The Chairman's Musing

This is my first Musings since I was recycled as chairman of the National Trust. Much has happened in the three years since I last held that office. The Trust has expanded in all sorts of new directions and I'm still trying to get my head round them all. Your editor has kindly allowed me to resume my past practice of occasionally sharing my thoughts with readers of trust news. In my first Musings of the new millennium I want to give readers an idea of my hopes and aspirations for the future of the National Trust in Western Australia. It's a big agenda for a chairman who only proposes to stay for a year or two while keeping the chair warm for his successor, whoever he or she may be.

Community
Most National Trusts in Australia were started by scions of old settler families who cherished their pioneering origins, and wanted to preserve the cultural heritage which their families built. Their aspirations are still an important part of our mission. But over the years the Trust has become more inclusive, so that we now aim to represent the heritage aspirations of the whole of the Western Australian community. We are now involved with the natural environment as well as the built environment, engineering and industrial heritage as well as architectural heritage, the heritage of later immigrant communities as well as that of the original Anglo-Celtic settlers.

We hold our properties in trust for the entire community. So we need to engage people from all the different elements in the community, particularly those who have never been associated with the National Trust in the past.

A recent initiative of the National Trust is to involve local government authorities in the management and utilisation of our rural and regional properties. For years we've planned a joint management of Greenough Hamlet with the Shire of Greenough. Those plans are now coming to fruition. We have also established a newjoint committee of the Shire of Bridgetown and the National Trust to get more widespread local community involvement in the management of Bridgedale. We hope to extend cooperative ventures to other local government authorities in rural and regional parts of the State. We hope to be able to help them realise the potential of their local heritage.

Another recent initiative is to involve ourselves in the heritage of our immigrant communities. We're starting with Luisini's Winery on the shores of Lake Goollelal. There the Italian community is helping us to conserve the old winery and to use the place for the interpretation of the history of Italian migration to Western Australia and the contribution made by the Italian community to the development of this State.

I would like to see our membership spread across the whole of the Western Australian community. We can achieve this if we can offer members involvement and activities that are relevant to their needs and aspirations.

I have made several references to the entire community. This, of course, includes the aboriginal community. It is my hope that, one day, they too will find value in the National Trust, and will ask us to work with them in the conservation of their indigenous heritage. But I think it would be wrong for us to try to involve ourselves in their heritage until we're invited to do so. For the time being we've limited our involvement to drawing up Aboriginal interpretation plans for some of our properties.

Volunteers and Professionals
When I was first involved with the National Trust over two decades ago, its work was done by enthusiastic, dedicated amateur volunteers. They were the founders of the National Trust movement. To-day the National Trust has expanded to employ an increasing number of heritage professionals who bring a whole new approach to the work of the Trust. But we're moving out of an uneasy transitional period when some of our older volunteers are gradually accommodating to the new professional management of the National Trust and of the heritage places it looks after for the community. We have to adopt modern interpretation practices in our properties. I look forward to the day when we can say that the interpretation of our properties and our educational programmes are right up with the heritage world's best practice. To achieve this aim we volunteers must all become thoroughly professional in our work.

I'm delighted to say that, at the recent meeting of the Directors of the Australian Council of National Trusts which I attended in Launceston, it was resolved to adopt our Western Australian Interpretation Planning Guidelines (prepared by our Curator, Sarah Murphy) as the Australian national interpretation policy.

Derivative, Home-made and Indigenous Heritage
Australian National Trusts tend to be still under the influence of the English National Trust. They seem to value the European kind of building and landscape more highly than what is more typically Australian. I would argue that our most important task is to preserve what's most Australian in our State.

All architecture has a `language', and in Australia the language of derivative architecture is typically European. A cathedral says I in an important place for Christian worship. A big house like Clarendon says I'm where an important English gentleman lives. Public parks like the Ballarat Botanical Gardens say This is where good children and their parents get seemly and orderly recreation and education. St George's College says This is where young Christian gentlemen come for an Oxbridge education. These messages are readily seen in their derivative architectural styles. While the early European architectural edifices are important components of Australian heritage which we must cherish, it's time to move on and identify and look after what I would describe as our homemade Australian heritage.

Our most important indigenous heritage consists of the landscape that was here when Europeans first arrived. If only our forefathers had cherished it as they cherished their own built environment and manmade landscapes we'd have a lot more pristine landscape and its endemic flora and fauna than they've allowed to survive. It has been hard for Europeans to learn to admire indigenous landscapes like the heathlands in Mount Lesueur National Park. They must have seemed flat and, most of the year, rather monochromatic. But actually these landscapes contain more rare plant species per hectare than almost anywhere else in the world.

Examples of home-made Western Australian heritage are to be found among the many early engineering works which were designed here by our own people and not brought whole from overseas-they include harbours, mining works, farming structures, grain silos, railway undertakings and early power stations. The Goldfields pipeline is an outstanding example of our unique Western Australian heritage. It's a local engineer's daring answer to the shortage of water in the newly discovered goldfields. The Golden Pipeline Project is the biggest project yet undertaken by the National Trust, and one of the most important.

We must make sure that we conserve our best examples of Australian modern architecture. Modern buildings have not been generally admired in Western Australia, perhaps because there are so few good ones. I've proposed to the Royal Australian Institute of Architects that we establish a joint listing initiative for Twentieth Century architecture. The National Trust has been perceived by the architectural profession as something of a barrier to innovative contemporary design. That's a pity because the best of contemporary architecture will become the heritage of future generations.

David Malouf in his year 2000 National Trust Heritage Lecture said that, for a new country like ours, the every-day simple heritage of place is more important than the grand monuments we more readily associate with traditional heritage. Professor Geoffrey Bolton's Daphne Street is a good example.

Advocacy
Lastly, the National Trust's most difficult and controversial activity is advocacy for heritage. The Heritage Council of Western Australia is a State government instrumentality and, as such, is precluded from public advocacy. Indeed the code of conduct adopted by government instrumentalities requires Heritage Councillors to "acknowledge and respect the legitimate interests" of the Premier and the Minister of the day. So the National Trust must carry the burden of informing the public about important heritage issues and, when appropriate, it must fiercely defend the State's heritage against depredations whether from the State government, local government or from private enterprise.

I believe the most useful tool for advocacy is an effective web site. We're in the course of reviving ours and we need computer buffs as volunteers to help run it.

Many controversies lie ahead and the National Trust must involve itself persuasively, where appropriate, with restraint and without impairing its good standing with the whole community as well as the government of the day.