Building Ipswich: Three Ipswich Architects - Chasing Our Past At Home (Transcription)

Melanie : Good evening and welcome to tonight's Chasing Our Past At Home.  My name is Melanie, and I'm the Digital Archivist and Historian of the Ipswich Libraries, Picture Ipswich collection.  Joining me tonight as your moderator is Deanna from Public Programming.  Thank you very much for joining us this evening for our extra special “Chasing Our Past At Home”.

We would like to commence the evening by acknowledging the traditional custodians on whose lands we gather today, and pay respect to elders past, present, and emerging. 

Now, I have been looking forward to tonight's Chasing Our Past at Home for some time because we're going to be joined by three prominent Ipswich historians - Dr Margaret Cook, Judith Nissen, and Dr Toni Risson.  In 2020, work began on researching Ipswich architects, builders, and trades people, and three historians were engaged by the council to research three architects who had a significant impact on the development of Ipswich's streetscapes.  The architects were George Brockwell Gill (researched by Margaret Cook), Will Haenke (researched by Toni Risson), and Bruce Buchanan (researched by Judith Nissen). 

Now this project is being undertaken in stages and as our three historians are at the completion of Stage Two, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to introduce the project to you.  We will be meeting our architects tonight in chronological order, so our first speaker will be Dr Margaret Cook.  Margaret has been a freelance historian for many years, working in the heritage museum, government, and private sectors, and publishing on numerous topics.  She holds a PhD in History from the University of Queensland and her current research interests include natural disasters and water politics, and the history of Queen's Park.  Margaret is a History lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and her recent books are “A River with a city problem : a history of Brisbane floods”, and an edited collection “Disasters in Australia and New Zealand :  historical approaches to understanding catastrophe”. She was the recipient of the John and Ruth Kerr Medal of Distinction for Excellence in History and Historiography in 2020, and tonight of course Margaret will be bringing us the life and works of George Brockwell Gill.  So Margaret, if you'd like to join us now.

Margaret : Thanks very much Melanie, and thank you everyone for joining us this evening. It's my pleasure to talk to you about George Brockwell Gill. So I'll get Melanie to share our screen so we can see some images in front of us.  So I called my talk “The prolific George Brockwell Gill” and I hope that by the end of tonight you'll understand why I thought the adjective prolific was appropriate. So thanks.

Well, many of us know some of George Brockwell Gill's buildings because he has such a rich legacy around town, and some of his buildings are particularly prominent and so I'm not going to really talk about them tonight.  But I am going to just flick you through half a dozen now to give you an idea of the variety and the skill of his architecture. 

So we have here the Ipswich Soldiers Memorial Hall designed in 1920.  Then we've got the Ipswich Club designed in 1916. The Ipswich Flour Mill in the top of town which is designed in 1902.  It's had a rich history as we know, where it's been a stove shop in Johnson's garage, 4IP, and many more uses.  And it's still in its glory at the top of town now.  The Ipswich Technical College, possibly one of his most prominent buildings.  It opened in 1901, and now the Pumpyard and restaurant complex.  The City View Hotel which was opened in 1907, further up the top of town, E. Bostock and Sons building designed in 1915 - this is one of the few that we actually have architectural drawings for, and it's got pride of place in the main street. And the Queensland Times building in all its glory, when it still had its verandas on the corner in that prominent spot, and this is taken in 1930, but the building was designed in 1888. Thank you. A home designed by Brockwell Gill (I don't know the date or the address, and that's fairly typical).  And then Ipswich Girls Grammar taken in 1910s, and this one was opened in 1892.  And I finished with this one of his group of prominent buildings for a particular reason.  And I will go to the next screen.

Because this letter is just a gem that's held in the Ipswich Girls Grammar archives, and it's a letter that's actually written by George Brockwell Gill, and that is always such an exciting find as a historian.  And this is a letter that he wrote in 1890, and it's really quite a profound letter because it's written in two inks - in black ink and in red ink the other way, because he was so poor he was using the same paper to basically write two pages on the same page.  And he was really at the end of his tether.  He wrote to his brother, John, in 1890 and he said that he'd been waiting for better news to reply to John's letter.  And he writes in the letter that “I'm happy to say that I've been appointed architect for the Girls Grammar School. I can tell you that this job has come none too soon as the past year has been almost a starvation one.”  Now, it's interesting when we think about such the success story that George Brockwell Gill became, that we have this letter here at the beginning of his career showing how destitute he actually was.  And I actually think this poverty that he experienced had a considerable influence on his future career.  But before I get to that, I want to talk about what we actually know about George Brockwell Gill. 

So he's born in in London in 1857, and we know from his marriage record that he was working at the time as an architectural draftsman.  And he immigrated to Queensland in 1886, with his wife and possibly one child.  He was soon employed by architect Samuel Shenton who is also a mayor of Ipswich, and when Shenton retired in 1889 Brockwell Gill took over his practice.  He became an associate of the Queensland Institute of Architects in 1904, Fellow in 1913, Vice President in 1914-16, and President in 1918 to 1919.  So you can see he was actually held in very high regard by his peers and colleagues.

Martin Haenke trained in his practice in 1904 and for seven and a half months we know he had an assistant, Algernon Toone.  But Algernon left to go and work in the Department of Public Works.  I'm not aware of any other architects who worked in Gill's practice so he may have been responsible for most of these buildings on his own, but again we can't be sure.

Brockwell Gill retired in 1943 after 55 years of practice in Ipswich and it's an extraordinary career, and his practice was taken over by Conrad and Gargett Architects in Brisbane.  Gill himself retired to Coolangatta and he died in 1954 aged 97, and it was only within a week of his 70th wedding anniversary that he died.

Now, what do I know of Mrs Brockwell Gill?  Well she married … she's Jane Cole and they married in England in 1884.  She's English, and was born in Middlesex.  Together they had several children, and I've done this research largely from ancestry.com.  They had Leonard in 1885, but he died in England, and then in 1886 we have the records that they had Sydney and Harry.  Now I don't know if this is an error in the records, or they were twins, but they're listed on the same day.  They then migrated to Australia and in Ipswich they have Florence and Marion. And next, we have Horace and Wilfred (who was known as Tom). And Jane died in 1955. She lived to a ripe old age of 95 as well. 

Now, Gil died in 1954 and his obituary states that he had three surviving sons and two daughters.  The obituary states that the daughters preceded him, but ancestry.com shows it was two sons, but whether it was sons or daughters it doesn't really matter.  The point I'm making is that he had a very large family.  He lived in Park Street when they lived in Ipswich, and his home we possibly are more familiar with as Merryfields, because by the 1940s it was the home of the Patterson family.  Brockwell Gill didn't design this house.  He bought it when he moved to Ipswich because he really liked the location.

