South Australia - The Festival State
South Australia - The
Festival State
Introduction
Altruistic Adelaide
Legends, Leaders & Larrikins
Don Dunstan
Howard Florey
Sir Donald Bradman
Sir Hans Heysen and The Cedars
Our Pioneering Past
The Wakefield Experiment
Hahndorf
This exciting state is a wonderful mix of fine food and wine, history and culture. South Australia is also blessed with some of the most superb natural beauty. The rugged beauty of Kangaroo Island, the windswept Coorong, the Flinders Ranges and the mighty Murray River are just a small sample of the geographical diversity of this state.
South Australia is the driest state in Australia. As you move away from the coast the landscape changes from undulating hills, grasslands and valleys to the arid deserts of the north. On the Stuart Highway that runs north to Alice Springs is the isolated township of Coober Pedy. Here Australian opals are mined and the heat is so extreme residents live underground.
Driving in the isolated northern regions of the state can be dangerous and care and planning must be taken. Most of the population live in the south west corner of the state and it is here that the most popular sights are found.
Adelaide is situated on the Torrens River in St Vincent Gulf, and is sheltered by the Mt Lofty Ranges. In 1836 Colonel William Light, with great foresight, set out his plan for Adelaide. Today the city is a delightful mix of gracious Victorian and Edwardian stone edifices intermingled with small workers cottages and the occasional highrise.
Numerous gardens, six squares - Hurtle, Hindmarsh, Whitmore, Light and Victoria in the city and Wellington in North Adelaide and extensive parklands are integral to the design. Victoria Square is civically the most prominent. Overlooking this square are the Supreme Court, the main State Government administrative offices, a tram terminus (the tram to Glenelg arrives and departs from here) and the Adelaide Hilton International.
Adelaide - The Festival City :
Adelaide is the artist capital of Australia. Each year they are able to produce a fresh and excitng festival that has deeply enriched the Australian cultural landscape.
Extract from the Age Sunday 12 March 2000. Writer Michael Shmith.
>>Queen Adelaide>>
>>...... the elders of Adelaide's cultural tribe talk in even-numbered years:" Remember 1988 and The Mahabharata? Or 1990 and Tristan und Isolde? Or the shorthand of referring to festivals by their director's surnames: "Ah, Kosky's festival. Or Steel's, Hunt's or Sharman's. And what about Helpmann's.
It is positively endearing, anthropological, as layered in meaning and importance as any historical dig. At the newly renovated Adelaide Museum is the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery, which contains a comprehensive collection of indigenous art and artifacts.
I have this mental image of the unearthing of festivals past. On the top layer is this year's, still under construction; then immediately underneath, barely dusted with age, is 1998. Dig a little deeper, and Barrie Kosky and his Red Square festival club (also on the Parade Ground) come into view. Further into the earth, there is Christopher Hunt's Mark Morris and Frankfurt Ballet festival, along with Balinese shadow puppets.
Now, we hit Rob Brookman's festival and, deeper still Clifford Hocking, which takes us down 10 years.......and can that be Peter Schreier and the
St Matthew Passion I see before me?
Down we go, back through '88, '86....and can this be 1982 already, with
Jim Sharman and the world premiere of Patrick White's Signal Driver?
This archeaological element applies to all great festival places. Note that term: not cities, towns, villages, but places. The spirit of the place, its foibles and its delights, is bound up in the very thing that makes the festival so distinctive. The attractions are only part of the story, and no festival is greater than the place that surrounds it and gives it currency. Thus one thinks of Adelaide, but also Bayreuth, Wexford, Edinburgh. I wish in my heart, I could include Melbourne and Perth, but they don't - at least to me, and despite their content and energy - consume the place they are in. In Adelaide, the festival permeates the very air you breath.
If you want to understand what a true festival encompasses, then ask Peter Sellars, the American director of the 2002 Adelaide Festival, who is here for Robyn Archer's festival. Sellars, an impish man with a good line in bright shirts, flew in from LA at the end of last week, and went straight to a conference of arts administrators, where he paced up and down the stage, microphone held high, pronouncing on various things: reconciliation, marketing, George Bush Snr, Nelson Mandela, the individual nature of being Australian, which, while Sellars is not, is an idealogy he is only too willing to pass on to others. "Please, please, please, please, PLEASE, don't look elsewhere," he said.
