The Australiana Society’s 2026 national tour, from 24–31 March, commenced in Launceston and travelled south via the Fingal Valley and Tasmania’s east coast, concluding in Hobart. The tour focused on historic properties and collections in private ownership not generally open to the public.
In the August 2020 issue of Australiana, we wrote an article on the amateur watercolourist, James Coutts Crawford (1817–1889), an Englishman who visited Australia in 1845–46 and rented ‘ForestLodge’, an early colonial house in Glebe... Later he moved to New Zealand, where he became sheriff of Wellington, dying in London on a visit ‘home’. In Glebe, he painted several local landscape scenes that included some early identifiable buildings as well as some in the country areas he visited. While these watercolours are not of great artistic merit, Coutts Crawford’s views and panoramas record and complement the early colonial history of one of Sydney’s oldest suburbs. In June this year we alerted that more of his watercolours were in an upcoming Melbourne auction sale.
The purchase of the former Goldfinders’ Home Inn at Kurrajong led owners Chris and Deborah Hallam to research their property, discovering that European habitation on the site began much earlier than initially believed. This inspired them to locate and document 160 early timber houses across the nation. The collation of this important project, Australia’s Earliest Timber Houses, is available free online and is intended to be an ongoing resource, with annual updates and future additions.
Fifty-five society members enjoyed an excellent day visiting three historical properties in the Cobbitty area, on Sydney’s semi-rural western fringe, onSunday 12 October 2025. Once known as the Cowpastures on the colonial frontier of British settlement, the area was probably best known for ‘CamdenPark’, the large sheep property of Johnand Elizabeth Macarthur. The Dharawal people lived in this area for millennia.
Acanthus leaves have been used as decoration in buildings, furniture and pottery since the birth of western architecture. They were often a decorative feature on Australia’s early Neo-Classical furniture until the advent of Australian themes towards the end of the 19th century. Bob Fredman discusses the use of acanthus motifs by Australian artisans and concludes with some information about an interesting piece of pottery.
The Australiana Society’s first national tour of Victoria from 20 to 24 March was a huge success. The tour got off to an unusual start at Gary and Genevieve Morgan’s Gallery, with our host Gary Morgan addressing us on a large screen from his hospital bed...
Ginni Woof reports on the Australiana Society visit to Fairfield at Cressy in north-east Tasmania, about 30 km south of Launceston, in December.
Through The Glebe Society, local homeowners contacted members Peter Crawshaw and Robert Hannan to ask what was known about a large stained-glass window, obviously not in its original location, which had been installed in their house. By using their contacts and research skills, they discovered that its provenance can be traced to one of Sydney’s 19th-century shopping arcades, the Imperial Arcade opened in 1891 and demolished in 1961.
The inaugural Australiana Society Tour of South Australia was held from Thursday 21 March to Monday 26 March 2024 and took in a variety of museums, public and private collections.
The March 2023 Australiana Society National Tour of Canberra and regions was a great success. Forty people from NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland enjoyed three days visiting diverse collections and houses. Each venue gave us a different perspective and appreciation of Australiana, in decorative arts, art, architecture and furniture from First Nations to contemporary. We had hot weather but quickly settled in as a cohesive group, renewing friendships and welcoming new members.
Spanish monks established the Benedictine mission at New Norcia in Western Australia in 1846. Following on from her article last year on Isidro Oriol,1 Dr Dorothy Erickson concludes her series on the Spanish craftsmen who worked on buildings and furniture for the monastic community. Here she examines the surviving work of Juan (John) Casellas at New Norcia, which has since developed into a monastic retreat and tourist attraction.
Curator Judith McKay focuses on a unique house museum in the Northern Territory, originally planned in 1920 by the Rev. John Flynn of Flying Doctor fame as a model outback hospital. Its most remarkable feature was a passive ventilation system designed to cool the building on the Coolgardie safe principle.
Victorian chairman Robert Stevens reports on a November 2022 tour to the Central Goldfields region.
Numbers were limited on the NSW Branch’s recent successful tour of the Sydney Basin, so one of the organisers, Peter Crawshaw, reports on it for members who were not able to take part in person, especially those who live outside Sydney. Colonial furniture collector Bob Fredman was honoured to be asked to give the 2022 Kevin Fahy Annual Lecture during the tour, so he and his wife Debbie took a short break from their property inundated by the Queensland floods.
