At the bottom of the garden

One of the more eccentric things we viewed this trip was a photographic recreation of a Victorian Pleasure Garden spectacle inspired by the famed garden parties held at one of Melbourne’s historic mansions, Rippon Lea.

Rippon Lea was home to the Sargood family. Sir Frederick Thomas Sargood grew his wealth selling drapery during the gold rush days. He later became a politician in Melbourne, frequently entertaining his guests to fabulous parties in the grounds of the exotic pleasure gardens he and his wife had created on their property at Rippon Lea, with its expansive lake, waterfall, archery hut and arched bridges over meandering walkways; all of which covered more than fourteen acres of land. 

Inspired by the tales of such magical themed parties, professional photographers and stylists, makeup artists and actors playing dressup together with the National Trust for support, set up a three day photo shoot to capture the essence of such a lush and exotic party. 

Mythical characters were researched. Museums scoured for costumes and jewellery. Tables laid with the extravagant feasts typical of the times. Characters were dressed and posed including arrogant butlers, insouciant hostesses, and peeking at them from the green boughs were woodland nymphs, fanciful unicorns, foxes, peacocks and faerie queens. The exhibition showed it all to be quite magical, slightly wicked, and delightfully fanciful.

In keeping with the garden theme, we followed the exhibition with a wander through the Fitzroy Gardens which were close. And what a boon to have this lovely open space such a short walk from the city centre. So commendable of our forefathers to ensure such green spaces were set aside for us to enjoy, even today.

Here, too, we found faeries at the bottom of the garden. The gnarled trunk of a three hundred year old tree, long dead, was carved by a lady sculptress and storyteller, Ola Cohn, who, in the 1930s, on returning from London where she’d trained under Henry Moore, was spilling over with new ideas and technologies and wanting to start something new.

Taking up her mallet and chisel she set about chipping away to release the little creatures she imagined hidden in the cracked whorls and knots of the dead redwood in the park. She uncovered faeries and spiders, imps, wizards and elves. Here, a kangaroo, there a lyrebird, even a sorcerer spider’s web was exposed. The trunk became a veritable cornucopia of dozens of delightful fairytale characters that Ola spent three years imagining and carving. 

It was a work of love that she gifted to the children of Melbourne whose families were in the midst of a depression at the time, so had very little. But the children then, and now, have treated Ola’s gift gently. With help from the city fathers who contributed to its preservation by installing metal rods to keep the trunk standing, and fluids to prevent rot setting in around the wee characters. 

And, once a year, in the summer, children gather at the base of the trunk and Ola’s characters spring, as if to life. The folk of the fairies tree dance, sing, and cavort as villains are vanquished and heroes rise up and rejoice. A touch of Enid Blyton enmeshed with Beatrix Potter. These are indelible memories for impressionable young minds. Deeply imprinted. Stirring their imaginings. 

And close by the fairies tree is a tiny model village,  not at all exceptional, until you read its intent. It came from the folk of the City of Lambeth in England to the folk of Victoria, as a thank you, for food packages sent and desperately needed, given the food shortage caused by the second world war. 

This little village of the Tudor period, with its thatches and half timbers, churches, barns and stocks, was lovingly carved by the wizened hands of a seventy-seven year old pensioner with such a passion for his hobby that he scoured the rubble of bombed out London war sites hunting down suitable material for his task. These tiny homes, and no doubt visiting children think they are for faerie folk, grew out of the rubble of war. 

And the tales from Fitzroy Gardens keep on keeping on. A grainy old noticeboard near one of the footpaths we trod told us of the early days of Melbourne’s hospital care. Prior to 1900, hospitals in Victoria were essentially charitable institutions. If you were well off, but poorly, you paid for any treatment needed at home. You did not go to hospital.

Hospitals were set up for the poor. Workhouses, as in England, were not a feature that the early fathers encouraged in Australia. They considered hospitals the better option for the poor. Typically, they were run by nuns, volunteers, and funded by private donors in the main. But public donations were welcome, too. 

And that is where Fitzroy Gardens played its part. Once a year, from as early as 1873 and right though until the1920s, Fitzroy Gardens was a venue for fund raising activities for a special event that came to be called, Hospital Sunday. 

Hospital Sunday would often involve the Bishop delivering a special service in the town hall. Different churches, throughout town, would offer different choral services. Donation plates were passed around. Sacred music would be laid on in the afternoon in the gardens. Crowds would come to listen. Collections would be made at the entrance gate, or on board excursion steamers, if listeners came by boat.

