TRUST Issue 2 (April 2017)

Autumn 2017

TRUST THE NAT IONAL TRUSTS OF AUSTR ALIA magazine

Issue No. 2 Autumn $8.95

Head West Time to visit

T R U S T

DUNDULLIMAL HOMESTEAD,

Dubbo’s hidden gem

SEED FOR THOUGHT

The volunteers preserving a historic SA garden

NATI ONA LTRUST.ORG.AU

IN FASHION

We speak to Night Life curator

ELIZ ABETH A NYA -PETRIVNA

MEMBERSHIP

NATIONAL TRUST

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, discounts at THE STORE, the new National Trust shop, and opportunities to attend events at discounted rates.

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

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

2 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

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

The garden at South Australia’s Beaumont House. For the full story, see page 38.

Welcome

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH MARNIE HAWSON BUDJ BIM PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL BELL JNR EDITOR’S PORTRAIT MICHAEL WEE

S

ince becoming Minister for the Environment and Energy in July last year, I have been extremely fortunate to meet hundreds of people and organisations across the nation working to protect our environment and heritage. My journey in those first few months took me from Far North Queensland to inspect the Great Barrier Reef to the majestic landscape of the Australian Antarctic Territory. Everywhere I went I was inspired by the dedication and commitment I saw to protecting the places that make Australia so unique.

In January I was privileged to visit Budj Bim in Victoria’s Lake Condah area with the Prime Minister to announce its inclusion on Australia’s World Heritage Tentative List.

The Prime Minister and I were shown around the area by leaders of the Gunditjmara community and it was fascinating to see the landscape that was shaped by a volcanic eruption around 30,000 years ago. That event, believed by the Gunditjmara to have revealed the shape of ancestral being Budj Bim, also changed the drainage pattern in the area, creating large wetlands that are still part of the area’s ecosystem.

Around six thousand years ago the Gunditjmara developed this landscape through the construction “Budj Bim’s legacy of a sophisticated system of channels, fish traps and is important not only weirs. This was a major engineering achievement that provided ideal conditions for growing and to Australia’s history harvesting eels that could then be smoked and but to a wider story consumed. The connection between people and the of Indigenous cultures land has continued for thousands of years and, as engineering landscapes I saw during my visit, continues today.

Budj Bim’s extraordinary legacy is important not around the world” only to Australia’s history but to a wider story of Indigenous cultures engineering landscapes around the world, and it has been recognised as an Engineering Heritage National Landmark.

There are many firsts associated with Budj Bim. It was one of the first to be added to the newly created National Heritage List in July 2004; the first on Australia’s Tentative List since 2010 and could become Australia’s first World Heritage site listed solely as an Indigenous cultural landscape. A formal nomination will be developed by the Victorian government and traditional owners with support from the Australian government.

Adding Budj Bim to the World Heritage Tentative List acknowledges and pays tribute to the work of the Gunditjmara in protecting and celebrating its outstanding heritage values. It already has the highest protection under Australia’s national environment law, and a World Heritage listing would help take its story to a global audience. I look forward to Budj Bim receiving the international recognition it so thoroughly deserves, and being visited by those who want to learn more about its remarkable heritage.

Finally, I am extremely pleased that the National Trust Heritage Festival, Australia’s longest running community festival, has now been expanded through a partnership with the Australian government to become the Australian Heritage Festival Month.

Running from April 18th to May 21st, the festival engages local communities in their history and the importance of recognising a nationally shared heritage. This year’s theme is Having a Voice — fitting for a place rich with voices from many cultures.

I encourage all Australians to raise their voice in celebration of the places, people and events that have made us who we are today.

Josh Frydenberg Minister for the Environment and Energy

The Minister and Prime Minister with the rangers and members of the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation at Budj Bim.

AS WE WERE finishing the final pages of TRUST, I wondered about Aphrasia “Aphra” Maughan, who indirectly is the cover star of this issue. It is her portrait that you can see hanging in the dining room at Dundullimal, the 1840s homestead near Dubbo in New South Wales. Aphra lived here — a house often described as having an elegance of proportion — with her husband John until 1858.

“When I first came across it, herds of cattle had been through, as had vandals, and it had suffered greatly from flooding.

But its beauty was evident even in its sorry state,” is how Dr Clive Lucas OBE, heritage architect and National Trust of Australia (NSW) board president, remembers his first impressions of the property. See it for yourself on page 20.

Artist Tom Carment loves to walk and from this passion came the idea for a book with his friend photographer Michael Wee. The result is called Seven Walks: Cape Leeuwin to Bundeena.

His account of three days spent walking through Victoria’s Wilsons Promontory is on page 30.

Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna is one of the many inspiring people within the National Trust and we spoke to her about her work on page 10. This busy costume curator is currently working on Night Life, an exhibition celebrating the eveningwear of the 1920s and ’30s. “I sit down with the costumes and consider their materiality… it’s like stalking someone through time!”

Every Wednesday morning at South Australia’s Beaumont House a group of volunteers will arrive to prune, weed and mulch in the 1.3 hectare garden. The oldest is 88 and the one in charge of the mulcher, Chris Hughes, has been volunteering at Beaumont for 35 years. Read about their amazing work on page 48.

I hope you enjoy these pages.

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

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

5

In 1856, the contents of BARWON GRANGE went up for sale. This included “superior house furniture, an excellent gig... and even a canary in a brass cage”.

p70

Contributors “The iron four-poster bed is almost SHAKER in its simplicity”

p20

Patron His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd) Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia Editor Victoria Carey Creative director Jo Quarmby Sub editors Leah Twomey, Jennifer Stackhouse, Joanne Gambale, Melody Lord Writers Christine Reid, Darren Peacock, Gina Pickering, Jennifer Stackhouse, Joanne Gambale, Peter Watts, Sarah Murphy, Sioux Garside, Stephen Todd, Tom Carment Photographers China Squirrel, Claire Takacs, Mark Roper, Marnie Hawson, Michael Bradfield, Michael Wee Calendar and news editor Leah Twomey

Christine Reid

Leah Twomey

Stephen Todd

Ryn Frank

A garden writer with many years’ experience, Christine Reid is particularly fascinated by the social and cultural history of gardens and designed landscapes, so Runnymede (page 54) and Barwon Grange (page 70) really struck a chord.

Christine’s work has appeared in Gardens Illustrated and Australian House & Garden and she has contributed to many international garden books, including the recently published The Gardeners’ Garden and The Oxford Companion to the Garden.

“The National Trust, in its custodial role, is to be applauded for its care of these historic homes and gardens.”

Leah Twomey has been working as a journalist for nearly 20 years on magazines such as Vogue Living and Country Style, and she loves the varied and fascinating subject matter that come with working on feature stories. For her, TRUST magazine plays an important role in sharing the stories of the Trust’s properties, their histories and their place in the modern world. “These places have incredible tales to tell, and the exhibitions and events that the National Trust puts on are a wonderful way to get all Australians involved in the historic houses and museums across the country.”

After 20 years spent in Paris, writing for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Australian and Le Monde, Stephen Todd now divides his time between a farm in Central West NSW and a Sydney apartment. He is the design editor of The Australian Financial Review Magazine and communications consultant for several architectural practices.

For this issue, he went to Dubbo for our story on Dundullimal on page 20. “What’s great about visiting these properties is that they give you an incredible sense of our forebears’ drive not just to survive, but to thrive. Their buildings are like nothing you will see anywhere else in the world.”

Illustrator Ryn Frank has worked with a rollcall of well-known brands from Marks & Spencer to Anthropologie and this time she collaborated closely with the National Trusts of Australia to capture the details of some of its most significant properties. When she’s not in her studio she can be found walking her dog, sketchbook in hand, finding inspiration in the coastal area of Cornwall, England, where she lives.

She recently explored a number of the Trust’s Australian sites and is deeply passionate about its conservation missions.

See her work on page 92.

Publication is co-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. Issue 3 of TRUST will be published in July, 2017. ISSN: 1835-2316

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

7

“The RUNNYMEDE garden represents an EVOLUTION, beginning about 1840 and continuing for 120 years” The garden at Runnymede in Hobart above the River Derwent entices visitors to explore its winding paths.

See the story on page 54.

Contents Issue No. 2

Autumn Autumn 2017

TRUST THE NATIONAL TRUSTS OF AUSTRALIA magazine

Issue No. 2 Autumn $8.95

Head West Time to visit

T R U S T

DUNDULLIMAL HOMESTEAD,

Dubbo’s hidden gem

SEED FOR THOUGHT

The volunteers preserving a historic SA garden

N AT I O N A LT RUST.O RG. AU

IN FASHION

We speak to Night Life curator

ELIZ ABETH A NYA -PETRIVNA

TRUST02_COVER_FINAL.indd 1

78

OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTOGRAPHER CLAIRE TAKACS THIS PAGE PHOTOGRAPHERS CHINA SQUIRREL/ANTHONY BASHEER

Cover stories 10

IN FASHION We speak to Night Life exhibition curator Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna.

20

HEAD WEST Time to visit Dundullimal Homestead, Dubbo’s hidden gem.

48

SEED FOR THOUGHT The volunteers preserving a historic South Australian garden.

28/03/17 6:25 PM

COVER STORY Dundullimal, an 1840s homestead in Dubbo, has survived in near original condition.

Writer STEPHEN TODD Photographer MARK ROPER

People 10

16

48

STARS OF THE NIGHT Curator Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna unveils the story behind a sparkling exhibition celebrating partygoers and their costumes from the 1920s and ’30s.

A SEARCHING BRUSH Colourist Elisabeth Cummings is the subject of an inspiring retrospective exhibition at the S. H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

GARDENING FOR THE FUTURE A band of generous volunteers is ensuring a historic Mediterranean garden in Adelaide survives for posterity.

Place 20

SIMPLY PUT The carefully preserved 1840s timber-and-iron homestead of Dundullimal is a treasure to discover in Dubbo in the Central West of New South Wales.

38

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL Now home to the National Trust of South Australia, Beaumont House has always had an important place in local history.

70

DOWN BY THE RIVER Marked for demolition in the 1960s and saved for the National Trust by local historical society members, Barwon Grange is a special place in Geelong.

92

A SHORT HISTORY Twelve pointers to the fascinating history of Peninsula Farm on the Swan River in Western Australia.

Travel 30

WALK IN THE PARK An exploration of Wilsons Promontory, Victoria, by artist Tom Carment and photographer Michael Wee.

94 Books 84

WILD ONE Shedding a new light on the story of convict and colonist William Buckley, who lived with the Wathawurrung people of Victoria for 32 years.

88

ON THE SHELF History, food, gardens, art and popular culture feature in our pick of the latest book releases.

Garden 54

SHIP SHAPE Runnymede in Hobart’s New Town has strong links with the river below and a garden that charts its long history.

62

AN OLD FRIEND Western Australia’s first farm, Old Farm, Strawberry Hill, in Albany tells a rich, multilayered story and is as pretty as a picture too.

Food 78

GRINDLE FAMILY RECIPE BOOK Recipes from the family who lived in Queensland’s Wolston Farmhouse in the 1920s.

Regulars 30

SPECIAL OFFER Get 20 per cent off Seven Walks, a book about adventures in Australia’s wild landscapes.

86

CELEBRATION Australian Heritage Festival round-up.

94

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

102

LAST WORD Tili Wiru are bold woven lightshades created by the Indigenous Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

SPECIAL NOTE: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that pages 84, 85, 87 and 102 of this issue may contain images of, and written references to, people who have died.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

9

PEOPLE

10 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

Stars of

THE NIGHT

A costume exhibition that celebrates the 1920s and ’30s is but a hint of the wonder that lies deep within the storage rooms at Labassa, and National Trust costume curator ELIZABETH ANYA-PETRIVNA is as doting a caretaker as they come. photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer JOANNE GAMBALE

THIS PAGE: Costume curator and exhibitions producer Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna. OPPOSITE PAGE: Detail of 1878 wedding dress in wool, silk, metal, and cotton, worn by Zillah Ann Figgis (née Price), married in the Independent Church, Geelong.

PEOPLE

E

lizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Anya-Petrivna signs off her emails ‘in haste’ just as 19th-century philosopher Thomas Carlyle did his letters, but the costume curator at the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) isn’t intentionally referencing the era she so loves. “It’s more prosaic than that: I’m just often in haste,” she says with a smile. “Actually, I’m nostalgic for a time when you could really concentrate on something like writing a letter. I mourn those lost skills.”

She’s more optimistic about the preservation of old-world dressmaking skills. The historic costume archives over which she presides are carefully stored away at the Trust’s Labassa, a regular trip from her office at Tasma Terrace in East Melbourne.

For 20 years, Anya-Petrivna has researched the provenance and admired the workmanship of clothes that span gold-rush glory through wartime wear and beyond. She’s witty and enthusiastic, but every so often even this contagiously chatty expert is left speechless. “We were in the costume storage when we found a textile box. We carefully moved aside the tissue and there was this beaded masterpiece,” she recalls. That was the lightbulb moment that inspired an exhibition that celebrates the night-life of the 1920s and ’30s with a collection of exquisite examples of eveningwear.

There are two sides to Anya-Petrivna’s working day; talking with designers and stylists and generally forging relationships for future collaborations, or locked away somewhere in a time warp of sorts; quiet, contemplative, studious and autonomous.

“I sit down with the costumes and consider their materiality… it’s like stalking someone through time!” she says in that jovial style that is her trait. “A few years ago I would spend a lot of time in the State Library looking through street directories and rates books and I still have to do that on occasion, but now I don’t have to write off to England to get a death certificate. The democratisation of information... it’s revolutionised this provenance research.”

A good deal of her research asks whether the piece is made locally, a prerequisite for the Labassa collection. There’s a social element too: “How is this person participating in fashion? I’m often looking through the passenger lists: was this woman travelling?” she explains. She talks about the huge numbers of anonymous producers — work done by women in their homes and by many unnamed dressmakers in the city — and the exponential growth in fashion production during the gold rush and land boom eras.

While researching the Night Life exhibition she was reminded of the era’s obsession with beadwork. “It’s visual: beads reflecting light, dancing dresses with streamers at the hips and shoulders so that when you moved your dress counterpointed what you were doing.”

There was a sense of “really out-there display”, she says, and all the department stores would advertise when they had a new shipment of beads, since many ordinary folk were beading at home.

Anya-Petrivna is nostalgic for such times. As a child she was intrigued by the gothic and by old houses she felt had a ghostly aura; though her own home was a less spooky mid-century suburban brick bungalow in western Sydney. At university she was drawn to heritage houses rather than museums: the idea of living history.

Then she won a scholarship to attend summer school at Attingham in England and was inspired by the specialist academics there to hone in on historic costume.

Provenance research quickly makes way for conservation matters when preparing for a show like Night Life, and Anya-Petrivna was >

12 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: A rack of Edwardian bodices and dresses shows a range of intricate lacework; Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna with late 19th-century hat boxes; a 1920s micro bead bag; detail of Edwardian garments; hat blocks donated

by June Millinery Melbourne, mid-20th century; Anya-Petrivna and a rack full of Edwardian bodices and dresses in a corridor of Labassa in Caulfield, Melbourne.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Detail of 1930s black lace evening dress donated by theatre owner, actress and director Irene Mitchell (1905–1995).

“I sit down with the COSTUMES and consider their materiality… it’s like stalking someone through TIME!”

PEOPLE

< thankful for the help of conservator Kylie Howe. “These dresses are as ephemeral as the night!” Anya-Petrivna exclaims. “The beads are glass, so I weighed one — the ‘discovery dress’ — and it was two kilograms. That’s a load of washing or two bottles of wine. Bugle beads with sharp edges beaded onto flimsy chiffons, ninons, nets.

They have an inbuilt vulnerability.”

As she explains, in conservation — and in the display of hitherto conserved pieces — a compromise must always be made. “We’ve used flat display cases that have mirrors so you don’t miss out on the sense of seeing the dress vertically.” Howe created ‘fake slips’ that allowed her to catch the beadwork onto stronger fabric to save the original from tearing. “It’s always of concern how long these garments should be on display… how we minimise the physical damage from gravity and dust,” she says. Between shows, they’re stored flat in acid-free boxes with purpose-made calico cushions.

“We want these dresses to be around into the future.”

The show’s move from Victoria’s Barwon Park to Rippon Lea — a 19th-century mansion with an “overlay of the 1930s” — is a chance to incorporate the house’s own history of party hosting.

Great Gatsby-esque, with a pool area, ballroom and terrace, the house’s heyday in the 1930s was due to its larger-than-life hostess Louisa ‘Lulu’ Jones. “I’m currently selecting photographs of people partying at Rippon Lea… it’s lovely to be able to ground it in place,” she says. “Rippon Lea looks best at night — it’s always had fairy lights and lanterns and garden events.”

Night-time events are factored into the three-month exhibition; dances, cocktail parties and late-night openings, as well as daytime interactive fun such as learning tambour bead embroidery. It would take embroiderers a whole week to bead one dress back in the day — and the results need to be seen to be believed.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: A group of 1920s evening shoes. Shoes were more important once hemlines were raised; photographs, cartes de visite, daguerreotypes and (below) material such as magazines and catalogues used to research the history of fashion.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Edwardian sequin and ninon shawl with ephemera and some of the collection’s cataloguing equipment.

Night Life, May 5th–July 30th at Rippon Lea Estate, 192 Hotham Street, Elsternwick, Victoria; ripponleaestate.com.au. To help us continue our work, donate today; nationatrust.org.au/donate.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

15

PEOPLE

A

rtist Elisabeth Cummings has an original and intuitive approach to the act of painting, based on her considerable experience, observation and memory.

During the past two decades she has been an intrepid traveller, camping in remote places at Lake Mungo, in the Pilbara, the Kimberley and on Elcho Island. Just last year she was camping and sketching in one of her favourite places in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia at Parachilna and Grindells Hut. The intense light and immersive space of these places, etched over eons by ancient riverbeds, are evoked in her masterly paintings Pilbara Landscape (2003), Arkaroola Landscape (2004), Ant Hill Country (2000), and Edge of the Simpson Desert (2011). As she recalls: “I sometimes dream of this country, the rugged mountains a bit south of Arkaroola. There is such a presence, you feel it, just a glimpse compared to what Aboriginal people know about their country, but I want to keep seeking it out. The painting is just an excuse to sit there in it all day, not travelling through. The more you return, the more you discover.”

