MHS has started to dip it's toe into the modern world!
We support a blog, have included multimedia presentations at open days and this year's President Report was delivered by SKYPE!!!
Geoff Ostling didn't let an overseas holiday stop him from performing his presidential duties and delivered his speech from a comfy chair in the USA while most members sat with wet feet on a coolish rain drenched morning in Herb Greedy Hall.
The following is a transcript of Geoff's report:
Good morning everyone. I am halfway across
the world at a place called Flintstone in Georgia in the USA. Flintstone is a suburb of the city of Chattanooga, which is on
the border of Tennessee
and Georgia
two of the ‘Southern states’ of the USA.
Chattanooga was made famous in the song, ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, first
recorded by Glenn Miller in 1941 and then recorded by the Andrews Sisters and
numerous other performers over the years, including KISS in 2002. Many MHS members will, no doubt, remember this
song from years-gone-by.
I am here for the 150th
Anniversary of some of the most important battles of the American Civil War and
to learn more about them. Our host, Dewaine Fisher,
is the son of one of the National Park Rangers of the Chickamauga – Chattanooga Battlefield and this
was his home for the first 27 years of his life. He continues to live close to the park.
Joe and I spent our first day here on a
guided historical tour of the bloodiest of all the battles of 1863. I was
amazed to hear about the severity of the fighting and the more than 10,000 men
from both the North and the South who died here in just three days of savage fighting
over the abolition of slavery in the United States.
We will also be visiting ‘Colonial
Williamsburg’ in Virginia and several of the beautiful old pre-Civil War house-museums
and other heritage buildings staffed by volunteers in period costume, which the
Americans call ‘Living History’.
After three weeks in the USA, Joe and I are
flying to Peru
in South America to see the archaeological remains
of the mighty Inca civilization. I’ll have a great many things to talk about
when I get home at the end of July.
Thanks to modern science I am hoping this report
is being presented on Skype, the internet connection that combines both sound and
image. Unfortunately it does not always work, but when it does, it is
brilliant. I have my fingers crossed
this morning…
Now to the 29th Annual
Presidential Report of Marrickville Heritage Society.
Marrickville Heritage Society
2013 President’s Report
This has been a very successful year. We
have over 400 members and a wonderful committee who have worked tirelessly throughout
the year. I want to thank our two vice presidents Lorraine Beach and Iain Carolin, and the other members of
the executive committee, our treasurer Diane
McCarthy, secretary Vivien Wherry, assistant secretary Rosemary Wood, and other committee
members, Robert Hutchinson, Mary
Oakenfull, Deborah Lang, Pamela
Stewart, Richard Blair and
Ian Phillips.
Richard
Blair has produced the newsletter each month which is
the envy of other history and heritage societies across Australia. While
thanking Richard, I also want to thank our ‘runners’ who deliver your
newsletter to your doorstep. Over the
last 29 years they have saved our society thousands of dollars in postage.
Deborah
Lang has developed a regular ‘blog’ on our Marrickville Heritage Society website. This ‘blog’ includes information about Marrickville
read by people around the world. There will be more of this in the Publications
Report later in the meeeting.
Our society’s financial position is
extremely good as a result of all the voluntary work.
Marrickville
Council has provided free-of-charge the Herb Greedy
Hall for our regular meetings. The
Council has also assisted in information about heritage-related development applications within the Local Government
Area.
In the
last year, our Society has been represented at
- The Fanny Durack
Centenary Picnic at Petersham
Park. Here we
celebrated the first Australian to win an Olympic Gold Medal at the
Stockholm Olympic Games on 15th
July 1912;
- The Marrickville Festival;
- The Health and Wellbeing Forum at Marrickville Town Hall;
- The recent Open Weekend at Tempe House arranged by MHS member and
founder of the Friends of Tempe House, Ross Berry;
- The Annual Conference of the Royal Australian Historical
Society held at the St George Rowing Club where MHS Vice President, Loraine Beach, was presented with a Certificate
of Achievement for her work in promoting history of this part of Sydney;
- Again, MHS was represented at the 175th Anniversary
of the opening of St Peters Anglican Church, in the parish of Cooks River. St Peters is the oldest building still-standing,
in the Marrickville LGA and gave its name to the suburb of St Peters;
- Marrickville, a past worth
preserving (MAPWP), is the volume of essays
published by our Society.
Marrickville Council purchased a copy of this volume for each high
school in the Marrickville LGA and they are being presented by a MHS
member at each high school’s assembly of students;
- Deborah Lang and I are our society’s representatives on
Marrickville Council’s Heritage Promotions Committee which arranged the
annual Marrickville Medal presentation at Marrickville Town Hall.
The speaker that night was Robin
Walsh, whose recent publication In Her Own Words, the writings
of Elizabeth Macquarie has received wide acclaim. We congratulate all the prize winners
including Lorraine
Beach who received Marrickville
Council’s 2013 ‘Special Achievement Award’.
Our speakers
for the year included
- Andrew Tink who spoke on the life and times of Lord Sydney after whom our
city was named;
- King Fong spoke on the history of the Chinese people in Australia;
- Laurel and Bob Horton provided an excellent presentation on St Peters with readings from the diaries
of early settler Alexander Brodie
Spark;
- Robert Parkinson spoke about the Marrickville and Newtown picture theatres between 1898
and 2012;
- Clinton Johnston, coordinator of History services at Marrickville Library, who spoke
about items from the Marrickville Council History collection and Archives
‘From the Vault’.
Our
excursions were to the following places:
 |
| Image: Richard Blair |
- Rookwood Cemetery where we inspected the
graves removed from the Lewisham
Catholic Cemetery
when the railway was widened in the 1920s, the Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn and the much-admired
Japanese garden at Auburn Botanic
Gardens;
- The Big Dig and the Rocks Discovery
Museum at the
Rocks;
- A bus trip to the two sites at
Petersham and at Vaucluse associated with the ‘Great Australian Patriot’ William Charles Wentworth, his wife
the ‘currency lass’, Sarah Cox,
and their children. We also visited
the Wentworth Family Mausoleum and the Wentworth Memorial
Church;
- The Egyptian Room at
Petersham Masonic Centre which includes bas relief sculptures some covered in pure gold. They are the work of sculptor Raynor Hoff and based on the 2000 year old Egyptian ‘Book
of the Dead’ in the British
Museum;
- Finally our annual Christmas ‘Pot Luck Supper’ at the home and garden of Laurel and Bob Horton in Tempe.
The
Heritage Watch Program of
the Society included numerous submissions to Marrickville Council and follow-ups
relating to DAs involving heritage issues. Recently I rang a member who had
spent a day and a half researching just one particular heritage site for
presentation to Council on proposed redevelopments. Many times we do not
recognise the enormous amount of work that members do which is not generally known
outside the Committee.
Marrickville Heritage Society is one of the
400 community groups affiliated to the ‘Better
Planning Network of NSW’ concerned with the new planning legislation
presently proposed by the state government. I am certain that there will be
lots more about this in the near future.
Our 30th
Anniversary
In April 2014 we celebrate 30 years of
contribution to the municipality
of Marrickville and the
continuing recognition of heritage within our Local
Government area. We look forward to another very successful year.
To
conclude
I have had a most enjoyable time as
President of the Marrickville Heritage
Society and consider it an honour to be invited to stand for re-election.
