1999 State Heritage Convention Report

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

WORKING TOGETHER: SHARED STANDARDS FOR THE FUTURE

by Dr Jenny Gregory President, National Trust of Australia (WA)

We are a diverse group - we come from different backgrounds within the field of heritage. We represent natural heritage, indigenous heritage and European cultural heritage in Australia. We know that the separation of these strands of heritage represents considerable duplication of effort, but we know also that, within each strand, there are special needs and considerations. I see this State Heritage Convention as an opportunity to grapple with these issues, to build on the work that has already been done at the National Heritage Convention in Canberra, and to bring some of the special considerations that exist in this part of Australia to the notice of the Australian Heritage Commission.

All of us here bring different expertise to this convention. Some of us know a great deal about our natural heritage, some know a great deal about indigenous heritage, some know a great deal about European cultural heritage. I would suggest, however, that few of us know very much about all three. In this state, except perhaps at the level of local government, our work has been quite separate. In consequence, this convention gives each of us a unique opportunity to learn more of each other's areas of expertise and each other's concerns. It is also a time during which we can draw attention to and isolate those points of difference that exist between our differing views of Australia's heritage.

I am an academic historian, with expertise in the area of European cultural heritage. My role as an historian is to critically analyse the past, and to draw lessons from the past for the present. Hence it seems most appropriate that, at this our inaugural State Heritage Convention, I should reflect on the way our understanding of European cultural heritage has developed and tease out some of the more general themes that may be relevant to our discussions. I work from the premise that we cannot know where we are going, unless we understand where we have come from.

When I analyse the changes that have taken place in our understanding of European cultural heritage over the past forty years, and reflect on the different interest groups, once deeply suspicious of each other, that today work together harmoniously, I am astonished by the distance we have travelled. There are lessons for us all in this journey. They have a bearing on our deliberations as we seek not only to endorse standards that will be acceptable to all fields of heritage, but also to chart a new course

During the ninetieth century it was a common lament of Australian colonists that 'Australian had no history'. Tom Griffiths in his award winning history Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia gives the example of the musings of an old shepherd whose words were documented in the late nineteenth century

'It's a queer country this Australia!' he said, 'I've wondered as I've been going along what was the beginning of it. Talk of its being new! Seems to me that it's as old as the world before Adam, and that it was just forgotten…It's creepy like… As you walk on and on, there's a feeling comes over you that you've gone back to Genesis… there's no trace of man…no animals to speak of except kangaroos - and they're just monstrosities.

This response to the Australian continent is typical of the feelings of many early settlers. Coming from a European background of close settlement, of land ploughed and tilled for generations, they were unable to read the land, unable to recognise the more subtle traces of human usage, unable to accept even unfamiliar animals.

There was also another side of this - a collective fear and guilt - which underlies the old shepherd's words - 'there's no trace of man'. This is also reflected in the words of many other writers. Here is one, writing at the turn of the century, describing the 'brooding' quality of the trees in the Victorian bush

when dusk enveloped the ridges and gullies on dull days in winter. The ironbarks …were, perhaps, revengeful phantoms of the black men who had once frequented these forests.

If we decode statements like this we reveal memories of massacre and inhumanity, an 'ethnic cleansing' of horrific proportions. No wonder our nineteenth century settlers preferred to believe that Australia had no real history, no heritage. No wonder that the historical narratives, the stories of the past, that did develop were structured in such a way that indigenous people were virtually banished.

But silence was not restricted to indigenous peoples. Until very recently memories of our convict ancestors were also suppressed. A number of historians have suggested, for example, that the destruction, in 1897 by fire, of much of the penal settlement of Port Arthur - a place first made infamous by the horrendous descriptions in Marcus Clark's novel For the term of his natural life - was welcomed as a way of neutralising past horrors. Interestingly this was also a reaction from many to the massacres at Port Arthur just three years ago - we should bulldoze the lot.

