Jenny Gregory

Reconsidering Relocated Buildings: ICOMOS, Authenticity and Mass Relocation 1

ICOMOS charters guide global heritage conservation practices. Fundamental to most is the notion that a ‘monument is inseparable from the history to which it bears witness and from the setting in which it occurs.’ Yet buildings have been moved for centuries. Neither the fabric nor the size of a building, nor planning regulations, nor even heritage listing, have prevented their relocation. This article briefly examines the history of relocation, reviews attitudes to relocation in ICOMOS charters, and analyses two case studies involving the mass relocation of heritage buildings in the UK and in New Zealand to question the assumption that buildings lose their authenticity if moved.

Connecting with the past through social media: the 'Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost' Facebook group

This article examines responses to the loss of heritage places through an analysis of a Facebook group, ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost’, which includes photos and discussion about buildings and places that have been demolished or obliterated in the city of Perth, Western Australia. In doing so, it grapples with a number of issues; feelings about the loss of heritage, the nature of social media and the social capital it generates, and emotional communities and nostalgia. It argues that in showcasing lost buildings and places from the past, social media such as Facebook enhances both awareness of and collective attachment to the past by facilitating public expression of emotional responses to the past and forming an emotional community that can be utilised to generate the social capital needed to mobilise against the destruction of heritage buildings and places.

Sydney: the Making of a Public University

tional support he needed. Case-workers simply cannot answer this need. Kenny, then, needs advisers and friends outside the professionals, and amongst those who shared his exact experience. Again and again Kenny feels himself alienated from those who did not lose their houses. Tears flow from those who were merely threatened by the fire: he himself finds it difficult to weep. ‘Tragedy’, he writes, ‘can often be appropriated by those not directly affected and then become a cornerstone of their identity’ (175). Appropriated? It is understandably hard for Kenny not to resent such onlookers. But perhaps it was ever thus. Returned servicemen often don’t speak about their experiences; it is their relatives and descendants who want the monuments. While in Darwin researching the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, it was clear to me that few of those who had suffered most acutely in that terrible night wanted any part of the events. I am sure Kenny would concede that the ‘merely’ shocked as well as the traumatised have a valid place to speak, write and memorialise after the event. Nevertheless, the experience itself remains paramount. Maybe casemanagers should seek not to overburden their clients with counselling and explanations, but find some names and addresses of people, like the solitary individual cited on page 172, who share the exact circumstances of loss and trauma after fire. The discussion part of the book improves as it becomes more pertinent to Kenny’s own experiences. The initial excursions into Homer, Empedocles, Hephaestus and Theophrastus give way to those of modern authorities enabling him to merge the two voices for integrated discussion of follow-up care, the disintegration of the community, house design, culpability, counselling, the ‘naturalness’ of the bush and the welfarist obsession with ‘families’ as though every victim lived with a partner and three children. This book is an important commentary on Australian fire history, and a terrific read.

Obliterating History? The Transformation of Inner City Industrial Suburbs

Abstract In all cities there are suburbs close to the heart of the city that have become degraded over time. The planned transformation of such areas has been a phenomenon of the deindustrialisation of cities in the 1980s and 1990s, much of which has occurred on the waterfront. A prime example is Londons Docklands. Today in Australia each state capital boasts inner suburbs that have been transformed. Industrial wastelands of derelict buildings, shattered windows, and graffiti are no longer. In their place are chic suburbs of designer homes and apartments for the well-to-do. This article focuses on East Perth as a case study of an inner city industrial suburb that has been transformed.

Harsh oil: Finding petroleum in early twentieth century Western Australia

Abstract Before becoming a science, an art or a form of investment, oil prospecting needed the mental vision of the discoverers of new oil fields in unexplored areas. According to Pratt, the minds of such men made the discovery of new wells possible, mostly in terrains that were not considered favourable such as in Australia. This paper is the initial outcome of an investigation into the first oil explorations in the SW of Australia in the early twentieth century. Following a review of the relevant literature, the paper provides an overview of the early global development of the oil industry, exploring expectations of oil resources in Australia in the context of international oil developments. This provides the background to an analysis of early oil exploration in Western Australia (WA), based on analysis of contemporary geological literature, unpublished government documents and newspaper reports. The result is not the tale of an epic quest for oil in Australia, but rather a story of sceptical scientists, visionary investors and a government that saw oil as an asset that would speed up Australias transition from a British colony into an independent political and economic power.

Understanding and finding oil over the centuries: The case of the Wallachian Petroleum Company in Romania

About four centuries passed between the first appearance of pamphlets in which the medical uses of petroleum were discussed (for example, the Tegernsee (southern Bavaria, 1430), Geneva (Swiss Confederacy, 1480), Nurnberg (northern Bavaria, 1500), and the Antwerp (Duchy of Brabant, today Flanders, 1540–1550) pamphlets), and Michael Faradays discovery in 1825 of the chemical composition of benzene derived from bituminous oil as a compound of carbon and hydrogen. During this long time span, studies of oil, carried out between alchemy and chemistry, benefited from rapid advances and brilliant insights, much as they had moments of stagnation, and disappointing regressions. In 1855 the chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr., of Yale University, proved that crude oil could be decomposed through a process of fractional distillation into a range of fuels and lubricants cheaper than the oils, greases and waxes rendered by animal fats and vegetal matter (Silliman 1855; Forbes 1948 Forbes 1958). In the course of the early 18...

“A Spirit of Bolshevism?”: Perth’s Water Crisis of the 1920s

The early 1920s were a pivotal period in Perth’s water history, marked by conflict over the inadequacies of the city’s water supply. Only a small area of the city had reticulated water; most people relied on wells or rainwater tanks. Water shortages, particularly in new suburbs and higher districts, prompted the Western Australian Government to impose water restrictions. The press, local government authorities, and opposition politicians took the government to task, and officials and householders protested at public meetings. This article analyzes the causes of water shortages, the level of protest, tensions over the governance of the water supply, and the response of the state government. As on America’s west coast in the same period, government decision making was often influenced by rural needs, but the role played by urban householders, with the support of the press and opposition politicians, was paramount in shaping new water supply systems for city dwellers.