A new survey exhibition, Interior Landscapes, held at the S.H. Ervin Gallery at the National Trust Centre on Observatory Hill until July 23rd, focuses primarily on her work from the mid-1970s to her most recent canvases.

Of special interest are two pen-and-ink studies of Florence in 1959. These were owned by her friend Margaret Olley, along with a painting by Cummings that was destroyed when Olley’s Brisbane home burnt down. Other sketchbooks document travels in Europe, Africa, Turkey, New Zealand, Bali and China. They reveal her remarkable ability to capture the spatial dimensions of a subject with just a few succinct lines and notations.

Born in Brisbane in 1934, the eldest of three children, Cummings began painting at a young age. Her father Robert was professor of architecture at the University of Queensland and took Elisabeth and her brother Malcolm to painting classes run on Fridays by the painter Vida Lahey. Cummings remembers the marvellous sense of freedom she enjoyed painting on large sheets of paper in the exuberant company of other boys and girls. Her parents owned a large painting

by Vida Lahey and kept open house during the war, welcoming regular visits from artists, including Donald Friend, and Len and Kathleen Shillam. Cummings first thought she would train as an architect, but after meeting the artist Margaret Cilento (1923-2007), recently returned to Brisbane from New York and London, she felt encouraged to leave the provincial city to study in Sydney.

At East Sydney Tech in Sydney, Cummings received a very thorough training in life-drawing and painting from her teachers Dorothy Thornhill, Godfrey Miller, Wallace Thornton and Ralph Balson. The sculptor Lyndon Dadswell taught her to model the figure directly in clay. She says: “You could be more expressive and more abstract, we didn’t have to be totally representational, and Dadswell was open to the more expressive.” A group of her clay sculptures from 2009 shows her ongoing interest in shaping three-dimensional form. > OPPOSITE PAGE: Elisabeth Cummings working on her canvas Monaro Shadow and Light (collection of the artist) in her Wedderburn studio.

16 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

A searching

BRUSH

One of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest colourists, ELISABETH CUMMINGS will be celebrated in an upcoming exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney. Curator Sioux Garside shares a little history. photographer MICHAEL BRADFIELD/ROLLER PHOTOGRAPHY

PEOPLE Cummings is still there. “Even [now] there is always something surprising about the bush to discover,” she says.

“I used to drive along the bush track at night with the lights off and then try to remember how it looked in the moonlight in order to paint it.”

The family home at Currumbin has also been an important subject. Moonlight at Currumbin and Early Morning Currumbin are masterly paintings from 2002, which show her poetic response to the mood and atmosphere of moonlight and sparkling sunlight on the sea seen through the window. These highly tuned abstractions remind us what authentic painting is, something surprising and heartfelt.

Her interwoven markings in oil paint are as close as can be to the rhythms of nature, implanted in everything a hidden energy. She had grasped this idea in the productive decade spent studying overseas. “Yes, it struck me I didn’t really understand it until then,” she says. “Cezanne’s paintings were rocking with that tension and life. They were energy and life, it moved, it moved. To hold all the elements, to make them move, to have that life in the painting.” She continues to paint the movement of light, rain and wind in the bush. “I also love watching the ambiguity of water. The sudden flood of heavy rainwater rushing through the rocky dry gully below my studio last year was the stimulus for a small work, which led on to Flash Flood.”

It is a challenge to think of another painter of Cummings’ generation who measures up as her peer, although her scribbly touch and singing colours suggests an affinity with Aboriginal art. As Terence Maloon, director of Canberra’s Drill Hall Gallery, says: “Her art is attuned to vibration — to thronging energies that course through a landscape, ricochet between the surfaces of a confined space, and riddle a painted surface to bursting-point.”

As we celebrate the achievements of one of Australia’s greatest colourists, we also look forward to more work from the searching brush of Elisabeth Cummings.

Interior Landscapes is at the S.H. Ervin Gallery from May 26th until July 23rd. 2 Watson Road, Millers Point, NSW, (02) 9258 0173.

“I used to drive along the BUSH track at night with the lights off and then try to remember how it looked in the MOONLIGHT in order to paint it” < After winning the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1958 she spent 10 years in Florence, immersed in the art of the classical world and early Renaissance, especially the still enigmatic paintings of Piero della Francesca. She had refined her painting based on an understanding of Modernist principles exemplified in the paintings of Cezanne, Bonnard, Braque and Matisse. When she returned she wanted to reconnect with the Australian landscape. Interior (1974) shows the close attention she had given to the compositional structures and colour of the French artists, and Grace Cossington Smith in Sydney. “I liked the way she mixed pure colour on the brush and applied it to the canvases,” Cummings says. “Her arrangement of the spaces in her paintings, that was mysterious to me — her compositions and reflected images in the angled plane of a wardrobe mirror.”

In the mid-1970s, Cummings designed and built her organic mudbrick studio-home with the help of friends at Wedderburn, a bushy area 57 kilometres south west of Sydney’s CBD. She described how she walked the land along the ridge, sitting in the gully beneath an immense rock shelter in order to find the right place to build. Over 40 years later,

THIS PAGE: Currumbin Interior with Mango oil on canvas (2002). OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM TOP: Day Into Night oil on canvas (2006); Elisabeth Cummings; Mornington, Kimberley oil on canvas (2012). All artworks courtesy private collection.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

19

SIMPLY PUT

An 1840s homestead of quiet sophistication

PLACE

and honest architecture, Dundullimal Homestead in NSW is the pride of Dubbo. photographer MARK ROPER writer STEPHEN TODD

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

21

PLACE

A

ustralian architecture of the mid-19th century had to respond to two imperatives: the British will to austerity according to the tenets of Georgianism, and the colonial drive to ‘make do’ with what you’ve got. Both aesthetics coalesce in the most successful colonial structures, the stoicism of necessity creating a unique, powerful beauty. The Dundullimal Homestead, just south of Dubbo in New South Wales, is one such structure.

Built in the early 1840s as the head station of a 10,500-hectare squatting run, the property’s elegance of proportion is almost Palladian, its symmetry near perfect, “atypical in its sophistication,” as Dr Clive Lucas OBE, heritage architect and National Trust of Australia (NSW) board president puts it. “When I first came across it, herds of cattle had been through, as had vandals, and it had suffered greatly from flooding. But its beauty was evident even in its sorry state.” The National Trust acquired the house from its last owners, the Palmer family, and undertook the extensive works necessary to restore it to its former glory.

Dundullimal was the name of the tribal group squatters encountered when they ventured out beyond the ‘limits of location’ established by Governor Darling in 1826. It is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘thunderstorm’ or ‘hailstorm’. The wide swathe of land between the Macquarie and Lachlan rivers became known as the Wellington Squatting District, and this run was established by Charles and Dalmahoy Campbell in 1836. The Campbells would abandon the property only five years later, most likely because > THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: The living room extends out from the rectangular main building to overlook the garden at the rear. The gently sloped verandah is beautifully constructed from fine cedar wood; a quiet spot on the verandah. OPPOSITE PAGE: In the dining room hangs a portrait of Aphrasia “Aphra” Maughan, who married John in 1852 and lived here until 1858 when the property was sold and the couple moved to Darling Point.

22 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I first came across it, herds of cattle had been through, as had vandals... But its BEAUTY was evident even in its sorry stateâ&#x20AC;?

< of the harsh conditions. The next owner John Maughan would begin construction on the homestead and its dependencies, which include a smithy, stables, coach room and sunken coolroom.

The geometry of the house is near perfect: a series of bedrooms aligned with the dining room, the living room annexed to the back and enclosed by a verandah. From the front it appears almost blind, stoically closed. From the rear it is open, generous, surrounded by a vigorous garden. Inside, the rooms are surprisingly grand with louvres and multi-paned glazed openings allowing past residents to admire the fine cedar joinery of the verandah. The sitting room is imposing, its tent-shaped plaster ceiling emphasizing the superior height, the delicate floral wallpaper reproduced from the original 1850 English patent.

The deep skirting board segues seamlessly into a handsome Georgian fireplace. The hearth is made from local stone.

It’s this mix of rigorous lines and local materials that creates much of the building’s charm.

“Because they are uncomplicated buildings, built by unlettered people in the most direct way, using the materials readily to hand, they often have a character and honesty that are rare and sometimes missing from their more erudite architectural betters.”

So wrote architect Philip Cox in his early celebration of colonial structure, titled Rude Timber Buildings in Australia, published in 1969. “Because they are made of a material with which everyone has a deep-rooted harmony, because they are put together in ways that are easily understood and because their forms are readily comprehended, they are universal buildings whose roughness and even whose frequent dilapidation give them a powerful emotional appeal and impact. They are buildings to be felt rather than reasoned.”

Feel, rather than reason — it’s good advice to any visitor to Dundullimal. The reason for its sophistication is unknown. No architect of note was involved in its genesis, no resident of any particular noblesse. In fact the property changed hands with such frequency that it’s surprising it wasn’t subject to more incremental change. But no, it remains intact, true to its original intent.

Perhaps the residents throughout the house’s history could feel the significance of the structure and refrained from interfering >

PLACE

“The sitting room is imposing, its tent-shaped plaster ceiling emphasizing the superior height, the delicate FLORAL wallpaper reproduced from the original 1850 English patent”

THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: The dainty floral pattern of the English wallpaper chosen by Aphrasia Maughan adds a feminine touch to the most sophisticated slab homestead in Australia. Today’s wallpaper is a reproduction of the original found in the house.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

25

PLACE

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The stables are made from sandstone quarried on the site, the material lending an elegance to these working buildings; topographical maps reveal the reach of the original 26,000-acre Dundullimal run; surrounding landscape; hallways are grand and airy, illuminating what from the front appears a blind, stoic structure. OPPOSITE PAGE: The campaign chest drawers in the main bedroom are original.

26 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

PLACE

< with it. Certainly for Dr Lucas, “it’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever seen”. As Lucas points out, it was common practice in the 19th century to sell the contents along with the house, and so each time Dundullimal changed hands the original contents remained. That means that today it is furnished much as it was in the 1840s. In the dining room a fine planter’s chair takes pride of place between the fireplace and a rudimentary sash window, a perfect all-seasons reading corner. On the verandah, original squatter’s chairs have turned timber legs and arms, the backs elegantly curved and hung with canvas hammocks. The dining chairs are Regency in shape but rustic in finish, testimony to elegant aspirations in conditions of reduced means. The iron four-poster bed is almost Shaker in its simplicity. Bare timber floorboards reinforce the elemental nature of existence in what was then largely uncharted territory.

Today, Dundullimal is the pride of Dubbo, the largest city in the Orana region of NSW, home to some 40,000 souls. The oldest extant building in the region, it is a rare gem of national significance and a drawcard not just for history buffs but also for architecture aficionados — or perhaps just for locals who enjoy it as a charming picnic spot. At least when there’s no dundullimal on the horizon.

Visit Dundullimal Homestead’s tea room or picnic in the grounds.

Dundillimal is available for weddings and functions — to book, email dundullimal@nationaltrust.com.au. 23L Obley Road, Dubbo, NSW; nationaltrust.org.au/places/dundullimal-homestead.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The working area of the homestead includes a coach room and stables as well as a blacksmith’s forge — a lasting reminder of the practical elements once needed for an isolated rural life. OPPOSITE PAGE: The white timber church, built in 1870 was consecrated in 1872 in the nearby township of Timbrebongie and moved around the district until it was finally settled at Dundullimal in 2013.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

29

TRAVEL

30 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

A WALK IN THE PARK Embarking on a three-day hike with a new friend, author and artist TOM CARMENT details his exploration of Victoriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wilsons Promontory.

photographer MICHAEL WEE writer TOM CARMENT

TRAVEL

A

darning needle and some strong twine, a coil of nylon rope to make a washing line, a wind guard for my stove: these were things that I forgot to take to Sealers Cove.

I’d grabbed the wrong sleeping bag from the camping shelf too, the thin one. But as I lay there, on firm sand, just above the reach of high tide, I stopped worrying — it didn’t matter. Between fast-moving inky clouds, a half moon lit up the sides of my tent. I could hear the waves as they fell on the beach and washed through the granite boulders of the shoreline.

The Kurnai and Boonerwrung clans, whose presence on Wilsons Promontory has been dated back 6500 years, call this place Yiruk or Wamoon. I had read in the Melbourne Museum that, according to the seven seasons of the Aboriginal calendar, we were in Waring, when the days are shorter than the nights, when wombats emerge to graze, when Sagittarius rises in the south east and the soft hearts of tree ferns can be eaten if there is nothing else.

On January 25th, 1798, the navigator George Bass entered this cove, having sailed with six men down from Port Jackson. Whatever he thought about the beauty of the place he did not say. He was probably pleased to have his open-decked whaleboat safe and sheltered. He wrote in his log that there was, in this place, “enough timber to boil down any quantity of blubber”.

Indeed, by 1840, just about all the whales and seals of Refuge Cove and Sealers Cove and the nearby islands had been turned into oil, coats and corsets, and all of the accessible tall trees had been felled. Such was the decimation that the place was abandoned for a while, until the trees grew back. The timber millers returned in the 1890s, only to have their settlement wiped out by the fire of 1906. This coast was hard to reach by land, and pastoralist’s cattle sickened on it, with ‘swamp disease’.

Unlike Bass we did not arrive in an open-decked whaleboat, but started our journey at 5am in Fitzroy, Melbourne, making sandwiches in Rob and Rosie’s kitchen, Liverpool versus Crystal Palace live on cable TV. You have to register for overnight walks on Wilsons Promontory with the rangers at the Visitor Centre in Tidal River. A modest fee is charged for each night spent out, and you must tell them the plan of your trip, which cannot be altered. My plan was a three-day triangle: Tidal Creek to Sealers Cove, Sealers Cove to Little Waterloo Bay, then back to Tidal River via the west coast and Oberon Bay; from 12 to 16 kilometres walking each day. The ranger warned me that the creek at the southern end of the beach at Sealers Cove was impossible to cross an hour either side of high tide. The day of our departure, Tuesday May 6th, it would peak at about five in the afternoon. The weather forecast for Wonthaggi, the nearest big town, was showers for the next three days.

“The ranger at TIDAL CREEK wasn’t happy about letting a pair of old codgers like us out into the PARK” 32 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

I had intended to do this walk alone, and was looking forward to that, and having time to think. But I was apprehensive about the long winter nights and the possibility of camping in cold and rain, or of hurting a knee or ankle.

The day before I left home in Sydney, Rob Adams, my Melbourne architect friend, rang up and said that he knew someone who was keen to walk with me. It was safer, he said: “Dan — he’s a helluva nice bloke.

I think you two’ll hit it off.”

Dan, a Zimbabwean, was born in Harare in 1982, at the same time as I was living in that city, aged 27, writing my first book, Days and Nights in Africa.

There was a nice synchronicity about that, I thought.

In Melbourne, on Monday, from a rain-swept phone booth in the city, I rang the number Rob had given me, and met Dan at a nearby camping shop in Elizabeth Street.

“I’m wearing an orange jacket,” he told me. He looked fit and cheerful — good qualities in a walking companion — with longish blond hair. He explained that he had made a gap in his work as a freelance TV editor in order to come on our walk. We looked over the abundant shelves, a bit overwhelmed by the many choices offered up by the ‘outdoor industry’. We kept it simple: Dan purchased a new billy as the one I’d packed was bashed up and blackened, missing its lid, and in danger of leaking.

I bought gas canisters for my stove and spare bootlaces.

In an underground supermarket nearby, I found packets of miso soup and dark chocolate.

Rob and Rosie took us all out for dinner at Marios restaurant in Brunswick Street that night. I quipped to Dan’s wife Karin that he looked strong, and could carry me out when I sprained my ankle. “He hasn’t told you about his dodgy knee then,” she said, laughing.

Next morning, with the creek crossing in mind, Dan and I started driving early, before 6am, in my silver hire car, rolling east for an hour and a half down high-walled expressways. At each rise, I could see out over receding grids of suburban street lights. By the time we reached the farmland of South Gippsland, grey light was seeping into the eastern sky. Another hour and a half took us through rain showers, past the park entrance, to Tidal Creek. There was impenetrable looking bush on both sides of the road and swamp wallabies and emus grazed at the verge.

Lamb’s tails, pipe-cleaners, old bill, knitting nancy: these are the common names of mosses that grow on Wilsons Promontory. We walked past them as we followed the undulating path to Sealers Cove. They grew like fur over the muddy tracksides and rotting logs; fungi also pushed through the moist earth at the bases of trees.

The boletus variety (called porcini by the Italians) was there: sticky green-brown top, spongy underside, yellow, bruising to green. I would have cooked some for dinner if we hadn’t been so far from a hospital.

We passed no-one until midday, when, in a dark gully, at the base of tall messmate trees, we met a couple taking off their raincoats. They were elderly, probably in their 70s, tanned and lean.

They’d been walking for three days and told us that, despite some rain, they had packed a dry tent each morning. “The ranger at Tidal Creek wasn’t happy about letting a pair of old codgers like us out into the park,” said the lady with a laugh.

“You look pretty fit to me,” I said. >

Navigation light, Waterloo Bay.

Whisky Bay on the West Coast â&#x20AC;&#x201C; exposed to storms.

Sealers Cove.

34 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

TRAVEL

< The man, very short, with a long white beard, spoke with a regional English accent, overlaid with a flutiness that came perhaps from a cleft palette. We swapped track notes and, as we talked, the showers came back again.

The man showed me a pair of ochre-patterned Gore-Tex trousers he’d bought on eBay for $35, ex British Army. He’d cut them into shorts with a pair of scissors and they looked enormous over his wiry legs, like a cartoon by Spike Milligan.

