — was added to the National Heritage List in recognition of the importance of this place to the story of Australia.

The 109 hectare precinct includes the Kings Domain, Domain Parklands, Government House and Grounds, Melbourne Observatory, the Shrine of Remembrance and the Kings Domain Resting Place. It is a rare and outstanding example of a particular type of public open space: a government domain. Domains have had a fundamental influence on the evolving shape of our modern cities. They have left a legacy of large green spaces in our cities that generations of Australians enjoy.

In mid-19th century Melbourne, this stretch of land between St Kilda Road and the Yarra River was reserved for a government house, botanic garden and wider parklands. By the end of the 19th century, wealth from the goldfields was turning ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ into a city to rival New York, Chicago and many European capitals, giving city planners more opportunity to invest in the development of the city’s buildings and parklands.

Developments within the listed area reflect this wave of wealth which is now embodied in the city and its parks.

Our older principal cities in Australia, like Melbourne, tell a story about urbanisation and the role of parks in this pattern of development are part of this story. As cities grew, parks were established as a solution to address overcrowding, disease and poor housing conditions. Parks were also regarded by some as an important ‘civilising’ influence in a new city. They offered recreation and temporary relief from harsh living conditions.

In the case of Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct, the park environment was further enhanced and valued because of its association with Government House, which lent the park a particular status and focus in the community. Few places tell this story about cities and their parks as well as Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct.

To this day Government House, with its landmark tower and flag, serves as a symbol of power overlooking the city. The continued use of the area as a government domain, with a vice-regal residence, anchors the ongoing prestige of the park.

The Queen Victoria Monument remains as a testament to her reign and its influence in Australia, as does the naming of the city ‘Melbourne’ after Queen Victoria’s early political mentor and British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. The community continues to enjoy a large public park, now located in an urban environment that is continuing to increase in density.

The Melbourne Observatory, once an emblem of the city’s sophistication, continues to look skyward, after more than a century of scientific discovery and observation in fields ranging from astronomy and meteorology to timekeeping. > ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

71

The Shrine of Remembrance opened in 1934 to meet the needs of a GRIEVING COMMUNITY after the devastating impact throughout Australia of World War I.

Like the waters of the nearby Yarra River, the stories that flow from the precinct keep on coming. Long a place of gathering, the role of Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct in remembrance and commemoration has grown over time. It has evolved to become a special and valued part of the city.

The Shrine of Remembrance opened in 1934 to meet the needs of a grieving community after the devastating impact throughout Australia of World War I. This grief was particularly acute because those who died overseas during the war were buried in distant graves far from home.

The views to and from the Shrine along St Kilda Road are now among Melbourne’s iconic vistas. The Shrine was purposefully built to construct a vista along this axis. The presence of the Shrine within the park further establishes Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct as an important place.

Kings Domain Resting Place is a more recent memorial area, but one that is associated with Aboriginal cultural practices. In 1985 the remains of 38 Aboriginal people from Victoria were repatriated and reburied in the Kings Domain. A granite boulder and inscribed memorial plaque now marks this burial site. The Resting Place represents the nationwide changes to Indigenous repatriation practices. This change, which has been advocated for by Indigenous people over many years, enabled Indigenous human remains and objects, which were held in institutions like museums, to be returned to their own communities. It is a place that is representative of positive and significant change in the national repatriation story and has outstanding National Heritage value as a result.

Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct — identified then as St Kilda Road and Environs — secured emergency heritage protection in February 2017 in response to concerns about environmental impacts associated with Melbourne’s Metro Rail Project. The community was particularly concerned about the loss of

HERITAGE

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: A statue of Australia’s first Governor General, Lord Hopetoun, overlooks the city; the view from the Shrine of Remembrance, towards the towers of the CBD and Government House; the Shrine stands at the head of a grand vista.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Sculpture at the Shrine of Remembrance.

trees along St Kilda Road. Twelve months later, the listing became a permanent one, ensuring ongoing protection of the place’s National Heritage values as a government domain and memorial precinct.

The precinct now joins Australia’s most prestigious heritage sites, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Melbourne Cricket Ground, in the National Heritage List. Every new National Heritage listing helps us better protect and conserve our heritage.

Every new listing helps us better understand ourselves as a nation.

Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct extends for approximately four kilometres along St Kilda Road from Princes Bridge to the Henry Street intersection.

KINGS DOMAIN RESTING PLACE Rise from this grave Release your anger and pain As you soar with the winds Back to your homelands There find peace with our Spiritual mother the land Before drifting off into the “Dreamtime” So reads the inscription on the memorial stone at Kings Domain Resting Place, part of Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct. On Friday November 22nd, 1985, representatives of Victorian Aboriginal communities collected the ancestral remains of 38 Aboriginal people from Museum Victoria. They led a

procession through the heart of Melbourne, along Swanston Street and St Kilda Road, to their prepared reburial place in the King’s Domain.

It was the first of many such repatriations of ancestral remains to Aboriginal communities in the state. In the 1970s and ’80s, the push by Aboriginal people to recover and repatriate Aboriginal ancestral remains gained momentum. Aboriginal communities were already galvanised by events such as the 1965 Freedom Ride, the 1967 referendum and the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, and they wanted to assert control over their own cultural heritage. This helped shape legislation and influenced universities, museums and other institutions that were in possession of collections to update their policies on the return of ancestral remains.

As a result many notable repatriation events took place, and continue to occur, throughout the nation.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

73

Living heritage

In 2011, work began to preserve two Goldfields ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES, Ngalia and Tjupan. The National Trust of Western Australia established the GOLDFIELDS ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE CENTRE in a Kalgoorlie shopfront in June 2016. Senior Linguist SUEÂ HANSON writes about the value of this important project.

HERITAGE OPPOSITE PAGE: Murtitikirlpa, the word for ‘camel’, tells us more than just the animal’s name. THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: Words in Aboriginal language carry meaning and values vital to understanding country; Peter Thomas and linguist Gizem Milonas at Wingellina Community with a portrait of Peter by Tobias Titz; Milonas and receptionist Carmel Smiler with GALC language resources.

W

hen Aboriginal people first saw camel tracks in the Western Australia desert around 120 years ago, they thought that the distinctive rounded camel track resembled the shape that naked buttocks formed in the sand; something clothed people would not have observed. The horrified people thought a legless person was forced to walk on their bottom!

On sighting a camel, the desert dwellers needed a new word to label the creature and called it murtitikirlpa. Through that single word, we can understand what these people were thinking and valued at the time. Murtitikirlpa translates as, ‘very dry knees’.

Ask most people about a camel and the hump is the first feature mentioned. Aboriginal people noticed the camel’s knees rather than the hump, height or the long neck. In particular they were most concerned about how dry and, apparently, swollen those knees were. Desert dwellers needed very healthy feet, knees and legs to survive walking great distances to gather food and water.

Swollen knees or a cracked heel were very serious injuries.

The word these people created carries all that information forward in time for us to learn from. That one word tells us about European explorers, Afghan cameleers and Aboriginal people.

Every Aboriginal language has words like this which provide a window into cultural meaning.

Ask Ngadju Elder Les Schultz why his Aboriginal language is significant to him and his response will quickly become an impassioned plea for understanding. “Language is our core identity. Our language is who we are, what we believe in and a direct link to our ancestors. Language explains our past and in turn it shapes our future.”

