CONNECTIONS… A Self Guided Walk
CONNECTIONS….A SELF GUIDED, WALK AROUND THE STRATHNAIRN HOMESTEAD PROPERTY
Written by Rosemary Blemings
Many of the segments are based on views from the Sculpture Walk and include reflections about the history of Strathnairn Arts
Start at the Homestead Gallery near the sundial and wander the grounds in an anticlockwise direction. There are still many reminders around of the property’s early farming days mixed in with more recent artistic endeavours.
Scenes from Sundial include a view of Prickly Pear cacti. Similar cacti took over vast tracts of agricultural land in Queensland and NSW and lead to the famous biological control success story whereby caterpillars from a small, introduced, moth ate the cacti. Numbers of the succulent, introduced as a ‘natural hedge plant’, became manageable only after studies and trials cleared the importation of the Cactoblastis moths in the 1920’s.
Nearby the rusting disc harrows tilled thousands of acres in conjunction with ploughs as cleared land was prepared for grain crops. In each case the earliest implements were horse drawn in Australia. When tractors became more powerful hydraulics were used to raise and angle the harrows. The concrete blocks weighed the harrows down so they didn’t bounce but tractors needed to be more powerful to pull the extra weight. Change now, shows increasing numbers of farmers reducing the tillage of Australia’s fragile soils thereby retaining more moisture, micro-organisms and humus.
The partly-dead wattles and other trees around the place still have value as birds can search for insects under the bark. The rough, dead branches deter predators.
Near Chair there’s an Argyle apple. These eucalypts are planted as street trees in local suburbs. Here they have grown to their potential and, with dense foliage, provide good cover for birds and food from the nectar in their spring flowers.
Beyond Studios 6 and 9 there’s quite a thicket of eucalypts below the dam. The largest tree is several hundred years old but most of the other trees around the dam are too young to feature in photographs of the property in the Bluefolk days of the seventies.
The dam area is a no-go-zone until the renovations program upgrades access and creates a safe boardwalk near the water. But, even from the fence-line, there’s usually some waterbird activity or frog calls to notice. A hide is planned so visitors have non-intrusive views of the waterbirds.
The Village Hall serves the Strathnairn and wider community as a meeting place and classroom. Each small building clustered round it is a studio for an artist or artisan. All are recent additions to the Studio network where textiles, fabric, threads and weaving are chosen media.
There’s a fascinating array of iron work, creations and metal pieces around Studio 6 reminding us that the blacksmith’s shop gave each rural community an essential service through the creation and repair of tools, wagon and implement wheels and the shoeing of horses.
All artisans needed to be resourceful and metalworkers reshaped old machinery and metal pieces using heat from forges fanned by bellows. Charcoal was the original fuel burning hot and clean for the smith. Many farm implements, heavy machinery and even nuts and bolts came from Britain and Europe initially by steamship. Were they, and imported railway locomotives and rolling stock as expensive and valued in the young colonies as the online items we can so easily and quickly buy these days?
A small vegetable garden, fenced to deter kangaroos, was a time-consuming necessity on farms where large families and farm workers , remote from shops and markets, needed wholesome, energising meals. Fencing ingenuity was essential if home-garden crops were to be protected from ‘roos, rabbits, birds and possums. Children had major roles in chores around the farm and the property but, in the process, learned about housekeeping, planting, seasonal growth, harvesting. They’d grow herbs and care for poultry.
Behind Studio 2 other “collections” stir memories of the resourcefulness of farmers, graziers, rural property owners and their neighbours. It just didn’t make sense to “throw things away” by taking them into town when there were very good chances that a future use would be found for everyday items, metals, timber, bathtubs and vehicle parts.
Studio 1 used to be cook’s quarters in its earlier life……imagine the aroma of cooking spreading out to workers in the paddocks. Sometimes the whiff of composting green-waste from Canberra Sand and Gravel blows less than two kilometres across the paddocks from the north-west.
Rows or clusters of pine trees Pinus radiata are a familiar sight around the region. At Strathnairn there’s also a row on the distant edge of the back paddock. Millions of seedlings were sold to create windbreaks on farms, probably after farmers had followed policy and cleared native trees to make way for crops and pasture. Silhouetted against the ever-changing skyscape the pines’ dark outlines, the cone-bearing branches and their lean pine needles have their own appeal. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly past seasonally in case the cones are worth eating. They can easily break off the cones with their powerful beaks, holding the cones in their left feet whilst searching for nourishing pine seeds.
Sulphur-crested cockatoos visit the other cone-bearing trees in Strathnairn’s grounds. Like the Monterey pine, each of these species has a long tale to relate about their origins, journeys to and trialling in Australia and their distribution across the ACT. They were grown in arboreta to test their suitability. Perhaps nurserymen travelled by horse and cart to sell young trees to landowners. Strathnairn’s turkeys and chooks love to dust-bath and forage amongst the dry soil and needles under the statuesque conifers. Each species has its own distinct aroma from the leaves’ oils.
Beyond the ‘back paddocks’ there are ancient eucalypts and their younger offspring. They have survived the threat of clearing for paddocks and, although there’s no native shrubs and groundcover species left, this remnant of Yellow Box Red Gum Grassy Woodland is a vital link for birds and other wildlife between the Murrumbidgee River corridor and the land and suburbs east of Strathnairn. The oldest trees contain hollows that are essential for nesting parrots, owls, kookaburras, possums, sugar gliders, smaller birds and wood ducks.