Out of sight, out of mind. Horrors will disappear if we ignore them. And so Australians hid their convict ancestry - it was the way they coped with the memories and the shame of the flogging triangle and the lash. A classic example of suppression of convict memories occurred in Western Australia in 1934, when members of an historical society suppressed letters, discovered in the walls of the old Toodyay Gaol, to a convict from his wife in England. Their argument was that Western Australia 'was founded as a free colony by gentlefolk; the convicts came later and unwanted, and should not be associated with it'. There are many similar examples and one can mount a strong case for the argument that the attitude of most nineteenth century white Australians to their heritage was characterised by silence and suppression.

There was not much interest in our physical cultural heritage until after 1900 when buildings began to acquire sufficient age to arouse interest. Historian Graeme Davison puts the first interest down to a fire in Pitt St Sydney in the 1890s, which destroyed several colonial buildings, and then to the outbreak of bubonic plague in the slums of Sydney in the early years of the century, which resulted in slum clearance and thus the demolition of part of the Rocks. But he also suggests that with the turn of the century came a rise in antiquarianism with its fascination for the romance of Australia's colonial past and our bunyip aristocracy who built grand country homesteads in imitation of the British aristocracy.

Until as recently as the 1960s heritage in Australia was largely concerned with the depiction of an ideal world. Anything disagreeable in our heritage was characterised by silence and suppression, while anything agreeable (and preferably romantic) was celebrated and promoted. And it was into this atmosphere of silence, suppression and boosterism that the National Trust was born in Australia.

The National Trust had begun in England in the 1890s when the social reformer, Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley began a campaign to stop the destruction of open spaces (like the Lake District) and historically significant buildings. They wanted to form a society along the lines of powerful preservation societies in the United States, such as the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which pioneered the concept of house museums.

Initially they favoured the idea of establishing a joint stock company, rather than a trust, but they decided that would appear too commercial. They wanted to emphasize the benevolent character of the new society. The matter was clinched when Octavia Hill suggested that if they called it a trust, rather than a company, people would be more likely to forgive its blunders!

The Trust did not begin in Australia until 1947 when it was formed in NSW. The idea of the past as a trust or legacy (a heritage) bequeathed by one's forebears and handed on to one's descendants appealed strongly to generation that had witnessed the devastation of World War II. It was almost ten years before the Trust was established in Victoria and this was in response to the development boom that accompanied the 1956 Olympics. Melbourne was terrified of looking old fashioned in a western world dominated by the tenets of progress and modernism and then even architects seemed to believe that that everything new was good and everything old was bad.

In 1959 the National Trust was established in Western Australia. The early years of the Trust in Western Australia remain a mystery and we desperately need an analysis of its history. It may provide us with some surprises for amongst the first buildings to be classified by the Trust was Fremantle Prison. This is intriguing as this occurred during a period when convictism was generally hidden away. And certainly few - except those with a ghoulish fascination with hanging - wanted to know about the criminals incarcerated in the prison.

Despite the aberration of the classification of Fremantle Prison, the National Trust of the 1960s and 70s was generally characterised by the stately homes syndrome. Sydney had Elizabeth Bay House, Melbourne had Ripponlea, Perth had Woodbridge. Indeed Davison has argued that its main support came from 'the hounds tooth jacket and cashmere twin set and pearls brigade' - Anglophiles from the upper middle class. But this aura of gentility did not prevent the Trust acting as a shrewd pressure group. Its members had useful contacts with those in positions of power. Many were in positions of power. We in Western Australia, for example, were fortunate to have amongst the Trust's early members, Ian Medcalf, rising politician and later Attorney General.

Silence, suppression, overlaid by boosterism, was now accompanied by a stately homes syndrome providing a view of the past that was underpinned by Anglo-centricity and class bias. It was a view from the top.

In the late 1960s however this view came under challenge, most notably in the battle for the inner suburbs that occurred in cities throughout Australia and, indeed, in other major western cities. In most Australian cities the inner suburbs had been a refuge for successive waves of migrant tenants. These suburbs became gentrified as young professionals, recognising their appeal (closeness to the city, to university, and cheap) began moving in, doing up and forming residents' action groups. Many leaders of the Australian heritage movement were part of this push. The late Max Kelly, Professor of History at Macquarie University, a leading light in the battle for Paddington in the 1960s and at one time President of the National Trust of NSW, is an example.