Aboriginal speakers and linguists at the National Trust’s Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre (GALC) are undertaking intense work to make sure the languages of the region are well recorded. This does much more than simply record the linguistic features of the languages; it gives a voice to people who lost theirs during the course of European settlement of Australia. It gives a voice to people whose internal language is an Aboriginal one and who struggle to make meaning with a smattering of English.

It gives a voice to the people from history and enables us to understand what they were thinking. Most importantly, the

language work enables people like Schultz to express their core identity.

Linguists and language speakers create hundreds of hours of natural speech recordings to ensure that the phonemes, morphemes, semantics, syntax and prosodic features of the languages are captured. The tone of voice, shades of meaning, idioms, metaphors, vocalisations, facial expressions, hand movements, voice volume, tone and speech rhythm are all critical to meaning.

Funds for the GALC language project are very tight and, with a number of languages being considered, video recordings of the speakers are not possible; something the linguists greatly lament as the fluent speakers of many of the languages are elderly.

Hope for language continuation lies in the eastern Goldfields ‘Lands’ region, where Ngaanyatjarra and Pitjantjatjarra are mother tongue languages. Hope for language survival also lies with people who want to relearn and use their language having the opportunity to engage with and celebrate their core identity.

The development of industries that use and value Goldfields languages will provide the opportunity for speakers to share the linguistic wealth and to be engaged in employment that celebrates Aboriginal core identity and strengthens language and culture.

An economic basis is needed to grow the continued use of languages, so the development of cultural tourism, translation services, language classes, ranger programs, and radio and visual arts programs can provide opportunities for Aboriginal employment, the consequential cultural continuation and exploration of core identity.

That word for camel, murtitikirlpa, is a history, language and sociology lesson wrapped up in just one word. If we lost that single word, all that information would be lost. We’d lose the chance to understand what those people thought and felt. We’d lose the chance to know what it took to survive in the desert.

We’d lose the heritage of the land.

The Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre is working hard to make sure the languages continue as living heritage.

The Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre is supported by a Commonwealth grant and arose from the initial work in two languages, expanding to include Kuwarra, Kaalamaya, Ngadju, Cundeelee Wangka and other languages. Photography: GALC.

SPECIAL NOTE: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story may contain images of, and references to, people who have died.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

75

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH ANDREW SOLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

T R AV E L

The COOK 250 project In 2020, some 250 years will have passed since JAMES COOK and the crew of HMB Endeavour charted the EAST COAST of Australia, with an enforced stay of 48 days on the shore of Wahalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River). writers JONATHAN FISHER & RICHARD FERGUSON

PHOTOGRAPHY ALAMY; AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY

R

econciliation Rocks in Cooktown, Far North Queensland, is tucked away behind the main street with its grand buildings from the gold rush era.

This group of granite boulders, nestled against the mangrove trees of the Endeavour River, is the place of first recorded reconciliation between Europeans and Indigenous peoples in Australia. It is a place of immense significance; a tangible connection with our collective past. Cultures collided and individuals took the time to review, reflect and reconcile the past.

This story is commemorated annually by both Indigenous and European peoples of Cooktown through the re-enactment of this encounter as part of the Discovery Festival each June.

Cook charted the coastline of eastern Australia that is now part of three states: Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. First Australian landfall for the voyage was off the coast of present-day Victoria, where they mapped less than 100 kilometres of that south-facing coast, now part of East Gippsland, before rounding Cape Howe and setting sails to head north.

Many people are familiar with the European narrative of the arrival of HMB Endeavour and the first landing of expedition members on the eastern Australian shores of what is now known as Kamay Botany Bay in New South Wales.

Eight days were spent fuelling and watering the ship between April 28th and May 8th, 1770. The landing site, just under 16 kilometres from what is now Sydney’s CBD, is one of two areas of the Kamay Botany Bay National Park that is managed by the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service. Linked by the waters of the bay, the La Perouse and Kurnell areas of the park are integral landscapes that capture the story of the first encounter between First Peoples on the east coast of Australia with Europeans. This space has various layers of recognition, including National Trust classification as a landscape conservation area and an ancient role as a meeting place “between Indigenous and other cultures in Australia”.

The records of time spent at that place by Cook, Banks, Solander and the other expedition members were not the first accounts of the lands, waters and peoples on the more fertile

eastern Australian or Tasmanian coasts; however, for the British, the accounts of the lands and waters were key elements of intelligence that contributed to the decision by the British to choose Botany Bay as a landing place for the First Fleet, which arrived at those shores in 1788.

The engagement at Kamay Botany Bay with the Indigenous peoples during those eight days of fuelling and watering the ship was sporadic, to say the least, and often confrontational.

In the recent Encounters exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, objects made by the local Indigenous community and taken by Cook’s men to be kept in collections in England for ensuing centuries were on display: a tangible and powerful link with the first encounters between two cultures on the shores of Kamay Botany Bay. After ‘the ship with the white sails’ departed the waters of Kamay Botany Bay and continued its voyage north, close to 18 years were to pass before Europeans and Indigenous peoples would meet again at that place. As the ship tracked up the coast, feeling her way in uncharted waters and through unfamiliar weather patterns, further landings were made to fuel and water the ship, but none involved encounters with Indigenous peoples, or indeed camping onshore.

The next recorded encounter with Indigenous peoples would occur after the disaster had struck; when the ship grounded on what is now called Endeavour Reef off the coast of Far North Queensland on June 11th, 1770. Seeking safe harbour and a place to careen and repair the holed vessel, the HMB Endeavour party made their way to the eastern shore of the Wahalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River).

After establishing a shore camp beside the river, the focus for the crew was repair of the vessel. Work progressed at pace and, after 48 days, favourable weather enabled them to continue the passage north to Torres Strait and west to Batavia (now modernday Jakarta). These 48 days spent ashore by Cook and his men comprise 86 per cent of their time on the Australian east coast.

It was during this time that the local Bama people had extended engagement with the Europeans from HMB Endeavour. >

The ENCOUNTER at Reconciliation Rocks marked a PEACEFUL ENDING to the confrontation before Cook MOVED ON.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

77

T R AV E L

The need to fuel and water the ship along the journey was critical and the crew had previously gone ashore during the voyage, but what was fundamentally different at Wahalumbaal Birri was the confrontation between Bama people and Europeans over the harvesting of turtles. Seen by the Bama as a precious resource to be carefully managed, Cook’s men saw them as easy takings. Their excessive harvesting lead to armed confrontation between the two cultures. Spears against gunpowder.

The encounter at Reconciliation Rocks marked a peaceful ending to the confrontation before Cook moved on to the Torres Strait where, on August 22nd, 1770, he landed on what he named Possession Island, raised the British Colours and declared the entire east coast of the continent a ‘British Possession’ in the name of His Majesty King George III. CELEBRATION OR COMMISERATION? What acts of reconciliation might 2020 create to honour the events that took place in 1770? A focus on the ‘first act of reconciliation’ at Cooktown and on the collection, study and recording of native flora and fauna by Banks, Solander and Parkinson, has already been met with concern as an attempt to distance the explorer Cook from consequent European settlement — or invasion — to the extent that some doubt if the 250th anniversary is to be celebrated or scorned.