He was a very busy man with an awful lot of interest, I think it would be pretty safe to say.  And I’ve listed what I know he was involved with.  He was a member of the Tennis Committee, and he worked as their President.  He was a lay preacher at St Paul's Church, the organist, and the choir conductor.  And there's lots of records in the QT of him performing music or preaching at Saint Paul's.  He was a member of the Ipswich Technical Committee, and he served as its Chairman.  He was a member of the West Moreton Literary and Scientific Club, again serving as the President.  He was Secretary of the Overseas Club which was set up in 1917, and they worked for the war effort, and it's probably not surprising that he got involved in this one because his three sons went to war and miraculously all three survived.  He was a member of the Cambrian Choir and Vice President.  He was a committee member of the Ipswich School of Arts.  He was on the Ipswich Fire Brigade Board.  He was Trustee of Ipswich Girls’ Grammar for 23 years including Chairman in the year he retired.  His passion was golf and he was a life member of the Ipswich Golf Club and President in 1924, and then Patron, and there's actually a Brockwell Gill trophy at the Ipswich Club.

So although Brockwell Gill and Jane were becoming frail in their 90s, the Queensland Times wrote an article about them on Brockwell Gill's 97th birthday, and it mentions that he only gave up surfing three years earlier, and he still enjoyed canasta and bridge.  They very much enjoyed their life at Coolangatta, and they lived in a home that he had designed and built on Kirra Hill in 1924.  I also know that from 1911 the Gills were frequent visitors to Coolangatta.

Now, what can I tell you about Brockwell Gill's architectural legacy?  Well, as I mentioned, there are actually very few plans that exist, and so what I did is compile records from the Trove database that mainly looked at the Queensland Times, but also Brisbane newspapers from 1892 to 1945. Now, there are a lot of problems with these records, as they rarely list street numbers, and only occasionally the clients.  So, I've got here a couple of examples of what a tender notice might look like, and sometimes they're not very helpful at all -they might just say Wood Cottage at East Ipswich.  Other times it's cottage residence at Woodend Road - it gets a bit more specific.  Sometimes, wooden villa residences on Denmark Hill.   Sometimes it's quite good - we might get tenders for extensive brick premises built for Cribb and Foote in Bell Street, so that's very specific - I can tell you exactly what that building is. Sometimes when it's one of his bigger articles or bigger buildings, there'll be a whole article and then we get everything in between, from the feature page article to just those poor tender notices.  So, from that we can try and reconstruct his career.

So one of his most iconic buildings in Brisbane is Brynhyfryd, and that's probably one of his largest projects.  But he also took on incredibly small jobs, and it really seems that no job was too small.  And I mentioned at the beginning about his poverty in the 1890s and I think this had a big influence because really, when I say no job was too small, I really mean that, as I'll show you from this next list. 

What did I learn from this?  Well I found about 350 building projects.  These were the new builds or substantial extensions or alterations.  I didn't do the little ones, where he lay a concrete slab or he did painting - there was plenty of those as well.  There's a bit of a breakdown I've done for us to have a look at the sort of variety and the amount of construction that he was involved with.  I found 66 cottages and 65 residences.  I think that's a matter of size.  The residences are bigger.  He was involved with 11 churches.  He had 14 hotels in his list of works, and these were either new builds or alterations and additions, and sometimes it was the same hotel, so the list here that I give you, sometimes he would go back to that site.  He seemed to be a very good architect to work with because clients got him back again and again. 

He was involved in designing four factories.  And I said again too - no job was too small.  He built stables, designs stables and coach houses - seven of them.  He built enormous stores -Cribb and Foote, London Pharmacy, and Whiteheads, amongst them.  He built a power house for Blackheath Colliery, Cribb and Foote warehouse, banking premises, hospital buildings, school buildings.  He did air raid shelters and toilet blocks. There's tenders for the Croquet Pavilion, and walls and fences.  He really was doing everything. 

He did grandstands and Ipswich Grammar’s swimming pool.  He did the War Memorial at Esk, bake house and ovens, and in amongst that he also found time to be the local supervising architect for other people's projects.  So he was the supervising architect for Burley Griffin, for the incinerator.  And you can actually see Brockwell Gill in this photograph, at far left, probably holding plans. And we have .. he also was the supervising architect for the Commercial Bank of Australia, and T C Beirne for Hall and Dods architects in Brisbane.

He worked throughout the region, again something I wasn't so aware of.  He worked, as we know, in Ipswich, Rosewood, Coominya, Lowood, Marburg, Esk, Harrisville, and Pine Mountain.  But perhaps even more surprisingly, for me at least, I discovered that he'd work further afield.  He'd designed properties at Scarborough, Sherwood, Southport, Stanthorpe, Toowong, and Wynnum South.  So his legacy actually extends beyond Ipswich. 

So my feelings are that he may have struggled initially to make ends meet, but I really think he made up for lost time.  I'm unsure if he died a wealthy man but I know he did manage to buy and sell land at Labrador on the Gold Coast.  But I would say that whatever he earned from his architecture in Ipswich, I think he paid it back in dividends with his voluntary work for the community.

Rarely was there an edition of the Queensland Times in the whole 55 years of his working career that didn't have a George Brockwell Gill tender, or an article about him or some building he was working on.  I really do think it's an understatement to call him prolific. Together with his community activities and maybe occasional family responsibilities, I think we can assume that he was a busy man, and yet he still found time for golf and tennis and music.  I would also add “elusive” to his attributes as there are very few photographs of him that can be found, even on family trees at ancestry.com.  And some of the photos we've used tonight are just excerpts from larger photographs. 

On his retirement the QT wrote, “perhaps no individual has been so widely and directly associated with the buildings of Ipswich”. “The buildings’ stability and general attractiveness are reflexes of the character of the man whose drawing pencil has been manipulated with facility, originality, and artistic skill in the city’s service”.  George Brockwell Gill lived a full life, had a long life and has left Ipswich with a very proud architectural legacy.  Thanks.

Melanie : Thank you very much.  Thank you, Margaret, for that. So we are now about to be joined by Dr Toni Risson, who is a storyteller and a cultural historian, who has penned everything from children's picture books to a doctorate on the magic of lollies.  An expert on the Greek cafe phenomenon, Toni curated “Meet me at the Paragon” for the State Library of Queensland 2019-2020. Brilliant exhibition - I think I went three times. 

And her book on Brisbane's Greek cafes, “A million malted milks” was a finalist in the 2019 Queensland Literary Awards.  Her first book on the subject documents the Greek shops that once traded in Ipswich - places like Blondie's, the Wintergarden milk bar, and the Ritz Café, which were the city's social hubs from the 1920s to the 1960s.  Having fallen under the spell of mixed grills and milkshake machines, Toni continues to document our lost cafe culture.  Tonight, however, Toni will be sharing with us the life and works of Will Haenke.  So, Toni over to you.

Toni : Thank you, Melanie, and thank you everyone for joining us tonight.  I did some of my primary school teaching at Walloon, and every morning I would walk up the long slope past the railway station to the little cluster of shops at the top of the hill, which is where the one-teacher school building was.  And 100 years earlier, somewhere in that region, probably at the edge of the shops, was a forge, and in that forge in 1875 architect Will Haenke was born.  His dad was a blacksmith, his grandfather was a blacksmith, and they had both come out about 13 years earlier from Prussia.  They'd worked on the first railway line and they'd also worked on railway lines around the mines in the Bundamba region.