For his top half he slipped on a green-patterned jacket, another eBay ex-army purchase. “He’s desert below, and jungle on top,” said his wife as they walked away.

We descended through a forest of tall stringybarks, each with a bedraggled hula skirt of bark halfway down its trunk.

Sometimes a cheeky eastern yellow robin hopped just ahead of us on the track, and jumped up onto tree trunks, hanging sideways, and looking back. In the 19th century, miles of tram track ran through here, taking logs out to the long jetty where ships were waiting. At low tide you can still see its stumps.

We crossed a swamp on well-made boardwalks covered in wire mesh until we came upon the beach unexpectedly: hard-packed yellow sand, very clean, and a perfect crescent.

No other human footprints dented its surface, nor crab or animal tracks; just a waving line of shells at the tideline.

If I were asked to place Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island somewhere, I would do so here, in Sealers Cove, on a grey winter afternoon. The place is pretty, but with an air of menace too. Steep forested headlands protect the dark waters of the wineglass-shaped bay and a creek loops across the sand at its southern edge. A few years ago, massive storms washed whole trees out into the cove, where a couple still stick out, like those in a newly-flooded dam. We took off our boots to cross the creek, the tea-coloured current cold below the knees.

It had stopped raining and there remained less than two hours before sunset, so I quickly pulled out my watercolour plates and brushes, knelt among the damp sand and driftwood, and did a few pages before the light disappeared. Dan came back from the locked-up ranger’s hut where he’d set up our stove, clutching two cups of black coffee. “You can come walking with me again,” I said. I pulled some fruit cake out of my bag and we sat watching a heron at the creek mouth, fishing from the incoming tide.

The campsites behind the beach among tall gums were muddy, and there was no-one else about, so we decided to set up on a small protected beach. It was separated from the rest of the cove by a big rock. We pitched our tents as close as we could to the bushes, but still less than a metre above the last high tide line. The sand was just firm enough to hold my pegs. Dan scrambled to the top of the rock which was shaped like a whale, a feat I could not follow. Up there he found enough mobile phone reception to check the tide times. “The next high is just before dawn,” he called down to me. I figured that I would get out of my tent before dawn, as my bladder dictated, and check if we were in danger of inundation.

We hung my bicycle light from a coat hook on the wall of the ranger’s hut and ate our reconstituted Thai chicken curry out of foil bags. The throb of a diesel engine came into hearing and we spotted the red and white lights of a boat slowly entering the bay below. I walked down to the water’s edge and saw that it was shining a strong spotlight up and down the bush above the beach where we had walked that afternoon. Were they smugglers, looking for a barrel of cocaine perhaps, or fishing?

I switched off my head torch at 8.45pm and soon found myself dreaming: I was lying in a tent, inches deep with sloshing water, like a child’s wading pool. I was plucking up wet journals and sketchbooks, shaking them. I woke in a panic, heart thumping. Nonetheless, I lay there dry and cold in my sleeping bag and I could hear the waves, a safe distance away, on the beach. I put on all my warm clothes and went back to sleep.

How do you talk to a stranger when you are thrown together on a walk like this? Well it wasn’t hard, and quite often we didn’t speak. At other times our subjects ranged widely: the constructed fiction of reality TV, the difference between painting and photography. Our common ground was Zimbabwe: I hadn’t been there since the year after Dan’s birth, 1983, but he had lived and worked there until recently, through the years of political turmoil and hyperinflation. “At one point” Dan said, “the US dollar bought one octillion Zimbabwe dollars.”

He talked, however, with optimism about the ingenuity of people who ‘make a plan’ in hard times, their resilience, but their resignation also. >

TRAVEL

“A strong WIND came up... and nearly blew Dan and his dome tent into the LAGOON” < Coming to Australia, Dan had to complete a period of rural labour in a Tasmanian carrot factory where avalanches of carrots would pour down a conveyor belt all day.

We commented to each other on what we were seeing: stopping to locate a bird in a tree, to look at the long scars caused by boulders, big as houses, that fell during the 2011 floods, wombat burrows and snake holes, the plaited trunks of tea trees, rocks shaped like a crouching rabbit or a lemon squeezer. We puzzled over animal tracks — was it a deer, a wallaby, a fox?

Day two broke with more clear sky than cloud and we packed up breakfast watched closely by a picnic-savvy crimson rosella, its red the envy of a 16th-century Pope. As we trudged up the winding path to Refuge Cove, through tall straight trees, I thought about the conundrum: why certain wild landscapes are preserved and others not.

I guess that over centuries popular ideas about what we see as beauty in a wild landscape have changed; but long views, unusual rock formations, waterfalls and gorges all remain the stock-in-trade of what a visitor to a nature park expects to find. Steepness helps preserve a place, too — it makes access by road, tilling the soil and grazing of livestock difficult. In the pioneering, commercially voracious atmosphere of 19th-century Victoria however, luck was needed as well, to save a place like Wilsons Promontory.

In 1893, the Australian banking crash stopped a town being built on the low country that connects the Promontory to the mainland, Yanakie Isthmus. A pub and another building were constructed, but the housing plots failed to sell. Around that time too, a Scottish ‘philanthropist’ who called herself Mrs Gordon Baillie, arrived in Melbourne promoting a zany plan to resettle 1000 displaced crofters from the Isle of Skye on Wilsons Promontory. There was a flurry of serious correspondence about her proposal in the Melbourne papers.

It’s telling that at this same time, the displaced Aboriginal people of the Yarra were fighting to keep hold of their land grant at Coranderrk, north of Melbourne. The modest success of their communal farm was undermined by the government, who evicted sixty of its able-bodied residents, deemed ‘half caste’. In 1893, a large section of Coranderrk was resumed. Meanwhile, Mrs Baillie, whose buxom ‘Flaxmanesque’ figure and charming manners had so impressed Melbourne society, sailed back to England and was later revealed as a serial fraudster. I would like to believe that her sympathy for the crofters was genuine.

In the end, the advocacy of eminent naturalists led to Wilsons Promontory being gazetted as a national park in 1905. The coastal strip was excluded until some years later.

A big wombat was grazing at Refuge Cove when we arrived, eating green shoots by the creek, its bum facing the track, nonplussed by our conversation and footsteps.

Solid as a 1930s armchair, it didn’t budge. This cove was a whaling base, for about 30 years in the early 1800s, until

36 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

the whales were gone. Southern right whales were the species most sought — they gave large quantities of oil and floated when dead.

At the back of the bay is the so-called Sailors Camp, and yachts that moor here usually leave behind a carved or painted sign with their boat’s name and a date, nailed to a rambling wall near the toilets: Red Reef, Harmony, Blue Wind, Ocean Pearl…

After Refuge Cove the track ascends and becomes narrower, more intimate; well beyond the range of day-trekkers. The long strands of leaning xanthorrhoeas (grass trees) brushed our shoulders as we climbed.

On the last steep forested spur before Little Waterloo Beach we spotted the burnt trunks of enormous old trees, many times the girth of all the tall gums around them. I learnt later that these were probably mountain ash, remnants of the terrible fire of 1951.

A little before dusk on our second day, we arrived at Little Waterloo Bay, and heard teenage girls laughing loudly on the track ahead. The campsites here were pretty full with two school groups, and muddy too, so we carried on another 800 metres to the more exposed Waterloo Bay. Rock and tree root steps descended to the base of a big lagoon and the northern end of a long white beach. There was a wide strip of round grey pebbles at the brown waters’ edge. I stepped down onto it and my boot sloshed calf-deep into wetness. The pebbles were floating pumice. “Thanks for the heads up on that one,” laughed Dan. We walked up the beach looking for a flat, protected place to pitch our tents. A strong wind came up that evening and nearly blew Dan and his dome tent into the lagoon. My pegs held and I slept through. In the morning the prints of a fox encircled the sand around our camp.

On day three of our walk, silver-grey palings took us over sand, back across the low heath to the other side of the Promontory. There seemed to be more birds; wrens, honeyeaters, and wattlebirds, in this sandy country. Or perhaps it was just that we had started out early. I stopped to listen to them, looking across yellow wildflowers at a copse of acacias. In so doing, I realised the extent to which the sound of our boots on the track had muffled their calls; the wide-ranging pitch of their notes, the beauty of their random timing, and their placement.

By midday, we had reached the west coast, at Oberon Bay — quite different to the coves of the east, less benevolent, and exposed to winter storms. The back of the long umber beach was strewn with driftwood, dead birds and a still smelly desiccated stingray. There were small treeless islands out to sea. We cooked our last lunch in drizzle, beneath brows of stained granite rising high up to our north. We skirted their base, on the last six kilometre stretch back to Tidal River.

SEVEN WALKS A collaboration between artist Tom Carment and photographer Michael Wee, Seven Walks details their adventures in iconic Australian wilderness landscapes. Order online at sevenwalks.com and enter the code nt2905 to receive a 20 per cent discount. National Trust price $55.95.

Boulders, Waterloo Bay.

HOUSE Beaumont House sits in a peaceful setting of established trees, garden beds and expansive lawns. The original cottage was extended in stages between 1849 and 1911 using a mixture of styles and materials.

38 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

The

HOUSE on the HILL BEAUMONT HOUSE is an apt base for the National Trust of South Australia — here, the Trust’s SA chief executive Dr Darren Peacock shares its story. photographer MARNIE HAWSON

HOUSE

W

e love old houses because they hold their secrets tightly. Only when we pay close and careful attention do they share their stories and those of the people they have known. Beaumont House, in the Adelaide foothills, is such a place.

Now the home base for the National Trust of South Australia, Beaumont House has lived and seen many lives in its 160-year history. Three of its most remarkable occupants — Bishop Augustus Short, Sir Samuel Davenport and Lilian Bennett/Brock — left their mark on Beaumont House and created a legacy for the rest of us to enjoy. Today, their contributions live on in a house and garden that has become a delightful haven of recreation and reflection for all who visit.

Augustus Short was 45 years old when he left England in 1847 to serve as the first Anglican Bishop of Adelaide, with a diocese that covered all of South Australia and Western Australia. Bishop Short served in his ministry for 34 years. An often controversial figure, he had an enduring impact at Beaumont House, in Adelaide and throughout South Australia.

It was Bishop Short who built the first home on the site, in 1849. He created a simple five-roomed brick structure he called Claremont Cottage, parts of which remain today, embedded within later additions. When he and his wife Millicent arrived in Adelaide, they brought a family of five children, the youngest of whom sadly died less than two months later. The elevated setting of Beaumont, above the Adelaide plain, with its cooler temperatures and gully breezes, promised some respite from the stifling summer heat.

Plans to build an official residence for the bishop in Adelaide were delayed by chronic labour shortages arising from the Victorian gold rushes in the early 1850s. Finally, in 1856, his official residence at Bishop’s Court, North Adelaide, was complete and the family spent the next 25 years there.

Short took a leading role in the establishment of St Peter’s Cathedral, St Peter’s College school and the University of Adelaide, places of learning and worship at the centre of city life.

The story of how he was forced to shift the site of the cathedral from the centre of the city to North Adelaide is emblematic of Bishop Short’s chequered career and the resistance by the non-conformist faiths that predominated in South Australia to Anglican assertions of authority. Among his many other achievements, he championed the welfare of the colony’s Indigenous people at the missions and ‘native stations’ of Poonindie, Point McLeay, Point Pearce and Hermannsburg.

Support for Christian missionary work was one of the ways in which the life of Augustus Short intersected with that of Samuel Davenport, but as a government minister, a member of the Legislative Council and an early supporter of the university, Davenport had many other dealings with the bishop. However, their most intimate and enduring connection was at Beaumont House. > FROM TOP: Bishop Augustus Short, who built the original cottage that became Beaumont House; Lilian Brock lived at Beaumont House for more than 50 years. She gifted the house to the National Trust in 1967; Sir Samuel Davenport established vineyards and an olive grove that was in commercial production for 100 years.

OPPOSITE PAGE: The former dining room features a number of elegant portraits, including this one of Samuel Torrens.

40 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

“Three of its most remarkable occupants left their mark on BEAUMONT HOUSE and created a legacy for the rest of us to enjoy”

HOUSE

ABOVE: The entrance path lined with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;City of Adelaideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roses is a spectacular sight in spring. BELOW: At one point the estate had 16,000 olive trees in production. This remnant grove, planted in the 1860s, is being selectively pruned to regenerate the trees. OPPOSITE PAGE: The Mediterranean-style arched addition was made in 1908, extending the formerly modest cottage by creating three extra rooms and a charming outdoor arcade.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

43

HOUSE

< Davenport owned the land on which the bishop had built Claremont Cottage. When the Shorts left in 1857, Davenport and his wife Margaret moved into the cottage, which they renamed Beaumont House. They made few alterations to the house, but greatly developed the property with vineyards, an extensive olive grove and other plantings. Davenportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s horticultural endeavours and the garden he established, with magnificent Mediterranean specimen trees such as pines and palms, remain his most abiding legacy.

Although Short had planted olive and other fruit trees on the property, Davenport created an enormous olive grove of thousands of trees, along with a processing mill that produced olive oil as early as 1864. The oil and wines produced at Beaumont were exhibited around the world. Davenport himself represented South Australia at many international exhibitions. Knighted in 1886, and known as the Grand Old Man of South Australia, he was a tireless experimenter and innovator, particularly in horticultural pursuits, many of them at Beaumont. The Davenport brand of olive oil was produced at Beaumont into the 1960s.

Davenport died in 1906 and a short time later Beaumont House was passed on to newlyweds Lilian and Richard Bennett. Lilian became known in the area for her fascination with animals. > THIS PAGE: The sitting room in the original cottage built by Bishop Short. OPPOSITE PAGE: The new drawing room, added as part of the 1908 extension and recently renamed in honour of author and Beaumont House volunteer Elizabeth Simpson.

44 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

HOUSE

A number of the specimen trees in the garden have been dated back to Davenport’s time at the house, including two Canary Island date palms (ABOVE) and three stone pines (OPPOSITE PAGE), with their magnificent shady canopies. One solitary grey box eucalypt (ABOVE) remains from the original tree cover, but has been joined by three young saplings, as the National Trust undertakes succession plantings to ensure the garden’s long-term regeneration. BELOW: Pride of Madeira (Echium fastuosum) towers behind ‘Apricot Nectar’ roses and kiss-me-quick (Centranthus ruber), with Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ in the foreground.

< She was often seen on her white horse or with her many dogs. At one stage she even kept pet koalas. Her love of birds saw aviaries established all along one side of the property.

In a book about Beaumont, volunteer Elizabeth Simpson published a recollection of the property from the 1930s: “The drive meandered up the hill through the gum trees and the olives and we came upon the big house itself. We were most impressed with the peacocks strolling on the front lawns. Beaumont House seemed to us to be like a palace — there were tiger skins on the drawing room floor! After tea we were shown the koalas.”

Seven years after Richard Bennett’s death in 1929, Lilian married again. Her second husband Kenneth Brock took up the olive business Davenport had begun. His nursery produced more than two million olive trees, which were sold across Australia.

It was through the generosity of Lilian Brock that Beaumont House was gifted to the National Trust in 1967. Since that time, for almost 50 years, the Trust has cared for, restored and regenerated the buildings and gardens. Although much diminished from the 16,000 olive trees that Davenport oversaw at Beaumont across a far larger estate, a remnant of the olive grove he planted in the 1860s is being carefully restored by the Trust. These olives maintain a living thread between the stories of Bishop Short, Sir Samuel Davenport and Lilian and Kenneth Brock — and the house they all called home.

Beaumont House and garden can be explored on Open Days, an opportunity to view the rejuvenated olive grove that may see olive oil flowing once again at the house on the hill.

Visit nationaltrust.org.au/places/beaumont-house. To read about the volunteers in the garden, see page 48.

46 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We were most impressed with the PEACOCKS strolling on the front lawns. Beaumont House seemed to us to be like a PALACEâ&#x20AC;? (visitor, c1930s)

GARDENING for the

FUTURE The garden at BEAUMONT HOUSE in Adelaide combines history with a sustainable future and it is lovingly tended by a keen bunch of VOLUNTEER gardeners.

photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer JENNIFER STACKHOUSE

48 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

PEOPLE

All the volunteer gardeners proudly wear National Trust shirts while they work. OPPOSITE PAGE: A band of 14 volunteers help restore and maintain Beaumont House gardens. They recently used a $300 garden prize to buy more garden tools.

PEOPLE

F

or Volunteer Manager and horticulturist Merilyn Kuchel, working with the volunteer gardening team at Beaumont House in the Adelaide Hills has brought together her love of gardening and history. Beaumont House, which is the State Office for the National Trust in South Australia, has a special garden that dates back to South Australia’s earliest years (see page 38 for more).

Samuel Davenport, who lived at Beaumont House from 1856 until his death in 1906 was, says Merilyn, South Australia’s first true Mediterranean gardener.

“He was far-sighted enough to recognise the limitations of our climate and worked with it,” she says. “He saw that the climate here was similar to what he knew at Montpellier in the south of France, where he lived from 1839 to 1841 before he came to Australia. He planted olives for oil, mulberries for a silk industry and also grew grapes and almonds, both of which are important crops today for South Australia.”

The heritage-listed olive grove at Beaumont House is a legacy from Davenport and later owners and a focus for Beaumont’s garden volunteers who are working to rejuvenate the trees.

50 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

Other horticultural treasures at Beaumont include a significant stone pine (Pinus pinea) and almond and pear trees, which may be the largest and oldest specimens in South Australia.

Mediterranean inspired Merilyn developed the current management plan for Beaumont House garden, which guides the development of the garden and the selection of waterwise plants to make the garden sustainable.

Studying the history of the garden helped her fall in love with the place and encouraged her to get more involved. Today she is ensuring the garden is restored in sympathy with the state’s Mediterranean climate, first recognised by Samuel Davenport.

“I want to be sure the backbone of the garden is retained long after this current generation of volunteers are gone by selecting tough plants that can survive on natural rainfall,” she explains.