Richard Ferguson, Project Manager Collections and Interpretation for the National Trust of Australia (Queensland) is the person charged with picking through the James Cook Museum’s collection in Cooktown, working with architect Stephen de Jersey and in the community, to refurbish the museum and represent the stories within. The aim is to do this in a more inclusive fashion, telling more of the Indigenous stories from before European settlement, the 48 days that Cook spent onshore and the reconciliation with the Bama people. The displays will then take the visitor through to the gold rush, the arrival of missionaries and the World Wars to the present day. There is undoubtedly an expectation that the impact of Cook should be retold in his eponymous museum.

The National Trust of Australia (Queensland) owns and manages the museum, which is housed in the former Sisters of Mercy Convent building, opened in May 1889, and includes an extension built in 2001 that houses and displays an anchor and a canon from HMB Endeavour, which were recovered from Endeavour Reef in 1969 (on loan from the National Museum of Australia).

When threatened with demolition in 1969, the then derelict St Mary’s Convent building was transferred to the National Trust of Australia (Queensland), restored through public appeal and developed into a museum space. This was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on April 22nd, 1970, as part of the Royal Visit to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of Cook’s voyaging along and charting the east coast of Australia. It would seem appropriate to invite members of the Royal Family to revisit the Museum some 50 years on, a visit that would be welcomed by representatives of the local Bama people, who confirmed their interest at a Cook 250 Project Planning workshop held

In Cooktown there is an OPPORTUNITY to demonstrate RECONCILIATION and the process of building a COMMON FUTURE.

in Melbourne in 2016, as part of the early project planning.

It may seem ironic to some that an exhibition about the treatment of Indigenous peoples is housed in a convent, a building that could represent an institution responsible in part for those peoples’ separation from their families and homes; however, the spirit of forgiveness may lead us through what has been a painful past. In Cooktown there is an opportunity to demonstrate reconciliation and the process of building a common future.

When the museum was refreshed and extended in 2001, strong social history display elements were maintained, while at the same time raising the profile of Indigenous objects in the collection and stories linked to the first contact with Europeans on the banks of Wahalumbaal Birri. While this was achieved through extensive consultation and involvement with the Bama people, there is still some tension about the display of Indigenous

THIS PAGE: A replica of James Cook’s Endeavour sails the waters of the east coast, giving modern Australians an opportunity to experience life aboard a tall ship. OPPOSITE PAGE: A portrait of James Cook. PREVIOUS PAGE: The masts and rigging of the Endeavour replica.

objects and stories alongside comparatively modern objects that are part of the social history collection, reflecting the lives, activities, achievements and failures of those who made their way to what became known as Cooktown in increasing numbers from 1873, spurred on by the Palmer River gold rush.

CURRUMBIN TO COOKTOWN National Trust of Australia (Queensland) recognises that Cooktown is one of the few towns that have a relatively intact built heritage and is a place yet to be ‘discovered’ by mass tourism. This is partly because of the fact that Cooktown has been considered relatively remote for many years, although that isn’t the case today: a bitumen inland road was completed from Cairns to Cooktown a decade or more ago, which provides a scenic five-hour drive from Cairns. It is well-serviced by light aircraft via a spectacular 35 minute flight over World Heritage rainforest and reefs.

The iconic Bloomfield Track through the mighty Daintree rainforest retains some of its ruggedness for those who seek adventure; however, even this has been tamed with concrete ramps in and out of the many creek crossings.

Irrespective of the way you get to Cooktown, it is for some a place of pilgrimage to see where Cook was forced ashore to repair HMB Endeavour. Thousands flock to the town mid-June for the annual re-enactment of Cook’s landing and reconciliation with the Bama peoples, by the Cooktown Re-enactment Society. To others, it is the step off to unspoilt walking tracks, a reef experience and the longer track to the tip of Cape York.

National Trust of Australia (Queensland) promotes the Currumbin to Cooktown Trail as a journey of discovery with properties all along the way. In 2020, the promotion could be reversed — from Cooktown to Currumbin — to acknowledge some of Queensland’s most iconic roots.

Jonathan Fisher is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Trust of Australia (Queensland).

Entry to National Trust of Australia (Queensland) properties along the Currumbin to Cooktown driving trail is free for National Trust members. For more information, visit nationaltrust.org.au/placesqld. The James Cook Museum is at the corner of Helen and Furneaux streets, Cooktown. Telephone (07) 4069 5386; email: jamescookmuseum@nationaltrustqld.org. Open from April to September, Tuesday to Saturday (except public holidays) 10am–1pm.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

79

Demolition of non-heritage buildings has aready begun; the National Trust is among those monitoring the safety of the adjacent heritage buildings.

PLACE

STRIVING FOR BALANCE

Queen’s Wharf, Brisbane, is Australia’s biggest single development, incorporating the LARGEST NUMBER of heritage places. It demonstrates the evolution of Brisbane as Queensland’s CAPITAL CITY. writer JANE ALEXANDER

S

ituated on 12 hectares of CBD and riverfront land, this $3 billion development, which received approval in December 2017, contains 11 places that are listed on the Queensland Heritage Register and also includes some of Brisbane’s earliest remaining heritage sites.

In the mid-1820s, the Moreton Bay penal settlement was formed on the north bank of the Brisbane River, establishing this area as Brisbane’s government precinct.

The official buildings, including the commandant’s cottage, the hospital and houses for officials, were constructed along the ridgeline parallel to the Brisbane River; the prisoners’ barracks was constructed at right angles to these, with the military barracks located at the junction of these two alignments.

This layout of buildings essentially established the later grid of Brisbane’s streets: a grid still evident today.

The penal settlement at North Quay gave way to the town of Brisbane, although the government retained some of the existing buildings along William and George Streets. The grid layout and placement of government buildings along North Bank established a precedent that continued: the official buildings were located in William and George Streets, while Queen Street, once free settlement was allowed, became the commercial centre of the town.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE QUEEN’S WHARF PRECINCT The official Statement of Significance for the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane (QWB) precinct says: “It demonstrates the evolution of Brisbane as Queensland’s capital city, with a large group of heritage buildings representing the creation and development of key state (and colonial) administrative functions from 1828 through to the present time. This historical continuity gives the precinct a high level of historical significance. This part of the city is the site of key initiatives and events that shaped Queensland’s history, including the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, the creation of the Queensland Government following

separation in 1859, and the reading of the proclamation of the federation of Australian colonies in 1901. QWB has rarity value through its retention of a collective of major buildings, gardens and features of government administration and presence within a defined precinct in a capital city CBD of Australia. Although dwarfed by modern development to the north of the precinct, the harmonious expression of low form sandstone and masonry buildings in conjunction with open green spaces of Miller Park and Queen’s Gardens highlights the landmark status of these heritage places and buildings and places the past in the present.”

NEW DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES The Queen’s Wharf precinct evolved during the 20th century, particularly in the postwar boom era and in response to massive technology changes in the 1980s and 1990s; however, the current Queen’s Wharf Development Scheme is the biggest change that the precinct and the CBD have ever seen under one single development proposal.

The current development has the potential to irrevocably impact on the heritage significance of this unique historic precinct; however, if done well, it has the potential to be an exemplar for the revitalisation and adaptive reuse of historic precincts and the buildings within them.