Encouragement, according to the Sellar's line, must begin at home; if it is done properly, by artists who believe in their own self-worth and are able to listen to others as well as themselves, then the rest of the world will listen.
Sellars is crazy about Adelaide - about this country - and he is quickly adapting to local politics while maintaining his own funky dynamic.>>
Adelaide's Tangible Heritage Is Treasured :
Adelaide residents delight in their heritage. Buildings from the colonial era are lovingly preserved and their verandas and gracious lacework maintained. North Terrace is a treasure trove for those wishing to capture the history and philosophy of this elegant city. Dotted with grand stone buildings that house the Gallery of South Australia, Parliament House and the Adelaide University, heritage is carefully preserved.
Meander through history that a stroll down North Terrace presents. Step back in time with a visit to Ayers House and recapture the pioneering spirit. Touch the timeless beauty of the aboriginal connection to their land in the beautiful artworks at the Gallery of South Australia. Walk through the parklands that surround the city and marvel at Colonel Light's vision of 163 years ago.
Enjoy a stroll through the South Australian Museum, The War Memorial and the Botanic Gardens and you will start to tap the depths of this artistic and cultural city.
Under the leadership of Don Dunstan (1967-68 and from 1970-79) South Australia underwent a decade of reform which saw it leading the way in areas of human rights, Aboriginal reconciliation and the Arts. Dunstan's determination can be seen in his election speech of 1970.
"South Australia will become the technological, the design, the social reform and the artistic centre of Australia.... the state with the most highly developed and diversified economy..... which provides the complete range of human and community services." Thirty years later his audacity seems breathtaking but in essence his legacy lives on.
With the creation of the SA Film Corporation, Dunstan revitalised the flagging Australian film industry. Movies such as "Sunday To Far Away", "Picnic At Hanging Rock" and "Storm Boy" made the international critics take note. Incidentally the film "Storm Boy" perfectly showcases the wild rugged beauty that is South Australia's Coorong coastline.
Dunstan gave the State Theatre Company a major grant whereby they produced some of the best theatre in Australia. He funded the State Opera and a modern dance group that thrived with the funding support.
The Adelaide Arts Festival has become an acclaimed International Event and should you enjoy a performance at the Festival Theatre you will be seated in the reality of his vision.
In his last interview Dunstan talked openly about his pending death and his belief that the current political parties had lost their way. To the end he maintained his great vision for how governments could be and his earnest desire for them to question their direction.
Dunstan, aged 72, passed away in his sleep on 6 February 1999 after a long battle with lung cancer. He was surrounded by friends, his daughter and his long time companion Stephen Cheng. It is one of the irony's of life that Dunstan never smoked.
The Dunstan Decade can now be recognised as that pivotal period in history when South Australia redefined it's vision and created a new focus for the state and it's people. Echoes of 1836 don't you think?
Howard Florey was recently chosen as the Australian of the century by a panel of 35 leading Australians. Here is a tribute written by Andrew Bolt extracted from the Herald Sun "Australians of the Century".
A Tribute to Lord Howard Florey :
>> It is not just what he did that makes Howard Florey, the son of an Adelaide bootmaker, our greatest Australian of this century.
True, his deeds make him great enough. He seized on an abandoned discovery by Sir Alexander Fleming of a bacteria-killing penicillin mould to develop a drug that would save more than 50 million lives.
Few scientific developments in world history have cured so much misery or offered so much hope.
Every person reading these words is likely to have had some illness shortened by Florey's work. As have their pets.
But it is also how Florey went about that work that makes him inspirational. He was so modest that for years people gave the credit for his work to Fleming.
He was so principled that he refused to patent his discvery, turning down the chance to be fabulously rich- but ensuring cheap penicillin could be rushed into hospitals around the world.
Determined and relentlessly practical, he showed the qualities we have long held to be quintessentially Australian. In every way, he was an Australian hero.