Collection points came together in the early evening, and the total of the funds donated was published in the newpaper in the following days. And folk were amazingly generous. In 1888 one Hospital Sunday raised over £14,000. Mind you, they were the good times still. The banks had not yet toppled. And finally, as we headed back to the city to find some lunch we passed Captain Cook’s parents house, dismantled stone by stone in Great Ayton, in Yorkshire, in the 1930s, and shipped to Australia in hundreds of cases and dozens of barrels, along with a cutting of ivy from the front garden, to be re-erected in Fitzroy Gardens where today you can stop and chat to the volunteers playing the part of Cook’s folk. 

We take a shortcut through the Conservatory and are enchanted by the display. Today, the arrangements are exceptionally romantic with a pink and purple vibe, separated by little puffs of white.

The Conservatory garden, like much of what we have seen today has stood here since the 1930's, changes form and flowers every two to three months. This involves moving dozens of hanging baskets, laying out hundreds of pots of background plants and greenery, and arranging nearly two thousand pots of coloured flowers. Quite an expensive operation it would seem, to change these so regularly, but most of the plants, we are told, are recycled, so that’s a relief. Tho’ still, the work involved is a huge expense.

But, it is all so very beautiful. And every little seating rock (and sadly, there are not nearly enough. People want to sit and gape) is occupied by a pair of city workers taking a romantic respite as they slowly munch on their lunch time sandwiches in one of the most beautiful settings to be found. 

Lunch is not a sandwich for us. We find a place called Lucy Liu, in one of the city lanes, and dive into platters of Michael Lambie’s delicious soft shelled crab, and blackened ham hock served as if it were Beijing duck with delicate pancakes, pickled greens and a tart, spicy sauce. Superb. We will return.

Romantic garden in the Fitzroy Conservatory

Rippon Lea from the gardens

Victoriana pleasure garden tableaux

Just that hint of danger 

The Fairies tree

A thank you from the ruins of war

Cook's parents house transplanted

Blackened ham hock 

Fragment of the past

We can thank Sir Redmond Barry for the State Library of Victoria. His statue stands at the front steps of the library welcoming everyone, just as he did in 1856 on the day the library first opened. And, this, after staying up all the previous night helping to shelve some of the 3,800 books that he had ordered for the library that had just arrived by ship the previous day. A librarian had yet to be hired, but someone had to do the work. Which tells you a lot about Sir Redmond Barry.

He was the judge who acquitted thirteen of the Eureka Stockade miners in 1855, but who in 1880, when he sentenced Ned Kelly to death by hanging said, “May God have mercy on your soul”. Only to have Ned Kelly respond that he would see the judge anon in the afterlife. And, as if following a script, just twelve days after Ned’s execution, Sir Redmond Barry died.

Even today, there are many interesting links between the State Library of Victoria and the tale of Ned Kelly. We were lucky enough to arrive at the library in time for a guided walk offered by a volunteer, one of the friends of the library. This went, astonishingly, far longer than 2 hours, though we skipped out after two as we desperately needed a cool drink, but we could easily have gone back and done more the next day as the collections were so interesting. This, we were informed, is a reading library, not a borrowing library, and is heavily used by RMIT students whose lecture rooms are just across the street, and by the general public who throng the building and its various galleries in their hoards.

The building itself has some magnificent parts, particularly the great Domed Reading Room which is vast. Its floor space is spiked with long rows of study desks and tables, filled with patrons while the entire space is canopied by a huge lantern-like glass dome spilling light down from some thirty five feet above ground level. The dome room is encircled by arcaded pavilions, lined with shelved books, and eccentric and interesting exhibitions, some you would not expect to find in a reading library.

One of these being Ned Kelly’s actual suit of armour which Ned made in preparation for his final showdown at Glenrowan. It is pitted with bullet holes and hugely heavy given its plough metal construction which kept Ned the only gang member alive after that last bloody dawn battle. Until, of course, Sir Redmond Barry sentenced him.

Amazing pieces of Australian history are on display. Batman’s ‘agreement’ with the natives for him to occupy land along Port Phillip Bay. Early records of explorers. First editions of some of the rarest books, along with fine botanical drawings. Too much to really absorb in one visit. So, we’re determined to visit gain, and move slowly through the collections of interest to us.

Our passion to do this somewhat soothing, that such a library as the State Library of Victoria is not yet seen as the defunct species suggested in another work of sculpture outside the library, on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe streets, where Petrus Spronk of Holland, created a work slamming carved bluestone deep into the sidewalk like an ominous foreboding. As if what is left of the library is but a fragment of the past that you almost trip over.

Thank you for the library, Sir Redmond Barry

Spokes of study desks below the dome 

Bullets pitting the armour Ned Kelly made

Fragment of a library 

Old'n'gold

Into the hills, north and west, we drove next day, on the recommendation of a friend who visits there regularly, and who once had relatives digging for gold in the region. After a quick coffee at Mr in Macedon we discovered an idyllic garden to visit enroute: Forest Glade. Another treasure. The day was glorious and sunny, but not hot, and the bees buzzed all around us, so heavily laden with pollen that you could almost smell honey in the air. So many, that we were not surprised to learn there were hives for it to be collected at the bottom of the garden.

