Standing up for our Environment and Heritage

It’s the last day of April and I’m determined to get a blog out.

My blog teacher Thang Ngo (blog: Noodlies) talked about ‘the 5%’: people who continue blog-writing three months after they started. In the second month, lethargy or self-hindrance descended on me like fog. 'Socked in' as the saying goes. I don’t want to drop out with the 95%!

One week, or at the most two, was supposed to pass before I posted again. But the first week of April, some maintenance tasks reared their heads: walls to wash, paint to buy and apply, curtains to sew and hang.

I toyed with using ‘the writing process’ for a blog post. I suffered road blocks laid by computer gremlins, which I thought other people could relate to. At another point I thought it was a great revelation to share that maybe I would get a cleaner. A friend of mine who works from home, said important advice from her mentor was: hire a cleaner.

The second week of April brought more projects: finding tax docs, playing with spread sheets, making appointments.

In the third week of the month I needed to read some books in my spare time, for book group and other goals. One disturbing book knocked me so flat I had to take time to recover.

I was also reeling from news that our freshly re-elected state government planned to get rid of the New South Wales Environment and Heritage office. Focussing to write wasn’t happening for me.

April’s fourth week brought Easter, coinciding with Passover, and boy did Australia hit the holiday spirit hard. Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday (my American readers might not believe that these are all actual holidays), and by coincidence, Anzac Day fell on the Thursday after Easter Monday, so there was another day off that week. (For Americans: it was like having Memorial Day and Thanksgiving in the same week.)

Easter and Anzac have sombre overtones, even if you aren’t religious. The holiday week didn’t inspire me to write. Besides, I had eggs to dye, and more blogs to read by other bloggers, and swimming to do because it was oh-so-warm for this time of year and it would be a shame to waste the opportunity.

So somehow a month passed without a blog post from me. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about it, believe me, writing crowded into my mind with things I need and want to do. I’m not ready to axe the blog: some of the characters that I’m driven to write about, haven’t yet been introduced!

I’ve decided to share some thoughts about heritage.

You might or might not know we are in the midst of the annual ‘Heritage Festival’, 18 April til 18 May this year. Walks, talks, and open days are available, from galleries and libraries, to National Parks. Heritage weeks celebrate our origins and who we are. Enjoy!

My pic of 'Leathers With a Reputation'

In February I took this picture in the heart of Sydney. Later I wanted to know more about the intriguing phrase painted on the side of the old building. I googled, as you do, ‘Leathers with a reputation’. Only modern leathergoods sellers came up, so I added ‘old building sign Sydney’ to the search, and voila, a link to the NSW Heritage Office database appeared in the top responses.
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2424180

Going to the Heritage link, I read the entry for the old building on Castlereagh Street where this ad was painted. I learned about the building’s occupants (Dixson’s tobacco factory, later Johnson and Sons leather merchants).

This great database lists all the ‘Items’ protected by heritage laws at state and council level. By the way, a ‘Heritage Item’ is the formal name for listed places, because protected places aren’t only buildings: they can be cemeteries, caves with Aboriginal paintings, gardens.

Looking up to see the bats sleeping

A place like Centennial Park shows that cultural heritage can consist of natural habitat for animals and plants. ‘Cultural’ just means that humans had a hand creating it. In Centennial, everything is planted. Every. Single. Thing.

Fields and bushes feed ibis, fairy wrens and cockatoos. Overseas plants also thrive: sprawling oaks drop acorns at this time of year. And of course there stand occasional reminders that we are in a ‘cultural’ place, like this statue of Charles Dickens!

The environment and the buildings in our communities belong to all of us, in that we are affected by how they look and how they function.

A lovely sight in Sydney's Inner West

Delving into the Heritage website, I found a colourful digital publication, Portraits of New South Wales, issued in 2018 for the 40^th anniversary of the Heritage Act of 1977. 

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/portraits-of-new-south-wales

The Heritage Act legislated that a Register or list should name places that must be protected, following community wishes and expert advice. (The National Trust had already created lists and these became a springboard.)

Before the Heritage Act, in the 1970s there had been reactive situations where community outcry demanded some sites not be torn up: like ‘Kelly’s Bush’ in Hunters Hill; and residential streets of the Inner West where an expressway was planned; and most of the old buildings and laneways where tourists now wander in The Rocks, which were to be knocked down under a redevelopment order. Living treasure Jack Mundey and his union workers are still revered for refusing to work at these sites, helping save them. After the Heritage Act, things were meant to follow an orderly course, not an ad hoc approach.

Over the years the Heritage Office has published guides to maintaining heritage sites and old buildings, among an array of resources, and they give advice. Long may they flourish.