Gentrification of the inner suburbs followed the rise of social history in which, perhaps the most influential historian from the social history movement of the 1960s, E.P Thompson, charged historians with the task of 'rescuing the poor and oppressed from the enormous condescension of history'. Instead of a singular focus on great men and great events, historians should consider the lives of the working class people. Within a few years not only working lives, but also the workplaces, the cottages and terraces of urban workers and artisans were attracting the attention of historians.

With the early 1970s came Trade Union involvement in the heritage movement in Australia, notably the Builders' Labourers Federation and their 'green bans' especially in Sydney where the great heritage campaigns to Save the Rocks, Woolloomooloo, Glebe, and Centennial Park occurred. These campaigns were largely successful. But more than the radicalism of barricades, picket lines, militancy, their campaigns also got great media coverage and galvanised public opinion. Suddenly everyone had an opinion about heritage. Silence, suppression, boosterism, the stately homes syndrome - the view from the top - were challenged by a new ideal as history from below began to make an impact. Notions of European cultural heritage were gradually freeing themselves from a view that represented upper middle class ideals alone. A more egalitarian view of European cultural heritage was surfacing.

By this time the National Trust had been enshrined in state legislation in most states and the movement had gained sufficient national support to form the Australian Council of National Trusts, which held its first meeting in February 1965. But although the Trust was on the national map, it had no formal legislative power to enforce its recommendations.

The growth of the Trust, was accompanied by a growing professional involvement in heritage and the growth of ICOMOS (the International Council of Monuments and Sites) in Australia. ICOMOS is part of UNESCO and was set up 1965. It adopted the Venice Charter in 1966. About ten years later ICOMOS Australia was established and, at a meeting at Burra in South Australia in 1979, members reviewed the European Venice Charter and adopted the Burra Charter to suit Australian conditions. Essentially that has acted as a code of professional practise governing the interpretation, documentation and conservation of historic sites.

The cause of heritage was given a tremendous boost by the election of a Federal Labor Government under Gough Whitlam which, fulfilling its election promises, set up a National Estate Grants Programme to assist the states and a Commission of Inquiry under Justice Hope in 1974. The Australian Heritage Commission was established in 1975. But this too had no formal legislative power.

It was only with the adoption of heritage legislation in each state - (1974 Victoria), (1977 NSW), (1978 SA), (1982 Queensland), and woefully late (1990 WA) and (Tasmania 1996) - that the full weight of the law was brought to bear in the protection of European cultural heritage throughout Australia. But the 'full weight' has been just a tad 'light weight' in most states, and in Western Australia, as in a number of states, decisions made by Heritage Council under the Heritage Act of WA are subject to the will of the Minister.

Hence the protection of heritage is highly political, whether at a ministerial, legislative, state or local government level, or indeed at the level of 'wheeling and dealing on St George's Terrace' - not that there's much heritage left on the terrace. There are a few echoes of the past left, but to our eternal shame Western Australians have virtually lost the heritage battle for that lovely boulevard of the interwar period.

But at least heritage in the 1990s has begun to reflect broader concerns - history from below as well as history from the top. Whereas stately homes were once the name of the game, now working class slab cottages, miners' huts, shearing sheds, factories, power stations, even silos, have heritage value. Our notion of cultural heritage has broadened. Rather than just buildings, we also think of sites, streetscapes, historic precincts. Our focus has also shifted from 19th to 20th century, from Georgian and Victorian, to Federation and Art Deco (even though we might squabble about the nomenclature), even to Modernism.

Our understanding of cultural heritage has come a long way from the silence and suppression of the past. Its class bias is disappearing, though there is still some way to go, its gender bias still exists (but that may be a matter of reinterpretation of existing heritage listings), its ethnic bias is still very substantial, and its racial bias is still immense (but that is largely because indigenous and European cultural heritage have been held apart in this state).