Much of what is being planted is donated or grown by the volunteers. “Some of us propagate plants at home and we ask for donations from the public and the Mediterranean Garden Society,” says Merilyn. “Tough old-fashioned favourites are a large proportion of what we grow.” >

“Much of what is being planted is donated or grown by the volunteers” THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Dennis Watts; a garden volunteer weeds among the kiss-me-quick (Centranthus ruber), an old-fashioned, waterwise plant; the daisies get deadheaded; Virginia Taylor writes romance novels when she isn’t volunteering. OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM LEFT: The 1.3-hectare heritage garden at Beaumont House regularly hosts weddings and garden tours; the ‘City of Adelaide’ rose; volunteers include Sonia Green and Marg Beard, who bring many years of gardening experience to their work at Beaumont House;

“They are PROUD of the garden” CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: Wigandia caracasana is a large Central and South American shrub that thrives in this heritage garden and provides months of vivid purple bloom; Merilyn Kuchel, Marg Beard, Beaumont House gardener Alex McLachlan-Kambuts and Chris Hughes enjoy freshly brewed coffee; the garden looks good year round; the team comes together for coffee and home-baked cakes at 10.30am.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Beaumont House’s proud volunteers. Standing, left to right: Bruce McDonald, Dennis Watts, Di Wilson, Merilyn Kuchel, Rod Matheson, Virginia Taylor, Alex McLachlan-Kambuts and Marg Beard. Front row, left to right: Sonia Green and Chris Hughes.

Volunteers At 64, Merilyn is one of the youngest of the 14 volunteers who turn up for work every Wednesday from 9am to 12 noon to work in the 1.3 hectare garden. The oldest volunteer gardener is 88.

They come from all walks of life including teaching, banking, public relations, nursing, biomedical research, firefighting, writing and the law. Most are keen and experienced gardeners, many are members of the Mediterranean Garden Society and all are united by their love of gardening and passion for Beaumont House and its history.

“Working here is being part of a worthwhile project,” says Merilyn, who began volunteering in 2009. “We can really do something important and make a major contribution through our work.”

She adds: “Many of the volunteer gardeners also volunteer on Open Garden Days and serve teas when we have bus tours,” says Merilyn. “I can confidently say they are proud of the garden and feel a real sense of ownership and achievement.”

Each Wednesday the volunteers come together to prune, plant, weed and barrow mulch, but it’s not all hard work.

52 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

They sit down to morning tea (with plunger pots of coffee and home-baked cakes) at 10.30am. It’s a jovial and happy occasion but also gives the group time to make important decisions about the garden and what work to tackle next.

Some of the volunteers have special roles. Chris Hughes has been volunteering at Beaumont House for 35 years and is in charge of the mulcher and the garden’s three large compost bays. He mulches suitable weeds and prunings to put back on garden beds.

The volunteers wear National Trust shirts while they work, which gives them a sense of belonging and also shows visitors to the garden that they are bona fide gardeners. Their tools are supplied by the Trust, but some were funded with a $300 prize in the local Burnside Council garden competition.

HOW TO VOLUNTEER Keen gardeners interested in volunteering to work at Beaumont House can contact Merilyn Kuchel on (08) 8202 9200 during working hours; 0428 851 582 or volunteer@national trustsa.org.au.

Visit nationaltrust.org.au/places/beaumont-house/

PEOPLE

“We can really do something important and make a major CONTRIBUTION through our work”

Ship

SHAPE

A house and garden that counts flamboyant bishops, master mariners and keen horticulturists among its former residents, Runnymede in Tasmania has a SPIRIT of its own. photographer CLAIRE TAKACS writer CHRISTINE REID

GARDEN

An aerial view of the house and garden at Runnymede shows the extensive grounds that insulate the house from its now suburban location. The towering Norfolk Island pine was planted by early residents Bishop Nixon and his wife Anna.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

55

N

ineteenth-century visitors to Runnymede must surely have admired the panoramic view from the rise on which the historic house and its exquisite garden sits. The property back then overlooked New Town Bay and the sparkling Derwent estuary towards Hobart Town.

In My Home in Tasmania (1852), artist and author Louisa Ann Meredith extolled the vista, writing: “The scenery is… the most beautiful on this side of the world… the broad and winding estuary of the Derwent flows between lofty and picturesque hills and mountains clothed with forests, whilst at their feet lie lawn-like flats, green to the water’s edge.”

During the 1830s and ’40s, a number of marine villas were built in the New Town, about five THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE kilometres upriver from the busy port at Sullivans FROM TOP: A side view Cove. Runnymede is one of them, and it is of Runnymede house; the a splendid survivor. vivid hue of a Cestrum Despite the property’s present-day view to the rubrum; Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’ (snowball tree). water being obscured by suburban housing, the OPPOSITE PAGE: property remains a beautifully preserved example A front-on view with the of an early whaling captain’s house, especially its mountain vista beyond; the grand driveway that surviving 19th-century garden. leads to Runnymede.

Sadly, there is no certainty as to who designed the house and no original plans have survived; however, we do know that it was built for lawyer Robert Pitcairn (1802–1861). The general layout of the garden, which today survives only in a truncated form, is most likely to date from the 1840s, according to the garden historian Richard Aitken, who prepared its conservation plan in 1997. >

56 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

GARDEN

GARDEN < Runnymede’s position resembles those of other colonial marine villas, particularly in Sydney, that featured elevated settings with scenic views towards the harbour. Lyndhurst in Sydney’s Glebe still exists and Joseph Lycett’s etching of Captain Piper’s Naval Villa at Eliza Point, held at the Mitchell Library, depicts a superb example, long since demolished.

In The Australian Colonial House (1997), historian Dr James Broadbent refers to colonial houses such as Runnymede using the term ‘villa’ as defined in 1825 by English architect John Buonarotti Papworth, who described “its insulated form, its garden-like domain and external offices for stables and domestic economy”.

From 1850 Bishop Francis Nixon owned the house, then known as Cairn Lodge, and renamed it Bishopstowe. The bishop and, more particularly, his wife Anna were the early colonial gardeners at Runnymede. Exotic plants were requested by Anna Nixon from the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1857; two of them are still to be seen in the garden — a large Norfolk Island pine, Araucaria heterophylla, and a karaka or New Zealand laurel, Corynocarpus laevigatus. Other plants included oleanders and viburnums.

The bishop was known for his flamboyancy and lengthy sermons, which sometimes went for three hours. Commentator Herbert Condon, who was rector of St Mary’s in the Tasmanian town of Hagley, said of the bishop that he “never lost his vanity: his love of display found satisfaction in wearing gorgeous robes”.

But we must be grateful for the bishop’s flamboyancy; he was a foundation member of the Hobart Sketching Club and both he and Anna sketched prolifically around Hobart, favouring picturesque landscapes. He was also one of the first in Tasmania to become interested in photography. >

58 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Agapanthus edge one side of the driveway; cotton-like viburnum crowns an inviting bench seat; the singular beauty of a rose.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Hedges and stone pathways twist and turn around the Runnymede garden to create an idyllic setting.

“Runnymede’s position resembles those of other colonial marine villas, particularly in Sydney”

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The RUNNYMEDE garden represents an evolution, beginning about 1840 and continuing for 120 yearsâ&#x20AC;?

GARDEN

< According to Runnymede’s recently retired property manager Gemma Webberley, the bishop was one of the earliest and most competent wet-plate photographers in the colony.

Some of the first photographs of Runnymede were taken by the bishop in 1853 and are now held at the State Library of Tasmania.

They show the façade with its attractive verandah posts of Huon pine, a garden layout with a semicircular driveway that is little changed today, and there in the background is Mt Wellington.

Interestingly, if you study the present-day view of Mt Wellington from the garden, it is evident that Bishop Nixon adjusted his pictures to render the mountain a more impressive (but slightly false) background to the house. Perhaps a very early example of what we now term ‘photoshopping’!

Two years after the Bishop and Mrs Nixon left Tasmania, in 1864, master mariner, whaler and ship owner Charles Bayley bought the estate and renamed it Runnymede after one of his ships. Captain Bayley installed a fountain in the front garden and, from this time, much of the produce of the extensive vegetable gardens and orchards was used to supply Bayley’s ships. During World War I and World War II, the garden would again be given over to food production.

The estate remained in the Bayley family (with another name change from Runnymede to Bayley) until the surviving unmarried Bayley daughters Hally and Emma decided to sell the historic property for its preservation. In the 1960s a sale was negotiated with the Tasmanian government and the property has been managed by the Trust since then.

The 1997 garden conservation plan is used as a guide for the dedicated band of volunteers who care for it today: pruning, weeding and composting. In spring and autumn, plant sales provide income for new equipment and garden necessities such as manure and mulch.

By 2010 James Broadbent was instrumental in the replanting of a bed of red and white geraniums, using an 1890 photograph of the garden to replicate the design. The original garden bed was said to imitate the flag on the whaleship ‘Runnymede’ and could apparently be seen from the ship in the bay.

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: Flanking a path leading to As Webberley says: “The Runnymede garden the house’s entrance are represents an evolution, beginning about 1840 white geraniums and blue and continuing for 120 years. Never a manicured spires of echium; white formal garden, it reflects its age, the personal flowers of Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’. tastes of former owners and a sense of tranquillity.”

OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM Webberley has compiled an informative booklet TOP: Runnymede’s many on the history of Runnymede — the owners, the colourful shrubs include rhododendrons; a view house and the garden — with relevant historical to Mt Wellington creates background about Tasmania. It also includes a list a stunning backdrop for of further sources for anyone who would like to the garden, the peak’s know more about this fascinating National Trust blue hues picked up by the echium spires. property and its colourful past.

Runnymede, 61 Bay Road, New Town, Hobart, Tasmania, (03) 6278 1269; email runnymede@ nationaltrusttas.org.au AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

61

GARDEN

A N OL D F RIE N D THE FIRST FARM in Western Australia – now known as Old Farm, Strawberry Hill and looked after by the National Trust – has an INTERESTING STORY to tell.

photographer CLAIRE TAKACS writer GINA PICKERING

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

63

O

ld Farm in Albany, Western Australia, is like a slightly difficult but lovable old friend; it’s always a pleasure to catch up but thoughtful consideration and plenty of time is usually due.

Being the first farm in the state, its historical significance belies its chocolate box appearance. The house emerges after a delightful tree-lined stroll through a prettyas-a-picture garden. Once a vast 622 hectares, the property now takes up a more compact two.

This area, known as Barmup by the Mineng people, was a vital source of water and food for them at various seasons across the year. They camped on the rocky hill to the north above the present farm site to avoid polluting the water and disturbing the plants and animals that were harvested and caught in the lake and stream along the valley floor.

A government farm was established in 1827 to produce food for the soldiers who had arrived the previous year under the command of Major Edmund Lockyer, establishing the British possession of Western Australia. Alexander Collie took up his appointment as Government Resident in 1831 and appears to be the first to refer to the place as Strawberry Hill. By this time cabbages, broccoli, turnips, potatoes, carrots, radishes and parsley were flourishing.

Beyond this, everyday lives were also nurtured here during what would have been very challenging times, and only two families have called it home since the colony was established.

Government Resident and successful naval officer Sir Richard Spencer, his wife Lady Ann Spencer and their nine surviving children arrived in 1833 to a small wattle and daub cottage. They brought with them building materials, fruit trees, sheep and other livestock.

Additional rooms were quickly built and within three years they constructed the two-storey granite house that still stands today. The early single-storey structures were destroyed by PREVIOUS PAGES: In one part of fire on Easter Sunday of 1870, and the scorch the garden at Old Farm, old-fashioned marks can still be seen. poppies (Papaver rhoeas) nod and Of all its visitors over the years, British dance in the breeze, Euphorbia naturalist Charles Darwin is the most illustrious. polychroma in acid yellow stand He arrived at the farm in 1836 with Captain more steadfast in the centre, and sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) Fitzroy, commander of HMS Beagle, choosing takes up the foreground. THIS PAGE, the farm as an eight-day stop-off during his FROM TOP: Roses at Old Farm bring return journey from Australia to England. He a National Trust period layer to the described it as a “small and neat farm in what property; a pear tree planted by is the only cultivated ground in the district”.

Sir Richard Spencer is a remnant of the original orchard. OPPOSITE PAGE: The initial relationship between the Mineng Poppies, roses and Ixia paniculata and the new arrivals was reported widely all take part in the chorus of colour as congenial, and the discovery of a rare in parts of the well-established 19th-century watercolour in 2010 seemed gardens, a poetic complement to confirm this belief. > for the 1833 granite house.

“Everyday lives were NURTURED here during what would have been very challenging times, and only two families have called it HOME since the COLONY was established”

GARDEN

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

65

“Itthe became as “I like what Trustknown, stands endearingly, for; CONSERVING our OLD FARM more than 100 years ago” built and— CULTURAL heritage” The purity of a white rose. OPPOSITE PAGE: The velvety silver-grey of the wormwood (Artemisia) is a soothing contrast to the bright reds and pretty pinks of the poppies and roses.

GARDEN

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

67

“After 179 YEARS of SERVICE, the roof slates, which originally arrived by ship, were crumbling away.

For the replacement roof, the Trust sourced SLATES from the very same WELSH quarry”

< The painting features scenes of friendly times at Old Farm and was bought at auction by the National Trust of Western Australia after being discovered in an old English scrapbook. Its return to the property was described as “particularly fitting”.

By the 1880s Strawberry Hill had become quite neglected and Joseph Spencer (the second eldest son) started to subdivide the property and sell various allotments.

The house was rescued from certain ruin in 1889 by Francis Bird, the chief architect of Western Australia and a pioneer of the state’s timber industry, who lived there with his wife Augusta Maude. Endearingly the Bird family referred to the place as “The Old Farm” and retained ownership of it until the 1950s when it was purchased by the state government.

Old Farm, Strawberry Hill is included in Western Australia’s State Register of Heritage Places and registered as an Aboriginal site.

The property and land has significant legislative protection to ensure present and future THIS PAGE: Pink roses and purple generations can experience its unique values.

Geranium maderense make an impact Looking after Old Farm has been a against Miner Cottage. OPPOSITE responsibility of the National Trust since 1964 PAGE, FROM TOP: Climbing roses are trained up the wall of Miner Cottage; and the Trust has overseen a great deal of electric-blue spikes of pride of Madeira conservation work, which can be difficult to (Echium fastuosum) make themselves recognise for those who visit but includes known along the tree-lined paths specialised engineering and architectural work that lead to the main house; poppies to ensure water is drained away from the walls and palms; strawberries, planted by school children in 2011. of the delicate building, as well as curatorial research to locate important artefacts such as the recently discovered watercolour.

At the same time, substantial conservation can be a very visual event. After 179 years of service, the roof slates, which originally arrived by ship, were crumbling away. For the replacement roof, the Trust sourced slates from the very same Welsh quarry. The work was a huge commitment made possible by Federal funding and contributions from the National Trust.

More recently, members of the Aboriginal Green Army were among volunteer workers who made a significant contribution to the landscape at Old Farm, clearing exotic arum lilies, agapanthus and poplars from a long-established creek bed. The rehabilitation program is a delicate and ongoing operation informed by Traditional Owners and guided by the National Trust. During a staged project, a buffer zone is being created along the edge of the creek and the banks are being stabilised to support local fauna and the safe flow of water into nearby Lake Sepping.

Next time you are in Albany, try and reacquaint yourself with an old and dear companion who still has a lot of valuable things to say.

Old Farm, Strawberry Hill, 174 Middleton Road, Albany WA. nationaltrust.org.au/places/old-farm-strawberry-hill.

GARDEN

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

69

PLACE

DOWN by the RIVER BARWON GRANGE on the banks of its river namesake in Geelong suffered years of neglect before the Trust bought it from a car dealership and gave it a NEW LEASE ON LIFE. photographer MARNIE HAWSON writer CHRISTINE REID

70 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

THIS PAGE: The wallpaper in the dining room of Barwon Grange was selected by the original National Trust furnishing committee as appropriate for early Victorian design. OPPOSITE PAGE: This part of the house was originally built as an external kitchen by the Chadwick family, who lived here 15 years after the Porter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien period.

PLACE

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: The south façade of the house; Claudette Brennan, curator and property manager. OPPOSITE PAGE: The drawing room features a Minton porcelain chandelier, a rare example that could be the only one of its style in existence.

B

arwon Grange is the sole survivor of a group of eight large homes built along the north bank of Victoria’s Barwon River in the late 1840s and early 1850s.

It is a fine relic of a much hailed era of the state’s history, when its potential for greatness became a talking point. In Land, Labour, and Gold or Two Years in Victoria, William Howitt wrote of its agricultural scope.

He envisaged “thousands of farms… capable of yielding the richest harvest, as well as pasturing any amount of cattle and sheep”. In the same year, journalist Samuel Sidney declared that Geelong’s position between the green hills around Corio Bay and Barwon, in the “centre of one of the best grazing and agricultural districts [and] near a gold field, will probably render it an important town”.

The many long-suffering immigrants who arrived in the colony of Victoria in the mid-19th century dispersed in all directions — some to seek their fortune on the goldfields of Ballarat or Bendigo, some to travel to the pastoral districts of the west and some to remain in the rapidly expanding ‘important’ town.

One citizen who chose the latter was Jonathan Porter O’Brien.

The merchant had arrived from Ireland via Liverpool in 1849 and was originally a resident of Moorabool Street, now a main thoroughfare of Geelong, before he sold his house and moved to a more prestigious address on the banks of the Barwon.

Barwon Grange curator and property manager Claudette Brennan explains the house’s history: “In 1852 O’Brien paid £220 for four acres [1.6 hectares] of river frontage; a narrow ribbon strip that stretched from a government road (now West Fyans Street) to the Barwon. On it was a four-room weatherboard cottage with storerooms and a garden.

This timber cottage was relocated to the western fence line and by 1855 a new house was built.” >

72 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

PLACE

< The new house was described in a sale notice as “…brick, eight rooms, large weatherboard storeroom, cellar, stables, coach house and green house” and Barwon Grange has remained remarkably unchanged for more than 150 years. The architect of this attractive house is unknown. Its roof line with fretted bargeboards, wooden finials, elegant windows and doors and the distinctive features of steep gables and decorative chimneys make it a typical example of a Picturesque Gothic Revival villa. Similar designs are found in the many pattern books of the period.

