As time has passed, the imprint and influence they made in changing the face of our agrarian and cultural landscape should never be underestimated. As far as dry stone terracing is concerned and in terms of immigrant survival, probably the two locations, both in Victoria were most important; namely the Daylesford and Yandoit areas in the central goldfields and the areas surrounding the Long Tunnel goldmine around Walhalla in Gippsland.

9.4Early 1800s Settlement

9.4.1Hepburn Central Goldfields Victoria

Located within a wider area known as Victoria’s Central Highlands is the other area known for its early settlement gold rush days and with that vernacular stone housing and dry stone terracing. The Hepburn Shire landscape is a diverse topography of forests, mountains and plains derived from volcanic and marine sedimentary rocks. The area’s character could be described as a rolling but irregular topography crossed by ridge-like rises. Therefore, the terraces here are far less prolific than those around Walhalla and were built for the most part to tame areas of undulating terrain rather than create flat land on steep mountainsides.

In 1851, gold was discovered at Jim Crow (Daylesford district today) and the area soon became known for its extensive alluvial deposits. The varied geology provided the area with a rich collection of goldfields and mineral springs. It also provided two prime sources of construction stone for the early settlers to use, bluestone and freestone (Marshall 2000). The Jim Crow goldfields were also known for their mix of cultures. Among these were Chinese, a significant Anglo Saxon community and large communities of Northern Italians who came from areas of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, the Duchies of Modena and Parma and the neighbouring Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

Because of the diversity of cultures, the development of the area also provided opportunities to exchange traditional skills among which was craft of dry stone walling that leaves a legacy that shaped the making of a cultural landscape. The search for gold meant the land was turned ‘upside-down’. Paddocks were cleared to grow crops and graze stock, and the stone was ideal for marking boundaries, for constructing practical low terraces and for ‘solid housing’ to keep out the cold.

By far, the most significant group of terraces in this area are those made as part of the construction of the Hepburn Swimming Pool located on Spring Creek within the Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve. Whilst by European standards, they are neither finely crafted nor noteworthy as beautiful works of art they do, however, hold an important status as a major contributor to the heritage values and cultural and social development of the area. So important was this pool that after a period of dilapidation, volunteers using old photographs to replicate missing features such as dry stone terraced seating managed to refurbish it in 1993.

clan that is part of the Kurnai group. Located in a steep sided, heavily timbered valley at the foot of the Baw Baw Ranges in west Gippsland, geologically the main strata rocks are of the Silurian-Lower Devonian period. In Upper Devonian times intrusions occurred in this stratum giving rise to the gold carrying quartz reefs including the famous Cohen’s Reef. Historically, Cohen’s Reef was the most productive gold deposit in the Walhalla-Woods Point Goldfield.

Gold was discovered in the early 1860s, and a township initially known as ‘Stringers Creek’ was established. The ‘gold’ word soon spread, and by 1870, the township named Walhalla named after the mining company and a Norse myth was laid out. Progress of the area continued to grow so that by 1871 there were 1484 inhabitants, numerous stores, butchers, bakers, hotels, banks, a post office, a school, a Mechanics’ institute hall, two breweries and a newspaper.

The buildings were crowded along the narrow floor of the valley and perched precariously on the hillsides, and unlike elsewhere in Victoria and other parts of Australia where dry stone walls are mostly constructed on flat or undulating terrain, the Walhalla area is known for a variety of European style terraced stone walls built to create flat land for housing and support the much-needed roads and waterways (Marshall 2000: 1).

Those brave early settlers came from Cornwall in England, Valtellina in Italy and the Poschiavo Valley in Switzerland. As mines were established along Cohen’s Reef, the population of Walhalla continued to grow and people including Irish, Cornish, Chinese and other European immigrants began to move out to establish homes further up the sides of the valley.

Most were employed by the quartz crushing mines such as the Long Tunnel and Long Tunnel Extended Mines, and as luck would have it, among them was a good mix of skills that enabled them to survive. The tyranny of distance and isolation became the mother of creativity as they were forced by circumstance to use what was at hand. Italian woodcutters cut wood and supplied wood burning charcoal to the lucrative Long Tunnel gold mine; the Irish and Cornish were skilled miners, and the Chinese and Italians became food producers (Aldersea and Hood 2003).

