DREAMING OF ‘HOME’

It was a real estate advertisement, but it highlighted the Colonial mind:

https://www.bosshunting.com.au/lifestyle/real-estate/6256-scone-road-merriwa/

The headline said it all:

On The Market: This $15 Million Estate Is A Taste Of English Countryside In NSW

The challenge was to make Australia just like ‘home.’

The images hold a surreal identity - a 'surreal-estate' identity - suspended in an alien space, as a place that is almost unbelievable, looking somewhat dreamlike, as ideal renderings in a feigned light, just like that at 'home.'

The images show how serious the strategy of reproducing memories of 'home' was, even though they highlight a degree of stubborn effort, a simplistic, naive, crudity intertwined in the realisation of the clichés.

One can see how, what is known as Australian Colonial Architecture, has its roots in this desire to be at 'home' - to be just like 'the old country' - as best as one could be given the rigours of place and period and their limitations.

 

What is interesting is the shearing shed. Here one can see a true Australian building that looks like a prototype for the marvellous Deeargee shed that has been attributed to Horbury Hunt: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/02/deeargee-gostwyck-shed-and-chapel.html: the nodal end linked to the linear stem of a building establishes the pattern, with growth occurring as an extension of the stem - all timber and corrugated iron.

Deeargee shed

Deeargee shed

Deeargee shed

The contrast between the raw necessity of the shearing shed and the ambitions for dwelling could not be more clear. The shed held the beginnings of an Australian architecture, while the dwelling sought to reproduce every familiarity known from 'home' that represented comfort, identity, and authority.

It took a long time for the shed to overcome the ambitions of desire; perhaps we are still grappling with this basic issue? Murcutt's work uses the same materials, but plays with Modernism rather than toiling with the real roots and spirit of place, in spite of the descriptive language that boasts of light touches on land, suggestively referencing country in text only. We have yet to find it in our architecture. We need to listen to Bill Neidjie, and truly understand his words, then there might be hope.

The dream

The reality: country.

 “Our story is in the land… it is written in those sacred places, that’s the law. Dreaming place… you can’t change it, no matter who you are.”

“I feel with my body. Feeling all these trees, all this country. When this blow you can feel it. Same for country… you feel it, you can look, but feeling… that make you.”

(Bill Neidjie, Gagudju Elder)