This week in 1829 the City of Perth was founded. (Lisa Scafidi has just alerted me to this fact.) A hundred and thirty five years earlier, in 1696, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh landed here. For many thousands of years before that the original inhabitants had built a strong relationship with this place.
The early European settlers nearly starved. South Perth Mill was built to grind wheat, grown where the Royal Perth Golf Club now resides. The mill was our first industrial development.
The mill and the peninsular represent many things in both Colonial and Indigenous history. For this reason the proposed museum here will show both lines of history. Recognition of this is important to our future. Our old buildings, artefacts, oral and written history, works of art, our people and much else make up this history. My recent blog on preserving Heritage House asks about ways to show our respect for South Perth’s heritage in its many lines.
Susan Harris and others have written about early farms, bird nesting sites, an old fig tree, Canning River wrecks, dreaming and learning trails, artists such as May Gibbs and very much more. Susan’s thoughts about the depth of our shared heritage, what that might include and how we might preserve and understand it can be downloaded here.
In any case, the matter is a broad one and we do things better in this city when we all contribute to the conversation. A motion to Council next week asks us to investigate building a community reference group around heritage matters. There are other views developing around this theme as we begin to appreciate heritage value in a time of rapid change. Do you have something to add? Click on Comments below or just email me, to have them published here.
3 comments:
I really enjoyed reading Susan Harris's ideas and suggestions for Heritage House. The use of Heritage House is a discussion the commmunity needs to become involved in - do we value heritage? I like the idea of looking at how we use the skills of volunteers. How can we encourage the City to utilise their facilities for the community? Each and every one of us with an interest and/or passion in South Perth heritage has something to offer. Collectively we can come up with a solution for the use of this building and how the May Gibbs Collection can be viewed and shared by more people. We as a South Perth community need to become more involved and show we are committed to our heritage.
Hi Pete,
I have to say I love looking back into the past. All too often we overlook the what happened before we got here. I have only been here 12 years, but love the history attached to both South Perth and Melville, especially because of the links to Perth in Scotland.
If I was a resident of South Perth, then I would hope my Elected Member would support the formation of the heritage group.
Hope your motion is supported.
John G said
The preservation of history has made the great places of the world we love to visit. Much work has been put into our heritage todate and the use of Heritage House and the future Old Mill redevelopment create a focus to display the history of South Perth. There is no doubt a huge amount of information on the history of South Perth is still untold within the community which would be fantastic to discover before the memory is lost as generations pass. It is also important to remember the events of today will also become tomorrow's history and collection of this is just as important. In this regard has consideration been made to take photographs say each 5 or 10 years from the same location and direction of key locations about the City and perhaps some typical urban locations in order to record the change into the future. It is possible many of our sporting clubs, schools and passive groups could be invited to store and display their history.
You have my suport as a local rate payer.
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