To retract the stone, they had to blast the hillsides with gelignite. Fortunately, many had come from not dissimilar terrains where the dry stone terracing craft used for survival purposes was quite familiar. So, despite the challenges, they were soon able to conjure up memories of home to utilise and reinvent already familiar and practical skills in new and creative ways.

Today, the road to Walhalla is still well off the beaten track with one road in and out. So it is hard to imagine just how isolated they must have felt in those unrelenting mountains and extremely challenging bush with only their wood, stone and other traditional skills needed to create the buildings, terraces, chimneys and house walls indispensable for day today survival.

Today, Walhalla caters principally for the tourist market. The township and surrounding area is protected as a conservation area under the Baw Baw Shire Council’s Special use Zone Planning Scheme. It is also listed on the Register of the National Estate and as an Historic Park. The valley is peaceful, and the hills are again covered with trees. Several buildings are heritage-listed, the post office, band

Fig. 9.2 Rudimentary terracing to create flat land for housing in Walhalla, Gippsland, Victoria. Photo R. Marshall

rotunda, fire station, shops and houses are restored. The train line has been rebuilt and the dry stone terraced flat land areas are recognised for the significant and important contribution they made to the establishment of the area (Fig. 9.2).

9.4.3Goonawarra Vineyard Terraces Sunbury Victoria5

The Sunbury area is particularly important as the nucleus of pastoral settlement by prominent Port Phillip founders. After exploratory trips to Port Phillip in 1835, pioneering figures including Aitken, Evans, and Jackson returned to take up land and make permanent settlements near Sunbury. John Aitken’s settlement in the SunburyGisborne area at Mt. Aitken has been described as Victoria’s “first inland occupation of sheep country” (Dixon 1981: 26–27; Boys 1935: 30; Milbourne 1978: 26).

The Sunbury settlement also gains immense significance through its association with George Evans and William Jackson who were members of the small Enterprize expedition which settled Melbourne. They were the only two founding settlers who are known to have had an extended stay at Port Phillip.6 In addition to

5The following is an edited extract from The City of Hume Heritage Study of the Former Shire of Bulla (1998) by David Moloney and Vicki Johnstone, reproduced with permission of the author and copyright holder David Moloney, February 2017.

6National Trust of Victoria, National Trust File No. 3020.

these Port Phillip pioneers, the study area was soon settled by others who accrued massive pastoral fortunes, such as WJT Clarke and James Malcolm.

Constructed c. 1863–69 the former vineyard terracing and associated structure is located beside Jacksons Creek, north of Goonawarra in Sunbury Victoria. Of state, historical and architectural significance, the dry stone terrace walls and gravel roadway of the former Goonawarra vineyard are the only known vineyard terraces to have been constructed in Victoria in the nineteenth century. Classified for their association with the politician James Goodall Francis a former Premier of Victoria who commissioned their construction as evidence of the extravagant sums of money, he was prepared to invest in his Goonawarra country estate.

Apparently built as much for their aesthetic as utilitarian benefit and fashionable Continental inspiration, the terraces are an integral part of the adjacent Goonawarra winery and homestead which was the largest of the wineries established during Sunbury’s vineyard boom which followed the 1862 Land Act’s Novel Industry provisions.

In the early 1860s, intensive new agricultural pursuits, such as the cultivation of vines, were provided with government support. Section 47 of the 1862 Land Act— the ‘novel industries’ clause—enabled leases, under very favourable conditions, to be issued for areas of Crown land less than 30 acres in size. The rent was fixed separately for each individual lease and, after a period of 5 years, the lessee had the right to purchase the leasehold land at £1 per acre.

The homestead and winery were erected on land which was leased JG Francis under this clause. Francis applied for a full 30 acres of land in April 1863, stating that he intended to grow vines and tobacco. A five-year lease of the 30 acres of allotment D in the Parish of Bulla, right on the eastern edge of Sunbury, was granted to Francis on 1 July 1863. The conditions of the lease required that 10 acres of vines for the manufacture of wine and 5 acres of tobacco were to be planted over that five years at a rate of not less than 3 acres per annum.