The National Trust has recently relocated out of National Trust House within the Queen’s Wharf precinct. Thanks to the support of The Star Entertainment Group in particular, the National Trust has an opportunity to return to the precinct as a long-term tenant in the former State Library building toward the end of this major project. This gives the Trust the opportunity to help activate this historic precinct while promoting the importance of balancing modern development requirements with heritage considerations.

The vision is for a transformative redevelopment to revitalise the area and create a tourism, recreational, cultural and entertainment destination for Brisbane. Two main project aims > ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

81

are to make an iconic contribution to the city’s form and to conserve and revitalise the precinct’s heritage places. Importantly, the new development has not tried to be similar in bulk or scale to the existing built environment. While the heritage buildings within the precinct will be retained and adaptively reused, the new development proposed for Queen’s Wharf is designed to be architecturally distinctive from the current character. Queen’s Wharf Brisbane is not intended to become a historic precinct, locked in time. Rather, it is seeking to amalgamate a historic precinct into a distinctive modern development.

not occur. At the National Trust of Australia (Queensland), we are encouraging of good and careful development.”

While the National Trust recognises that the Queen’s Wharf development is inevitable and supports the repurposing of the heritage buildings to more accessible uses, the devil is always in the detail and the Trust tabled an extensive review of the development’s heritage documents and submitted a formal response to Queensland Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning (DILGP).

Demolition of significant nonheritage buildings on the site has already happened in the project’s early stages. An impressive project in its own right, with buildings spanning the road and adjacent to the busy Riverside Expressway, the demolition progressed smoothly under the watchful eye of thousands of commuters, office workers and visitors.

The noise was not unreasonable and there was little or no dust that escaped the site: a remarkable achievement for which Destination Brisbane Consortium should be congratulated. The heritage buildings were carefully surrounded by hoardings and, where necessary, additional strapping was added. Motion sensors remain on the heritage buildings with readings taken every hour.

Good HERITAGE OUTCOMES are intimately linked to good URBAN DESIGN; by encouraging one we GAIN the other.

INTEGRATIVE APPROACHES The integrative approach that characterises the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane development will be dependent on good urban design and attention to detail. Good heritage outcomes are intimately linked to good urban design; by encouraging one, we gain the other.

It is important to be able to repurpose heritage buildings into commercially viable options, otherwise in Queensland (the former state of the ‘midnight demolitions’) there is a risk of losing our precious heritage assets.

Indeed, “use it or lose it” has never been truer for Brisbane, with the approval of the Queen’s Wharf Plan of Development on December 23rd, 2017. National Trust of Australia (Queensland) CEO Jonathan Fisher says, “In an urban world it would be remiss of the National Trust to expect that development in our cities will

82 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

A STRONG VOICE FOR HERITAGE On giving a green light to the development, the state government tabled 135 pages of development conditions that the developer

PHOTOGRAPHS ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, THINKSTOCK

Once the site of a sawmill, Queen’s Wharf has long played a role in Brisbane’s success.

PLACE

must adhere to. These conditions were based on expert reviews of the proposed design and public submission, such as that prepared by the National Trust. The National Trust of Australia (Queensland) is in an exciting process of rejuvenation to ensure that it remains relevant in the 21st century: being a strong voice for heritage is an essential goal and the success of the campaign can in part be measured by responses to such submissions. In light of the success with Queen’s Wharf Brisbane, the Trust’s relevance appears to be on the rise.

While there were some areas of the submission that were disappointingly not incorporated into the development conditions, primarily with regard to building setbacks and urban design, there were other comments that were taken on board and incorporated into the consent conditions. In particular, the National Trust of Australia (Queensland) was concerned at the lack of detail presented in the Conservation Management Plans for each heritage building. The consent conditions were adjusted to require the incorporation of detailed Schedules of Conservation Works and Maintenance Plans for each building prior to compliance assessment being considered.

Also positive is the requirement for a new shared access way in Queen’s Park that will be limited to one-way traffic and used only for hotel drop-offs and pickups; and there is an additional requirement for the preparation of a precinct-wide Heritage Interpretation Plan.

MOVING FORWARD The National Trust of Australia (Queensland) is independent of government and the development industry, but has a long relationship with The Star Entertainment Group, one of the major partners in the Destination Brisbane Consortium and a long-term annual Heritage Awards Sponsor. The Trust has appreciated their consultative approach to the development over its design stages, but has not hesitated to criticise where such criticism has been justified. The Trust’s aim is to continue to collaborate with the proponents, build a relationship with the government agencies responsible for the development and to be seen as a major stakeholder in the Queen’s Wharf development.

This development contains some of Brisbane’s most significant government buildings and the National Trust of Australia (Queensland) will be watching closely as it unfolds and the process of adaptive reuse begins. The developers have been bold in acknowledging the National Trust on site hoardings, encouraging residents and visitors and the like to contact the Trust, which looks forward to responding to any concerns and helping to get the very best outcomes that will protect, conserve and celebrate Queen’s Wharf Brisbane.

Jane Alexander is a Heritage Advocacy Adviser at the National Trust of Australia (Queensland). For updates on the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane development, visit queenswharfbrisbane.com.au or follow @queenswharfbrisbane on Facebook.

The TRUST will be WATCHING CLOSELY as the development unfolds and the PROCESS of adaptive reuse begins.

The plan seeks to amalgamate history with modern development.

Start your journey…

Currumbin to Cooktown Set off on a driving trail from Currumbin to Cooktown and explore Queensland’s National Trust properties. Travel through beautiful towns visiting hidden gems along the way.

James Cook Museum

Hou Wang Temple

Currajong House Stock Exchange Arcade ara Clark Museum Z

Brennan & Geraghty’s Store

Great membership discounts plus entry to over 1000 National Trust properties worldwide.

Plan your trip now nationaltrust.org.au/qld

Harris House Royal Bulls Head Inn Grandchester Railway Wolston Farmhouse Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

JN00138_CWSCooktownTrust

Free admission for members to all National Trust properties along the trail

News & Events Discover the exciting activities happening at National Trust properties across the country.

EVENTS

Afternoon tea at Wolston Farmhouse, Queensland includes cakes baked from recipes written by past inhabitants.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

85

Labassa’s sumptuous interiors have a wealth of detail to discover.

EVENTS

VICTORIA

COMO FASHION QUARTER EXHIBITION APRIL 6TH– JULY 1ST Go behind the scenes and get up close with some of Melbourne’s unique artists and their striking visual interpretations that fuse the past with the present in an immersive new fashion exhibition dividing Como House into four distinct quarters.

Tickets, comofashionquarter. com.au. Como House, Corner Williams Road and Lechlade Avenue, South Yarra.

10am–4pm. nationaltrust.org.au/vic

Labassa, in Caulfield North, Victoria.

PHOTOGRAPHER ANTHONY BASHEER PREVIOUS PAGE PHOTOGRAPHER CHINA SQUIRREL

PIRATE SUNDAYS AT POLLY WOODSIDE MAY 6TH, JUNE 3RD AND JULY 1ST Meet our Polly crew and discover what life was like on a tall ship sailing the Seven Seas. Join in the pirate fun with activities, games and singalongs for the whole family.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Email bookings@nattrust.com.au; pollywoodside.com.au. Polly Woodside, 21 South Wharf Promenade, South Wharf.

10am–4pm.

NATIONAL TRUST ADVOCACY TOOLKIT LAUNCH MAY 16TH Join our advocacy team for the launch of the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) Advocacy Toolkit. This free online resource will provide communities with what they need to protect their natural and cultural heritage.