What about the arbiters of European cultural history in Australia?. Have they changed? I suspect that the people involved in the heritage movement represent a much broader cross-section of society than they did in the past. And each of them carries different cultural baggage into the heritage movement. The result is a much more vibrant diverse understanding of what constitutes European cultural heritage in Australia. What about those who make their living in the heritage industry, as it has become known? The professionals. Well that has changed too. In the early years architects dominated the industry. Hence aesthetic considerations and built fabric were often upper-most in the consideration of heritage values. But, although in many ways the industry is still led by architects. Architects no longer dominate the industry. Different professional voices are being heard.

Gradually over the past ten years or so, historians have increasingly made their mark in the heritage industry - thanks largely to the growth of Applied or Public History courses in universities across Australia. In this state postgraduate courses in Public History, first developed by Dr Lenore Layman at Murdoch University (and now carried on by Professor David Dolan within the Cultural Heritage programme at Curtin University) were crucial in first involving historians in heritage work in Western Australia. This reflects worldwide trends. Public history (as opposed to academic history in universities) in the United States has grown dramatically over the past two decades and this trend has also been apparent in Australia. History has moved from the ivory tower into the community and in both nations this has been encouraged by sesquicentenaries and bicentenaries as settler societies like the United States and Australia seek to legitimate their nationhood.

Archaeologists have been involved in the heritage industry for a long time. They were among the earliest to call for a recognition of our industrial heritage. In Western Australia, however, their numbers have been smaller than in NSW and Victoria, and much of their work has focussed on indigenous rather then European cultural heritage.

The emergence of a number of professional disciplines - architecture, history, archaeology - has led to a multi-disciplinary team approach to heritage assessments. It is no longer acceptable for a lone architect, for example, to research and write a heritage assessment or a conservation report. Best practice dictates a multi-disciplinary team approach. The result is more rounded, a higher standard of assessment and a deeper understanding. Assessments and conservation plans have been enriched by the input of several professions and the creative charge that has occurred through a cross-fertilisation of ideas. Our work has been enriched by an understanding of each other's views.

We have come a considerable way within the field of Cultural Heritage. From the view from the top to the view from below, from stately homes to grimy industrial heritage, from silence and suppression to the great clamour of the picket line, from blundering good intentions to legislative protection, from aesthetic to historic understandings, and from a single professional voice to a chorus of professional voices

Can we learn any lessons from this small history of the development of understandings of European cultural heritage in Australia? We can learn that change is possible. We can learn that we gain from listening to other voices. We can learn that our understanding is enriched by those other voices. We need to learn and remember these lessons well, because no matter how firm our resolve to form a common set of principles and standards for natural, indigenous and European cultural heritage, ultimately there will be major issues - major differences - that we will need to address. We must not suppress those issues, we need to face up to the challenges they present.

For me the key questions will be - Which heritage should have priority? Whose heritage should have priority? There are places in which fundamental differences occur and for these we will need to develop new principles/standards/methods in order to accommodate conflicting views of heritage significance. To illustrate my point consider the following cases; one hypothetical and the other a real example

A hypothetical:
The place is a foreshore cliff on the Swan River near an old industrial site, now cleared for housing. The vegetation that grows on that cliff makes up a cultural landscape that provides a link with both its pre-European history and its European history. Date palms and fig trees grow amongst native rushes and peppermints. The local urban bushland group wants to remove all European vegetation from the area. They are clever activists and have gained the support of the local council. Many of the new residents of the area enjoy strolling along the cliff top. They do not know how the fig trees and the date palm got there, but they regard them as familiar landmarks that somehow remind them that this place, in which they are newcomers, bears traces of the people who once used the place. Should the fig trees stay? Which heritage should have priority?

An example:
The place is Goonininup. It is of immense significance to many indigenous people who are connected to that place. The building at that place is the Swan Brewery. It is of immense significance to our European cultural heritage. Whose heritage should have priority? Is there a way of accommodating conflicting views? How firm is our commitment to the concept of 'unity in diversity'?

These are amongst the challenges that we face.