These ‘picturesque’ pattern books were sought by the growing middle classes of the Victorian era who desired an increase in social standing and greater material possessions. Of the more than 60 pattern books published in the first half of the 19th century, one of the most popular was J.B.Papworth’s Rural Residences, which featured a series of designs for cottages, ‘decorated cottages’, small villas and other ornamental buildings, published in London in 1818.

Whether O’Brien brought architectural pattern books with him to peruse on the long voyage from Liverpool (many settlers did, dreaming of their new home in the colonies) or whether Barwon Grange’s builder referred to his own books is a matter for conjecture.

What is known is that the O’Briens only lived at Barwon Grange for a year after moving in. They sailed from Melbourne in early August, 1856, and never returned to Australia.

But they left a wonderful legacy. As Claudette explains: “On 29th July, 1856, the entire contents of Barwon Grange went up for sale. The Geelong Advertiser listed in three columns of broadsheet everything you can think of.” This included “superior house furniture, an excellent gig, a dog cart, green house plants...” and even a canary in a brass cage. >

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP LEFT: The housekeeper’s bedroom; detail of fabric on the half tester bed in the main bedroom; the second bedroom features examples of children’s toys. The pull-along horse is covered in calf skin.

OPPOSITE PAGE: The main bedroom, with wallpaper and fabric chosen by the original furnishing committee.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

75

PLACE

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE: A tie-back made of opaline glass on the damask curtains in the dining room; the east-facing front of the Picturesque Gothic-style house, sometimes called ‘Vicarage Gothic’; a view to the Barwon River, with an early planting of a Moreton Bay fig.

< Claudette has a photocopy of the advertisement in her office and it makes for amazing reading. It presents a comprehensive picture of life in a middle-class merchant’s home in 19th-century Australia. The Advertiser’s words are further enhanced by a visit in person to this picturesque house with its two living rooms, drawing room, dining room, two bedrooms, small smoking room and a conservatory. Upstairs are two simply furnished servants’ bedrooms.

By the late 19th century, the banks of the Barwon were no longer sought after for residential development. The great wool boom of the 1880s led to the establishment of tanneries and wool scourers along the Barwon, particularly in the lower reaches, with the associated smells and water pollution. Gradually the houses disappeared; light industry took over. In 1967 the property was owned by Geelong car dealers Winter & Taylor; Barwon Grange was set for demolition.

It is thanks to the conservation efforts of the late Dr Philip Brown, Trust member and chair of the Geelong Historical Society, as well as Geelong branch members, that by 1971 Winter & Taylor had agreed to sell the property to the Trust for $15,000.

As the Geelong Advertiser noted in 1856: Barwon Grange’s position is “one of exquisite loveliness, of great value, having an extensive frontage to the River Barwon and containing… the richest soil, forming a most productive garden, richly stocked with fruit trees”. The fruit trees are no longer but the garden is still intact, thanks to the local Trust volunteers who are maintaining it with care and sensitivity. Massive Moreton Bay fig trees complement the house, the carriage drive gravel is perfectly raked and the view to the river is still of “exquisite loveliness”.

Barwon Grange, 25 Fernleigh Street, Newtown, Geelong, Victoria.

(03) 5221 3906; nationaltrust.org.au/places/barwon-grange.

76 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

We invite you to experience Wolston Farmhouse.

NationalTrust.org.au

Historically known as Wolston House, this National Trust property is one of the oldest existing residential farmhouses in Brisbane. Its history is the story of change on the fringes of the city – from pastoralism to agriculture and dairying and finally to heritage tourism.

Today’s Wolston Farmhouse captures the ambience of a traditional rural homestead, surrounded by paddocks of cattle and kangaroos, the views stretch down to the tree-lined river banks and across the lands once part of this extensive estate.

The earliest parts of Wolston House were constructed in the 1850s by Dr Stephen Simpson. It was still occupied as a farmhouse up until the 1960s, when it fell into disrepair. The house was rescued from demolition by the National Trust of Queensland and was opened to visitors in 1969.

Enjoy tea on the terrace, and a fascinating wander through the rooms and stalls as they once were.

Call (07) 5534 0803 for additional information.

223 Grindle Road, Wacol.

Ginger Bread, made according to the old family recipe, is the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea on the Tea Terrace at Wolston Farmhouse in Wacol, Queensland.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Try the Victoria Sponge, light as a feather with farm-fresh eggs and strawberry jam.

FOOD

The Grindle family

RECIPE BOOK From an unspoiled slice of 19th century rural living at WOLSTON FARMHOUSE at Wacol on the fringe of Brisbane city, comes the taste of a GRACIOUS PAST in these recipes from the 1920s. styling and photography CHINA SQUIRREL

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

79

FOOD Coconut Macaroons are a sweet treat for children and adults alike. OPPOSITE PAGE: Make classic Queensland favourite Pumpkin Scones using the Grindle family recipe.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

81

FOOD

MARBLE CAKE Makes 1 loaf; serves about 8–10 225g butter, softened 1 cup caster sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 4 eggs 1½ cups self-raising flour 2 tablespoons milk, plus 1 tablespoon extra 1 tablespoon cocoa powder red food colouring

MOCK CREAM (BUTTERCREAM) 90g butter, softened 1 cup icing sugar mixture, sifted 1 tablespoon milk 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease and line a 22cm x 12cm loaf tin (top measurement) with baking paper.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla for 6 minutes or until pale and creamy. Add add eggs one at a time, beating until well combined.

Stir in flour and milk then mix until well combined.

Divide cake batter among three bowls.

In a small bowl mix cocoa and extra milk together. Add to one portion of cake batter and mix well. Add a few drops of red food colouring to another portion and stir to combine well.

Place alternate spoonfuls of the three batters into the prepared loaf tin. Tap tin to ensure batter fills corners of tin. Use a skewer to swirl the colours together.

Bake for 50–55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes in tin before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

To make the mock cream: use an electric mixer to beat the butter, sugar, milk and vanilla together until light and creamy.

Use a flat-bladed knife to spread the cooled cake with the mock cream and serve sliced.

GINGER BREAD Serves 16 250ml boiling water 125g butter, chopped 1 cup brown sugar 250ml treacle 3¼ cups plain flour 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 2 teaspoons ground ginger 1 teaspoon ground cloves 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease and line a 23cm square cake tin with baking paper.

Combine boiling water, butter, brown sugar and treacle in a large heatproof mixing bowl. Whisk until butter melts then set aside to cool at room temperature.

Mix in sifted flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and bicarbonate of soda. Add eggs one at a time and stir until well combined.

Pour into the prepared cake tin. Bake in a preheated for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from oven. Stand in the tin for 10 minutes before removing.

Cut into 16 squares. Best served warm.

VICTORIA SPONGE Serves 6–8

RECIPES ADAPTED FROM THE GRINDLE FAMILY COOKBOOK AND TESTED BY CHINA SQUIRREL

1 cup plain flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 3 eggs (at room temperature) ¾ cup caster sugar 1 teaspoon melted butter 2 tablespoons boiling water ¾ cup strawberry jam 1 tablespoon icing sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line the bases of two 20cm shallow round cake tins with baking paper.

Sift flour and baking powder together twice to aerate. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar in large mixing bowl until thick, pale and tripled in volume, about 6–8 minutes.

Sift flour mixture one more time over the egg mixture, then fold in gently using a large metal spoon until just combined (do not overmix). Add butter and boiling water and gently fold through.

Divide batter evenly between the two prepared cake tins. Bake in a preheated oven for 18–20 minutes or until cakes spring back when gently touched in the centre and have slightly shrunken away from the sides of the tin.

Remove from oven. Allow to stand in tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto wire racks lined with baking paper to cool completely.

Place one cake on a serving plate and spread the top with jam.

Place remaining cake on top. Dust with icing sugar and serve. Best eaten the day it is made.

COCONUT MACAROONS Makes about 25 2 egg whites (at room temperature) 1 cup caster sugar ¼ cup desiccated coconut

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line three baking trays with baking paper.

Put egg whites in a clean, dry, medium mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until sugar has dissolved.

Continue beating until egg whites are thick, glossy and hold peaks.

Add coconut and gently fold through with a spatula until evenly mixed. Be careful not to overmix. Dollop spoonfuls of meringue onto prepared baking trays.

Bake for 18–20 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from oven and cool on trays. Store in an airtight container.

PUMPKIN SCONES Makes about 14 2 cups self-raising flour pinch salt 2 tablespoons caster sugar 20g butter, chopped ½ cup cooked and mashed pumpkin, cold 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 tablespoon milk extra, butter for serving

Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Enjoy afternoon tea in the style of the Grindle family at WOLSTON FARMHOUSE, where you can try these cakes, or cook them at home for a taste of 19th century charm.

Sift flour into a medium mixing bowl.

Stir in salt and sugar. Using your fingertips, rub butter into flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre. Add pumpkin, egg and milk. Mix with a flat-bladed knife until it forms soft dough, adding a little more milk if required.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and lightly knead until smooth. (Do not overknead or scones will be tough).

Roll or pat dough out to a slab about 2cm thick. Using a 5cm diameter scone cutter, cut out 14 scones. Place scones, just touching each other, onto prepared tray.

Bake for 12–15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven. Serve warm with butter.

Wolston Farmouse, 223 Grindle Road, Wacol, Queensland. Open Wednesday–Sunday 10am–4pm: (07) 5534 0803; nationaltrust. org.au/places/wolston-house/. To help us continue to protect special places, donate today. Go to nationaltrust.org.au/donate/.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

83

BOOKS

T

hroughout colonial times, there were many examples of non-Indigenous people living rich and full lives with Australian Indigenous people.

Negative attitudes towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culture meant that events in these stories were often misinterpreted and sensationalised. In their book Living with the Locals, historians John Maynard, a Worimi man, and Victoria Haskins re-evaluate several of these encounters. One of the most well-known is that of William Buckley, who lived for 32 years with the Wathawurrung people of the south-eastern Victorian coast.

of existence,” he would later recall. “I look back now to that period of my life with inexpressible astonishment; considering it, as it were, altogether a dreaming delusion, and not reality.”

In 1835, it came to an end. Buckley was returned to white society after coming across John Batman’s party out looking for a site for a new settlement. Buckley received a free pardon from Governor Arthur in return for his ongoing assistance in the development of a colony, particularly as an interpreter.

Born around 1780 in Cheshire, England, William Buckley was found guilty in 1802 of possession of stolen goods and was transported to Port Phillip in present-day southern Victoria. In October, 1803, Buckley escaped and made his way along the sea front, living on shellfish and berries. Eventually, three Aboriginal men discovered him. They grabbed “both my hands, they struck their breasts, and mine also, making at the same time a noise between singing and crying”. But although they encouraged him to stay with them, Buckley decided to remain alone.

Three months later he resolved to try to find his way back to the convict settlement, unaware that the British had packed up and left by then. His health seriously weakened, Buckley came across an earthen mound with an upright spear in its centre, which he removed to use as a walking stick. Not long after, he collapsed in the sight of two Aboriginal women, who soon brought back some assistance.

Inadvertently, Buckley had made a strong bond between himself and this Aboriginal group by taking the spear, which came from the grave of a man who had been killed in a fight with a rival group. As he gratefully ate food they had prepared, Buckley noticed that they were calling him ‘Murrangurk’, the name of the dead warrior.

Buckley’s rescuers took him to their main camp across the Barwon River.

Sometime later, a young man appeared and invited everyone to his encampment.

Buckley was being taken to his own family — the late Murrangurk’s brother, wife and son. A great corroboree took place and Buckley embarked fully on his new life.

For the next 30 years he would live the life of an Aboriginal man, becoming a proficient hunter and gatherer, and forming a close attachment with his adoptive family. “I led a different sort

The book Living with the Locals reveals the story of convict William Buckley, who lived for 32 years with the Wathawurrung people.

84 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

WILD ONE

Buckley maintained his strong sympathies for the Aboriginal people who hosted him, and was deeply sceptical of Batman’s claim to have entered into a contract with the Indigenous inhabitants for their land.

His expressed opinion was that “if any transactions had taken place, it must have been because the natives knew nothing of the value of the country, except as hunting grounds, supplying them with the means of present existence”. And he was already anticipating the future, believing that the land deal was “another hoax of the white man, to possess the inheritance of the uncivilised natives of the forest, whose tread on the vast Australian continent will very soon be no more heard”. Buckley advocated for the local Aboriginal people, taking a

prominent role in distributing food and articles to them, arranging their employment within the settlement, and taking up cases of wrongs being done to them.

Within the surrounds of the settlement, there was an escalation of violence and reprisal between European and Aboriginal people. Buckley found that the Europeans were dismissing his authority and knowledge of the local Aboriginal population. He did not hide his disgust, saying, so it was claimed, that he would “rejoice if the whites could be driven away … so that the aborigines could have the country to themselves again”. In December 1837, it was Buckley who was driven away, pensioned off in Hobart.

Buckley died there in 1856. Bound by strict Aboriginal codes, he honourably carried secret cultural knowledge to his grave. However, during his life, he had described aspects of Aboriginal life that were not taboo. He learnt the language and the skills of hunting and fishing, he learnt about marriage practice and burial rituals. And he witnessed fierce intertribal interactions. It was these that have persistently interested non-Indigenous people, with some historians regarding them as evidence of the violence of traditional Aboriginal culture.

Buckley described one prolonged battle, initiated by a group of 300 armed men against his smaller group, in which spears and boomerangs were hurled in both directions. The large group killed three people from Buckley’s clan before retreating. During the night, some men from Buckley’s tribe ambushed the enemy as they slept, killing three men on the spot.

It is remarkable that, in a battle against 300 men, Buckley’s group apparently suffered only three deaths, and even more extraordinary that his group was able to successfully ambush the much larger group in retaliation. Close examination of Buckley’s accounts of various battles suggests that this was not the chaotic violence of warfare but rather a highly ritualised form of conflict resolution, or retributive justice, under a shared Aboriginal Law. Numerous colonials were frustrated that Buckley would not talk about his Aboriginal life. These observers failed to comprehend Buckley’s determination to withhold his knowledge, perhaps to protect his Aboriginal community or out of respect for their taboos.

Edited extract from Living with the Locals: Early Europeans’ Experience of Indigenous Life by John Maynard and Victoria Haskins, NLA Publishing, $44.99.

“I look back now to that period of my life with inexpressible astonishment.”

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: Indigenous artist Tommy McRae’s depiction of two Aboriginal groups fighting; an artistic rendition of John Batman’s famous treaty.

The Aboriginal people of the area would have had no idea of the meaning of the transaction; retributive justice taking place. The man on the right faces the consequences of breaking the law; an illustration of William Buckley introducing himself to Batman’s party, marking the end of his time with the Wathawurrung people.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Buckley’s story became a popular legend.

HERITAGE FESTIVAL

Sharing STORIES The 2017 Australian Heritage Festival is putting the focus on local and cultural history and personal stories. With more than 1100 events around the country from April 18th to May 21st, there’s something on the program for everyone.

AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE FESTIVAL

Heritage is being created in the places people live, work and play: where they shop, bars, libraries, sports stadiums.

Those spaces and places and buildings each have a history.

People may live within a stone’s throw of amazing heritage sites, taking for granted the many stories that connect them to the nation’s history, but tend to consider somewhere in their own town or region not to be relevant to them.

Heritage is what we choose to make it.

Rather than saying to people we’re going to talk about ‘heritage’ and ‘history’, the Australian Heritage Festival allows people to tell their stories and share their passions and interests.

By encouraging a greater sense of appreciation, of being proud of your town and feeling connected with your own community, we’re aiming to remove the potential barriers that may be stopping people from accessing their local heritage.

Scott McAlister, Chairman of the Australian Council of National Trusts, said The Australian Heritage Festival will help shape how people identify with the places they live, work and play in, connecting the past and present and energising local communities. “The National Trust is delighted to work with the Australian Government through their National Trusts Partnership Program, to expand the festival and engage with more communities across the country,” he said.

The Honourable Josh Frydenberg, Minister for the Environment and Energy, said the Australian Government is proud to support the expanded Festival through a three-year partnership. “Australia’s heritage is unique, it contributes to our sense of place, community and personal wellbeing, it informs us about where we have come

from and who we are, and is an important part of our national identity. The Festival’s theme, ‘Having a Voice’, is extremely fitting as our national heritage is rich with voices from many cultures. I encourage all Australians to raise their own voices in celebration of the places, people and events that have made us who we are today.”

Some of this year’s highlight events include the Urban Polaris biking event exploring Canberra’s historic sites, a walk to remember a special Aboriginal woman in Perth, a chance to ride the 130-year-old Victorian Colonial Express running between Castlemaine to Maldon in Victoria, sleeping under the stars in Queensland to celebrate our ANZACs and a two-day celebration of Australia’s multicultural communities in Smithfield NSW. There are so many local treasures to be explored across all states and territories.

That’s why we’ve created an exciting new digital experience across online, social media and mobile platforms, making it easier than ever to find events. We encourage everyone to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to upload all your event photos and share your stories. #AHF2017 #sharingstories For more information on the Australian Heritage Festival, visit www.australian heritagefestival.org.au.

PHOTOGRAPHY KARA ROSENLUND

E

very year since 1980 the National Trust has showcased heritage from all over Australia with the biggest community-based festival of history and culture involving hundreds of volunteers. There are 1100 events across the country that will invite everyone to explore local treasures of every age, style and function. It’s a chance to see hidden places and try out new experiences.

With support from the Australian Government’s National Trusts Partnership Program, we are making the 2017 Festival bigger and more inclusive than ever — with a new name and greater passion to inspire everyone to engage with their cultural heritage.