The garden was on twelve hectares and had magical little walkways winding through all of it. We likely wandered it in its entirety, it was so spectacular, and we could not bear to leave. The daffodils and bluebell glades were just finishing; the elegant poppies stood tall and magnificent; the azaleas, rhododendrons and peonies were opening up fresh and new. Garden ornaments were a feature, too. There were tasteful pieces of sculpture in perfect little spots all over the place. We particularly loved the exquisite Japanese moongate, opening onto a singing streamlet topped with stepping stones, and delicately arched bridges hidden around secret corners.

On talking to a gardener we learned that Forest Glade was owned by Cyril Stokes. Cyril, now a philanthropist, once trained to be a minister but was chucked out of the church for his gay leanings we learned. He married, had children and divorced; then found a gay partner, some three decades younger than him, with whom he built a relationship. He also built a hugely successful bathhouse in Melbourne, bought and sold retirement homes, and became seriously wealthy, sufficient to indulge his passion for collecting 18th and 19th century porcelain pieces. In fact his collection is one of the largest of its kind in the world and is occasionally on display here at the bottom of the garden. The garden was Trevor's refuge, one he built from scratch after a bushfire raged through here in the 80s. Sadly it was not enough to assuage his demons. He was found dead here one morning not so long ago by Cyril and a gardener. Cyril had a sculptured piece made of the two of them that was scheduled to be unveiled the weekend after our visit. In remembrance. 

After lunch, looking out over the magnificent views from the Top of the Range tea rooms, we headed across country to Taradale, a tiny town settled well before the gold rush days, but one that became a busy working hub once gold was discovered in the region. At one stage some 5,000 folk lived in Taradale, and that’s not counting some 3,000 Chinese who were digging up the dirt along the Back Creek tributary. In those days there were hotels, churches, banks, and civic offices vying for business, and houses aplenty. 

Today, instead of mullock heaps pocking the goldfields, horses graze in peaceful paddocks amiably dodging rusted relics of ancient farm machinery. A quartz battery, fully outfitted yet, still stands to one side of a dipping roadway, which would once have been a sea of moving wheelbarrows and drays loaded with rich stone heading for the crusher.

Other little oddities have survived. The streets were named after scientists and the old busy Faraday street, once the heart of the town, is still lined with buildings that grew from the town’s gold: the old police station, the historic courthouse, and the solicitor’s house, once used as the Mining Register’s Office, are now all private homes. As is the old Catholic Church built out of the ballast bricks that were carried aboard one of the sailing ships coming out from England in the 18th century. The picturesque old Methodist church, too, was built using bricks recycled from an earlier church in town. 

Today Taradale is a mere shadow of its former self in terms of size, but, is a peaceful, rural and picturesque hamlet of fewer than two hundred folk, many of whom are living in the solid stone dwellings of their town’s past, that are still standing strong. 

All the little towns on the drive back to Melbourne offer up a history that links them to the discovery of gold. And, of course, bushrangers. We were charmed by Kyneton which before the gold rush days was all slab huts and tents, but now proudly boasts some lovely historic stone buildings as part of its gold history. 

One of these, the Old Court House, was home for a time to Ned Kelly accused of ‘robbery in company’ but from where he was soon acquitted due to lack of evidence. A letter he wrote to Sergeant James Babington of the Kyneton police is the only written document of Ned’s that survives. We happened upon this letter just a couple of days after this, when we visited the Melbourne library exhibition. And, though it had a few spelling and grammatical errors, it certainly showed that Ned could put his hand to a well constructed plea for help and consideration without too many difficulties, after sadly realising that “everyone looks on me like A black snake”. 

We stopped for afternoon tea at a charmingly named delicatessen and coffee house in Kyneton: Duck, Duck, Goose & Larder. We chatted with the busy and productive owner who told us that the name for the business came via his family. His daughter, who worked in the shop was nicknamed Duck. His wife, too, was lovingly called Duck. He was the Goose, he said, and the provisions they stored, of course, were the Larder. Delightful. 

Just as interesting as their name for the shop is its history. The building, still, in amazing condition today, was constructed in 1878 by the Shire. And is a rare example of that sort of commercial venture. Well, it was half built, actually. Huge as it is today, the Shire intended it to be double its size. Thinking they might boost business in the community, they installed five butchers as well as a pie and coffee stand in their Market building.Sadly, it did not do well for the Shire, and has spent over a hundred more years finding its successful self, as Duck, Duck, Goose & Larder. We just loved it! 

