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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