CLOCKWISE, FROM LEFT The water wheel at Anderson’s Mill in Smeaton, Victoria; tour the mill on May 13th–14th; ride Victoria’s oldest railway carriages from Castlemaine to Maldon; WA celebrates the extraordinary life of Fanny Balbuk Yoreel; a quilt in the exhibition Balbuk’s Country at Perth City Library; the building of Anderson’s Mill began in 1861.

“Australia’s heritage is unique, it contributes to our sense of place, community and personal wellbeing, it informs us about where we have come from and who we are...”

The Australian Heritage Festival (AHF) will be officially launched at Government House, Canberra, on April 18th, 2017, by His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd) Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. The AHF is supported through funding from the Australian Government’s National Trusts Partnership Program.

April 18th–May 21st, 2017 www.australianheritagefestival.org.au

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

87

BOOKS

ON THE SHELF

VICTORIAN WATERCOLOURS

By Peter Raissis, Art Gallery of NSW Publishing, $55

From the history of Greek cafes in AUSTRALIA and Jack Mundey’s remarkable life to Cruden Farm gardener Michael Morrison’s diaries, there is plenty to inspire in this issue. writer LEAH TWOMEY

CRUDEN FARM GARDEN DIARIES

By Michael Morrison & Lisa Clausen, Penguin Random House, $49.99

GREEK CAFÉS & MILK BARS OF AUSTRALIA

By Leonard Janiszewski & Effy Alexakis, Halstead Press, $49.95

The nostalgia of bygone Greek cafes and milk bars once dotted throughout Australian suburbs and country towns is well captured here through documentary photographer Alexakis’s lens and historian Janiszewski’s well-researched stories.

With Modernist fit-outs and bright lights that brought a touch of glamour to the mundane, these places introduced us to the American food culture of sodas, ice-cream sundaes, milkshakes and hamburgers. Also available from cafesandmilkbars.com.au.

88 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

Gardener Michael Morrison’s personal diaries reveal his work as head gardener of one of Australia’s finest private gardens, and his subsequent friendship with ‘the Boss’, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. Michael tells of the plants at Cruden Farm — about 50 kilometres southeast of Melbourne in Langwarrin — and of the life there; the freak storms, the memorable parties plus all the triumphs and tensions he shared with the Boss.

ANNIE’S FARMHOUSE KITCHEN: SEASONAL MENUS WITH A FRENCH HEART

By Annie Smithers, Hardie Grant, $40

Alongside Robin Cowcher’s charming illustrations, chef Annie Smithers, whose restaurant du Fermier is a beloved gem in Trentham, regional Victoria, reveals how to plan a classic French Provincial menu.

Seasonal of course, the menus are inspired by her own home’s vegetable garden in Malmsbury and are full of technical advice.

It’s wise to take heed; she has three decades of lauded cooking under her belt, which began as an apprenticeship with Stephanie Alexander in 1984. She guides the reader through a feast per season.

This beautifully presented collection of 80 artworks by more than 70 artists represents the glory of British watercolours from the Victorian period. Peter Raissis explores the social, cultural and technical background of watercolour painting in 19th-century Britain in a book that will appeal to lovers of art, nature, history or all of the above.

LOOKING FOR ROSE PATERSON: HOW FAMILY BUSH LIFE NURTURED BANJO THE POET

By Dr Jennifer Gall, NLA Publishing, $39.99

Exploring the legacy of prolific poet Banjo Paterson and his place in Australian history, Dr Jennifer Gall (assistant curator at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and a Visiting Fellow at the ANU School of Music) delves deeper into his family life, particularly the impact of the relationship between his parents. Featured is a selection of original letters from mother Rose to her sister Nora that beautifully detail 19th-century rural Australian life.

SIX TUDOR QUEENS: ANNE BOLEYN, A KING’S OBSESSION

By Alison Weir, Hachette Australia, $29.99

Alison Weir brings to life the story of the second of Henry VIII’s wives who died, beheaded for treason. Well known for her death, Weir explores her life. Queen Anne’s court was a festive and lavish one and she was known for her intelligence and ambition. Biographer Weir is the top-selling female historian in the UK, and this is the second of her series about the six wives.

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT: JACK MUNDEY, GREEN BANS HERO

By James Colman, NewSouth, $49.99

Review: John Richardson – Director, COX and NSW National Trust Board Director Jack Mundey the communist, unionist, politician, conservationist, Historic Houses Trustee and Patron threads his way through our conservation world, reviled then revered.

Jim Colman’s book weaves Jack’s story into a fine history of the conservation movement from 1945 to the present time, where threats to our heritage are worsening; we just lost 20 per cent of Haberfield, Sydney. Colman describes the great gains in legislation and conservation of the 1970s and how they are being lost again. Mundey is more optimistic, trusting that the gains made have changed attitudes to heritage.

The 1970s were an extraordinary period for the conservation movement. After the establishment of the Trust in 1945, the 1950s and ’60s saw the growth of all sorts of heritage groups. But the threats of the ’70s at Kellys Bush, the Rocks, the QVB and Woolloomooloo created heated battles, with Mundey and the Builders’ Labourers Federation a significant force needed to preserve Sydney. For the first time we saw the ‘green ban’ as an effective conservation tool. Greenpeace was established.

The Whitlam Government created the Australian Heritage Commission and the National Estate. NSW created a Heritage Act and a Heritage Council.

Australia ICOMOS was established and the Burra Charter adopted.

There has never been a more intriguing connection in the world of conservation than that between the unions and Sydney’s conservation movement in the early 1970s. It rapidly developed after Mundey and a group of women in Hunters Hill saved Kellys Bush, placing pressure on the National Trust. It makes fascinating reading for anybody involved with the Trust.

In the early days it was not a comfortable relationship, with clandestine meetings described by John Morris, but in 1997 the Trust made Jack a National Living Treasure and in 2006 an Honorary Life Member.

Anyone interested in the conservation of Australia should read this book about a man who is far more than a ‘green bans hero’.

ADMAN: WARHOL BEFORE POP Edited By Nicholas Chambers, Art Gallery of NSW Publishing, $55

Published in conjunction with the exhibition running at the Art Gallery of NSW until May 28, the essays in this collection by Warhol scholars and experts are printed alongside rare illustrations, drawings, photos and ads he created between 1949 and 1961 in New York, a great insight into Warhol’s early career.

VERSUS RODIN: BODIES ACROSS SPACE AND TIME

By Penelope Curtin and Tony Magnusson, Art Gallery of SA Publishing, $49.95

Released in conjunction with the Versus Rodin exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, the book and show, which runs until July 2, mark 100 years since the death of French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Both are curated by Leigh Robb, who has deftly paired the gallery’s collection of Rodin’s bronzes (the largest in the southern hemisphere) with figural works by contemporary artists in Australia, including Indigenous, and overseas.

THE SONGS OF TREES

By David George, Haskell Black Inc, $32.99

The author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s best ‘networkers’. Haskell — a professor and Guggenheim Fellow — explores groups of trees around the world and how they network with other plants, fungi, bacteria and animals, his findings ultimately enriching our own understanding of biology, human nature and ethics.

THE GREAT DIXTER COOKBOOK: RECIPES FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN

By Aaron Bertelsen, Phaidon, $49.95

From the kitchen garden of Great Dixter, the historic house and garden on the border of Kent and Sussex in England, come 70 classic and seasonal recipes. They are presented as Christopher Lloyd, the revered gardener and writer who grew up in the house, believed best — in accordance with honest, simple cooking of homegrown produce. Great Dixter was Lloyd’s home from 1921 to 2006, and his worldrenowned garden flourishes to this day.

A number of his own recipes are published for the first time here. Author Aaron Bertelsen has been gardener-cook at Great Dixter for nearly 12 years. His words are complemented by Andrew Montgomery’s photography of this splendid house and gardens. Each recipe is embellished with anecdotes and tips, and throughout are seasonal growing guides for the planting and harvesting of fresh produce. Both delicious and delightful, it’s one to keep for generations, as it took to write.

BOOKS

THE NATIONAL 2017: NEW AUSTRALIAN ART Co-published by Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary Art

This publication is in conjunction with a collaborative exhibition between the Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary Art, all in Sydney. Emerging, mid-career and established Australian contemporary artists living across the country and abroad have been selected to present work as part of a single curated program at the three Sydney institutions. Curators for this inaugural edition of the book include Art Gallery of NSW curator of contemporary art, Anneke Jaspers, and head curator of Australian art, Wayne Tunnicliffe; Carriageworks director Lisa Havilah, and curator Nina Miall; and the MCA’s director of Curatorial & Digital, Blair French. A six-year initiative, more editions will be published in 2019 and 2021.

THE ART OF LIVING IN AUSTRALIA

FLORET FARM’S CUT FLOWER GARDEN

By Erin Benzakein, Hardie Grant, $55

A small family farm that makes a big impression, Floret in Washington’s Skagit Valley, USA, is run by Erin Benzakein, her husband and two children. She is considered America’s leading ‘farmerflorist’ and specialises in growing unique, uncommon and heirloom flowers.

Her book is part DIY instruction, part inspiration thanks to the gorgeous photography on how to cultivate a seasonal flower garden so as to cut and arrange your own blooms. As Erin shares her knowledge, her passion for her farm and her respect for nature shine through.

By Philip E. Muskett, University of Sydney, $25

BRAE: RECIPES AND STORIES FROM THE RESTAURANT

By Dan Hunter, Phaidon, $75

Chef Dan Hunter — owner of Brae in Birregurra, Victoria (voted Restaurant of the Year by The Age’s Good Food Guide 2017 and number 65 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list) — has released his highly anticipated debut book.

It’s a monograph that details his ethical, locavore philosophy, his signature recipes and gorgeous photography of Brae’s surrounding landscape through the seasons, as well as its beautifully crafted dishes and glimpses of the staff tending the farm. Personal essays exploring Hunter’s ethical vision and how he sustains it in a world-class kitchen portray a pioneering restaurant that has long led the Australian food scene.

90 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

Since Philip E. Muskett’s book, which details the benefits of the Mediterranean diet and its suitability to the Australian way of life, was first published in 1893, it can probably claim the honour of being the first Australian guide to Mediterranean-style eating.

In this updated version, more than 300 recipes encourage a more plant-based diet (and less meat) through salads, vegetable dishes, seafood and desserts, all provided by Mrs Wicken, lecturer in charge of ‘domestic economy’ at Sydney Technical College. A historical book that was clearly ahead of its time, it gives contemporary readers a delightful glimpse of 19th-century Australian life, not only of the food enjoyed but the clothing worn and homes lived in.

MOCKINGBIRD SONGS: MY FRIENDSHIP WITH HARPER LEE

By Wayne Flynt, Penguin Random House, $22.99

A collection of letters between Harper Lee and her close friend reveals the famously private writer as never before. Wayne Flynt had left the violent racism of his home state of Alabama, but the publication of Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird inspired his return in the 1960s and they finally met in 1983.

The letters are heartfelt, witty and insightful, and continued until Lee’s death in 2016.

They reveal the mind and heart of one of modern literature’s most acclaimed authors.

BOOKS

LEFT: Caroline photographed circa 1985. ABOVE: “I wanted my mother to be remembered as an extraordinary woman.

She let no obstacle stop her,” says Louise Dobson of the decision to do the book.

RIGHT: Caroline Simpson

by Judy Cassab in 1955.

driving force A new BOOK gives a rare INSIGHT into Caroline Simpson, a passionate philanthropist.

PHOTOGRAPH DAVID HUNT PHOTOGRAPHICS

C

aroline Simpson was a true Sydney character and a person of status, wealth and contradictions. The eldest child of publisher Sir Warwick Fairfax, she was passionate about Australian colonial history and poured her boundless energy and considerable wealth into its study and conservation.

Caroline Simpson: A Woman of Very Firm Purpose is a handsome book, privately published by her daughter Louise Dobson. Undertaken by writer and researcher Michael Collins, it contains 36 interviews with Caroline’s family and friends. It is raw in parts, especially in the repetitive discussion of difficult aspects of her family life — some chapters reveal as much about the respective writer as they do about the subject.

Nevertheless it is very illuminating and well-illustrated with family pictures and paintings from her collection. The chapters themselves are mixed. Some of the best — that caught parts of Caroline’s paradoxical character — are by Dr Janet McCredie from The Women’s College, her half-sister Annalise Fairfax Thomas, her daughter Emily Simpson and the former Mitchell Librarian Elizabeth Ellis. The latter describes her as I fondly remember her, “in she’d march [to the Mitchell Library Pictures workroom] with great determination in her flat sandals”. The poignant contribution from her younger brother James Fairfax also stays with the reader: “I do miss the casual intimacy of our relationship. We knew what the other was thinking, and that’s a rare situation to have with anyone.”

Caroline, who died in 2003, was a paradox and this comes out amply in the book. She could, in turns, be spirited and quiescent; thoughtful and impetuous; perspicacious and careless; constant and unpredictable; introverted and outspoken; generous and awkward. Her paramount commitment was to her extended family, rather than to the many causes she was interested in. She supported libraries, galleries, universities, publishers, botanic gardens, choirs and writers’ festivals amongst many others. The book notes some of these, but there are probably many more since her philanthropy was mostly anonymous. Her generosity was enormous.

Like Caroline, who was sceptical of academic rigour, and as Annalise says in her chapter “might have had a bit of a problem in acknowledging another point of view”, the book would have benefited from a more rigorous and objective approach. In the end, it does capture her well.

Caroline’s contributions were of such a scale, and her provenance and character so influential, that one hopes that there might be a fuller biography one day. She deserves nothing less. Peter Watts AM Peter was the Inaugural Director of the Historic Houses Trust of NSW (now Sydney Living Museums) and worked with Caroline’s children and advisers to accept a donation of colonial art and furniture valued at $12 million. Its library was renamed the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection as acknowledgement of the gift.

Caroline Simpson: A Woman of Very Firm Purpose, $39.95.

OBITUARY James Fairfax AC, former chairman of publisher John Fairfax Ltd, died on January 11, 2017. One of Australia’s most generous philanthropists, his gifts to the arts included donations of old masters worth more than $30 million to the Art Gallery of NSW, while he was also an avid supporter of medical research and education. Mr Fairfax’s concern for the preservation of Australian heritage was longstanding. Over 50 years ago, he sat on the Trust’s Appeal Committee which saved Francis Greenway’s masterpiece, St Matthew’s, at Windsor. Late last year, negotiations were finalised which saw the gift of his country residence, the Retford Park Estate at Bowral, to the National Trust so that it might be enjoyed in perpetuity by the Australian people. The property has come with an endowment which has been invested by the Trust to provide for its interpretation and ongoing upkeep. Dr Clive Lucas, OBE, National Trust of Australia (NSW) Board President AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

91

No2

A SHORT HISTORY of Peninsula Farm

Immerse yourself in the history of the SWAN RIVER COLONY and the early days of Perth by spending time at the intriguing National Trust property of Peninsula Farm. illustration RYN FRANK writer SARAH MURPHY

PLACE

This compact house was home to Joseph and Ann Hardey and their six children, five of whom were girls. The first, Ann Margaret, was born soon after they settled in the Swan River Colony in 1830 and the others quickly followed. It must have been a tight fit by our standards.

For much of its recent history, the place was named Tranby House after the brig on which the family arrived from Yorkshire, England. On the 26-metre-long, eight-metre-wide Tranby were 37 passengers, 14 crew plus various livestock, farm equipment and building materials.

It is now known again by its original name of Peninsula Farm.

Third time lucky: the house dates from 1839 and was the third attempt at a home by the Hardey family. The other two were both lost in floods; the first soon after it was built in 1830 and the second in 1836.

The property’s huge oak trees are as old as the house with an extensive root system that extracts water from the soil and helps keep the fabric of the house dry.

When they die the house could undergo considerable structural changes.

The artefacts in the house with direct provenance to the place include a four-poster brass bed, a medicine chest, sewing machine and a few pieces of mourning jewellery, all now on display for visitors to enjoy.

Joseph Hardey planted grapevines on the property and it became an award-winning enterprise for him.

There is great irony in his successful winemaking given his strict Methodist beliefs of teetotalism.

The property was owned by the Hardey family from 1830 until 1913. Its two subsequent owners, including a baker with the apt name of Harry Baker, kept horses in the surrounding paddocks. A race track was even constructed in the western paddocks in 1951 (now no more).

The inside of the wardrobe under the stairs is covered in more than five different layers of wallpapers that appear to date from circa 1850 through to the end of the 19th century.

There is no clue as to why they redecorated so often.

Joseph and Ann Hardey were deeply religious and were instrumental in developing Methodism in the fledgling Swan River Colony. The very first Methodist service was held on the beach at Fremantle, where they landed. Joseph gave thanks for the success of the voyage and their safe arrival.

Peninsula Farm was classified by the National Trust in 1967 and formally vested in the Trust in 1978. It has been open to the community ever since.

By 1860 the majority of the peninsula was owned by Joseph Hardey. His only son Richard went on to become a well-known politician in the area.

After Richard died in 1910, his sons had no interest in taking on the property, but the Hardeys’ time there was commemorated by a plaque unveiled in 1929 as part of the colony’s centenary celebrations.

UPCOMING EVENTS at Peninsula Farm

include the ANZAC Sunset Ceremony, April 24th; and the Giving Children a Voice open day, May 14th. 2A Johnson Road, Maylands, WA, (08) 9272 2630.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

93

News and Events Discover the great events happening at National Trust properties across the country.

A mix of Australian Regency and classic Italianate architecture, Como House & Garden, built in 1847, is open most weekends for tours.

94 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

EVENTS

N SW

nationaltrust.org.au/nsw

AUTUMN HOUSE INSPECTIONS Bowral & Burradoo, Southern Highlands APRIL 5TH Autumn is a colourful season in the Southern Highlands. Join the Southern Highlands Branch for another day viewing private homes opened exclusively for Trust members and their guests.

Two are in Bowral, two in Burradoo — all original, some with a modern twist — and all splendid at this time of year.

Phone (02) 4871 3944 or (02) 4869 2886. Email janedeen@bigpond.com.

Bookings essential.

Celebrate Easter at Rippon Lea House & Gardens in Elsternwick.