Florey was born in Adelaide in 1898, to a father who had grown rich as the biggest shoe and boot manufacturer in South Australia. He was a brilliant student and fine sportsman, but in 1918 - in just the second year of his medical studies at Adelaide University - he suffered a double blow. His father went broke and died of a heart attack.
It didn't stop Florey, who won scholarships that took him to Oxford University and further studies at Cambridge and in the United States.
He was just 36 when he was appointed director of Oxford's Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, where he was to do his greatest work.
One of his great friends was later to say Florey already seemed to have a "great fire" burning within him. He had a great memory, aphysical dexterity in the laboratory, a fiercely analytical mind and a then unusual ability to devise animal experiments.
He could combine the scientific disciplines of pathology, phsiology and chemistry to solve the seemingly insoluble. But he was not an easy man to get on with.
Although modest and at times almost shy, he once wrote to his fiancee, Adelaide surgeon Mary Reed: " I may not be able to throw off my selfishness and domineering manner." And he was largely right.
He was very practical, uncompromising, driven and blunt to the point of brutality, with an impatience for red tape, foot dragging and humbug. At Oxford he was dubbed "a bushranger of research" - in part a homage to his birthplace and the Australian twang he never lost. In his private life, he was no easier. His first marriage, to Mary, was close to a disaster. She battled deafness and various illnesses, which would have tested his patience, but was herself a prickly character. Nor was Florey emotionally close to his two children. But he knew how to put together and lead a superb research team.
At Oxford, Florey was joined by German Ernst Chain, and the two decided to investigate the mould Penicillium notatum, whose disease-killing action had been accidentally discovered and documented by Fleming in 1928.
It was a crucial decision. Fleming had failed to test penicillin in an infected animal to see whether it could kill bacteria deep in the body, and dropped further research into it.
"The trouble of making it seemed not worthwhile," he said in his 1945 Nobel Lecture. As World War II broke out, Florey's team battled to discover how best to make penicillin, extract it and test it.
Starved of cash, they grew the mould in bedpans, and even built an extraction plant from junk, including a bathtub, letterbox, aquarium pump and milk bottles.
Eventully they had enough to inject four of eight mice infected with a fatal bacterium. By 3.30 next morning, the four mice that had gone without penicilin were dead. The other four survived. "It looks like a miracle," Florey said. It was.
In 1941, the team was ready for their first human test. Albert Alexander, a police officer dying of infection, was put on a penicillin drip and within 24 hours showed a remarkable recovery.
But four days later the penicillin ran out, Alexander died and Florey decreed there would be no more tests until he had enough peniciliin for a complete cure.
He went to America to beg for cash, and eventually could make enough penicillin to start successful clinical trials, overseen by his wife.
In 1943, the British Government funded production of penicillin, and two months later its injured troops were being treated with it.
In 1944, Australia squeezed out enough penicillin to treat civilians as well as soldiers, making it the first country to distribute it to the general population. Penicillin , the wonder antibiotic was launched.
Chain urged Florey to patent it and use the money to fund further work, but Florey insisted this was against medical ethics and refused, even though he would have been made incredibly rish.
The quarrel between the two colleagues was so bitter that from then on they communicated only in writing. It was typical of Florey, who also rejected a gift from Lord Nuffield of 50,000 pounds sterling, the money instead going to fellowships for other scientists.
Florey was always meticulous in sharing the credit for his work. On the scientific papers explaining his penicillin research, he always listed as authors his entire team in alphabetical order, with his name in the middle.
He insisted on the same inscription when an American foundation donated a rose garden to Oxford University in honour of his work. But the British Government, hungry in the way years for a propaganda coup, trumpeted his breakthrough as largely the work of the Briton Fleming. In the public's mind, Florey's role remains confused and almost obscure.
Nor was his profile helped when four years ago his face was removed from Australia's $50 note. Nevertheless, in 1945, Florey shared the Nobel Prize with Chain and Fleming, and was later created Baron Florey of Adelaide and Marston.
He continued to research and was a great president of the Royal Society, London. His influence helped establish the Australian National University, and from 1948 to 1955 he was "adviser" and de facto head of its school of medical research. In 1965 he was appointed the university's chancellor.