Mitchell has links to properties like Strathnairn as its streets names recall industrialists’ contributions to Australia. Sandfords manufactured wire netting on Parramatta Road and Lysaght’s company was famous for galvanised products such as guttering, pipes, fencing and the ubiquitous galvanised sheeting for walls and roofs. “Galvanised iron” reached Sydney in late 1849 coming from the UK factories by ship. These valued materials had many advantages over timber, stone and brick but didn’t reach more distant settlements until these places were connected by rail.
The walls of many of the out-buildings show galvanised sheeting of a variety of origins. Some have been painted. For many the memories of events or working inside galvanised buildings or under “hot tin roofs” would show the huge divide between then and our better-insulated now. Galvanised iron was invented in Britain in the 1820’s using the processes based on the discoveries of Luigi Galvan (1737 – 1798) in Bologna.
To the right of a pyramidal sculpture (Form work from NGA 1982) there’s a couple of large “coppers-on- wheels”. What’s their story? Nearby and outside ceramicists’ studios there’s a range of fashionable plants from decades ago. Succulents, Valerian and with grapevines trailing over the gutters and roof. All need to survive the punishing westerly sun.
There are three tractors to ponder and perhaps admire for their functional simplicity and durability. The “little grey Fergie” has a complex history from before WW2 in Canada and USA, links with the Ford Motor Company . It’s known for its Ferguson-pioneered three-point-linkage system and from a commemoration in Wentworth where tractors constructed levee banks which saved the city from Murray River flooding in 1956. Tiny by today’s tractor standards the Massey-Fergusons were ideal for smaller farms before the days of vast paddocks and industrialised farming.
The Orange Ford 535 and the slasher’s blue tractor even have a nostalgic-for-some smell of an oily rag about them. All the tractors were built to last and are still ready-to-go with specific tasks around the property. They are out in all weathers and, with accessible essentials, show the resilience and abilities of their owners. Farm folk were operators and mechanics, repairing them and the farm’s implements far from the reassurance of service-manuals and service-centres in town.
There’s a range of Eucalypt species on the western edge of Strathnairn’s older buildings. Argyle Apple, Southern Blue Gum and Brittle Gum could have come to Strathnairn when nearby suburbs’ streets were planted with these species. Eucalyptus pulverulenta is a most un-eucalyptusy tree with its straggly shape and rounded leaves. It’s a species from near Bredbo that propagated readily 45 years ago and is grown in and beyond our region but it’s now unusual in “the wild”.
Some of the 40 year old trees are surrounded by building materials. Isolated from sources of new materials rural folk are champions of adaptability and innovation using what’s at hand. Quite a few birds use the tunnels and holes created in the stockpiles for roosting, shelter and nesting. Here, also, are woodpiles of pine and eucalypt ready for the axeman and for keeping the homestead’s fires burning in winter. Some timber would be used to fire-up the Pizza Oven each Sunday.
A favourite tree is the massive, horizontal Eucalyptus trunk near the shearing shed. It features in photos of the Blue Folk days. It’s several hundred years old and shows Eucalypts’ tenacity in growing new, vertical branches from epicormic buds under the bark as a death-defying strategy.
The Foundry is highly unusual as a public access facility.
The Woolshed has been restored and refurbished utilising an ACT Government grant. It’s a novel meeting place, exhibition space and perhaps even a conference venue. Will Bush Dances be held there?
Opposite the Foundry complex there’s a tiny dam. The water may look more like Guinness but frogs have been heard there. The water’s colouring may be caused by tannins from leaves and plant material providing a connection to the long-experimentation that gave rural artisans a range of natural dyes from the vegetation of the bush.
Near a low-stable which was once an extensive chook-run a new cottage is being built for Strathnairn’s manager-caretaker.
Horses are a modest source of income through agistment. Their owners enjoy occasional rides and may have once used the various jumps-equipment between the pony and the vines. Tack and horse foods are stored in adapted sheds. Was one a traffic-monitoring cubicle? Bicentennial trail?
The Vineyard was planted in 1991 definitely pre-dating the commercial vineyards seen when approaching Studio Road.
The water-tank on its classic stand is literally connected to the small windmill on the dam’s shore. There was once an electric pump and pies from the dam to the tank still exist. Whether or not the windmill was more than a cosmetic reminder of the importance of a water supply may remain a mystery. Few properties were without a windmill as the wind was harnessed long before mains electricity reached rural homes.
A walk round the property shows a variety of fencing styles and components. Pause to consider the effort that went into the aged posts (their covering of several species of lichens made vivid and textured with the slightest fall of rain). It would take days to fell suitable fencing trees with axes and two-man saws. Corner-posts needed diagonal timbers to take the strain of taut wire. Different styles of wire reflected the need to keep stock in paddocks and often the top strand was barbed wire to discourage climbers.
The wire and wire netting which kept chooks in pens and foxes away from them, have connections back to the galvanising process which was used to prevent rusting.
House sparrows are slight enough to enter through some gauges of netting as they search for left-over grain. They are an introduced species closely related to Canaries and some Australian finches. Along with Blackbirds Sparrows are part of the adopted natural history of farmhouses and properties’ gardens. Starlings may be present in swirling flocks over the paddocks, especially in Autumn when they celebrate the remains of the grape harvest.
Check out our articles (on the blog) about Strathnairn’s native birds which you might spot as you walk around the property.