But in that same year, 1875, William and Christina (Will's parents) put the forge on the market because Will wasn't well enough to continue working as a blacksmith.  And when you think about it had he had better lungs it's very likely that his son, Will, would have followed in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather and become a blacksmith, and we wouldn't have had architect Will Haenke.  Anyway, within a couple of years, Christina and William, they had a daughter, and then Martin, and possibly another child.  By then, they were living at the top of town.

Now, Will's granddaughter, Angela Geertsma, thinks their dwelling-cum-business was around where the Baptist Church is at the top of town,  If you'd like to pull up the next slide, Melanie, it's got a picture of the family in the 1890s, excluding the eldest and youngest children, who were girls.  So why you would do that, I don't know, but clearly that was a thing in the 1890s.  So the eldest son, Will, is seated, but I'll also draw your attention to this other with the glasses, towards the left of the frame, because that's the Martin Haenke that Margaret just referred to, that was working for Gill – so he was an architect as well. So, in 1891, the last of their children was born, so that was a girl, Eva.

Will was going to school at this stage, at West Ipswich State School, and the family business seems to have been a timber yard.  So, his father, William, was managing a timber yard, but there seems to have been a shop that had an oven in it, so like a bakery or a cafe or something like that.  And we think that Christina was selling meals from that shop, and there was a dwelling attached to that as well.  They were also fruiterers.  So, don't get the impression that this business was terribly stable, though they were there for the best part of 20 years.  But I don't know whether (especially considering there were 10 mouths to feed) that they were terribly well off.  Because in 1891, the year that the last child was born, Will became apprenticed to local architect Henry Wyman, and the family story goes that Wyman waived the fee for the apprenticeship because Will was such a good draftsman.  But it could be that he waived the fee because he could see that Will was a good draftsman, but the family couldn't afford to put him into that apprenticeship.

Also, in 1891, Will did the drawing that's on the next slide, and it's a drawing of a train crash that happened at Darra about seven years earlier.  So, he would have been maybe nine at that stage.  And the fact that it was done in 1891, the year that he was apprenticed, and the fact that it's still hanging 130 years later on the wall of the family home suggests to me that it's not just another kid's drawing.  But I'm wondering whether this was actually like a test piece or a sample of drawings submitted to Wyman in his desire, his application to be an architect.

In the next slide you can see a close-up of a section of it.  And you can see that the detailed observation and the precision. If you look at the way the wheels are drawn - the shattered glass and split timbers, it's quite a well-observed and precise drawing, so I can see why Wyman would have thought he had a career in view as an architect. 

So, he's a local boy.  He's born at Walloon, goes to West Ipswich State School, is apprenticed to a local architect, but he did go to Melbourne to complete his studies.  And what we know from Wyman extolling the virtues of his ex-pupil in the paper, is that he was completing all the examinations so he could become part of the institutes and associations that were part of the architect's career.  He got 100 percent on one of the hardest subjects, and in that respect had the highest mark ever achieved by a student in Melbourne.  He won the Victorian Prize for drawing, so he was doing really, really well.  We know that he came back to Ipswich in 1900, the year that his father died.

He then set up a practice in Greenham Chambers, but in the next slide you will see that by the beginning of the First World War he had moved into this building here, and I'm pretty sure that's Bottle Alley, cutting through underneath the ladies and children's clothing shop. So, we know that he was there at least from 1916.

Now, the Architectural Build and Builders Journal of Queensland began publication in 1922, and they list Will Haenke’s field of expertise as shops, hotels, and ecclesiastical work.  And the next couple of slides - the first one is the Rising Sun Hotel in Rosewood, and it's credited with being very significant for its art nouveau features that really - the undulating lines on the timberwork on the veranda.  And you'll see in these next couple of slides how beautiful his drawings are.  I can see that same little boy that drew the trains for Wyman.

This one you will know as well.  It's Whitehouse's Bakery in Laidley, and it's a substantial sort of a brick structure.  He did three shops in Laidley around this time.  But the next slide I want to talk about is another hotel in Ipswich, and it's in a bit of a dilapidated state, and I hear people saying some quite unkind things about buildings when they get into dilapidated states, but you'll see on the left of this slide a beautiful painting that local artist Glen Smith did this year and he put it into the Ipswich Art Awards, and in it he celebrates the very dilapidated nature of it, which I just love. What's quite important about this building I think is, really, it's got its little toes on the footpath but the rest of it is just hanging out in space over Timothy Moloney Park.  So, it would have been a reasonably challenging building to execute.

In the next slide you'll see the plan for it, the drawing for it, and a photograph of it as it is now. And what I found really interesting about this is it's quite different.  You can see in the plan that there's that gable with the open porch is on the right in the plan, but it's ended up on the left in the building, and the other gable’s disappeared.  And also, from the side it was originally designed as a three-level building, and that bottom level appears never to have been built.  So, I hope we get a chance to talk a bit later about the difficulties involved in tracking down buildings, and Margaret's already mentioned that. And unlike Brockwell Gill, I've got something like 280 plans that are stored in the Fryer Library to work from, but again there's nothing more than street names, you don't ever get house numbers.

The next slide I wanted to put in is -  it's like Brockwell Gill, Haenke was doing just about everything.  We had plans for stables for Cribb & Foote, buggy sheds, parking stalls, a railway signalling system. There's a picture of a tap, ovens and bake houses, even the church’s slaughter yards.  And I wanted to put this one in because I have had cattle dips in my childhood, and have always thought of them as quite scary, really dirty places.  I always thought I'd die if I ever fell in.  I love the way he's drawn it.  It's quite a beautiful and delicate thing under his hand and you can see all the little steps that their feet go up to get out, the drip yard so that the chemicals are draining back in.  Beautiful detail.  One of my favourite pictures in the collection.  So, despite the categorization that he was in hotels, shops, ecclesiastical work, we see a whole range of things.  And then also quite a lot of domestic architecture as you'll see in the next slide.

I've just selected four buildings that you might know from driving around Ipswich streets.  And the two on the left are his earlier ones, Edgbaston at the top in Syntax street, and Pindari in Park Street, really beautiful examples of federation architecture.  The next slide has (if you look at that top building, Edgbaston), the next slide is that building.  So it gives you some idea of what kind of detail was drawn on the architectural plan for people to be working from. 

So, the next slide which is the same as the one before, it gives you an idea of some of his later work.  So, he really had a major change in his style from that federation through to the what we call the Californian bungalow on the right.  And this is where his brother Martin comes in.  Martin Haenke was an interesting character.  We don't know a lot about him for sure because he had a bit of an inclination to make stuff up.  But he ended up actually quite early in his career, went to California, and never came back.  And he was actually working in the place where the Californian bungalow was being developed at the time that it was being developed, so we believe that he was sending architectural magazines back home to his brother in Ipswich.  And so Will was ahead of the wave that was  - they were all bungalows that were being built between the wars in Australia and he was really riding that wave, and the most beautiful buildings in Ipswich that are the classic Californian bungalow are his.