Postponed several times due to Covid-19 restrictions, our plans for a visit to Bathurst in the NSW Central Tablelands, lands of the Wiradyuri Nation, finally came to fruition from 30 April to 2 May 2021, with the maximum 50 participants from five states taking part. Others were unable to attend for fear of not getting home again.
Australiana Society members visited the Ballarat region of Victoria in May, as part of a tour carefully planned by Victorian branch chair Robert Stevens. Luckily, it fell into a gap between COVID lockdowns, and gave members from several states a chance to get out, mingle and enjoy what the Victorian Central Goldfields region has to offer. Robert Stevens shares the experience with those who could not attend this time, and promises to continue to plan other tours in better times.
On a beautiful summer’s afternoon, 85 members from Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and northern Tasmania attended the Tasmanian Branch’s 2020 opening event, an ‘At Home’ at Clairville (plate 1) near Evandale, courtesy of the owners, Michael McWilliams and Robert Henley (plates 2-3). The event on 22 February 2020 marked a new beginning for Clairville, a treasure of Australia’s architectural and design heritage whose future has been secured. John Sinclair built Clairville on a 700-acre grant he had received in 1826 for his role in the capture of a member of Matthew Brady’s bushranging gang. About 1860 Sinclair sold the property to Dr Donald Cameron of Fordon, Evandale; Cameron’s elder son Donald inherited Fordon and his younger son Robert was given Clairville.
At a heritage conference in Adelaide in 2015, Dr Donald Ellsmore attributed the superb interior decoration at Adelaide’s Ayers House and Gawler’s Para Para in South Australia to the Sydney decorating firm of Lyon, Cottier & Co. and their employee Charles Gow, purely on speculation. Till now, his opinion has gone unchallenged. By looking at the surviving artworks and researching contemporary journals, catalogues, directories and newspapers, Dr Andrew Montana refutes this attribution and restores William Joseph Williams and his workmen as the artists responsible. He shows that South Australia had its own pool of talented decorators and did not need to rely on importing skilled workmen from Sydney or Melbourne.
“Bring forty members to Tasmania to celebrate the Australiana Society’s 40th anniversary” was president Jim Bertouch’s brief. The new Tasmanian Chapter of the Australiana Society accordingly set to work under the leadership of chairman Colin Thomas to emulate the success of the Society’s 2015 Tasmanian tour. The eight-day tour from 7 to 14 March was designed as a rich and varied experience of Australiana in its many permutations – art, design and social history, public and private collections and collections seen in the contexts for which they were made, as well as showing how they were underpinned economically by maritime and rural industries. The tour provided opportunities to meet custodians of historic places and collections, dealers and fellow collectors.
Vaucluse House has been in public ownership since 1910, initially managed by a government-appointed board of trustees as a public park and historical museum, and latterly managed as a house museum under the control of the Historic Houses Trust of NSW (now known as Sydney Living Museums). Megan Martin looks at the work of the early Vaucluse Park trustees, their approach to the house and its grounds, and their legacy of substantial acquisitions which survive today in the collection at Vaucluse House.
From Clive Lucas OBE: I very much enjoyed Robert Stevens’s article on Elizabeth Hudspeth, and would like to draw attention to her involvement with Australia’s first picturesque “Italian” villa at Rosedale near Campbell Town. Miss Hudspeth visited the house soon after its completion in the 1840s to the design of architect James Blackburn. The sketch she did is illustrated in Clifford Craig’s Old Tasmanian Prints published in 1964.
Those familiar with the capital of New South Wales will know George Street, Sydney Cove and The Rocks. Karen Eaton deconstructs John Carmichael’s engraving George Street from the Wharf and explores in detail its five main elements – George Street, the King’s Wharf, the Commissariat Stores, Kemp & Dobson’s chandlery, and the Australian Hotel – during the years 1828 and 1829.
Dorothy Erickson documents the life and work of Mattie Furphy (1878–1948), a Victorian who moved to Perth in 1902 to become a prominent Western Australian artist and designer.
Australiana Society members were privileged to see, touch and experience many and varied treasures on our Tasmanian tour. Here we showcase the welcome and rare opportunities extended to those who participated, and encourage other members to consider creating a future tour showcasing your state or region, offering unique and privileged opportunities to members.
The Australiana Society Canberra Centenary Members’ Tour conducted from 5-8 September 2013 was extremely successful and thoroughly enjoyed by all who participated. It was superbly organised and led by committee member Lesley Garrett, assisted by Dr Paul Donnelly, another committee member.