Email conservation@nattrust. com.au. Tickets, trybooking. com/346911. Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 239 A’Beckett Street, Melbourne. 1–2pm.

LA TROBE’S COTTAGE WINTER TALKS JUNE 10TH AND JULY 4TH Enjoy an afternoon series of talks and discover more about

the life of the La Trobe family, including their music and their horses.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Email bookings@nattrust.com.au.

Mueller Hall, National Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens. 2.30–4pm.

NIGHT TOURS AT THE OLD MELBOURNE GAOL DATES SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY Experience a different side to the Gaol: at night! Be guided by a hangman, locked up in an original cell block and hear

LABASSA MANSION TOURS

MAY 20TH, JUNE 17TH AND JULY 15TH Come along and explore this Victorian-era mansion, take your photo in front of the powerful architectural features and hear stories about those who once called Labassa home.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Email bookings@nattrust.com.au.

Labassa, 2 Manor Grove, Caulfield North. 10.30am–4pm.

compelling stories from visitors and staff alike.

Bookings are essential.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Email bookings@nattrust.com.au; oldmelbournegaol.com.au. Old Melbourne Gaol, 377 Russell Street, Melbourne.

TO HELP US continue to protect special places, donate today. Call 1800 650 093 or go to nationaltrust.org.au/ donate/

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

87

Enjoy a Sunday high tea at Runnymede.

nationaltrust.org.au/tas

TASMANIA

STITCH AND SIP MAY 12TH Bring a friend or make new ones while you learn to crochet a simple basket with upcycled T-shirt yarn at the historic Runnymede House.

All materials are provided, with a glass of Pimms on arrival, tea or coffee and afternoon tea treats. Book now: space is limited!

Ph (03) 6278 1269. Tickets, $55 per person. Runnymede, 61 Bay Road, New Town. 3–5pm.

MOTHER’S DAY EVENT MAY 13TH Come along to this popular day at beautiful Clarendon. Stalls, bric-a-brac, food, drink, music and a dog agility course. Bring along the whole family!

Ph (03) 6398 6220. Email clarendon@nationaltrusttas. org.au. Clarendon, 234 Clarendon Station Road, Nile, via Evandale. 10am–4pm.

MOTHER’S DAY HIGH TEA MAY 13TH Elegant high tea at Franklin House. Bookings essential.

Ph (03) 6344 7824. Tickets, $20. Franklin House, 413 Hobart Road, Youngtown. 2pm.

A RIGHT ROYAL AFFAIR MAY 20TH Enjoy a lighthearted celebration of the royal wedding and toast the newlyweds.

Franklin House.

RUNNYMEDE HIGH TEAS

SUNDAYS IN MAY. These highly popular and extremely elegant events are always filled in advance, so bookings are essential.

Ph. (03) 6278 1269. Runnymede House, 61 Bay Road, New Town. 2.30–4pm.

Ph (03) 6424 8055. Tickets, $35.

Home Hill, 77 Middle Rd, Devonport. 1–3pm.

A RARE TREAT AT RUNNYMEDE: TSO CHAMBER CONCERT MAY 26TH This unique and special event at Runnymede House is being offered with limited seating.

For further details please follow Runnymede on Facebook @RunnymedeHouse

and stay tuned for tickets to be released!

Runnymede House, 61 Bay Road, New Town.

IN THE SHADOWS: HOBART CONVICT PENITENTIARY MAY 29TH Back by popular demand, this wonderful performance includes original scores and performances by the Tasmanian Symphony

Orchestra, and readings of monologues written by prisoners from Risdon Prison.

To keep up to date on ticket releases and times (still to be announced) follow Hobart Convict Penitentiary on Facebook.

DEVONPORT JAZZ JULY 27TH Jazz comes to Home Hill. This is a very special opportunity to experience one of Tasmania’s leading jazz musicians in the intimate sitting room of this iconic home. Space is limited to 35 people so bookings are essential.

Ph. (03) 6424 8055. Tickets, $30. Home Hill, 77 Middle Rd, Devonport. 7–9pm.

THE STORY OF BRITTON JONES

MAY 26TH Come along to this fabulous talk by Lucille Gee, one of Franklin House’s dedicated volunteers, who has written a book about Britton Jones, the former convict who first commissioned the building of Franklin House.

Ph (03) 6344 7824.

Tickets, $25. Franklin House, 413 Hobart Road, Youngtown. 2pm.

nationaltrust.org.au/nsw

Christopher McVinish’s Portrait of the Actor, Colin Friels, Salon des Refusés 2017.

ERYLDENE HISTORIC HOUSE AND GARDEN JUNE 9TH–10TH, JULY 14TH–15TH Tour the house, hear the stories of the Waterhouse family and enjoy the camellias for which the gardens are renowned. Bring a picnic.

Ph (02) 9488 2271. Email eryldene@eryldene.org.au; visit eryldene.org.au. Tickets, free for NT, Eryldene Trust and HHA members, $12 non-members, $10 concession, $5 children (6–15 yrs); $30 family (2 adults 2 children).

Sunday afternoon teas (from 1pm), $25 adults, $12 children (6–12 yrs). 17 McIntosh Street, Gordon. 10am–4pm.

ANNUAL GARDEN SEMINAR AT LINDESAY JULY 25TH Lindesay’s spectacular grounds with vistas to Sydney Harbour are a much-loved venue for celebrations of all kinds. Enjoy a day in this 1834 house, built by the then Colonial Treasurer on the Darling Point peninsula.

Hear a landscape designer and other garden experts talk about how to choose and nurture plants to enhance your own house and garden.

Succulents, currently a hot topic for gardeners, will be a special feature and some will be for sale.

Ph (02) 9363 2401. Tickets, including morning tea or coffee and lunch, $70 NT members, $90 friends. 1 Carthona Avenue, Darling Point.

9.30am–3pm.

40 YEARS OF THE S.H. ERVIN GALLERY

JESSIE MACKINTOSH (18931957): The Tiresome Visitor. 1938.

Linocut. Gift of the Friends of the S.H. Ervin Gallery 1987.

S.H. ERVIN GALLERY 2018 SALON DES REFUSÉS

MAY 12TH–JULY 29TH Each year guest selectors go behind the scenes of the Art Gallery of New South Wales to select from unsuccessful entries in the Archibald and Wynne Prizes. Among the criteria for the works are diversity, humour and experimentation.

Ph (02) 9258 0173; shervingallery.com.au.

Tickets, $7 NT members, $10 non-members, $4 seniors and concession. Children under 12 years free. Special ticket prices apply for major exhibitions. Watson Road, Observatory Hill, Sydney. Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm.

N SW

PALM BEACH DAY JUNE 5TH A National Trust House Inspection Day, organised by the Trust’s Women’s Committee.

By courtesy of the homeowners, the day features three private homes within easy walking distance, selected for their architectural, historical and environmental features.

Inspections are for members only and conditions apply.

Ph. (02) 9363 2401. Tickets, $40 members, $20 youth (12–20 yrs). 10.30am–12.30pm or 1–3pm.

EVENTS

MARCH 31ST–MAY 6TH A special exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the S.H. Ervin Gallery will feature many rarely seen works from the collection.

Ph (02) 9258 0173; shervingallery.com.au.

