Chapter 9
Australian Dry Stone Terraces:
An Historical and Contemporary
Interpretation
Raelene Marshall
Abstract The topic of this paper will attempt to describe Australian terraced landscapes styles and their historical evolution through the prism of the range of practical, survival, cultural, social and aesthetic genres constructed from the 1800s early settlement era through to present-day contemporary designs. The story stretches from the Gold Rush times, through a creative surge after World War II, to the contemporary terraces built in the last decade or so at the Mount Annan Botanical Gardens in New South Wales. Of particular interest here is the historical background that in the 1850s and 60s Gold Rush period Swiss Italians from Ticino and Swiss immigrants from the southern part of Graubünden settled in the area around Daylesford, Victoria. Even today, their influence is ever present in the township of Hepburn Springs through the names of its residents, the names of its Mineral Springs (Locarno) and its buildings.
9.1Introduction
It could be claimed that dry stone structures and terraces across the world are a creative endeavour made in nature, of nature. Albeit in the early days constructed as a practical agrarian craft, rather than for more esoteric reasons their makers chose the landscape as the setting to display their craftsmanship. Regardless of their end purpose, made by desire, design or default the landscape had become their museum or gallery.
Long before we put public art on street corners, Australia’s indigenous and immigrant artisans were influencing and creating aesthetic and practical dry stone structures that would change the face of the landscape for centuries to come. Although the years have seen many changes, today’s modern-day walls, terraces and sculptures made by equally dedicated craftspeople and artisans add to that genre and carry on the essence of this ancient craft in new and innovative ways.
R. Marshall (&)
Dry Stone Walls Association of Australia, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: raelenemar@optusnet.com.au
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Thousands of years prior to the arrival of British and European immigrants to Australia in the 1800s, the Gunditjmara indigenous peoples of south west Victoria (Vic)1 and the Ngemba from Brewarrina in New South Wales (NSW) in particular were well known for their sophisticated construction of dry stone fish traps and weirs. Designed to catch fish, eels and other aquatic animals, even today theirs and other traps elsewhere in the country are still visible along rivers and coasts.2
With European settlement in the early 1800s, came the need to survive in harsh and unfamiliar terrains. Distances were great, and people were forced to make do with what was at hand. In some places, the land was barren and infertile; other areas were flat and stony, and in the mountainous and undulating areas around the Victorian goldfields of Daylesford and Walhalla Italians, Swiss Italians and some British needed to tame slopes and or create dedicated flat land to build housing and grow crops.
However, in other more recent developmental periods of Australia’s landscape history, the beauty and functionality of terracing was more creative and designed to enrich the artistic, visual and cultural amenity of domestic, public and private gardens.
9.2Australia
The history of dry stone terracing in Australia has had quite a different trajectory to that of its European counterparts. Unlike the need in much of Europe to establish flat areas of land for survival needs in mountainous areas, in Australia’s very early settlement days there was already an abundance of flat land available for cultivation. Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest continental landmass on Earth and has had a relatively stable geological history. To that end, squatter immigrants who arrived in the 1800s tended to settle on land that was relatively easy to work unless there was a pressing need to construct built-for-purpose terraces such as to establish vineyards or flat land for housing and crops in places such as the Victorian goldfields.
For about 50,000 years, before the first British and European settlement in the late eighteenth century, Australia was inhabited by Indigenous cultures who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups and are the oldest living cultural history in the world. After the European discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia’s eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales
1“National Heritage Places—Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape”, Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy, https://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/ national/budj-bim (accessed February 16, 2017).
2“National Heritage Places—Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps (Baiame’s Ngunnhu)”, Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy, http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ places/national/brewarrina (accessed February 16, 2017).
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from January 26, 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s, most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies had been established.3
Even today, due in some part to a scarcity water, much of the land mass is still uncultivated so although there are relatively few terraced landscapes, for those that do exist their historical and more recent content and context and is both complex and fascinating.
The craftsmanship of many freestanding boundary walls built in early settlement days can comfortably equal the style and quality of our British and European counterparts. However, given the tyranny of distance, the scarcity of amenities, the raw uncultivated landscapes and the extremely small populations it is probably unrealistic and almost unfair to try to compare the far less prolific and more rudimentary terraces with the beautifully crafted terraced walls of our British and European counterparts.
9.3Survival Creativity and Dry Stones
In the mid to late 1800s, the need for work and the deprivations caused by war, poverty, crop failures and natural disasters motivated British and European migrants to leave their homeland to search for new survival opportunities in Australia. Some came in search of a new life or adventure, others in search of gold or land on which to grow crops or graze livestock and some brought with them traditional walling skills from their native villages and farming regions.
On arrival, they tended to gather in communities of their own nationalities where many used their homeland skills to recreate ‘homes’ in the challenging rural and bush landscapes and remote mountainous mining towns. In those early days, the need for shelter was ever present. Their story was about survival, existence and creating a sense of place for themselves, their family and their future.
In areas of dry stone constructions where the horizons are vast, the land is stony, the eucalypts are majestic, the bush is unrelenting and native grasses grow nearly as tall as men, those early walls and terraces blend so seamlessly with the landscape it is hard to believe that they once weren’t there.
It is probably fair to say that in those early days the thought of dry stone craftsmanship as an art form would have been be the farthest thing from the minds of the Italians and Swiss Italians and others who settled and built terraces on the gold fields in Victoria. Bearing in mind that the early emerging communities often consisted of as few as one thousand or so people, they would have needed to be able turn their hands to a wide range of infrastructural and creative skills. Needless to say, their expertise would have been wide and varied.
3“The First Fleet”, Project Gutenberg Australia, http://gutenberg.net.au/first-fleet.html (accessed February 12, 2017).