His firat wife died in 1966, and the following year Florey married divorcee Margaret Fremantle, who had been his special assistant for more than 30 years. Their marriage lasted just eight months before Florey died of a heart attack in February 1968. A truly great life had ended.>>
The Home Of Australia's Greatest Living Treasure :
Adelaide is the adopted home of Sir Donald Bradman, Australia's cricketing hero and one of our most loved and revered "national living treasures". Australians hold "The Don" very dear and his place in our sporting and national history is unparalleled.
No one captured the hearts and minds of a nation in quite the way Sir Donald Bradman did in his heyday. Bradman rose to fame in a period of world unease, when the nation was gripped by depression and Hitler's power was rising in Europe. Australia had been united at the turn of the century but was still struggling with a sense of national identity and pride.
For the working man hardships were common, but Bradman's colossal feats with a bat gave the public an opportunity to rejoice. The crowds loved his ability at the wicket and they cheered his wins and hundreds were known to leave the ground when he was out. He was instantly recognised and acclaimed for his courage and honesty at the wicket.
The phenomena that was the "Bradman era" puzzled not only historians but the man himself. Several years ago the popular press reported that he was living frugally because he was in fact suffering financial hardship. This was firmly denied by Sir Donald who throughout his career has never "cashed in" on his hero status. Now in his 90's, Sir Donald rarely makes public appearances.
For more detail on this modest national treasure read "Bradman" by Charles Williams published by Abacus.
Not surprisingly this book is dedicated "For Jessie Bradman, an Australian heroine in her own right". Jessie Bradman passed away in 1997 aged 86 after a long battle with inoperable cancer. Lady Jessie and Sir Donald shared 65 years of married life.
Hans Heysen, Dunstan and Bradman have made enormous contributions to their country. All were men of great dedication, humility and courage.
Sir Hans Heysen and The Cedars
But no visit to Hahndorf is complete without a visit to The Cedars, the home of celebrated watercolourist Sir Hans Heysen OBE.
Born in Hamburg on 8 October 1877, his family migrated to South Australia when he was six. As a boy Heysen loved the Adelaide Hills and his greatest yearning was to paint the great gums that dotted the valley floor from Grunthal to Hahndorf Village. He visited the Hills whenever he could escape from Adelaide, whether by bicycle, coach and train or tramping on foot with his paint box strapped to his shoulders. Heysen's schooling was fragmentary. He worked for a time in a hardware store and later on his father's produce cart. His striking development as an artist culminating in a private scholarship and four years of intensive study in Europe between 1899 and 1903. In 1904 he married Selma Bartels, the beautiful daughter of a former Lord Mayor of Adelaide.
But it was not until his spectacularly successful exhibition in Melbourne in 1908 that he could afford to make his home in Hahndorf where he lived until his death in 1968. Once in Hahndorf, Sir Hans was free to paint without interruption and his stature grew. In 1912 after yet another successful exhibition in Melbourne he was able to buy The Cedars.
The Cedars - Not Just A Studio But A Home :
Originally built in the 1860's the house was extensively renovated and extended to accommodate the Heysen's family of eight children. Heysen increased the original holding to 60ha to ensure that his beloved gums would be protected for his painting.
It was here on a hillside, half hidden by pines and gums, that he built the studio that was to become the delight and envy of his friends and clients. And here, in the simple graciousness and sincerity of his daily life, he and his family set a pattern of living that became a legend in its own time.
To understand the complexity and depth of this great artist I would like to share the following article which was published in "The Home" magazine 01 December 1921. The insightful writer was Freda Sternberg and I think it fully captures the Heysen mystic.
>>Just at the end of this year's autumn, when all the gardens and the trees were riotous in russet brown, golden yellow, and wonderful dull green, I chanced to be in Adelaide.
"Do you want to see Hans Heysen's home?" asked a native, proud that his State could claim such an artist. "Do I? Of course I do". "Then take my car and go," suggested the noble soul.
