Von Guerard and the Cultural Landscapes of the Camperdown Region
Author: Trevor Pitkin
In 2024 the Victorian Branch decided to mount a tour of the Camperdown region of the western district. It was designed to appreciate the rich cultural landscapes of this area, using the perspectives presented by Eugene von Guerard in his many paintings and sketches from the mid nineteenth century as a basis for selecting tour destinations.
A detailed booklet to support the tour was researched and produced as a record of the event that ran over three days in November 2024. The narratives in the booklet do not pretend to represent full histories of each site or chronological detail. Rather the emphasis is on providing a starting point to reflect on the landscapes visited, beyond what the eye can see. Ruth Pullin’s published work on von Guerard in this area of the state was used extensively to seed these narratives; Pullin is the pre-eminent scholar of von Guerard.