Tickets, $7 NT members, $10 non-members, $4 seniors and concession. Children under 12 years free. Special ticket prices apply for major exhibitions.

Watson Road, Observatory Hill, Sydney. Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm.

Kenrokuen Garden

TOURS ICONS OF CATTAI AND EBENEZER JULY 29TH Conservation architect Graham Edds and heritage consultant Carol Edds will lead this tour of two significant 19th century farmhouses, the first of which is not generally accessible to the public. Relax over a catered lunch at historic Tizzana Winery. The tour continues after lunch to Ebenezer Church, the earliest church of any denomination to survive in Australia. This is a self-drive tour: itinerary provided on booking.

Email: nt.hawkesbury@gmail. com. Tickets, (including two-course catered lunch with wine/soft drinks): $100 NT members, $110 non-members.

BYO morning tea. Additional cost: $8 per vehicle entrance to Cattai National Park.

JAPAN, THE MAGIC LAND OF THE RISING SUN NOVEMBER 3RD–18TH Explore the vibrant and exciting capital, Tokyo, as well as the ancient former capital, Kyoto. On this tour you will enjoy the charming old-world villages, picturesque lakes and mountains, hot springs, Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and more. You will discover the depth of Japan’s history and culture, the elegance of its architecture and the beauty of the countryside, as well as meeting the gracious locals as we travel. This two-week visit to Japan will surely surprise and delight!

Bookings and enquiries: David Smith, Travel on Capri, 1800 679 066. Tour Leader: Jill Bunning, 0439 321 164.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

89

Old Government House at Parramatta, NSW, holds the nation’s most significant collection of Australiana.

EVENTS

TALES FROM THE EAST:

PHOTOGRAPHER MICHAEL WEE

India and colonial New South Wales APRIL 27TH–AUGUST 26TH This exhibition examines the connections between Australia and India: strong today, and firmly rooted during the Lachlan Macquarie era of governance from 1810 to 1821.

Vignettes of Macquarie’s time in India with his regiment provide context for the Anglo–Indian influences that abound in his country residence, Old Government House, and which permeated many aspects of colonial life.

Multimedia displays explore landmark events in colonial India and their impact on society, religion, clothing and fabrics, interior design and furnishings.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Email ogh@nationaltrust.com.au.

Tickets, NT members: $10 adult, $5 child, $9 group member, $20 family. Nonmembers: $16 adult, $8 child, $4 concession and group member, $35 family. Old Government House, Parramatta Park.

TALES FROM THE EAST PUBLIC PROGRAMS Bollywood-style dancing for everyone APRIL 29TH AND AUGUST 11TH Fabulous Bollywood music and an easy dance lesson from Avantika Tomar and the Nautanki Theatre team will have you and your children dancing Bollywood style in no time at all! Great fun and a good workout.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Tickets, $15 adult, $35 family (1 adult, 2 children). Experiment Farm Cottage, Harris Park.

1–2.30pm.

Parramatta Lecture Series: Colonial Anglo–Indian Textiles MAY 26TH To tie in with the exhibition at Old Government House, learn about textiles and the way they

Seahorse Fountain, Norman Lindsay Gallery.

were used, in a talk by textiles historians and curators Lindie Ward and Leimoni Oakes.

Parramatta Lecture Series: ‘Finding’ George Jarvis AUGUST 18TH Historian and academic Robin Walsh and author Roanna Gonsalves will explore different approaches to ‘finding’ the elusive figure of George Jarvis, Governor Macquarie’s Indian manservant.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Tickets $10 NT members, $15 nonmembers. UNE Lecture Theatre, Parramatta Campus, Level 1, 232 Church Street, Parramatta.

10.30–11.30am.

Tours with the Curator JUNE 28TH AND JULY 26TH Lead exhibition curator Ian Stephenson will take you through the exhibition at Old Government House, exploring crosscultural and historical stories.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Tickets, $20 NT members, $30 non-members. Old Government House, Parramatta Park.

1.30–3pm.

WINE AND JAZZ FESTIVAL

at Norman Lindsay Gallery MAY 26TH This is the premier wine and jazz festival in the Blue Mountains, with something for everyone who enjoys a quality afternoon of wine, jazz, culture and friends. Australian legendary band Galapagos Duck will delight you with wonderful jazz while quality NSW wineries provide wine tasting.

A no-reserve auction starts at 3pm.

Ph (02) 4751 1067. Email info@normanlindsay.com.au. Tickets, $35 NT members, $40 non-members, $20 children (includes gallery admission and car parking). Norman Lindsay Gallery, 14 Norman Lindsay Crescent, Faulconbridge. 12noon–4pm.

Fashioning Asia JULY 19TH Curators Glynis Jones and Min-Jung Kim will give you a behind-the-scenes tour of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences’s extensive collection of Indian textiles and Asian decorative arts.

This will be an exploration of the shifting perceptions of Asia over time.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Tickets, $15 adult, children 16 years and under free, $8 concession and student card holders.

Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo. 11am–1pm.

PARRAMATTA FEMALE FACTORY BICENTENARY CELEBRATIONS JULY 7TH Commemorating 200 years since the foundation stone of this institution was laid by Governor Lachlan Macquarie on July 9th, 1818, set aside time on this important occasion to learn more about these women who were the ancestors of up to one in seven Australians alive today.

Email parramattafemale factoryfriends@gmail.com.

5 Fleet Street, North Parramatta.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

91

EVENTS

Old Blythewood

ANNUAL ROSE PRUNING JULY 22ND AND AUGUST 5TH

WA nationaltrust.org.au/wa

All gardening enthusiasts are welcome for the rose pruning at Samson House in July and Old Blythewood in August. Bookings essential.

Visit nationaltrust.org.au/wa. Sampson House, 61 Ellen Street, Fremantle; Old Blythewood, Southwest Highway, Pinjarra.

SAMSON HOUSE MAY 11TH AND 18TH Visit the late 1890s home of one of the members of the prominent Samson family, one that has been here since Fremantle’s foundation, and helped to establishing Western Australia’s oldest familyowned business.

Entry by donation. Samson House, 61 Ellen Street, Fremantle.1–3pm; last admission 2.45pm.

A NIGHT OF BLING AND BUBBLES JULY, DATE TBA Join the National Trust and the Royal Western Australian Historical Society for an extravagant night: displays of costume and jewellery from the RWAHS collection; colonial jewellery expert Trevor Hancock of Trinity Antiques will give a talk using pieces from his collection; and take the chance to have your jewels valued.

Ph (08) 9321 6088. Visit nationaltrust.org.au/wa.

49 Broadway, Nedlands.

Ngadju film production in 2017.

NAIDOC WEEK JULY 8TH–15TH

The National Trust’s Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre in Kalgoorlie is running a series of events through NAIDOC Week, including the July 9th launch of the Goldfields Aboriginal Translating and Interpreting Service; July 11th Goldfields Aboriginal Language Awards; July 13th launch of the Women’s Book Writing Project; plus the GALC Aboriginal Film Festival at the Orana Cinema, 6–7.30pm daily.

