Interview Recording
Interview Transcript
Bud Townsing interviewed on 26 September 2025 by Heather McIntyre
Synopsis
Raised in Western Australia, Bud moved to Canberra, Sydney, Tasmania and finally to Bundanoon and then Bowral. His interests included areas of heritage and conservation and throughout his life, he has contributed to heritage conservation campaigns with advocacy, photography and his prodigious writing skills. He has also produced exhibitions on researched areas of heritage concerns and has been involved with AGHS for some years, providing talks and publications.
He talks of his various projects which involved his family, especially his wife Maureen. Living in Annandale in Sydney, exposed him to conservation campaigns and developed his skills in negotiation and working with local councils to achieve conservation outcomes of a heritage nature. Maureen became the Chair of the Annandale Association and they both worked on gaining statistical information on density of housing and planning issues to assist in conservation and revegetation of the suburb. They were community oriented and Bud mentions that Maureen:
also was really heavily involved in resident action. If people had a problem they would come and see Maureen, and she would see what help could be done. It became very much a way of life.
Bud describes how they both worked on restoration projects for their own houses, learning new skills and maintaining the integrity of the original buildings.
Basically, I did them all. My labour goes in for free because I watch these Grand Design television things always going over budget and stuff like that, whereas my logic was, A, I didn’t have a budget B, in my own time, I could do the really labour-intensive jobs, strip and paint. We’d go to demolition sites, get marble fireplaces. Rebuild the marble fireplaces. None of that’s technically hard, and that’s how we brought the houses back. We didn’t alter the houses, much . . . by the standards of the time, we had quite a light touch on the house[s], and tried to take them back to the way they were. If they had cedar skirting boards. Well, it’s nice if you can get back to the cedar skirting boards. If they had marble fireplaces, let’s put the marble fireplaces back in, repair the fibrous plaster to get as it was. So, that all of that we did ourselves, which means that we weren’t running up debts.
The Gentle Advocacy process that Bud involves himself in produced books on locations, especially in the Bowral and Bundanoon areas. He talks of the way exhibitions, information, publications and talks can bring forward local heroes and stories that can assist with conservation of heritage precincts, of houses and areas that provide flavours of location which is what attracts people to towns and areas. Care and vigilance is required and Bud has been involved in conserving such “flavours” for practically his whole life.