I took the car and was wafted above the mundane things of life to the beautiful hills that surround peaceful Adelaide. They were more than usually wonderful that day. A slight rain had brought out all the scents of the bush, and had intensified the colourings of the trees and growing things. In the midst of all this glory, at the end of about an hour's run, I came upon Hans Heysen and his wife. Once you have met them both it is impossible to think of one without the other.
An avenue of trees led up to a garden full of deep-scented flowers, which made a gorgeous frame around the bungalow home. Once before, for a small moment, I had met Hans Heysen in the heart of a busy city where he was spending a short holiday. Then he seemed the shyest of mortals. But here in his own kingdom that shyness was no more. As he opened the doorway leading into a delightful room full of furniture that combined elegance with comfort, books, pictures, and the many things that revealed that Heysen and his wife new how to express themselves in their surroundings, he looked like a tall, happy youth, who was eager to share with everyone the things he had gathered around himself.
Looking back now on the two hours spent at "Ambleside" I think the things that impressed me most- apart from the pictures in the studio- were Heysen's modesty, the wonderful harmony that existed between the artist and his wife, and the way he talked of the things he loved- the bush, his work, his children, books, the Old World and the New. Not once during that afternoon did he (Heysen) show himself the artist facing the interviewer; not once was he anything but a big-minded, sincere-thinking human being.
"I do not know what to tell you" he admitted over a cup of the most wonderful coffee ever brewed. "Tell what you want to know and I'll see what I can do".
So by degrees I got him to talk of his boyhood in South Australia, of the days when he had to work and could only snatch rare moments for painting, on the days when he went for the first time to Paris, London, Italy and Germany.
All these places seemed to take on a new colour as Heysen talked of them. He showed his individual point of view by the way he talked of things that had most appealed to him. Many of them were things that would have escaped the eye of the average artist. Just as Heysen sees the true beauty of the Australian bush so he found a thousand new wonders in Europe. He talked, too, of the Old Masters that had thrilled him- and of Turner, Corot and the Barbizon school.
"I made up my mind to come back to Australia and paint a hundred Turners" he confided laughingly; "but the first picture I painted when I came back was a gum tree, as was the last I did before I left."
Heysen thought that every artist should have the opportunity to go abroad to study and see, but he was just as keen that they should return and give Australia the benefit of all they had acquired. "Isolation is a good thing for any artist" he insisted "it gives him a chance of finding himself".
It is only necessary to spend a very short time with Heysen to find he has proved this theory himself. He knows what he wants to say and he says it in his own simple way. Yet in his isolation Heysen is in touch with the world- he sees it from his home with a big vision.
To get to Heysen's studio the way leads past the yard where the turkeys he so loves to paint have their home. " I think they are much more beautiful than peacocks" he said as we passed. "Hans paints them and we eat them" added his wife laughingly. The studio and the turkeys are on the crest of a hill covered with gum trees. It is a real workshop studio, a big airy room with a gabled, high roof. " I can't work if I feel I have a roof on my head" the artist explained as he went from one to another of the things he loved best in that studio. In one corner was a big bench "Australian wood"
Heysen pointed out, making sure that it's beauty was not overlooked.
Across one end of the studio was a big divan, a gorgeous seat from which to look at the work which he took from his portfolio. First of all, studies of still life-zinnias, grapes, apples, and other fruit grouped in a wonderful way. "I don't know how these will be received but I love painting them". Then a picture of stately turkeys passing over the brow of a hill: then a man ploughing. He had drawn the same man in charcoal, and as we looked Heysen told: "I like best to work in charcoal. I think it is the mother tongue in art; there is nothing between it and Nature."
Heysen does not have to go far afield for his subjects. There is one old gum tree that he has painted at least fifty times, and he said laughingly: "I'm sure I'll paint it five hundred more. It is different every time I approach it".
Several eminent Australians have asked Heysen to paint their portraits, but he has always refused. "I don't want to paint human beings: they do not appeal to me in the way animals and Nature do," was the way he summed up that matter.
Again, he does not work in any orderly way, nor does he spend a certain amount of time in his studio each day. If the mood takes him he gets up at night and paints the moonlight. Often he first digs on his land and then comes in and paints. Heysen has no love for reading, and being honest, he does not mind saying so. He finds all that books can give him in his work and the things surrounding his work.
