Caroline Grant
Chair:
Caroline Grant
Secretary:
vacant
Treasurer:
Gillian Lilleyman
NMC Rep:
Caroline Grant
Membership Secretary:
Sue Monger
Newsletter Editor:
Joy Hill
Committee:
Joy Hill
Ruth Morgan
Carmel O'Halloran
Theresa Putland
John Viska
Lisa Williams
24 October (Sunday)
Yanchep National Park
We'll visit the park, which was vested in the Caves Board in 1905, John Viska will speak on the rockeries built in the 1930's and Gillian Lilleyman will tell us about Louis Shapcott, who oversaw the building of the rockeries. We will have time to explore the site, once a popular resort, and find some wildflowers.
11–25 May 2011
Photographic Exhibition - Early Perth Gardens
Good news! The City of Perth Council has notified us that our application for a grant has been approved. The exhibition will be held in the Perth Town Hall from 11–25 May, 2011.
The Branch is grateful to the National Management Committee for its indication of financial support. Now, it's full steam ahead for the exhibition sub-committee!
Many will be aware of the storm that lashed Perth on Monday 22 March. There has been much publicity about the damage wrought by hailstones to vehicles and buildings, and it is a great sadness to see the imposing avenue of Norfolk Island pines Araucaria excelsa at Karrakatta cemetery stripped of their foliage. Many other trees have suffered a similar fate and we can but hope that the arboriculturalists will be as busy as the insurance assessors.
STORM UPDATE
It was encouraging to note an item in the local press in which a spokesman for the Karrakatta Cemetery Board expressed optimism that the trees will recover with cooler days and autumn rains. Driving past Karrakatta on the way to Northam for the AGM, AGHS member Marion Blackwell was more cautious, saying ‘let’s wait and see’.
Much of Kings Park was also affected.
AGM at Muresk, Northam
On Sunday 23 July approximately 30 members and guests met at Morby Cottage (1836) outside Northam for morning tea with the Northam Historical Society. We were shown through the old stone house and garden, close to the Avon River, before proceeding to Muresk Agricultural College for lunch and the AGM. The dining hall is located in the old Dempster homestead, the property sold by Andrew Dempster’s daughter in 1925 to the West Australian Government to create an agricultural college.
The property contains a variety of exotic trees including a very old peppercorn tree, Schinus molle. By 1913 Muresk together with Hope Farm constituted about 2500 hectares, including 2000 sheep, some cattle and horses, orchards, vineyards covering nearly nine hectares and a 2.5 hectare vegetable garden.
Our thanks to speaker Bruce Bott for an informative presentation and accompanying notes.
On Sunday 16 May, 15 members and friends met at The Cloisters where Marion Blackwell, landscape architect and botanist, introduced us to the site at 200 St Georges Terrace and outlined her research. The Cloisters, with the Perth Town Hall, is one of the city's few remaining mid 19th century convict-built buildings. Designed by Richard Roach Jewell and built in 1858 as a secondary school for boys, the tudor and gothic architectural influences of mother England are very apparent. The bricks were hand made in the Queens Gardens quarries. Having been a school for boys, and later girls, The Cloisters had many uses including a private home.
In the late 1960's the church owners made plans to redevelop the site. A public outcry resulted in a business deal to retain the building and the Port Jackson fig Ficus rubiginosa, planted in the early 1890's, which led to Marion being instrumental in successfully securing the tree's future. Her account of countering the dewatering program demanded by the high rise building project, climbing the tree in barefeet to apply by hand a stress guard substance to both sides of the leaves and preventing haphazard pruning was amusingly recounted. Letters written at the turn of the 19th century enabled us to appreciate a personal insight to the days when the Cloisters was a family home.
Phil Palmer, landscape architect for the National Trust (WA) and author of the conservation plan for the Florence Hummerston Reserve, led us westwards up the Terrace to view this small pocket of land (FHR), whilst explaining that it is the only area of public open space between Elder St and Barrack St. Known as St Georges Terrace Reserve when it became a public garden in 1898, the park was granted to the City of Perth in 1970 and later named for Florence Hummerston, the city's first female councillor (1951-68).
Whilst traffic demands have truncated one corner of the reserve, the original plantings of camphor laurels Cinnamomum camphora, Washingtona palms Washingtonia filifer, later plantings of Jacaranda mimosaefolia and lawn offer city workers a shady lunchtime picnic spot. A statue of Alexander Forrest (1849-1901), explorer and city father, graced the reserve from 1903 to 1916 when it was moved to Stirling Gardens, and a water feature memorial to philanthropist Sir Charles McNess (1852-1938) located in those gardens, was moved by the City of Perth to FHR in 1995.