So that one at the top in that picture is at 95 Chermside Road and it's classic original Californian bungalow.  The one at the bottom is a timber version and that was for his brother and it's in Glebe Road. So next slide will show you that top building - the drawing for that.  A Californian bungalow has these pylons rather than the veranda, the sort of delicate veranda of the federation style, has these sorts of larger pylons often tapered, but the low-slung gables, and the multiple gables, the deep porch rather than the veranda, and a real sense of organic material, so often using raw timber or stonework, projecting rafters. Australia, especially Queensland, really embrace this idea of welcoming the outside in, and that real informal relaxed sort of lifestyle that the bungalow promoted.

The next slide has what most of the Californian bungalows look like, and this is one of Will’s too.  It's in Salisbury Road.  You can see where rather than the concrete we've got a timber version of it, where the pylons are represented by the weatherboards, but you still have that deep porch sort of look, rather than a wraparound veranda.  One of the things I've noticed about Will's work is that - see the little bay window with the little faceted panes? I've noticed that on several of his buildings, so if you see one of those in Ipswich you better let us know because it could very likely be one of Will's buildings.

The family bought Rockton House in 1916 and have had it ever since.  The fifth generation of the Haenke family is actually living in the house at the moment.  Well there are three generations there, but the youngest is the fifth generation.  And when Will and Laura, his wife, bought the house it had been pretty well unattended for three years and was very dilapidated, so he did lots of restoration work - took out walls and did beautiful leadlight doors and windows inside, that Angela says he didn't just design them, he actually made these windows himself.  So, he was a man of many talents.  He was a wood carver, he played the violin, I think he was … Melanie likes to use the word “Renaissance man” and I think that she's not far wrong with that.

The next slide will show you his other life. So, he was building buildings from 1900 to about 1937 - is the last one that we know of for sure, but for 50 years he was a coal miner.  He owned coal mines and was on organizations and boards.  Coal mines in Ipswich, the Darling Downs, Blair Athol.  So, a really rich career in that, but probably was more extensive than his architectural career.  I love this photo (I don't know where it is) but I love it that the six-pit ponies are up the top, the boys in the front look to me like they should be running back from the playground into school when the bell goes, and Will is the man at the base of the tree that's on the left hand side. So not the one in the bowler hat the one beside him.  And he was in coal mining from about I don’t know - 1904 or something like that, so very early in his life in the coal mining. 

He was also an inventor.  The next … he did patents for three inventions, and this one he demonstrated in his rooms around about 1905 I think.  And it was … remembering this is a time when there were gas lights in city streets (there weren't any streetlights), and this was an invention that would enable … instead of someone had to come along and light and extinguish all the lamps, this would let it happen from the gasworks so they could all go on and off at the same time.  He took out the patent, but I believe someone in America got in just before him and had a kind of the monopoly on it.  But this, the model for it when he did the demonstration, he made that himself.  He made models.  I think some of the blacksmith's trade was passed on to him because I believe blacksmiths at that time could do very small precise things as well.

I'll leave you with a last slide of his wife, Laura - I know she's one of Melanie's favourites.  I see this family as being a creative dynasty. I've only really talked about Will, but his children and grandchildren and the people who married into the family have just brought all sorts of creativity - basket makers, photographers, painters, potters, writers.  His daughter-in-law was a very prolific writer.  But this is Laura, part of the Taylor family, working on a … I would say working on a photograph for her family business - the mother and father's business.  So we've got the Boyles and the Lindsays elsewhere, but in Ipswich we have the Haenke family, and Will Haenke was at the centre of that.

Melanie : Thank you, Toni.  So the … Laura's family, the Taylor family, they are of course the photographers of IXL Studios, so Benjamin and Laura Taylor - their photography studio.  So that's why I'm interested in them because I'm obviously interested in photography history.

Our next presenter will be Judith Nissen. Judith is a professional historian, with wide-ranging interests in Queensland history.  She researches and writes histories of people, buildings, places, and organizations.  Judith works in the heritage field, undertaking significant assessments, citations for heritage registers, and conservation management plans. Other work in her varied practice includes archives supports, research, museums and exhibitions. She has served on the state and national management committees of Professional Historians Australia, is a founding committee member of the Mount Crosby and Moggill Historical Societies, and has served with a number of other history and heritage organizations. She's currently compiling an engineering heritage driving tour of Ipswich, but tonight Judith will be introducing us to the work of architect Bruce Buchanan.  Thank you, Judith.

Judith : Thanks, Melanie, and good evening everyone.  Thank you for having me.  Okay, tonight I'm talking about Bruce Buchanan, who I've labelled not just an architect, but obviously a heritage expert and also an artist.  I will be concentrating on his heritage and architecture work tonight, mainly in Ipswich, but we also should recognize that perhaps like Will Haenke and his family, Bruce is also an accomplished and very much awarded artist. Bruce also … should mention that Bruce also had a very fruitful and long-standing professional collaboration with his historian and journalist wife, the late Robyn Buchanan, and many of the joint works that they produced relative to Ipswich are actually held in the Ipswich City Council Library. 

Along with Robyn, Bruce was one of the three inaugural inductees into the Ipswich Heritage Hall of Fame - that was in 2013. So I suppose, first of all, I just wanted to say, you know, why heritage conservation - why is it important?  I suppose, well I would say that anyway, that of course it's important.  But I guess museums preserve our shared past, but so too does the conservation and protection and restoration of our built heritage.  And I think the prevalence of museums sort of, big and small, wherever they might be across the country, across the world in fact, I guess, testifies to the desires of communities to be able to sort of preserve their own history. 

Now heritage isn't only about old buildings although age is often a factor.  It's, I guess what's important to a community, and it can actually include quite recently constructed places.  And one of those places in Ipswich is in fact the Tool & Gauge Shop, built in 1941 in North Ipswich Railway Workshops.  Okay so it's not all that old, but it produced tools that were needed to make munitions during the Second World War, so it's one of only two known in Australia to make those tools for munition production. So it's a very important part of Ipswich's history even though most people wouldn't consider it to be old and often not of heritage value.  But it's still I think important to the community and important to the Ipswich history. Heritage work also includes like reports about places and plans for their conservation and continued use, and Bruce has produced an awful lot of those, many of which again, are available through the Ipswich Library.

So what about Bruce?  He graduated in 1966 from what was called the Queensland Institute of Technology.  He then followed in the footsteps of many young Australians at the time and he went to London.  There he joined the architectural practice of a company called Jellicoe & Courage(?).  He took charge of several new builds, including a school and a sports centre.  Now, Geoffrey Jellicoe, one of the principals of that practice was considered one of the UK's leading landscape architects.  Now, one of the projects that Bruce was involved with there was the John F. Kennedy Memorial - the memorial at Runnymede in the UK.  Now, Bruce has said that this was a project that was very close to his heart.  The memorial had already been opened by the time he got to London, but Geoffrey Jellicoe was still fine-tuning some of the aspects, and he took Bruce on several visits with him, and did a lot of explaining and discussion of the principles behind the design which was very finely-detailed, and had a very specific purpose - nothing was done without a purpose there.  And I guess Bruce has said …  I guess this work, particularly at this memorial, combined with his love of history and architecture and art, it really finished up influencing the course of his entire professional life as an architect, and also subsequently as an artist.