Hans Heysen is the father of eight splendid young Australians, all alert minded, with splendid bodies. As the car turned to go down the pine avenue back to Adelaide the last glimpse I had of Heysen was with his smallest son in his arms, and he looked as though he thought him far more beautiful than any of his pictures.>>
(Note the reference to Ambleside as the name of Heysen's home. I can only assume that the author named the property Ambleside in error confusing it with the name of the road where it is located.)
The third generation of the family have now undertaken the work needed to protect the historical significance of the site while enabling visitors to acknowledge the wonderful versatility of one of Australia's most gifted artists. The Heysen home and studio together with Nora Heysen's studio are open every day except Saturday. Nora Heysen is Heysen's daughter and a renowned artist in her own right being the first female Archibald Prize winner.
Extract from The Herald Sun 15 August 1999. Author not known.
>> The Utopian Colony>>
>>The birth of new settlements in Australia provided a perfect opportunity for a bold experiment in colonisation - and it was an English Diplomat, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who seized the chance.
Though well-educated and blessed with a privileged upbringing, Wakefield found himself imprisoned for three years after abducting and marrying an underage heiress. While in prison he studied colonial government and wrote a booklet expounding his views on what he considered to be a superior scheme for funding a new colony.
Wakefield argued that convicts should play no part in a new colony - and rather than give the land away or sell large selections at low prices, he proposed it be sold at a price sufficiently high that workers were kept in their place, working hard before they could move to the next rung of the economic ladder.
He also wanted the blocks to be small, creating more concentrated, vibrant urban areas rather than spreading the population into rural areas.
Yet Wakefield also envisaged a colony that embraced democracy, free migration - paid for by the sale of land - and freedom of worship. The outcome, he believed would be a colony of hard work and social harmony.
His views were warmly welcomed, particularly by philosophers, political radicals and ideological reformers. A land company was formed in London with the aim of applying these high principles to the newly-surveyed area of South Australia.
Working-class and middle-class migrants were carefully screened and the first ships loaded with settlers for South Australia sailed in 1836.
Though Wakefield's scheme was later diluted and the province took on much of the character of the rest of Australia, Adelaide's history was quite distinct; it became a centre of non-conformist religion, attracted the first settlements of non-English speaking migrants and in 1840 held the country's first formal poll when citizens turned out to elect a city corporation.>>
This gives a fascinating insight into the South Australia of the twentieth century which has lead the way in challenging new directions. This also confirms why Don Dunstan was so welcomed as Premier of South Australia when he successfully tapped into long dormant feelings from the colony's past.
The Adelaide of today, may at first glance, seem a trifle conservative but on closer consideration this is more modesty than reality. South Australia became the first colony to extend political equality to women in 1894. It was not extended to other Australian women until 1902.
Non-English Migrants Add To The Developing Colony :
For me, Hahndorf is a "must see". Only 28km south east of the city in the picturesque Adelaide Hills lies this delightful village of approximately 2750 people. The atmosphere here is distinctly German, for this attractive town was established by Hermann Kook and 187 German Lutheran settlers who were escaping religious persecution in Europe. The aboriginals called the site "Bulartilla" which is said to mean "swimming place" but the name of the captain on the voyage out was Dirk Hahn and so it became known as Hahndorf.
The new arrivals were naturally industrious and the settlement soon prospered. Crops were sewn and the village grew with its distinctive European flavour. Today, Hahndorf is a popular tourist attraction and its unique character has been recognised with a government Heritage listing.
A stroll through Hahndorf's tree shaded street will allow you time to enjoy delicious apfelstrudel, cheesecake and black forest cake and explore the many small shops offering interesting local handicrafts and home made preserves. Visit the Hahndorf Academy, a gallery exhibiting the work of Australian artists including the magnificent Hans Heysen.
Do not miss the Hahndorf Antique Clock Museum with its 650 different clocks including the world's biggest cuckoo clock, made especially for Hahndorf in Germany's Black Forest. Children will love Misty Hollow, a village within a village, a storybook come to life, at the rear of a children's gift shop at 56 Main Street.
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