For more information about these events ph (08) 9021 3788 or visit wangka.com.au.

nationaltrust.org.au/nt

TO HELP US continue to protect special places, donate today. Go to nationaltrust.org.au/ donate/

nationaltrust.org.au/qld

ACT

nationaltrust.org.au/act

MOLONGLO RIVER RESERVE WALK MAY 27TH Not to be confused with Molonglo Reach or Molonglo Gorge near Queanbeyan, the Molonglo River Reserve at Coombs offers an easy walking trail through an area of protected box-gum woodland north of Holden Creek pond.

Experience the natural beauty and discover its unique ecological values with Janelle Dennis from Molonglo Catchment Group. See what’s left of Riverview Cottage, home to Isaac and Emily (Shumack) Blundell and their eight children.

Visit facebook.com/events/ 2043913089180115. Tickets, $10. Meet at Edgeworth Crescent, Coombs.

9.30–11.30am.

COMMUNITY OPEN DAY AT HARRIS HOUSE MAY 5TH Come and view one of Toowoomba’s most historic buildings, Harris House, at the Community Open Day. Gold coin entry to the Heritage Rose Exhibit and a free history tour of Harris House at 12pm. Devonshire tea available to purchase.

Email toowoomba@ nationaltrustqld.org.

Harris House, Toowoomba.

10am–3pm.

QUEENSLAND

NT

LECTURES, OPEN DAYS AND MUSICAL EVENTS VARIOUS DATES Many of the 19 properties managed by the National Trust are open to the public, including Hartley Street School Museum, Alice Springs; The Roadmaster’s House, Darwin; the Old Katherine Railway Station; Burnett House, Larrakeyah; and Jones Store, Newcastle Waters. The National Trust holds monthly lectures and talks at Burnett House.

Musical events are held at Stahl Gardens in Darwin.

Ph (08) 8981 2848. Email foh. ntnt@internode.on.net. Visit Audit House, 2 Burnett Place, Larrakeyah by appointment.

COOKTOWN DISCOVERY FESTIVAL JUNE 15TH–17TH

The 2018 Cooktown Discovery Festival will take place in beautiful and historic Cooktown. This is one of Far North Queensland’s premier events with hundreds of visitors flocking to Cooktown every year to experience the unique culture and have a great time making history fun! A must, of course, is a visit to the James Cook Museum.

Visit cooktowndiscovery.com.au.

TOWNSVILLE HERITAGE DAY MAY 20TH Heritage Day is a free, family-friendly event that promotes Townsville’s unique heritage and increases community awareness of local heritage groups and organisations. Enjoy live entertainment, a food court

and a range of other activities.

Set in West End Park, the guided tours are popular.

Visit nationaltrust.org.au/ahf and search ‘Townsville’.

10am–2pm. There will be a free shuttle bus for visitors between the park and the National Trust Townsville Heritage Centre, running between 11am and 4pm.

‘GHOSTLY TOURS’ AT ROYAL BULL’S HEAD INN MAY 11TH

Stories will be shared about the history of the Inn; ghost stories that have been associated with the Inn for many years.

Bookings are a must.

Email toowoomba@ nationaltrustqld.org.

Tickets, $12 adult, $10 teen (13–18 years), $8 child (5–13 years), $8 concession, $30 family. Royal Bull’s Head Inn, Brisbane Street, Drayton.

6.30–7.30pm, 8–9pm.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

93

Rhossilli in Ipswich will open its doors in May.

GREAT HOUSES OF IPSWICH MAY 12TH

QUEENSLAND HERITAGE AWARDS MAY 31ST Join us for an inspiring evening at the Old Brisbane Museum to celebrate the 2018 Queensland Heritage Awards, recognising outstanding achievements in conservation and heritage throughout Queensland communities.

Dress in cocktail style; drinks and canapes at 6.30pm.

Visit nationaltrust.org.au/qld and check the What’s On page to book. Old Museum Building, 1D Bowen Bridge Road, Bowen Hills.

CURRUMBIN WILDLIFE SANCTUARY: NEARLY A VET Bring along a teddy or toy animal and join Rebecca Johnson, author of the Juliet, Nearly a Vet series and winner of the 2015 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools.

Practice your veterinary skills and learn about the things real vets do, along with some extra special guests!

Stay up to date for the release date of this event by following us on Facebook:@Currumbin. wildlife.sanctuary.

MOTHER’S DAY AT WOLSTON FARMHOUSE MAY 13TH

Rustic charm, delectable treats, beautiful landscapes and lawn games come together to create the perfect event to celebrate your mum. Enjoy a Farmhouse Tea with your mum and guided tour of the farmhouse. Including a gift bag for mum, buy tickets before they sell out.

Visit wolstonfarmhouse.com.au. Tickets, $49 per person.

Wolston Farmhouse, 223 Grindle Road, Wacol. 10am–5pm.

PHOTOGRAPHERS KARA ROSENLUND, CHINA SQUIRREL

We open the doors again to some of the most outstanding private heritage homes in Ipswich. Featuring Rhossilli, Dougleen and Brighton Cottage.

Visit greathouses.com.au. Tickets, free for NT members or $5 per person per property (children & students are free). 10am–4pm.

Guided tours of Wolston Farmhouse are an ideal Mother’s Day activity.

EVENTS

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

95

Exquisite Victorian costumes are on display at Ayers House.

EVENTS Anlaby Station, near Kapunda.

KJDM. Tickets, adult $15, concession $13, member $10, child $10. Z Ward, enter via 63 Conyngham Street, Glenside. 2–3.30pm.

Z WARD: BEHIND THE WALLS APRIL 28TH, MAY 6TH, MAY 12TH, MAY 16TH Neither prison nor hospital, the ‘criminal ward’ of the former Glenside Mental Hospital occupies a unique place in South Australia’s history. Explore the breathtaking architecture and sobering history of this important site.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email bookings@nationaltrustsa. org.au. Visit trybooking.com/

TURA NEW MUSIC Louise Devenish: Music for Percussion and Electronics MAY 20TH The delicate and the powerful collide in a collection of solo works performed by Louise Devenish within the rich historic surrounds of Z Ward.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email bookings@nationaltrustsa. org.au. Visit trybooking.com/ UEZF. Tickets, adult $20, concession $15. Z Ward, enter from 63 Conyngham Street, Glenside. 5–6pm.

SA

nationaltrust.org.au/sa

AGE OF ELEGANCE: FASHIONABLE LIVING IN VICTORIAN ADELAIDE APRIL–JULY Be swept into the spirit of Adelaide high society during the Victorian era with an immersive fashion installation in one of the city’s most beautiful heritage homes.

Acclaimed costumier Marion Boyce has created a unique experience with more than 40 authentic period costumes organised into breathtaking tableaux that invite you to lose yourself in the whimsical world of elegant living in Adelaide’s most glittering decades.

Visit trybooking.com/UBGW. Tickets, adults $20, children $10, concession $18, family $50, members $15. Ayers House Museum, 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. Tuesday–Sunday 10am–4pm, Fridays till 9pm.

THE BEST OF TOWN AND COUNTRY APRIL 30TH, MAY 21ST

Experience the best of colonial South Australia on a grand day out to two of our most delightful heritage places. This exclusive guided experience begins at Adelaide’s grandest Victorian-era mansion, Ayers House, before journeying to the beautiful house and gardens of historic pastoral property, Anlaby Station, near Kapunda.

Coach, morning tea and a formal lunch included.

Tickets, trybooking.com/OUIP. Departs from Ayers House Museum, 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. 8.30am–5.30pm.

