Forum Celebrating 40 Years of the NSW Heritage Act

Yamba Cottage on Camden Valley Way at Narellan has been at the centre of community concerns around heritage matters in the local area for many years (Camden Images)

Luke Foley Announces Heritage Policy

At State Parliament on Tuesday, 18 April 2017, Opposition Leader Luke Foley made several announcements on heritage matters that the Labor Party will take to the next state election in 2019.

Amongst the announcements from  Mr Foley were:
1. Development of a 10-year heritage strategy for New South Wales that will be a roadmap for heritage management;
2. Restrict the s32 provisions so that the state government cannot plead economic hardship on heritage matters like they have on the Sirius project;
3. Restrict the ability of the Minister for Heritage to ignore recommendations from the Heritage Council;
4. Strengthen the provision of the Heritage Council;
5. Move the Office of Premier and the Cabinet Office into the old Chief Secretary's building on the corner of Macquarie and Bridge Streets.

For those who want to read the speech, click here

Heritage Forum Speakers at Parliament House

The forum was introduced by Shadow Minister for Heritage Penny Sharpe MLC and invited a number of speakers to reflect on the 40th anniversary of the Heritage Act passed into law by the Wran Government in 1977.

Speakers were:

1. Meredith Burgmann 

Meredith Burgmann is the former President of the NSW Legislative Council and co-author of the book Green Bans Red Union - the Saving of a City. She spoke about the history of the Green Bans in the 1970s in a legal environment where there were no legal protections for heritage matters.

She went on to outline: the development of resident action groups and the conditions conducive to developing heritage legislation in the 1970s.

These conditions included
(a) community activism around the Vietnam War,
(b) Anti-Apartheid,
(c) environmental issues, and
(d) anti-discrimination legislation.

2. Reece McDougall 

Reece McDougall is the former CEO of GML Heritage Consultants and Executive Director of the NSW Heritage Office from 2006 to 2008. He spoke on the history of the 1977 Heritage Act introduced by the Wran Government.

He maintains that the conditions that allowed the introduction of the Heritage Act included
(a) the legislation supported for the National Trust in 1960,
(b) international factors, including travel by Australians witnessing overseas activities, and
(c) the green bans.

McDougall also outlined the 1998 amendments to the Heritage Act that introduced the State Heritage Register and the advantages of having a separate heritage office in the state government.

Gilbulla is the house built in the late 1890s by JW Macarthur Onslow at Menangle built in the Arts and Crafts style  (Gilbulla)

3. Shaun Carter 

Shaun Carter is the immediate past president of the NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects. He has organised a crowdfunding effort and taken the state government to court over the decision to demolish the Sirius building in The Rocks.

Carter spoke about the benefits to the community of retaining its built heritage. These included
(a) acting as a marker that allows stories to remember,
(b) containing cultural heritage, and 
(c) the need to know who we were and who we are.

Carter bemoaned the loss of the best of 20th-century buildings, and many are not listed on local heritage registers.

4. Paul Connell 

Paul Connell is the organiser for the Public Sector for the CFMEU, who led the campaign to save the NSW Heritage group within Public Works from privatisation, that is, keeping the Stoneyard at St Peters (Alexandria).

The Stoneyard is the home of the stonemasons who oversee the maintenance of the state government's stock of sandstone buildings.  The Stoneyard also has heritage roofing plumbers and carpenters who, until the Baird Government, used to work with the Government Architect.

The Stoneyard is the site of
(a) apprentice training in traditional trades,
(b) stockpiles of Sydney yellow sandstone, and
(c) the centre of WHS.

Former 1940s Stuckey Bakery building in Argyle Street Camden is an example of Camden Modernism (I Willis)

Originally posted 18 April 2017. Updated 7 August 2023.

Music at a Sydney House Concert Goes Hmmm....

Things That Make You Go Hmm...
a Sydney House Concert

The CHN blogger was out and about in Newtown recently and attended a house concert put on by the I Heart Songwriting Club.

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A group of musos performed in a lounge room tucked away in a corner with around 20 people ranging from children to oldies. Sitting on lounges, chairs and on the polished wooden floor with greenery displayed in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind them. 

What a knockout show in a small and intimate venue, as opposed to a noisy pub somewhere.
The music was delivered with soul and warmth.  It spoke to the heart on a Sunday afternoon in the intimate surroundings.

The intimate surroundings of the Newtown House Concert for the I Heart Songwriting Club in July 2017 with performer Mariamma, (Francesca de Valence)

The domestic space certainly beat  the hell out of the huge souless barns that pass as music venues in some places.  The interval was an opportunity to have nibbles, cheese and dip, meet the musos and make  new friends in a truly warm and welcoming environment.


House concerts are an emerging trend in music performance and hark back to the days of chamber music. A look back at how live acoustic music was performed in earlier times. When a grand house provided a library, a parlour, a ballroom for music in the raw uncut version. At a time when there was no amplification or recording. All music was live and of the moment.

Friends and fans of the I Heart Songwriting Club in lounge room of the host at the Newtown House Concert in July 2017. (Francesca de Valence)

Graham Strahle reviewed the house concert scene in Australia in 2016 for Music Australia and came to the conclusion that this performance space is growing in Australia. He maintains that this type of performance is flying under the radar and is growing popularity.

Strahle reports that some artists prefer house concerts over other types of venues with a range of organising abilities. Performers relish the networking possibilities. This is very community based and a new interpretation of an old idea.

Some who provide performance spaces in their homes have dedicated rooms while providing supper or even meals for patrons and fans. These type of performances seem quite informal and not on regular circuits.