RIPPON LEA HOUSE & GARDENS

VICTORIA

Easter Fun Day APRIL 16TH Spend Easter Sunday out with the family and enjoy an Easter egg hunt, boat rides, house tours and more.

Ph (03) 9656 9889; ripponleaestate.com.au.

192 Hotham Road, Elsternwick. 10am-4pm.

nationaltrust.org.au/vic

PORTABLE IRON HOUSES Open Days FIRST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH Get an insight into life in the gold-rush era when you visit the few remaining pre-fab iron buildings in the world. Ph (03) 9656 9889. 399 Coventry Street, South Melbourne. 1–4pm.

PHOTOGRAPHERS ANTHONY BASHEER, MICHAEL WEE

COMO HOUSE & GARDEN Tours OPEN MOST WEEKENDS Tour the privileged lifestyle of Como’s former owners, the Armytage family, who lived there for nearly a century.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Cnr Williams Road & Lechlade Avenue, South Yarra.

POLLY WOODSIDE Pirate Sundays FIRST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH Kids can scrub the decks and hunt for treasure during a Sunday aboard our tall ship.

Ph (03) 9656 9889.

21 South Wharf Promenade, South Wharf. 10am–4pm.

LABASSA MANSION Open Days THIRD SUNDAY OF THE MONTH Make time to discover the diverse group of artists,

musicians and bohemians that once occupied the mansion.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. 2 Manor Grove, Caulfield North.

10.30am–4pm.

BARWON PARK MANSION Festival of Colours APRIL 9TH First celebrated by Lord Krishna, God of play, the festival invites participation by throwing ‘rainbows’ of colours.

Bookings via festivalofcolours. com.au. Entry included with purchase of coloured dyes.

105 Inverleigh Road, Winchelsea. 11am–4pm.

RIPPON LEA HOUSE & GARDENS Night Life exhibition MAY 5TH–JULY 30TH Moving to Rippon Lea House & Gardens, with a number of new costumes, the Night Life exhibition explores evening wear of the 1920s and ’30s.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Bookings via nightlifecostumes.com.au.

Tickets from $17. 192 Hotham Road, Elsternwick.

BARWON PARK MANSION Masterworks MAY 7TH Enjoy an afternoon of classical music followed by a countrystyle afternoon tea.

Ph (03) 9656 9889. Tickets from $35. 105 Inverleigh Road, Winchelsea. 2–4pm.

OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARRAMATTA Governance: The Exhibition UNTIL APRIL 16TH A partnership between Old Government House, Parramatta Artist Studios and the City of Parramatta brings 10 contemporary artists together to respond to the role of governance today at Old Government House.

Curated by Lizzy Marshall, the exhibition features new pieces

alongside established works from invited artists.

Ph (02) 9635 8149; www. nationaltrust.org.au/event/ governance-exhibition/.

Parramatta Park, Parramatta.

Open Tuesday–Sunday.

OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARRAMATTA Heritage Dinner: A Shared Table APRIL 22ND Enjoy a three-course meal with matching wines in the elegant Georgian dining room of Old Government House.

Pre-dinner drinks will be served in the drawing room.

Service is provided by our 19th-century butler, Mr Fopp, assisted by his footman as you enjoy dinner in Governor Macquarie’s home.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Email info@friendsofogh.com.

Tickets $175. Parramatta Park, Parramatta. 6.30–10.30pm.

COACH TOUR: WEST OF THE GREAT DIVIDE — SURVEYORS & SETTLERS APRIL 23RD Departing Lithgow Visitors Information Centre, this coach tour hosted by the Lithgow Branch of the Trust takes you

OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARRAMATTA

Ghost Tours APRIL 21ST, MAY 19TH, JUNE 16TH, JULY 21ST. This long-running event never ceases to intrigue. As you wander through the candlelit corridors and rooms of this 216-year-old building, Australia’s oldest Public Residence, sense the presence of the first governors, their families, the military, the convicts who worked the Domain — and the traditional owners of the land.

Ph (02) 9635 8149. Email info@friendsofogh.com. Tickets $35, over 16 years only. Parramatta Park, Parramatta. 7.15pm.

Take a ghost tour of Old Government House in Parramatta, one of the most popular tours at the estate.

Parramatta’s convict-built Georgian house, Old

Wunderkammer translates from German as Cabinet of Wonder, or Curiosity.

Artist Rod McRae’s thought-provoking exhibition Wunderkammer is on at Everglades in the Blue Mountains until the end of August.

Pictured is Are You My Mother? (2010).

S.H. ERVIN GALLERY Peter Powditch exhibition UNTIL MAY 21ST Peter Powditch rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a leading proponent of the Pop Art movement in Australia. This exhibition is an insight into the creative journey of an artist who, while highly respected, is yet to be fully appreciated for his work.

Interior Landscapes: Elisabeth Cummings Retrospective MAY 26TH–JULY 23RD A celebration of the work of Elisabeth Cummings, this major retrospective features a selection from the past 50 years through 60 paintings, prints and terracotta ceramics.

Ph (02) 9258 0173. Email shervingallery@nationaltrust. com.au; www.shervingallery. com.au. Watson Road, The Rocks, Sydney. Open Tuesday–Sunday.

Elisabeth Cummings’ Journey Through the Studio (2004).

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

to routes and sites important in the ‘opening up’ of land west of the Great Divide.

Visit the point of G. W. Evans’ first crossing of the Divide by a European and explore parts of Cox’s 1815 road.

After lunch, view ‘Macquarie’ at O’Connell and the convict barracks on this little-known 1822 property, built on the grant to William Lawson for his 1813 services to exploration.

It’s then on to the 1830 property ‘Westham’.

Ph 1300 760 276. Bookings essential. Tickets, from $60.

OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARRAMATTA Cavalcade Of History & Fashion: A New Look: A New Generation — Parade APRIL 30TH A nostalgic fashion journey from 1945 to 1975, from the Cavalcade of History & Fashion. Ph (02) 9635 8149.

Email info@friendsofogh.com.

Parramatta Park, Parramatta, 2–3pm.

NOWRA COUNTRY WEEKEND National Trust NSW coach tour from Sydney, accommodation and all costs included MAY 5TH–7TH

Self-drive tour MAY 6TH–7TH Nowra, on the southern bank of the Shoalhaven River, is close to the south coast, which is renowned for its beauty and lush farmland. From rural homesteads to exquisite gardens, historic outhouses and an artist’s studio, there’s so much to see and do. On Saturday view six private homes in Terara opened exclusively for National Trust members. Three properties in Tapitallee, Cambewarra and Nowra await you on Sunday, including the oldest house in Cambewarra Village. Enjoy lunches and dinners in beautiful surroundings with your friends, all arranged by the National Trust NSW. Ph (02) 9363 2401. Bookings essential. Tickets $85 NT members for self drive; from $650 NT members for coach tour, all inclusive.

NSW PARLIAMENT & GOVERNMENT HOUSE Tour MAY 19TH Meet in the lobby of Parliament House, Macquarie Street.

Explore these two highly significant, historic buildings, hearing their histories from

EVERGLADES HISTORIC HOUSE

Wunderkammer At Everglades JUNE 10TH–AUGUST 27TH Mysterious and amusing, Wunderkammer translates from German as Cabinet of Wonder, or Curiosity. Following in the tradition of wealthy Renaissance Europeans, who collected symbols to amuse and provoke discussion, Rod McRae has reimagined the Wunderkammer to present the dangers facing the rare and exotic in today’s global environment. Don’t miss the Faux Fur luncheon and talk.

Ph (02) 4784 1938. Email everglades@nationaltrust.com. au. 37 Everglades Ave, Leura.

knowledgeable and passionate guides. See the ‘bear pit’ where robust debate takes place and visit the secret foundations of the original Rum Hospital.

A short walk down Macquarie Street takes you to Government House where the grandeur of the building and its position by the Harbour will sweep you away. Morning tea at Parliament House. Ph (02) 9363 2401. Enquiries, 0417 433 306. Bookings essential.

Tickets from $45.

OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARRAMATTA What is Governance?

The Forum MAY 20TH Speakers include Andrew Tink (historian, author and former NSW politician) and Amanda Chadwick (Administrator, City of Parramatta), who will explore the concept of governance over 200 years.

Includes a two-course lunch provided by Lachlan’s Restaurant. Ph (02) 9635 8149.

Bookings www.eventbrite.com. au/e/what-is-governance-aforum-celebrating-50-years-ofold-government-housetickets-30544992896. Tickets $50, includes lunch. Lachlan’s, Parramatta Park, Parramatta.

EVENTS

NATIONAL TRUST NSW WAY HOLIDAY TOURS Explore the histories and cultures of faraway lands in comfort and style. Enjoy wonderful scenery, foods and wines, with our experienced National Trust guides, and make new friends in our small groups of people who share your own interests and love of

RUNNYMEDE

High Teas MAY 2ND, 7TH, 9TH, 14TH, 16TH, 21ST, 28TH Traditional high tea is served in the drawing room.

Ph (03) 6278 1269. Tickets $30. Bookings essential.

61 Bay Road, New Town. 2.30pm.

PHOTOGRAPHER MARNIE HAWSON

Runnymede in Hobart, a beautifully preserved 1840 whaling captain’s house, serves delicious high teas in the drawing room.

travel. By taking our tours you are supporting the National Trust NSW — and heritage everywhere!

SOUTHERN IRELAND JULY 3RD–17TH Southern Ireland is the land of leprechauns, green fields and rolling hills. This tour is a magical blend of Celtic mythology, some of the most beautiful gardens and wildflowers you will ever see, breathtaking scenery and visits to castles, manor houses and monasteries. Kiss the Blarney Stone, visit medieval Kilkenny, Cobh and Killarney as well as the beautiful Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula and the Cliffs of Mohr. Marvel at the Book of Kells, the magnificent horses of the Irish National Stud and the world famous Japanese Gardens.

Bookings/enquiries: David Smith, Travel on Capri, phone 1800 679 066.

PIEDMONT, ITALY: The home of ‘slow food’ MAY 21ST–30TH, 2018 An exciting new tour with our ever-popular Italian hosts, Barbara and Ugo Mariotti.

Unpack only twice as we explore the birthplace of the ‘slow food’ movement and its emphasis on the freshest possible regional food, lovingly prepared. This scenic region of Italy is bounded on three sides by the European Alps, spreading out to the fertile plains of the Po River Valley.

Expressions of interest: David

Smith, Travel on Capri, phone 1800 679 066.

SCOTTISH ISLES AND HIGHLANDS JUNE 2ND–15TH, 2018 The return of one of our most popular and unique tours, with a coach tour of some of Scotland’s most ancient castles and historic sites. Travel by coach from majestic Edinburgh to St Andrews and Aberdeen, to Orkney and Oban, the gateway to the islands. There we board a fishing boat lovingly converted to combine romance with luxury while we cruise to the Hebrides and the beautiful Isle of Mull. Expressions of interest: David Smith, Travel on Capri, phone 1800 679 066.

FRANKLIN HOUSE/ST JAMES CHURCH Heritage Festival — Blessing of the Bonnets MAY 14TH Franklin Village will be celebrating the lives of convict women from the area at a Blessing of the Bonnets at St James Church, Youngtown, at 11am. This will be followed by a light lunch at Franklin House at 12.30pm.

Bookings essential, ph (03) 6344 7824. Tickets $15.

413 Hobart Road. nationaltrust.org.au/tas

NATIONAL TRUST NSW HOUSE INSPECTIONS Paddington Day JUNE 6TH Enjoy three private properties in what is celebrated as the largest intact Victorian suburb in the southern hemisphere.

Tree-lined streets, meticulously conserved Victoriana combined with innovative interpretations in tune with 21st-century lifestyles. Plenty of places to graze, shop,and make a whole day out of it.

Ph (02) 9363 2401. Tickets $38, NT members only.

Bookings essential.

TOUR: DR CHAU CHAK WING BUILDING, UTS BUSINESS SCHOOL JUNE 14TH, JULY 26TH Meet at Concierge Desk, Dr Chau Chak Wing, Building 8.

The first Australian building designed by internationally renowned architect, Frank Gehry, and a key element of the $1 billion redevelopment of the University of Technology.

Designing ‘from the inside out’, Gehry’s designs for the UTS Business School are based on the concept of a treehouse, where people can undertake quiet, focused work in offices and other rooms in the ‘branches’, then meet in formal and informal social spaces in the ‘trunk’. Ph (02) 9363 2401. Bookings essential.

Tickets from $45. 14–28 Ultimo Road, Sydney.

TASMANIA

NORMAN LINDSAY GALLERY Wine and Jazz Festival MAY 27TH The premier jazz and wine event in the Blue Mountains, enjoyed not just by connoisseurs but by everyone who loves wine, jazz and a great day out with friends. Music by Galapagos Duck, quality NSW wines for tasting and an auction at 3pm.

Ph (02) 4751 1067. Email info@normanlindsay.com.au.

Tickets $35. 14 Norman Lindsay Crescent, Faulconbridge. Open 11am.

FRANKLIN HOUSE Mother’s Day High Tea MAY 14TH Celebrate mothers everywhere with a delicious high tea.

Bookings essential, ph (03) 6344 7824. Tickets $20.

413 Hobart Road, Youngtown. 2pm.

CLARENDON HOUSE Design Tas x National Trust Tasmania APRIL 21ST The Trust and Design Tasmania are celebrating 25 years of the Tasmanian Wood Collection with this special In Conversation event.

Bookings essential, ph (03) 6398 6220. Tickets $30.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

97

WA nationaltrust.org.au/wa

PENINSULA FARM Easter Egg Trail APRIL 15TH Join us for the family Easter Trail around the grounds, including an egg trail and Easter craft.

Ph (08) 9321 6088.

Entry from $3.

Johnson Road, Maylands.

10am, 12pm, 2pm.

CITY OF PERTH LIBRARY Balbuk’s Country APRIL 19TH–MAY 17TH WA Inspired Art Quilt group has created a new range of superb quilts to recognise Noongar Whadjuk activist Fanny Balbuk Yooreel.

Ph 1300 THE LIBRARY. 573 Hay Street, Perth.

OLD OBSERVATORY Old Obs Afternoon Tours APRIL 22ND, 29TH, MAY 6TH, 13TH, 20TH Take a tour of this fascinating building, once the residence for the original Perth Observatory, still surrounded by evidence of the astrological and weather readings taken here from the 1890s–1950s. 4 Havelock Street, West Perth. 1pm, 3pm.

WOODBRIDGE Guildford to Gallipoli APRIL 25TH, 27TH Gresley and Wilfred Harper grew up in this gracious home.

Accomplished horsemen, the brothers enlisted in the 10th Light Horse during WW1.

Their letters and postcards home detailed their journey to Gallipoli. After a one-hour presentation there is a tour of their childhood home. Ph (08) 9321 6088, bookings essential.

Tickets from $5. Ford Street, Woodbridge. 10.30–11.30am.

OLD OBSERVATORY Ask the Expert Jewellery & Smalls Antique Show APRIL 29TH Colonial jewellery expert Trevor Hancock will be able to tell you whether that magnificent brooch Grandma left you really

98 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

explores the life of Fanny Balbuk Yooreel and her commitment to her land and people, as she experienced early colonisation. It will be guided

by Noongar Elder women.

Bookings essential. Ph 1300 THE LIBRARY. 573 Hay Street, Perth. 12.30pm, 5.30pm.

The historical Gallop House in Dalkeith will be hosting a musical Open Day on May 6th.

GALLOP HOUSE

Musical Moments at Gallop House MAY 20TH A unique type of music ‘machine’ will be demonstrated at the Open Day at Gallop House. There will also be a chance for limited access to the newly conserved house and grounds.

Ph (08) 9321 6088. 22 Birdswood Parade, Dalkeith. 11am–4pm.

is as precious as she told you it was. Stay for the chance to buy a beautiful piece. Bring a picnic and enjoy the grounds. Event run in conjunction with Trinity Antiques. 4 Havelock Street, West Perth. 10.30am–3.30pm.

CENTRAL GREENOUGH Traditional Skills Demonstration Day MAY 3RD Master Stonemason Keith McAllister will explain and demonstrate traditional masonry conservation skills for heritage buildings.

Ph (08) 9926 1084. Tickets $7.

Brand Highway, Greenough.

9.30am–12pm, 12.45pm–3pm.

SAMSON HOUSE Women’s Voices in Samson House MAY 5TH, 12TH Fanny, Mary, Daphne and Rita: learn more about these women when you look inside Samson House, one of Fremantle’s ‘prettiest little villas’ built for Mary in the 1890s. Ph (08) 9321 6088. Corner Ellen & Ord Streets, Fremantle. 1–3pm.

Guildford to Gallipoli at Woodbrige.

EAST PERTH CEMETERIES Giving the Dead a Voice MAY 7TH Hear fascinating stories uncovered during research of those buried in East Perth Cemeteries. Then tour the cemeteries to find the graves of some of those they refer to.

Ph (08) 9321 6088. Bronte Street, East Perth. 2–3pm.

OLD BLYTHEWOOD Letters to the Editor MAY 7TH, 21ST Listen to Old Blythewood Warden Vince Taylor’s talk on the shenanigans of early settlers and personalities of the Peel region as told through their letters to the newspaper editors of the day. Ph (08) 9531 1485. Tickets from $5.

Southwest Hwy, Pinjarra. 10am.

CITY OF PERTH LIBRARY A Passionate Life: the extraordinary Fanny Balbuk Yooreel MAY 11TH On the 110th anniversary of her death, this presentation

PENINSULA FARM Giving Children a Voice MAY 14TH Peninsula Farm is holding an open day which gives a voice to children — those who lived in the house and those who visit today. Ph (08) 9321 6088.

Johnson Road, Maylands.

10am–4pm.

EAST PERTH CEMETERIES Looking for the Ledgers MAY 21ST Bright red letterboxes can still be found in Perth bearing the name Ledger, and a descendant has researched the family that established the foundry. But why is the talk in East Perth Cemeteries? Come to find out the connection and hear about a once-shameful family secret.