So, in 1966 he went to London, he came back to Brisbane in 1971.  He worked on several major, he worked with several major architectural practices.  One of the important projects that he worked on was at Gatton College (now the University of Queensland) on the administration building.  So he was working on some renovations and restorations of that beautiful building.  So again, he was starting out in his, I guess, heritage career then. So because of course Ipswich had so many wonderful heritage buildings, only four years after coming back to Australia, Bruce then established his own practice in Ipswich.  Now, he went on to practice here in Ipswich for 35 years.
 
Like the other architects that we've been discussing tonight, his practice spanned a wide variety.  There are houses, commercial sites, industrial sites.  He also did design several new buildings around Ipswich, but tonight I'm concentrating on his heritage work in Ipswich.  So I thought I might run through some of the work that Bruce has done to preserve the built heritage of Ipswich.  Yes, houses are one of the things that first come to mind.  Now, he worked on Rockton - it was mentioned by Toni Risson.  So I won't go into anything about Rockton because Toni's already talked about that.

Claremont - it was built in 1857.  Thought to be Ipswich's oldest surviving house.  Now it was owned by the National Trust, but Bruce and Robyn leased it from them in 1980.  It was run down, it was overgrown, and it certainly had a checkered past of various occupants and various uses.  So the Buchanan family took stewardship of Claremont, and it became their family home.  They restored it over a period of seven years, living in it the whole time.  Can you imagine living in a renovation for seven years?  But they also opened it up even though it was a family home.  They opened it up for family visits, for public tours, and public visits. And the work that they, that Robyn and Bruce undertook here in Claremont over that seven years really informed Bruce's heritage work right into the future.  And it was particularly important when looking at the logistics of opening very fragile buildings to public inspection and public visit.  Bruce and Robyn actually were awarded a joint Menzies scholarship, and they went to the United Kingdom, and they learned a lot from the National Trusts in both England and Scotland, about opening heritage places to the public.  On their return they made a report and that report was actually adopted by the National Trust, and applied to a number of the National Trust properties right across Queensland. 

Now, other houses.  Now we've got a couple of houses in Limestone Street.  Now Penrhyn, on the left. That actually faces Waghorn Street - you probably know about. And 105 on the right.  They're both quite modest stone houses but again, like the architects we've heard about tonight, a modest building didn't necessarily mean it wasn't worth expert and professional attention. So Bruce worked on alterations and renovations of both these houses.

Then of course there were the grander houses, and I think everyone is probably aware of buildings like Gooloowan - see on the left, isn't that just magnificent?  Bruce undertook a number of series of alterations and additions to Gooloowan.  It even included conversion of a rear veranda - the servants’ quarters had a rear veranda, and Bruce converted that to a conservatory.  Okay, staying on Gooloowan, heritage work isn't just about buildings.  Bruce worked on the entrance gates to properties, and Gooloowan is one of them, where he designed, and I guess restored entrance gates to Gooloowan to fit in with that heritage project, heritage house.  He also worked on the entrance gates to Ipswich Grammar School - you've probably seen them as you've been past. 

In heritage terms it's not just buildings that are important.  Fences and yards, and plantings and gardens, are all important parts of heritage places.  And Bruce worked on structures.  For example he worked on the garden shed at Rockton, restoring that - for what was probably many regarded as something that really probably should have just been demolished - now it's just an old shed, we should knock it down, put something new on, but he worked on that and restored that.  And all credit to Rockton's owners for actually bringing him in to do that sort of work.  Not many people would consider that was important. 

In Queens Park as well, Bruce was in charge of the reconstruction of a very early gazebo that was … apparently it collapsed in about the 1980s, and he reconstructed that to the earlier plans.  That's now called the Lions Lookout. 

Schools have also been a very important part of Bruce's work.  Margaret mentioned George Brockwell Gill working on both the Grammar Schools, in fact, including Ipswich Grammar School.  He's worked on the original buildings there at Ipswich Grammar School - those ones on the left - so they were the 1863 building, yes that’s a really iconic Ipswich building.  But he's also worked on much newer buildings, such as the dormitories. You see the round building there - the 1972 Fox Dormitory.  I think it was probably a Karl Langer building, I suspect.  He worked on refurbishing those – both the round dormitory towers that are so obvious on the Ipswich Grammar School landscape. 

He also worked at Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School, another George Brockwell Gill building.  He worked on the restoration and maintenance and upgrading of the older buildings there at the Girls’ Grammar School.  That's the 1890s administration building, but he also designed an extension to that Karl Langer design building on the right.  So that was their assembly hall, and he worked on that - an extension to match the original architecture. So I guess that’s an important part of heritage work - is trying to make sure it fits with the original but doesn't necessarily duplicate it.

Right, so for Ipswich it's important (given my interest in engineering history) to also look at some of the heritage work that he's done in the industrial area.  One of the major reports that he worked on was of course the conservation management plan for the North Ipswich Railway Workshops, now the museum.  But that was a massive job because it's such a huge site, with so many varied buildings, and the conservation plan itself is an absolute masterpiece. 

Another one that he worked on for a report was for Hancock Brothers.  Now, I just loved their letterhead.  I just had to put that in to show you.  Hancock was actually quite important manufacturers of things like railway rolling stock, and their complex at North Ipswich (you can see that beautiful drawing on the left, of their complex on the river) - there was a foundry, engineering workshops, a sawmill, and a joinery.  And Bruce worked with the engineering heritage specialist, the late Ray Whitmore, and worked on the boiler house.  You can see what sort of … what a wreckage it looked to be in 1991, but in 1993 a report was done for the conservation and restoration of that boiler house. 

Now Bruce has also worked a lot beyond Ipswich.  Now, I think just a little taste of some of his work.  Isn't this lovely?  This is the Croydon Railway Station.  You might know the Croydon Railway Station, it's the terminus or one of the termini of the Gulflander, the train to nowhere - runs between Normanton and Croydon.  You can see the station building in this 1907 photograph at the end of the street. Take particular note of the roof form.  That building was destroyed by a cyclone in 1969, and sort of various temporary buildings were created using some of the materials from that building. But in 2003 the latest temporary station also collapsed in a storm and from termite damage.  So Bruce designed this beautiful new railway station which I visited in 2019.  He designed a galvanized corrugated iron structure.  It was prefabricated in Cairns, and then it was transported.  It's over 500 kilometres to Croydon, so it was transported by road and re-erected in Croydon. And his design really I think is a fine reflection, without being an exact duplication of the original building.  That building received two separate design awards in the same year in the first year that it was up.

Bruce has also worked on a number of important government buildings in Queensland.  The Parliament House, and a number of the government buildings in the George Street precinct. But he's also worked further afield in Australia.  He was the first Queensland member on the what's called the Official Establishments Trust, and that's an independent organization that is charged with the care of the of the four official residences of our Prime Minister and Governor-General.  So we've got The Lodge, Kirribilli House, Admiralty House, and Yarralumla.  So he served on that for many years under both Liberal and Labor governments.