Exquisite garden, exquisite day 

Stepping stones, enticing you deeper into the garden

Moongate is a perfect frame 

A special memory 

Delicious coffee, lunch and gift gallery all in one

Quartz battery as it ever was

Old Methodist Church in Taradale

Old Court House - where Ned was acquitted

A page from Ned's letter 

Delicious deli 

Amazing historic structure 

Lovely old signage

One step ahead of the cobwebs

We have current National Trust Membership so our plan this trip was to see as many National Trust properties as possible during our three week stay in Melbourne. This took some juggling as they are not all offered for regular tours or viewings and some only opened once a month to complicate things. 

With only three weeks at our disposal we needed to plan carefully to see the sites of interest and even then we discovered we constantly had to stay open to disappointment, as so much to do with National Trust sites all over Australia we are discovering, seems to rely so heavily on volunteers, so if the volunteers happen not to be available that day, then nothing much is able to proceed. Added to which specific websites for specific National Trust sites often hold confusing, outdated, and even conflicting information. Which is not often able to be clarified by contacting full time staff, who seem to not want to be bothered. So, planning these visits tended to lean more towards the random.

As soon as our plane landed in Melbourne we taxied to our home for the next three weeks, dumped off our luggage, picked up the car we were to use, and drove south of Melbourne to visit one of the more rarely opened sites, Labassa. Labassa is an old mansion in present day Caulfield. It grew a little at a time, in a way reflecting the growth and development of the state of Victoria as it grew. As such, its tale is quite poignant.

The house, first called Sylliott Hill was built in 1862 for Melbourne lawyer, Richard Billing, who started construction from scratch then extended the house over the decades until his death there in 1882. The property was then leased to another Melbourne businessman who happened to be one of the Victorian Cobb and Co owners, and a director of R. Goldsbrough & Co. Ltd. His name was Alexander Robertson. 

After a time Alexander purchased the property along with some 15 acres of parkland surrounding the house. He renamed it Ontario which is from where his Scottish family were migrating at the time of his birth. He set to work organising his architect, John A B Koch, to remodel it according to his wishes. 

And the house grew grew and blossomed. Some of it was whimsical. Alexander had the money. He was born at sea and on the ceiling border in the billiard room are four painted cartouches, one of which depicts a ship at sea, believed to be a reference to Alexander’s sea birth. Above the grand staircase in the main hall an exquisite trompe l’oeil mural was uncovered in recent decades. Quite beautiful. It takes the eye from the four seasons motif on the stained glass windows of the landing, up over the graceful wooden curve of the staircase, to the expanded sky above. 

Pieces of geometric stained glass were inserted into the grand front door panels casting colourful slashes of light into the main hall. And in the luxurious drawing room 22 carat gold leaf decorates the extravagant cornices and pillars. There are even eucalyptus leaves and gum nuts included in the carvings here— a nod to a federated Australia, no doubt. Such amazing craftsmanship, at a time when such skills must have been in really short supply in Australia, are to be treasured. Alexander, sadly, did not live long enough to enjoy his renovations. He died in 1886 just weeks after it was completed. 

These were the last of her dressed up days. From 1921 onwards Labassa was sold to a series of owners and converted into flats for many decades. Great chunks of her beautiful ceilings and cornices were slashed and scarred and screwed to enable temporary partitions to be installed in the largest rooms, dividing the upstairs and downstairs into as many flats as could be squeezed into the spaces. Even the dark crawlspace under the stairs became a tiny roomed flat. 

Thank god for the lady in Flat #5, The Laundry. From 1921 onwards, here lived Mrs Emily Jane Brearley, and her husband, who were appointed caretakers of Labassa by the new owners. Thanks to the Brearleys much of the beautiful craftsmanship still survives. During this time the various flats were occupied by louche bohemians, actresses, playwrights and musicians. The space in the gardens was soon taken up by tenement type blocks of flats, closing in on Labassa’s breathing space. Barry Jones lived in one of the surrounding flats for a time, as did Graham Kennedy. The fireplaces in the old home still worked as there is a tale told of a disused telephone pole being dragged into the house by one of the tenants and as the winter progressed the giant log was fed further and further into the flames, slowly turning to coal, then ashes. Amazing that the place did not burn down.

Through until the sixties, when she died, Emily Brearley was the meticulous minder of the old mansion. Stairs were polished, tiles waxed, cherubs dusted, parquetry patches repaired. She would not allow it to decay on her watch. Which lasted over 40 years. The National Trust took over in the eighties, thanks to a donation that allowed them to purchase the property and demolish some of the intruding tenement dwellings that cramped its outlook. There is still damage. There is little money. But, at times, Labassa is able to live on graciously still: as a wedding venue, a film set for a period murder mystery series, or as an exhibition showplace. Its tales live on with it.

Labassa 

Glitter, gilt and gold

Ornate living room columns 

Elegant staircase, stained glass lit 

Atop the stairs the painted sky offers space and light