House concerts have proved popular in North America and Europe. Fran Snyder, writes that house concerts in the US, bring performers closer to the fans and

sometimes they even help artists rediscover what they enjoy most about playing music – the intimate connection with an audience.

Snyder makes the point that it allows performances in

'markets where you don’t have a significant fanbase'. 

This mode of delivery is not for all and there are disadvantages. The performer is exposed and there is no hiding behind a loop-track or a huge drum kit. It may not be for the faint hearted.

ABC News reports that attendances are falling at regional music festivals and that this type of performance is replacing them. Allowing fans to cheaply access high quality live music.

House concerts, according to Megan King, in the northern rivers area of  NSW are held in old houses with metal house ceilings that provide an ideal acoustic venue.

The house concert is another form of the 'pop-up' economy - a part of the gig-economy.The advent of social media makes the job of creating a network of friends and fans reasonably easy. In the old days it was only word of mouth. Private email groups and the like provide the vehicle for cheap and easy promotion. 

WH Chong writes that house concerts are

intimate, convivial gatherings in a domestic space.

Wikipedia has an interesting history of house concerts maintaining that their origins are based around the performance of folk, blues and country music. Where live performances were traditionally informal and small affairs at low cost. There are even influences going back to the medieval period with small intimate performances of unamplified music. You could argue that live performance goes back to the ancients and were a form of house concert, especially those based around religious festivals and the like.

The performers from the I Heart Songwriting Club at the Newtown House Concert in July 2017 (Francesca de Valence) 

"Things That Make You Go Hmm"

The CHN blogger concurs with all the conclusions of other writers after experiencing this type of performance for the first time.

After a hugely successful Brisbane show, I Heart Songwriting Club is touring "Things That Make You Go Hmm" and held  house concert in Sydney. The theme of the Sydney house concert was:

These incredible women share stories and songs on:
The dangerous powers of seduction
The sudden absence of love
The elusive nature of time
and… of course, being a stalker …. “Things That Make You Go Hmm..."

All the artists that who performed for the I Heart Songwriting Club were singer-songwriters who were storytellers in their own right and told a story through their music. The performers were:

Francesca de Valence,
Helen Perris,
Colleen O'Connell
Mariamma,
Issabird

House concerts are a form of performance that seems likely to a strong future if current trends are any guide.

Learn more

Graham Strahle, Under the radar: Australia’s house concert scene (Music Australia)

JH Chong, The Joy of house concerts (Daily Review)

Megan King, House concerts let you take your live music home with you (Northern Star)

Liam Pieper, Bands turn their backs on pubs as live music enters the loungeroom (SMH)

I Heart Songwriting Club up coming events

Cumberland Plain Woodland, Sydney's natural heritage

Cumberland Plain Woodland (cc Wikimedia)

What good is Cumberland Plain Woodland you might ask?

The early settlers in the Sydney Basin might not have understood the ecology of the Cumberland Woodland but they knew good farming country when they saw it. John Macarthur understood the potential of the good grazing country on the Nepean River floodplain.

The cows that escaped from the Sydney penal settlement found their nirvana in Cumberland Woodland managed by the Dharawal people in the Cowpastures.

Elizabeth Macarthur Onslow saw the importance of the Cumberland Woodland in 1905 when she insisted the mature specimens with the bounds of Macarthur Park be preserved when she gifted the park to Camden township.

It is clearly shown in the Appin district on Sydney's rural-urban fringe, where the Woodland comes up against the Sydney sandstone communities.

Just east of Appin the colonial settlements of the early 1800s stopped. Why? Sydney sandstone is terrible farmland. Better to use the clay soils of the Cumberland Woodland.

There are the clay soils of the Cumberland Woodland between Appin and Campbelltown and a host of land grants handed out to would-be yeoman farmers from about 1813.

These colonial land grants created a pseudo-European cultural landscape of smallholder farms on the colonial frontier. There was a conflict between the Dharawal and the Europeans that resulted in the Appin Massacre of 1816.

There are surviving remnant patches of Woodland at Beulah, a Hume family property, now owned by the Sydney Living Museum and at Noorumba Reserve at Rosemeadow.

One important stand that has had recovery work is at The Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan.

Cumberland Woodland (ABG)

Cumberland Plain Woodland in Serious Trouble



Cumberland Woodland Mt Annan (cc Blogger/A Koskela)

Extent

The Cumberland Woodland is found on clay soils derived from Wianamatta Group geology of Sydney's Cumberland Plain. Where once it covered over 100,000 hectares it is a mere skerrick of its former glory.

Today Cumberland Woodland barely covers 6,000 hectares of Sydney's Cumberland Plain. That is less than 6 per cent of the original area.

The Woodland is indigenous to the Camden, Campbelltown and Wollondilly Local Government Areas and the catchments within them including the Nepean River and South Creek.

Critically Endangered

In New South Wales under the Threatened Species Conservation Act the Woodland proposed to be listed as critically endangered. The Woodland is highly fragmented across the Cumberland Plain.

Threats

The Woodland is under threat from clearing, fire and grazing associated with urban development, industry and farming. Invasive weed infestation is a major problem in remnant Woodland.

One common weed is African Olive which escaped from the gentry estates of the Camden district in the 1820s where it was introduced as a hedging plant and rootstock for olives.

 

Common Species

Grey Box, Forest Red Gum, Narrow-leafed Ironbark, Grey Ironbark, Narrow-leaved Stringybark, Spotted Gum and Black Wattle.

 Best Viewing

The best viewing in the local area is at The Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan.

More reading

NPWS, Cumberland Plain Woodland Fact Sheet, Endangered Ecological Community Information,  2004.

Originally posted 1 September 2013. Updated 8 August 2020.