But apart from his architecture, as I've mentioned, he's also an artist.  Now, towards the end of his architectural practice, Bruce became more immersed in his artwork.  You can see here now, where his art and his architecture overlap.  So his interest in architecture certainly has influenced a lot of his work, but this love of landscape painting has, I think, been influenced. And it really, the circle has turned, and I think this is going right back to his early work with Geoffrey Jellicoe in the UK where he sort of … he was… he had that influence from this wonderful landscape designer, and now Bruce himself is producing the most beautiful, beautiful, landscape art, and I think he's absolutely devoted to his art now, and he's won so many awards for his art it's just lovely.

So, what I thought I'd do is I would sort of conclude with his last words, because I had the privilege of actually speaking to a living subject for this biography.  So I'll just let you read those last words – “I’ve enjoyed being an architect, I’ve enjoyed heritage work and doing my paintings.  I consider myself fortunate.” This is a picture of him out on his property, out west of Ipswich.  So, he considers himself a very fortunate man, and I guess I consider myself a very fortunate architect to have had the privilege of being able to do a little bit about his professional biography.  Thanks, Melanie.

Melanie:  Thank you, Toni.  Oops, let me just stop sharing now so we can all return.  Margaret and Toni, if you'd like to come back as well now.  We understand that we are … we're going to be running late tonight.  So, if you have to leave, we fully understand, and appreciate that.  But right now, you have got four historians in the room and we're going to be talking about these architects and the research process.

If you have any questions tonight, you've got captive historians here, so please write your questions into the chat, and we will address them tonight.  But I'd like to talk to the three of you first about some of the challenges that you've experienced in researching for this project.  So, you're doing three very different architects, and you each have three very different approaches to the way that you would normally conduct your research.  So, what has been some of the challenges that you've come across?  Who wants to start?

Margaret: Happy to start.  My biggest challenge has been the loss of plans.  I know that his architectural collection was actually eaten by termites, and so there are very few that survive, and that's a great disappointment.  There's some coming to gradually emerging. Conrad Gargett have some.  The Fryer Library have some.  So we're trying to compile that collection.  But given that I know he probably did 350 buildings, when we're talking about a clutch of plans, that's deeply frustrating.  Because I suspect they were beautiful.  Maybe not in the same calibre as Haenke’s but they were.  That's a great loss.  And the newspapers are wonderful that they've now been digitized.  I couldn't have done this project in a year when I was going through microfilm.  I'd be wearing thicker glasses as well.  And so for me that's probably … and my wish is I could have talked to Brockwell Gill.  I was saying before that if only someone had gone and interviewed him in 1950, when he was sitting on his veranda at Coolangatta -  wow! would he have had stories to tell!  So that that's where I would … my time machine would probably take me back there.

Melanie : So Toni.  You were saying that you've got obviously a number of Haenke plans that have come through, but the big problem is addresses.

Toni:  That's right.  I felt very sorry for myself, that I had all these plans with no addresses on it.  Now I find out someone hasn't even got the plans! Yes, trying to locate the buildings is what I'm going into now, and I guess I thought when I saw myself in relation to someone who was studying George Brockwell Gill, that he's so well-known and people know where his buildings are, and Haenke is less well known and the buildings aren't as grand, so finding them is very difficult.  And I've had to really think outside the box, and use social media and all sorts of things to identify them.  But as you can see with the Ellenborough Street Hotel, you can't just take a plan and then go along a street and see - oh well what building looks like this one - because they didn't necessarily get built the way the plan looks.  And not all of the plans were built. 

One of Haenke's plans is for a more, I think, a masonic lodge or something in Mount Morgan, and I thought for a long time that that was his building, but then it didn't end up that he was the architect on that building. If they were built, people then changed them, or pulled them down.  I thought I had a building of his on the corner of Park Street and Warwick Road - a shop that I've got a plan for - and I thought, “Oh great! That shop's still there.  Go and photograph that.” Then I happened to find a little article to say that shop had been pulled down, so it was only there for maybe 10, 15 years and then the shop that's there is not Will Haenke's shop.  So it's very difficult to try and identify them, but that's the task.  And that's the wonderful thing about an evening like this, is I'm sure there are people out there who know their house was designed by one of these architects, that we may not yet be aware of.  So yeah, it's difficult but it's a community project, I think. There are so many people in the community really interested in houses and really interested in history so I'm sure we'll find more. 

Melanie : And Judith, you had the advantage of being able to consult with Bruce, so how did that affect your research process compared to what Margaret and Toni were going through?

Judith : I did mention that I thought I drew the long straw on this one [laughs], but yes, I mean, it was … writing a biographical piece about a living person is… I mean … it's an enormous privilege, because you know, I ask questions and I kept sending him silly questions, and you know, he kept writing stuff.  And because Bruce is very literate as well, he would write me these wonderful things that I'm thinking, “I'm going to use your words if I can't do better than that.” So that was actually one of the great benefits.
 
I guess one of the challenges was that he's a very modest man, and so trying to actually explore the scope of his work, which is, you know, really quite vast, was … it wasn't simply a case of asking him to list everything because, you know, and I don't think he was forgetting, or he wasn't leaving stuff out.  He was just … I think … a natural modesty.  So I guess I still did a lot of the stuff that we do as architectural historians, you know, still checked all of the usual repositories with their photographs, and Picture Ipswich, and the Fryer Library’s fabulous architectural plans.  What, of course I didn't have, was the benefit of the digitised newspaper resources because the … at least through the National Library’s Trove, all of those cut out before Bruce started working.  So it was a case of looking at more contemporary sources such as State Archives, and who've got some material. 

So I guess the other thing is when he's doing mainly work on existing buildings, it's not necessarily acknowledged in the documentation.  You might know who designed a building, but you don't necessarily know whether who's done work on it since.  So that was probably the most challenge about putting stuff together.  It was all little bits of information, so …

Melanie : Please attendees, if you want to add some questions into the chat, you are more than welcome to.  At the moment we're just getting some thank yous coming through to all of you. So you all have a very different approach to your research when you're not normally researching architects.  Like Toni, I'm assuming you would describe yourself as a social historian.  Like when you're looking into the culture of the Greek cafes and the lollies.  So architectural history is going to be very different from Judith when you're looking more at you know, heritage and conservation plans and that sort of thing.  So how has your individual approach, normal approaches to history, how has that affected your approach to this project?  Has it helped or, you know, have you had to learn new skills?  Again, who wants to start?

Judith : Yeah, I think … I believe that most of us probably have the same principles in our approach regardless of the subject.  I mean you're always looking for evidence, looking for  you know, what matches with what, what doesn't work together, where are the inconsistencies, where else I can look.  I mean, I think part of the skill of being a historian is about searching widely, and you know, casting your net much wider than anybody might ever imagine would turn up historical sources.  So … but I think it's the challenge is then, working out for any particular project, where am I not going to waste too much time sort of ferreting around in places that don't have anything.