At the time of his application, Francis was a prominent member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and of Melbourne’s business community, and he set up the Goonawarra vineyard as both a hobby business and a country retreat. In 1870, the Balliere’s Victorian Gazetteer described it as his summer residence. Francis was later to become the Premier of Victoria.

It appears that some sort of dwelling, if not part of the original homestead, was erected soon after he was granted his lease. The entry for this property in the Bulla District Road Board rate book, made in November 1863, describes it as ‘house and enclosure for vineyard’. It also seems from the high valuation beside this entry that Francis had accumulated considerably more land than the original 30 acres.

The terraces were an innovative measure taken in an apparently unfulfilled hope of producing superior wines. As well as their extraordinary cost, contemporary commentators often noted the conspicuous position and picturesque effect of the terraces. Whilst some are substantial and sturdy, they are mostly small and at the time of the Heritage Study undertaken in 1998 by Historians David Moloney and Vicki Johnston were found to be in a poor and fragile condition. The associated brick building, presumably a store room, has an unusual barrel vaulted roof, and an

unusually angled chimney or vent at one end. The road cut into the hillside above the terraces is also original and contributes to an understanding of the place (The Australasian, 8 July 1882: 56).

Set on a steep part of an escarpment of Jacksons Creek the fabric consists of the remnants of the terraces and the stone walls that supported them. At least, one is quite high and in substantially better condition however most of the walls are small, badly eroding and vandalised. The area is also substantially overgrown.

There are no records of tobacco having ever been planted on Francis’ property, but it is recorded that about 12 acres of vines were planted in 1864, located on “a hot and dry but deep and thoroughly drained hill of volcanic debris” (Shire of Bulla 1864). This was probably the north–west facing hillside to the south of the present homestead.

On 2 November 1866, the architect John Flanagan advertised for tenders for “rubble and cut work (labour only) of a wine store at Sunbury”. This was for the large bluestone winery, which was completed in early 1867 at a cost of £2500. In April 1867, the winery was described in a newspaper article as “the great feature of the place”.

Newspaper reports that relate to the vineyard and the terracing can be viewed in Appendix 9.1. They note the elaborate nature and the extraordinary expense of the terrace work. They also note the picturesque nature of the vineyard and that the terraces were “ornamental as well as useful. A cursory inspection of the surroundings of the vineyard is sufficient to show that utility is not the only object aimed at in its management”.

9.4.4Ha-Ha Wall the Mansion at Werribee Park Melbourne’s West Victoria

Whilst many early settlers came to seek their fortunes, there were some few among them who came to improve the family fortunes using money they brought from their wealthy farming families back home. It is not surprising that once they had established themselves they then began to try to recreate the larger house and garden styles they had left behind.

Home to one of the relatively rare ha-ha retaining walls in Australia, the large property at Werribee Park was developed by Thomas Chirnside a leading Victorian Scottish pastoralist who arrived and settled in 1839 and owned large areas of land across the western basalt plains. By 1870, he and his brother Andrew both well-educated and astute businessmen had acquired 250,000 acres of freehold land in Victoria, including the property at Werribee. The Mansion completed in 1877 was modelled on the ideal grand English country estate.

Werribee Park is set on approximately 1000 acres of land 35 km southwest of Melbourne. The area includes the Werribee Mansion (1873) with formal garden, grotto, mansion gates and gate lodge, freestanding laundry, the Chirnside

homestead (1865) with ha-ha wall, ration store (built by 1861), blacksmith shop, men’s quarters, stables, implement shed, Bellenger’s house, ford, woolshed. It is believed that the concept of the ha-ha wall is of French origin attributed to the reaction of Louis, Grand Dauphin to encountering such a feature in the gardens of the Château de Meudon circa 1700.

Used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden by grazing livestock and or to deter vehicular access, the recessed design element creates a vertical barrier, which preserves an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond, when on approach, the vertical drop suddenly becomes visible.

When the need for public open space nearer to the cities developed, the State Government Instrumentality Parks Victoria became public custodians of many properties that were once working farms or large pastoral estates. Among them were farms that once boasted a range of functional boundary and dividing dry stone walls. One was the Mansion at Werribee Park (Marshall 2000: 10).

