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Authors: Robin Boyd
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Unstudied late-Georgian dignity thus persevered deep into the nineteenth century, unaffected by the chain of revivals reacting through Europe.
Victoria, too young to have witnessed this one coherent phase of Australiaâs architectural development, never knew intimately any style. She knew only the wonderful confusion of all styles which was Victorian. The Old Colonial had passed from the minds of the first builders in this new colony at Port Phillip Bay. All at once, with the opening of the new territory, the revivals of the century came crowding in on top of each other. Almost from the beginning every builder indulged in eclecticism unhampered by any local traditions or any special tastes on the part of the bewildered populace. The churches were mainly Gothic; the public buildings leant to Rome. But the houses and offices felt free to dip into history wherever their fancy led them.
The builders who overlooked the Old Colonial details were also oblivious to all lessons on the Australian climate learnt by the older men in New South Wales. In Port Phillip Bay the new settlers found a climate milder than any yet encountered on the new continent. The winter was grey, damp and depressing, but not uncomfortably cold for long periods; never cold enough to take leaves for more than three months from the English trees which they hastily planted. Even the fierce summer sun was accepted philosophically. Despite the lesson of the Old Colonials, verandas were not considered necessary. After some ten summers the need for protection became apparent. A veranda was often added thereafter, but it was separately pitched from light poles and sprang in a galvanized iron buttress to the wall line; it was never an integral part of the Victorian house.
The white man came to Victoria with the nineteenth century (in 1801, the first building, a block-house planted about with ill-fated fruit trees) but a successful foundation was not laid till the eighteen-thirties. In contrast to the older States, this foundation was the work of privately enterprising men under a cloud of official disapproval. Henty, Batman and Fawkner, men of opposed natures, intentions and ideals, pressed across separately from the harshly settled island of Tasmania, bringing fruit trees, seeds, vines, implements, livestock, some labourers, two builders and one architect: Samuel Jackson, of John Pascoe Fawknerâs party. Fawkner and Batman each had such strong rival claims to the foundation of Melbourne that some historians, to make peace, have termed the former the âfatherâ and the latter the âfounderâ of Melbourne. Each man was typical of his class in the sharply divided society that developed. Batman, the polite stockholder, the first of an army of wealthy pastoralists, applied what elegant English features he could to the mud and crackling branches of the wild land. Fawkner was the convictâs son, the trader, the self-educated editor of the first newspaper which he stuck in manuscript to the window of his, the first, hotel. He was the fighter, the tough, fierce critic of authority, the forerunner to the radicals who later broke the oligarchical rule that persevered till the middle of the century. He had the spirit that built up trade unionism and wages and cut down working hours to degrees unheard of abroad, the religiously democratic fervour that brought manhood suffrage sixty-one years before it appeared in the United Kingdom, the spirit that led Victoria in 1859 to become the first parliamentary state in the world with a secret ballot at elections, the spirit that discounted experts and suspected artists of all kinds.
Thus the opposing factions were there in strength from the beginning. Those who sought elegance looked for it only in one directionâback across the months of ocean; but those who were required to create the elegance for them with bricks and sticks had no great love of the Old Worldâfor if they had not been deported,
Victoria, too young to have witnessed this one coherent phase of Australiaâs architectural development, never knew intimately any style. She knew only the wonderful confusion of all styles which was Victorian. The Old Colonial had passed from the minds of the first builders in this new colony at Port Phillip Bay. All at once, with the opening of the new territory, the revivals of the century came crowding in on top of each other. Almost from the beginning every builder indulged in eclecticism unhampered by any local traditions or any special tastes on the part of the bewildered populace. The churches were mainly Gothic; the public buildings leant to Rome. But the houses and offices felt free to dip into history wherever their fancy led them.
The builders who overlooked the Old Colonial details were also oblivious to all lessons on the Australian climate learnt by the older men in New South Wales. In Port Phillip Bay the new settlers found a climate milder than any yet encountered on the new continent. The winter was grey, damp and depressing, but not uncomfortably cold for long periods; never cold enough to take leaves for more than three months from the English trees which they hastily planted. Even the fierce summer sun was accepted philosophically. Despite the lesson of the Old Colonials, verandas were not considered necessary. After some ten summers the need for protection became apparent. A veranda was often added thereafter, but it was separately pitched from light poles and sprang in a galvanized iron buttress to the wall line; it was never an integral part of the Victorian house.
The white man came to Victoria with the nineteenth century (in 1801, the first building, a block-house planted about with ill-fated fruit trees) but a successful foundation was not laid till the eighteen-thirties. In contrast to the older States, this foundation was the work of privately enterprising men under a cloud of official disapproval. Henty, Batman and Fawkner, men of opposed natures, intentions and ideals, pressed across separately from the harshly settled island of Tasmania, bringing fruit trees, seeds, vines, implements, livestock, some labourers, two builders and one architect: Samuel Jackson, of John Pascoe Fawknerâs party. Fawkner and Batman each had such strong rival claims to the foundation of Melbourne that some historians, to make peace, have termed the former the âfatherâ and the latter the âfounderâ of Melbourne. Each man was typical of his class in the sharply divided society that developed. Batman, the polite stockholder, the first of an army of wealthy pastoralists, applied what elegant English features he could to the mud and crackling branches of the wild land. Fawkner was the convictâs son, the trader, the self-educated editor of the first newspaper which he stuck in manuscript to the window of his, the first, hotel. He was the fighter, the tough, fierce critic of authority, the forerunner to the radicals who later broke the oligarchical rule that persevered till the middle of the century. He had the spirit that built up trade unionism and wages and cut down working hours to degrees unheard of abroad, the religiously democratic fervour that brought manhood suffrage sixty-one years before it appeared in the United Kingdom, the spirit that led Victoria in 1859 to become the first parliamentary state in the world with a secret ballot at elections, the spirit that discounted experts and suspected artists of all kinds.
Thus the opposing factions were there in strength from the beginning. Those who sought elegance looked for it only in one directionâback across the months of ocean; but those who were required to create the elegance for them with bricks and sticks had no great love of the Old Worldâfor if they had not been deported,
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