Toni : Yeah, I would agree with that, Melanie.  I think you, as a historian, you do… your approach is much the same.  I don't know about the others, but I have to have a passion for the subject.  I find it very difficult if it's not something that I'm really motivated about and I love.  Even though I'm not … wouldn't describe myself as an architectural historian, I love old houses and I love history, and it's that's just embodied in the buildings that are around us so …

But I do see the cultural context of whatever I'm doing as being important, so you know a date isn't just a date for me, but the fact that that date coincides with something else, that makes me think about what that meant.  Like the fact that his father wasn't well enough to be a blacksmith anymore.  You know that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks – okay, if he was actually well enough, we wouldn't have had an architect in his family, more than likely.  And also because he's gone, finding other ways to put his story together is a challenge. I was really fortunate to have Angela who lives at Rockton, and has lived there a lot of her life, to be able to go to her and get the family stories, and her memories of Will as a grandfather.  I love doing that - that was really important. 

One of the difficulties, thinking about that and the cultural context of the family, I can't tell you how long it took me just to get my head around their names.  Because the first one was Johann Martin, the next one was Johann William, the next one is Martin William. And Johann Martin … and they all go by their second names.  And I just, you know, I don't know -took me a long time to get my head around that.  But in writing that up, I made the decision early on to just call my architect Will, because there were just too many Williams, and his father being Will, you just can't clarify it otherwise, so I think you just find ways to get what you want and if you've got the luxury of thinking about the context, so that those kind of things settle down, that's a great privilege too.

Margaret : Just to add, I agree totally with what you both said, and I think the thing with, as a historian you go down rabbit holes.  All the time you think, ”I'll try this.  I'll go to the Fryer and I'll see what happens here, and oops, that didn't work so well… I'll try something else…” and every job's different, but it's the same skill set and it's that thrill of the chase that all three or four of us have. That we just have that tenacity of - we've got a question and we're not going to let it go. So we're very reluctant to get out of that rabbit hole, or maybe that's just me, but yeah I think that's our common passion. 

And for me the buildings are interesting because I love people, and I love people's stories, and buildings are where we work and play and live, and I always wish the walls could talk.  But sometimes when you do this research, they sort of do.  You know, you can actually get some degree of empathy or understanding of how people might have actually lived, and that's really that aha moment for me, when I go “Oh that's really exciting.” So … and when you find that old letter in the handwriting of the person you're researching - that's as close as I got to being able to interview, (the equivalent) of Bruce.  I got the letter and our photograph, and they suddenly come alive, and that makes it really exciting, yeah.

Melanie :  We have a question that's come through from Deanna, and it's a great question, and after tonight's talk I can actually answer it, because I didn't know - Judith has given us the answer. So Deanna's question was “Do we know if there is a building that all three would have been involved with?”.  Well it seems to be Rockton.  Because Brockwell Gill did some work at Rockton, and obviously Bruce Buchanan has done some work at Rockton, and Will lived at Rockton, so did some work.  So maybe we have a house.

Margaret :  Maybe Ipswich Grammar too perhaps? Because he gilded the pool.  You mentioned the boarding houses … did Haenke do work there?

Toni : I haven't found any connection with the Grammar School, but I know that Will did work on the Prince of Wales Hotel and the Grand Hotel which you mentioned.  So I don't know whether Bruce would have come along afterwards and done any heritage work (well not on the Grand, because we ripped that one down) but he may have been involved.

Margaret : But it is interesting when you listen to the three talks that their paths may not have crossed because they were working at different times, but I'm sure they walk the same territory.  And they would have been looking at each other's buildings and learning from them as well.  I mean, they're very different styles but particularly with Bruce, he would have been looking at their work all the time and he would have been working on their property so there would have been that coordination with their work that way too.

Judith :  I was just looking in my catalogue … I don't think … no, I haven't found either of those hotels for Bruce, so yep.

Melanie : So it might be Rockton, the property.

Margaret : It might be.

Judith : I think Rockton’s probably the only one that comes to mind, because Haenke didn't work at the Girls’ Grammar School either, Toni?

Toni : I don't think so.

Judith : Okay, oh well, and Bruce worked on St Paul's Anglican.

Margaret : Oh yeah, he was there.

Melanie : It's like six degrees of separation game, Ipswich Architects edition here [laughs].

Judith : Yes

Margaret : I'd like to also add to what Toni said before too.  Please, this is a community project, so I don't think I would claim for a minute I've got a definitive list, so you know if you’ve got information, Melanie's always collecting photographs and plans.  Picture Ipswich just grows everyday.  So if there's anyone out there who wants to add to our knowledge, please you're more than welcome.

Toni : One of those buildings that you had in your slides, Margaret, that I think you had “unknown” (I only saw it briefly), but I thought it might be “Arrochar” on Waghorn Street. Yeah it looks very similar to it.

Margaret : Okay I'll go for a drive.

Melanie : Well, stay tuned for Arrochar.  That'll be one of our “Chasing our past” in October. Now, discovering and learning about the personal stories and lives of the architects, how has that altered your understanding of their actual architecture, their work, knowing their stories, and you know, about their family.

Judith : I didn't look much at Bruce's family but I suppose it really brought home to me that … and I think Bruce isn't alone in this, but there seemed to be many architects who have got this amazing sort of artistic sensibility as well.  Obviously there are some architects who are more like engineers, you know and they work much more on the structural stuff, but I can think of a number of, sort of modern architects whose work I actually know, and who are also quite accomplished artists, and not necessarily even as architectural artists, but are accomplished landscape architects or whatever.  And I suspect that informs their practice, whether they're doing some heritage works or designing from new, because that sensibility about the place of a building in the landscape is, I think, well, important for really good design, that the building has to sit in its landscape, so and that was I guess something that really was brought home to me for Bruce in particular, because of his sort of passion for art as well as the architecture.

Toni : I think learning about Will, and speaking to Angela about what she knows about him, and imagining him as a boy growing up, and you know being in places that I go to, I guess I have come to think of him as a really curious, inventive sort of person. And I think from even from those early drawings and other certificates that are at Rockton that show that he was doing drawings, and winning prizes, and putting models in shows as a teenager, he's just has got that kind of mind where he's just can't help himself.  He's just got stuff coming out of his fingertips all the time, and so I think … and also the beautiful … the drawing, and the beautiful watercolours, especially the ones that are on the linen paper in the colour which I think designates different building materials, they are works that I would love to have one of those on my wall.  I just think that his buildings couldn't have been anything else but inventive, and you know having really creative approaches to whatever problems he was solving, that would have come out in his buildings, as it did just in the rest of his life.

Margaret : With Brockwell Gill I don't know so much about his art, but he was an incredible musician.  And he was a singer, he was in the Cambrian choir.  He was also an orator, he was a lay preacher, he was in the literary society.  So he was obviously a deep thinker.  I won't go as far as a Renaissance Man, (I know that title's been taken), but he was impressive. And I also think, “Did that man ever sleep?” because apart from having his children that I wonder if he ever saw them, there was not an organization in town that a man of his background (a middle-class protestant man) - he was in every organization I think he could just about be in.  I imagine he was never home because there just weren't enough hours in his day.  He's doing all of this architecture and he's in every committee you could just about find, and he's obviously reading, playing canasta, swimming - he's athletic – golf, tennis he's just going … Really? Did this man ever rest?  And yet he lived to 95!  I think he had to fit all of it in.  So that was my overwhelming feeling - it's probably “Wow, this man really packed a lot into his life!”