Today, the unique ha-ha wall that surrounds the smaller early Werribee Park homestead is maintained under the jurisdiction of Parks Victoria. The property, now part of the outer Melbourne urban sprawl, is of aesthetic significance as one of the few properties in the State to achieve the ideal of an English country house. The retention in general of the original layout, boundaries, early plantings and many garden features is fundamental to the significance of the mansion.

The property was listed in April 1987 on the Victorian State Heritage Register.7 The bluestone Chirnside homestead (1865), with associated ha-ha wall (1867), was built primarily as a permanent base for Thomas’s nephew Robert, who managed the sheep station from 1859 until 1866 and was then a lessee until 1873. The garden surrounding the homestead features an impressive Ficus macrophylla, and framing the central view are two Lagunaria Patersonia, near the ha-ha wall. Today, the unique ha-ha wall that surrounds the smaller early Werribee Park homestead is the only dry stone construction that remains on the once heavily walled estate.8

9.5Garden Terraces Post-World War II

The early settlement gold rush period had brought with it much wealth, and from the 1860s onwards, significant changes were taking place. The visual landscape was altering dramatically. Fences and stone walls had begun to clearly define rural boundaries as large pastoral estates were subdivided. Churches and schools were built. Times were good. People were settling down. Homesteads were becoming grander. Pastoralists were protecting their stock with fences, but the abundance of stone meant that dry stone walls still remained economically competitive.

7[VHR] H1613; Heritage Overlay H02.

8[VHR] H1613, http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/1207/download-report.

The cultural and social landscape was also undergoing important change. In the decades after the 1850s gold rush, wallers were in demand and in and around the Victorian goldfields areas, groups of people from many nationalities began to build communities and put down roots.

However, the good times were to about to come to an end. A depression in the 1890s brought with it the beginnings of a steady decline in lifestyle and income. Food was scarce, and in many dry stone wall areas, people began to pull the walls apart to reach rabbits that took refuge among the stones.

By the time, the second Great Depression of the 1930s arrived those walls that had fallen into earlier disrepair become fertile breeding grounds for “underground mutton”. Dry stone walls changed from “containing” to “container”, and the walls became a steady source of food and income to poor families. Fewer wallers were working at the trade. Old wallers were dying. Times were tough. World War II was imminent.

The period after World War II brought about even more change. People were learning new trades and “making do” with recycled materials. The lack of skilled wallers and the economic climate meant that postand wire fencing had become a competitive alternative. So by the 1950s, dry stone walls were no longer an important form of fencing for agricultural purposes. Yet even as early as the 1920s, their slow decline and fall in favour for farming use began to be paralleled by an increase in popularity for use in public and private garden settings.

In the period after the Second World War, the craft of dry stone walling began to experience a revival through the influence and work of a small group of innovative landscape designers. This was a time period when people began to re-connect with things of beauty, a time of creativity, of being at one with nature and her materials (Proudfoot 1989).

In their gardens, people began to value recycled materials to create a sense of place. Nature and the natural form suddenly became important. They had talk of the influence of early 1900s landscape designers such as Edna Walling from the UK and Paul Sorensen from Copenhagen and their physical and spiritual affinity with stone (Ratcliffe 1990; Dunn 2002; Hamilton-Smith 2002).

Their talent lay in blending terraced stonework with native plantings to create gardens of exquisite beauty. Each of these designers valued and respected the form, shape and placement of local stone. They understood and appreciated the inherent qualities of dry stone terracing for their aesthetic value as well as their practical application (Marshall 2000: 9).

Arguably Australia’s best-known and most influential garden designer Edna Walling began her career in Melbourne Victoria 1916. Since commencing her career, Walling played a dominant role in the creation of Australian gardens as we know them today. Her love of the natural countryside and bush where she experienced a spiritual and intellectual awakening inspired the designs that interpreted the fragile relationship between garden and landscape (Dixon and Churchill 1998).

The landscape gardens for which she is renowned employed expansive bodies of water, magnificent vistas and were replete with collections of plants from the northern hemisphere. Her gardens carried clear messages of success and power,