Ph (08) 9321 6088. Bronte Street, East Perth. 2–3pm.

WONNERUP VOICES JUNE 6TH Enter a bygone era of country living at beautifully conserved Old Blythewood (Pinjarra) and Wonnerup (Busselton) on an all-day bus tour. Lunch included.

Discover Wonnerup, Old Blythewood, Busselton Jetty and Lake Clifton Thrombolites. Book via (08) 9321 6088 or bit.ly/ wonntour. Tickets from $79.

Departs The Old Observatory, 4 Havelock Street, West Perth.

PENINSULA FARM

ANZAC Sunset Ceremony APRIL 25TH Many WA families were affected by the Great War, losing a brother, son, uncle, husband, sweetheart or father. The Hardeys were one: Corporal Joe Hardey was killed at Pozieres in July 2017. He was named for his grandfather, the first European owner of Peninsula Farm, which makes this a fitting place to remember all Australians and New Zealanders who served in conflicts and peace keeping operations. Join us on the banks of the Swan River for this moving ceremony.

Ph (08) 9321 6088. 5pm. Johnson Road, Maylands.

EVENTS

WOLSTON FARMHOUSE

Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea MAY 14TH With the enduring appeal of the classic wide verandah overlooking lush green farmland, Wolston Farmhouse is the perfect place to take mum and enjoy a beautiful farmhouse afternoon tea of delectable sweet and savoury treats. Bookings via (07) 5534 0803 or email info@nationaltrustqld.org 11am–3pm.

Wolston Farmhouse in Wacol is Brisbane’s oldest residential farmhouse.

PHOTOGRAPHER LIZ LOOKER, KARA ROSENLUND

nationaltrust.org.au/qld

QUEENSLAND

CURRUMBIN WILDLIFE SANCTUARY Anzac Eve Symbolic Sleepout APRIL 24TH Currumbin RSL, together with the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, is offering the opportunity to sleep out under the stars at the Sanctuary, as a symbolic gesture to the significance of Gallipoli. All proceeds raised from the event will go to veterans’ welfare. Enjoy entertainment throughout the night, parking and exclusive access at the Anzac Day Dawn Service at Elephant Rock Currumbin. Tickets $59. Visit australiaremembers.com.au.

28 Tomewin Street, Currumbin.

Open from 12pm.

CURRUMBIN WILDLIFE HOSPITAL FOUNDATION Sanctuary Under the Stars Gala Dinner APRIL 29TH Proudly presented by The Star Gold Coast, join us at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary for an unforgettable evening under the stars, where you will meet the Hospital Heroes and some of our amazing wildlife, whilst enjoying exceptional entertainment and exquisite dining. Donate via Live and Silent auctions, with all proceeds raised going

to the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital. Bookings via goldcoasttickets.com.au/ event/4331 or call (07) 5534 0882. Email ghiggs@cws.org.au.

GREAT HOUSES OF IPSWICH Great Houses of Ipswich MAY 13TH An opportunity awaits you to view some of the most beautiful privately owned and outstanding heritage houses in the Ipswich area. Take a sneak peek inside three homes to see how these heritage-lovers have maintained these properties.

Email greathousesipswich@ gmail.com. Tickets $5.

10am–3pm.

NATIONAL TRUST QUEENSLAND GALA DINNER MAY 20TH Join us for an inspiring evening to celebrate the 2017 Australian Heritage Festival. Enjoy exceptional entertainment and exquisite dining in one of Brisbane’s most beautiful venues, Brisbane City Hall, and celebrate with us as we present the Queensland Heritage Awards, recognising outstanding achievements in conservation and heritage throughout Queensland communities. Special guest appearances by Brisbane’s own Naomi Price and Luke Kennedy. There will also be a silent auction and major

CURRUMBIN WILDLIFE SANCTUARY Easter Fun for Everyone APRIL 14TH–17TH With adults at kids’ prices, it’s fun for everyone this Easter long weekend. Fun Easter activities for the kids: see Blinky Bill and friends after the show for a special treat!

Happy Easter to our bilbies who are shy but oh so sweet!

Visit currumbinsanctuary.com.au. Tickets $35.

28 Tomewin Street, Currumbin. Open 8am–5pm.

Bring the kids along for some Easter fun at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

prize raffle with all proceeds raised in support of Wolston Farmhouse.

Email info@nationaltrustqld. org. Tickets from $225.

Bookings via brisbanetickets. com.au/event/4328. Brisbane City Hall, 64 Adelaide Street.

TOOWOOMBA OPEN HOUSE 2017 MAY 28TH Toowoomba Open House is a free-of-charge event that invites visitors to open the doors of public and private buildings and places of architectural, historical or environmental significance.

Visit facebook.com/ toowoombaopenhouse for details.

JAMES COOK MUSEUM Cooktown Discovery Festival JUNE 9TH–11TH Cooktown comes alive with history, cultural exhibits, music, dance, crafts and more at the annual festival. See a full re-enactment of the landing of Captain James Cook and his first meeting with the Guugu Yimithirr people as well as celebrations throughout the weekend. A visit to the Trust’s James Cook Museum is a must!

For more information regarding the Cooktown Discovery Festival, visit www.cooktowndiscovery.com CURRUMBIN WILDLIFE HOSPITAL Hospital Open Day JULY 29TH Go behind the scenes at one of the busiest wildlife hospitals in the world. Visitors can watch our Hospital Heroes in action, as well as tour through the purpose-built rehabilitation facilities, along with fun activities for the kids.

Visit www.cwhf.org.au Entry by gold coin donation.

27 Millers Drive, Currumbin.

10am–2pm.

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

Go to nationaltrust.org.au/ donate/.

EVENTS

SA

nationaltrust.org.au/sa

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM Looking Up at Ayers House APRIL 18TH The painted decoration at Ayers House is considered to be the finest in Australia. Created for Henry Ayers by eminent Scottish decorative artist Charles Gow in the 1870s, these works were lost for many years. Heritage conservation architect Dr Donald Ellsmore will introduce these works and explain their restoration.

Bookings www.trybooking.com/ OTKR. Ph (08) 8223 1234.

Email ayershouse@ nationaltrustsa.org.au.

Tickets $15. 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. 5.30pm–7pm.

180TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION:

THE NAMING OF ADELAIDE’S FIRST STREETS & SQUARES MAY 23rd

Join us in raising a toast to those immortalised in the street names of Adelaide on this day in 1837. Enjoy a passing parade of images and engaging talks from author Dr Jeff Nicholas and descendants of those memorialised in our city’s street names. Includes wine, nibbles and door prizes.

Bookings, www.trybooking.com/ OUIT. Ph (08) 8202 9200.

Tickets $30. SAHMRI Building, North Terrace, Adelaide.

5.30pm–8.30pm.

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM The Fabulous Gaze: Ayers House Family Ceiling Tour APRIL 22ND All ceilings aren’t the same.

At Ayers House there are low and high ones and ones painted with gold. Explore the ceilings and find out what they reveal about power and purpose. Play Ceiling–Match Mystery then take inspiration from their ornate decoration to design your own stencilling.

Ages 6+.

Bookings essential, www. trybooking.com/OUIR.

THE HAHNDORF PIONEER WOMEN’S TRAIL WALK FROM HAHNDORF TO BEAUMONT MAY 7TH The Pioneer Women’s Trail Walk honours the early European settlers from Hahndorf who supplied Adelaide with fresh produce at a time when most foodstuffs had to be imported into South Australia. The walking trail has been developed between Verdun and Beaumont and traverses the Mt Lofty Ranges, passing through the townships of Bridgewater, Stirling and Crafers.

There’s a range of walks to choose from, from six to 26 kilometres.

Bookings essential, www.trybookings.com/OPKM. Email hahndorfnationaltrust@gmail.com. Tickets $15. 8am–4.30pm.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email ayershouse@nationaltrustsa. org.au. Tickets $15.

288 North Terrace, Adelaide.

10am–11.30am, 1pm–2.30pm.

LUXURY DAY TOUR The Best of Town and Country Bus Tour APRIL 23RD, MAY 2ND Experience the best of colonial South Australia on an exclusive guided excursion to two of our most delightful heritage places.

Visit Ayers House, the city’s grandest Victorian era mansion, then journey to the beautiful gardens and home of the historic pastoral property, Anlaby Station.

Morning tea and lunch is included. Bookings essential, www.trybooking.com/OUIP. Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email ayershouse@nationaltrustsa. org.au. Tickets $110.

288 North Terrace, Adelaide.

8.45am–5.30pm.

The garden at Beaumont House in Adelaide dates back more than 160 years.

BEAUMONT HOUSE Victoriana: Old Fashioned Day of Play APRIL 30TH Take the children back to the Victorian era for a day of old fashioned games and play!

Enjoy stories, music and dress-ups, craft activities, feed baby farm animals and try some parlour and outdoor games from long ago.

Refreshments including Devonshire teas will be available. Ph (08) 8202 9200.

Email events@nationaltrustsa. org.au. Entry $5.

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

Z WARD: BEHIND THE WALLS MAY 6TH & 20TH Go behind the walls of the notorious Z Ward at the former Glenside Mental Hospital. For almost 90 years it was home to those classified as ‘criminally

BEAUMONT HOUSE

Heritage Garden Tour MAY 5TH

Join us for a guided tour of one of Adelaide’s finest heritage gardens in its autumnal glory. As featured on ABC-TV’s Gardening Australia, this Mediterranean garden dates back more than 160 years. Included is a one-hour tour and a delicious Devonshire tea. Bookings essential, ph (08) 8202 9200 or visit www. trybooking.com/OTMS. Email events@nationaltrustsa.org.au.

Tickets $15. 631 Glynburn Road, Beaumont. Tours at 10am, 11am and 12noon.

PHOTOGRAPH MARNIE HAWSON

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM Ayers House After Dark MAY 12TH & 26TH Step back in time to 1876 and join Butler (Mr Wilkins), Housekeeper (Mrs Galvin) and Cook (Mrs Jenkins) on this special visit to Ayers House.

The Master and Lady are out for the evening and the staff are ready to show you through as they prepare for a fictional upcoming State Dinner.

Bookings essential, www. trybooking.com/MAGF. Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email ayershouse@ nationaltrustsa.org.au.

Tickets $20. 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. 6.30pm–7.30pm.

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM Ayers House Family Open Day MAY 20TH & 21ST Passed by Ayers House a thousand times? Seize this chance to come inside!

Explore the nooks and crannies of Adelaide’s finest Victorianera mansion. Learn what life was like in the 19th century, discover secret treasures and dress up in Victorian garb. Part of the 2017 Dream Big Festival.

Ph (08) 8223 1234. Email ayershouse@nationaltrustsa.

Heritage Harvest: Olive Oil MAY 21ST

Join us amongst the historic olive groves planted by Sir Samuel Davenport in the 1860s for a harvest, pickling and tasting day.

Take part in harvesting, preserving and enjoying our edible heritage.

Ph (08) 8202 9200. Email events@nationaltrustsa.org.au.

Entry $10. 631 Glynburn Road, Beaumont. 11am–4pm.

org.au. 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. 10am–3.30pm.

AYERS HOUSE MUSEUM Preserving Preserves: Australian Marmalade Awards MAY 28TH Making and sharing recipes is one of the ways we celebrate and enjoy our cultural heritage.

Join us for an afternoon of discussion and tasting of South Australia’s favourite preserves (and full Devonshire tea) as we launch the 2017 Awards.

Bring your favourite recipe to share! Ph (08) 8223 1234.

Email ayershouse@ nationaltrustsa.org.au.

Entry $15. 288 North Terrace, Adelaide. 1–4pm.

For more information about Australian Heritage Festival events in South Australia visit www. nationaltrust.org.au/ahf/sa.

GUNGAHLIN HOMESTEAD Heritage Festival Open Day APRIL 22ND Visit Gungahlin Homestead and learn about this former pastoral property dating from the 19th century, well before Canberra was established.

The complex includes the Homestead, a carriage loop, outbuildings and remnants of a Victorian garden. The Homestead was built in two major stages; a rendered brick Georgian house in 1862–65 and the grand sandstone Victorian addition of 1883 nationaltrust.org.au/act

BURNSIDE WALKS MOBILE APP LAUNCH MAY 10TH Join us on a walk from the past into the future. Burnside Council, Burnside Historical Society and the National Trust have collaborated to produce a mobile app guiding walkers around places of heritage and historical interest in the City of Burnside. Official launch and guided walk from St David’s Church. Ph (08) 8202 9200. St David’s Church, 484–496 Glynburn Road, Burnside. 11am.

BEAUMONT HOUSE

ACT

insane’ on the overlapping edges of criminality and mental illness. Explore the architecture and social history of this remarkable building. Bookings essential, www.trybooking. com/KJDM. Ph (08) 8223 1234.

Tickets $15. Enter from 63 Conyngham St, Glenside. 2pm.

Canberra’s Gungahlin Homestead, circa 1890.

by Edward Crace. Tours of the building will be conducted throughout the day by guides familiar with the history and architecture of this important place in Canberra’s heritage.

You can also learn about recent times at Gungahlin Homestead, which has been used as a scientific wildlife research station by CSIRO and is now home for Soldier On, our partner for this Open Day. Entry by gold coin donation.

44 Bellenden Street, Crace.

10am–3pm.

URBAN POLARIS APRIL 29TH The National Trust Urban Polaris is a unique seven-hour cycling and navigation event set in and around Canberra.

The event is undertaken in pairs and consists of teams finding the fastest route throughout a series of control points that are spread all around the Canberra region.

Ph 0422 413 469. Email urbanpolarisact@gmail.com.

Start and finish point is at the Former Transport Depot (Home of the Old Bus Depot Markets), off Wentworth Avenue, Kingston. Registration check in starts from 6am.

AUTUMN 2017 / T R U S T

101

LAST WORD

TILI WIRU

Traditional grass WEAVING from Central AUSTRALIA shines a new light on modern interior DESIGN.

Weaver Ester Giles collecting native seedpods to decorate baskets, sculptures and lampshades. The lampshades (left) are made from coloured raffia and native grasses and seeds. ABOVE: Yangi Yangi Fox with a bag filled with native grasses collected in Central Australia.

102 T R U S T / AUTUMN 2017

TILI WIRU means beautiful light and is the name given to light and lampshades made in the Red Centre of Australia by Indigenous women. These colourful woven shades transform any illumination into a beautiful light. Each is a unique piece made by members of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. ‘Tjanpi’ is a word for grass and celebrates the natural materials of the desert.

The Aboriginal weavers use natural fibres they gather from local grasslands, combined with raffia and ornamented with handmade beads, which include natural seeds and painted native seedpods.

The Tjanpi Desert Weavers was set up by the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council 12 years ago to provide income for more than 400 Aboriginal women artists from 26 remote communities on the NPY lands. Each unique piece is produced as the women work together while they talk, laugh and share stories.

In the past five years, a handful of Tjanpi weavers have turned their skills to crafting light shades in a joint project with Australian furniture and homeware designers Koskela, based in Sydney.

The Tili Wiru weavers live in the red sand deserts near Alice Springs. Their use of local materials along with brightly dyed raffia produce functional sculptural pieces imbued with the colours of the Australian desert. Each piece is intricately woven and no two pieces are the same.

The Tili Wiru shades are available in three sizes: large (600mm diameter by 650mm high), medium (430mm by 370mm) and small (230mm by 240mm). A percentage from the sale of each piece is used to further develop Indigenous projects.

For more information visit koskela.com.au and tjanpi.com.au

PHOTOGRAPHERS ANIA FREE, ALEX CRAIG

FROM LEFT: Out gathering grasses; a selection of colourful light and lampshades made by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers; Molly Miller and Mel Darr collect native grasses or ‘tjanpi’ to use in their weaving.

MELBOURNE

A Fair to Remember … at Labassa

4-7 May 2017 The Australian Antique & Art Dealers Association, in conjunction with the National Trust of Australia present antiques & art of many styles displayed within this outstanding Victorian era mansion and all for sale!

Gala Previews | Thursday 4 May (in 2 sessions) 6-7:30pm & 7:30pm-9pm General Admission | Friday 5 & Saturday 6 May 10am-5pm | Sunday 7 May 10am-4pm.

Tickets online or at the door Labassa, 2 Manor Grove, Caulfield North VIC 3161 aaada.org.au/labassa PERTH

Ask the Experts Antique Show… at The Old Observatory

29 April 2017 Was that magnificent brooch Grandma left you really as precious as she always said? This is your chance to find out together with talks on specialty areas of antique collecting and styles and the opportunity to purchase a treasure from the splendid pieces on display. *Please note, valuations will be informal only and not suitable for insurance or other investment purposes.

Saturday 29 April 2017, 10.30am – 3.30pm This is a free event The Old Observatory, 4 Havelock St, West Perth WA 6005 aaada.org.au/asktheexperts

NATIONAL TRUST aaada.org.au | +61 3 9576 2275 | info@aaada.org.au | #aaada

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary Voted one of the Gold Coast’s most popular tourist destinations, Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is the crown jewel of the National Trust of Australia (Queensland) properties. As one of Queensland’s earliest nature-based tourist destinations, the Sanctuary is a physical embodiment of everything the National Trust represents: dedication to conserving our nation’s Indigenous, natural and historic heritage and culture.

The Sanctuary was established in 1947 by beekeeper and flower-grower, Alex Griffiths. Instead of hunting or displacing the flocks of wild lorikeets that were ravaging his prized blooms, Griffiths redirected their attention by providing regular feedings each day.

These feedings quickly gained popularity amongst locals and tourists alike, and thus, the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary was born.

Now known as Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, it has have grown to over 27 hectares with live shows daily, an amazing high-ropes course, Segway tours, native animals to hold and a rainforest to explore.

National Trust members receive free entry into the Sanctuary.

The rainbow lorikeets are still fed daily at 8.00am and 4.00pm. The Sanctuary opens 8.00 am - 5.00 pm 7 days (Closed Christmas Day, Anzac Day).

CurrumbinSanctuary.com.au 28 Tomewin Street, Currumbin.