Judith : You’re exhausted just researching and writing about him. [laughs]

Margaret : Oh come on please retire.  Just retire.  I'm feeling tired reading these tenders.  Have a break! [laughs]

Melanie : You mentioned his involvement with the church, and that's something that I've noticed.  It's sort of an area which I'd love to do some more research in myself.  In that late 19^th, early 20^th century, the role of the churches and membership of those congregations -what that role played in the wealth, in the development of Ipswich as well.

So Brockwell Gill with the congregational church, and Will Haenke with the methodist church. And I had a discussion with Danny Keenan, the council's heritage architect, recently as part of this project, talking about the architecture of Will Haenke, and I raised that question with him.  And he said you know, it was a curious thing, to start looking into was the influence of their faith in their architecture.  I don't know if that's something that any of you have looked at, but particularly for Margaret and Toni.  Do you see an influence there that would have come through?

Toni : Well, Will Haenke certainly did quite a lot of churches in Ipswich, and I think the furthest afield was Bundaberg.  But Angela tells me he didn't charge for his work on the churches, that he would just do that, you know, as part of his faith, I suppose. And he didn't charge for the Ipswich Croquet Club, or the Bowls Club either.  He was a member of those, I think he was still a member of the Bowls Club when he died. And so, he was giving his time to those organizations in meetings, as well as in the form of buildings. But he also did things like … he lobbied for an Ambulance Centre for Ipswich, and wrote letters to the editor explaining that these are all the situations where people are being injured at work and we need an Ambulance Centre, but then  would go the next step and say well this is how we could actually fund it - so a very practical way of looking at it.  He also was on a committee to investigate a power station for Ipswich, so I think it's that community-mindedness to me, is part of the outworking of your faith.  They weren't just people who did their work, went home, and counted their money.  They just were giving back to the community as well, and I see that as part of faith.

Margaret : Yeah, I’m not quite as sure, but I mean I know he was a very devout member of St Paul's Church because that comes across in the things I’ve read.  But I think the other thing is these three men are incredibly civic-minded. They're doing a lot of things for the community. I think that's another common thread. I mean Brockwell Gill’s on every committee.  Haenke’s doing that sort of work.  Bruce Buchanan's opening up Claremont for … people could come through his home.  He's working for the National Trust - that's a voluntary thing.  So I think these three men – Ipswich owes them a lot.  I think that not only is their architectural legacy enormous and we've got beautiful buildings as a result, that make us the envy of a lot of heritage places around Australia - they built our city as well, in terms of social history and community as well. So I think that's a really important part of these three men's story, and I’m glad the three of us have captured it as much as we can.

Melanie : I could keep asking questions for quite a long time, and I know whenever we've done our practice sessions, and even just before tonight's session started, I had to remind everybody that it's about time to stop talking and get ready for tonight. So we will have to start to wrap it up, but I would like to talk … just the last question - sort of looking at the project itself.  So what kind of work are you each producing as part of these Ipswich Architects project, and then I can tell everybody how it will be accessible. So what is everybody producing?

Toni : Well I’ve finished a biography of Will's life, putting him in the context of family, and working at Rockton, and the kinds of buildings that he constructed - so that's part of the Picture Ipswich collection.  And I seem to be a bit behind the other two in trying to identify the buildings.  And I’m working on a … like a chronological thing of the building - so year by year what building he was doing, so you can see how much he's doing at any one time, in any one year.

And also, the three of us are working on a massive spreadsheet that has the buildings, and where they are, and when they are built, and as much information as we can find about the builders and other trades people -that would be an ongoing project.  So I imagine - and also with Angela, we did a film, oral history that Melanie and I are working on. So I see those as really valuable items that are going to be permanently lodged in Picture Ipswich, for people to be able to further investigate themselves.

Margaret : I’m adding to that database, so I’ve got - as I said, I’ve done an analysis of the 350. So it's in a database, I've got a chronological list.  I haven't done my biography yet, Toni, mine's in a different order, so it's just a matter of order. [laughs]

Toni : I just do this and I’m an overachiever!

Margaret : No, no, I haven't done it, it’s in a different order … I had to do this part first. So that will all be available on Picture Ipswich as well. So again I think it'll be a valuable resource, because we've talked about a lot of buildings we think of Brockwell Gill’s, but this is the … and I’ve got all the newspaper references that - so we can confirm it. So I’m trying to leave  a trail of crumbs so people coming after me will be able to find where I got that information.

Judith : Yes, yes, I think I’ve got a reasonably complete … I guess I call it a catalogue, of Bruce’s works, with as much detail as I could find for anything within the Ipswich City Council area, and then I’ve also included (not quite as much detail), but all the other works that I found outside the Ipswich area, so to give people some idea of the breadth. I’ve also finished I guess what I call a professional biography of Bruce.  As I said I drew the long straw, and Bruce has signed off on that, so I’m guessing that that will be available in Picture Ipswich very soon, Melanie. And I’m hoping that, I guess, the next step is I would really like to get some sort of filming or interviewing with Bruce, in context and in situ, at some of the places within Ipswich that are very dear to his heart. Because that's one of the things he said to me in an email just the other day – Ipswich is very dear to his heart, so I’m hoping we can inveigle him back to perhaps do some more work with us.

Melanie : And yes, all of the information as it's being collected will become available on Picture Ipswich. We are developing a brand new website at the moment, so that'll just be a couple more months’ time that it will be launched, and it's a brilliant interactive website which is absolutely perfect for a project like this, and the rest of the Picture Ipswich collection, so please stay tuned for that.

Just before we finish I’m going to quickly double check the chat to make sure I haven't missed any questions. We have thank yous from Wayne, Alex, the Rubies.  Laura Whitmore, who did present our last chat “Chasing our past” does have a question for you, Toni - information about, do you have information about the Kokinakos family?

Toni:  Yes, George Kokinakos’ son, Emmanuel, he runs an accountant business in Brisbane - you could look him up.

Melanie : Okay well, Laura says that they knew them very well. Lisa is a thank you. Julie is a thank you.  Stephanie Shannon is also another thank you – “most informative, and how fortunate we are to have bright minds researching and presenting”.  And Tania Jen is also a thank you.

So I think it's my turn to say thank you. Thank you very much for tonight's presentation. I have been looking forward to it for a long time, and I know this is just a taste of the work of each of these three architects, and I’m sure that there is a lot more that you'll be able to tell us once you've gone further on in the project.  So thank you very, very much, we really, really appreciated it. And to our attendees, thank you for coming tonight, and we would also appreciate your feedback on tonight's event - so a short survey will be emailed to you very soon and it'd be wonderful if you could complete it for us.

Information about our next “Chasing our past at home” will be coming soon, so please keep an eye on our website for further information.  And just a last-minute advertisement for tomorrow night, we have a special online event with David Koch who's co-host of Sunrise, and a financial journalist. So that's tomorrow night, Wednesday the 9th of June, 6.30 till 7.30 p.m. He's going to be talking about nine money habits that will help you change your financial life. Registrations for that close 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, so you can register through the Ipswich Libraries website.  So thank you everybody for joining us tonight.  Take care, and enjoy the rest of your evening.