ABSTRACT
Heritage conservation was a latecomer to Australia. A country that prided itself on its youth was bound, perhaps, to doubt that it had much old stuff worth keeping. Over half a century passed between the foundation of the English National Trust in 1890 and the establishment of its first Australian counterpart. Australian cities, moreover, seemed the least interesting part of what built heritage the country had. ‘It was all London without being London’, Richard Somers, the hero of D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo, exclaims on first seeing Sydney, ‘made in five minutes, a substitute for the real thing’. Conserving Australia’s urban heritage was the life’s work of relatively small cadre of professionals, assisted on occasion by wider circles of protesters, bureaucrats, and voluntary workers. In the beginning, it was heavily influenced by the interests of a social and academic elite. Architects like Robin Boyd, Brian Lewis, and John Freeland played a leading part.