Redruth Gaol, Burra.

BREAK OUT IN BURRA PHOTOGRAPHER MARNIE HAWSON

APRIL 28TH–29TH

Discover Australia’s newest nationally listed heritage site.

Using the Burra Passport key unlock the stories of Australia’s first mining boom town. Go underground to the miners’ dugouts and the Old Unicorn Brewery, break in to the famous Redruth Gaol and explore dozens of other historical sites. The weekend features live music performances, mystery challenges and a chance to win prizes as you discover why this remarkable town is now recognised on the national heritage list. Excursions are available to Martindale Hall and Bungaree Station.

Tickets, trybooking.com/UMJP. Burra Open Doors Weekend, Burra. 10am–2pm.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

97

EVENTS Play on the lush lawns of Beaumont House, Beaumont.

TRY A WALK, TAKE A HIKE

Take the children back in time for a day of Victorian-era fun, with traditional outdoor games, stories, music and imagination on the beautiful lawns of Beaumont House. Food trucks will be onsite for lunch and Devonshire teas will be served on the verandah.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email bookings@nationaltrustsa.org. au. Tickets, adult $5, child $2.

Beaumont House, 631 Glynburn Road, Beaumont. 11am–4pm.

Discover Adelaide’s secrets, mysteries and treasures with our range of guided walking tours. Each tour explores the city’s beloved and hidden places — both great and small — and allows you to uncover the colourful and sometimes strange stories of Adelaide’s rich and marvellous heritage.

• Southwest Corner: April 25th and May 30th, 11am.

• In the Steps of Stella Bowen: Wednesday May 16th, 11am.

• Somerton Man Mystery (night tour): May 18th, 5.30pm.

• City of Pubs (night tour): May 25th, 5.30pm.

Visit adelaidetours.net.au.

APRIL 22ND

Distribution of this magazine may vary; we apologise if some events are already completed or booked out in advance. We recommend contacting the organisers to confirm details and ensure availability.

98 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

ADELAIDE TOURS

PIONEER WOMEN’S TRAIL WALK: HAHNDORF TO BEAUMONT MAY 20TH Walk in the bold, determined footsteps of German pioneer women as they made the regular 35 kilometre trek from home in Hahndorf to market in Adelaide, bearing heavy baskets of produce. Take in spectacular Adelaide Hills scenery as you wind your way to Beaumont House for our annual Heritage Harvest Festival.

An unforgettable challenge and fitting tribute to the women who helped build South Australia.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email bookings@nationaltrustsa.org. au. Visit trybooking.com/OPKM. Walk starts from Hahndorf.

8.30am–4pm.

HERITAGE HARVEST FESTIVAL MAY 20TH As the walkers descend from Hahndorf, join us for a special harvest celebration with live music, food, wine and produce in the beautiful autumn splendour of the Beaumont House gardens. Welcome the weary walkers as they arrive, or lend a hand picking olives in the 150-year-old olive grove for the famous Davenport Olive Oil. Ph (08) 8202 9200. Email bookings@nationaltrustsa.org. au. Visit trybooking.com/OPKM. Tickets, free entry for Pioneer Women’s Trail Walkers, adult $10, member $8, child under 15 free. Beaumont House, 63 Glynburn Road, Beaumont.

11am–4pm.

PHOTOGRAPHER MARNIE HAWSON

VICTORIANA: OLD FASHIONED DAY OF PLAY

G O L D

C O A S T

•

A U S T R A L I A

Iconic Gold Coast Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is an iconic Gold Coast nature-based tourist destination established in 1947 and is the crown jewel of the National Trust of Australia (Queensland) properties.

Made famous by our rainbow lorikeets, guests can still enjoy the free daily experience at 8am and 4pm with a gold coin donation for feeding.

It’s so much for everyone and National Trust members receive FREE entry into the Sanctuary.

Open 7 days, 8am-5pm 28 Tomewin St Currumbin QLD 4223 CurrumbinSanctuary.com.au

PHOTOGRAPHS ANTHONY BASHEER, MARNIE HAWSON, MARK ROPER, KARA ROSENLUND, MICHAEL WEE

MEMBERSHIP

NATIONAL TR

NATIONAL TRUST

Encourage a FRIEND or FAMILY member to sign up or DONATE today and help us protect our special PLACES. Go to www.nationaltrust. org.au/membership to discover more about the benefits of membership.

ISSUE 5 2018 / T R U S T

101

LAST WORD

WELCOME TO COUNTRY

P

A new book from Professor MARCIA LANGTON offers fascinating insights into Indigenous languages and customs, history, native title, art, dance and storytelling, as well as CULTURAL AWARENESS.

rofessor Marcia Langton’s Welcome to Country is, as Stan Grant writes in the foreword, “an ancient book and a modern book. We live in a globalised world, we are a touch away from anyone, anywhere. This is a book of songlines and trade routes; it is also a book of modern tourism in a global economy.”

It’s also a carefully curated guidebook to Indigenous Australia and a work of substance — clearly needed to fill a gaping hole in the market where there is little to help tourists learn more about a culture that has existed here for over 50,000 years.

One of Australia’s most important voices for Indigenous Australia, Professor Langton AM has been the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne since 2000, worked with the Central Land Council, the 1989 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, and the Cape York Land Council. In 1999 she was also one of five Indigenous leaders who met with Queen Elizabeth when Australians were debating the then imminent republic referendum.

The first part of her book serves as an introduction to Indigenous culture. Here, the prospective traveller learns that there are about 120 Indigenous languages still spoken in Australia and not all questions are welcome. In some areas, Aboriginal people may not respond as your question could breach

102 T R U S T / ISSUE 5 2018

a local custom. “Often an Aboriginal person — whether a man or a woman — is not permitted to discuss local customs without the permission of their group or clan. Instead of saying, ‘I am not authorised to answer that question,’ an Aboriginal person will remain silent or answer another question. This is still the Aboriginal way in many areas today. Asking too many questions can be seen as intrusive, even though meant with goodwill,” is just one of the tips on cultural awareness and tourist etiquette.

Part two, Exploring Indigenous Australia, starts with the Northern Territory and lists events, places and tourism experiences state by state. Entries range from Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy and Queensland’s Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary with its popular performances from the Yugambeh Aboriginal Dancers to one of Professor Langton’s favourites, Charcoal Lane, a restaurant in Melbourne’s Fitzroy that specialises in native foods and supports indigenous hospitality students. She also recommends taking a walking tour of Melbourne with Wemba Wemba-Wergaia man Dean Stewart, who has an “encyclopedic knowledge” of the city’s Indigenous history.

This book will help you spend time in Aboriginal country with the people who know it best — the traditional owners.

Welcome to Country: A Travel Guide to Indigenous Australia

by Marcia Langton (Hardie Grant Travel, $39.99) is out now.

Celebrate with us

Rippon Lea Estate 192 Hotham St, Elsternwick ripponleaestate.com.au

Y O U ’ R E I N V I T E D T O A PA R T Y. 150 YEARS AGO.

FA S H I O N A B L E L I V I N G I N V I C T O R I A N A D E L A I D E Be swept into a magical world in this immersive fashion installation by acclaimed costume designer Marion Boyce.

29 MARCH TO

29 JULY

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM 288 NORTH TERRACE

www.ayershousemuseum.org.au/ageofelegance

(08) 8223 1234