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I’m typing this with two fingers and a
thumb on a computer that sits near the window of a flat in Fitzroy.
We live on Brunswick Street, high above the restaurants, cafes and
passing trams. “Is there much street noise?” people ask. “Yes,” we
say, but why would we live here if we didn’t like the sounds of the
city? And the morning rituals of the shop-owners putting out their
signboards, café tables, umbrellas, book displays, cut flowers and
fruit; the smells of fresh coffee or garlic; the short walk to the
Post Office where I say hello to Anna and along the way to Liz the
wine-distributor, Henry the café-owner, Rob the Hairdresser and Pat
who grows corn in his front garden just around the corner.
From
this window high above the shops of Fitzroy I can look across a
large part of the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne. Due West from
here I look straight up Faraday Street all the way to the university
and the hospital. Off to the left, over the top of the Exhibition
Buildings and the new Museum, I see the city skyline – the corporate
towers of the Commonwealth and National Banks, the
communication giants Optus and Telstra, Orica,
Shell, AXA Insurance and so on. I know these mega-
monopolies by the insignias emblazoned on the side of each building
about eight times higher than the tallest tree that ever grew here.
These are the symbols that spell out in logo-language some of the
recent highlights of the Australian capitalist enterprise.
But
what would we see if we were here in 1890 when my grandfather was a
roadmender in the Otways while his wife, deep in the forest, ran a
household with ten children. First of all we could observe the view
from this same window, except that the window is brand new. The
building, designed by John Beswicke was completed just months
earlier. The new three-storey structure of red and cream bricks,
arched windows and ornate turrets occupies nine building blocks. It
is typical of Beswicke’s handiwork and springs triumphantly from the
flat land to outshine everything for miles - perhaps fulfilling one
of architecture's principle objectives. In 1890 we can see nothing
of the city, except perhaps the tip of the Australian Building
that stands on the corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street. It
is another part-project of Beswicke's. It is a magnificent piece of
architecture epitomising the grand aspirations of our boom years and
is the tallest building in the world. We do not know it, but within
eighty years it will be pulled down.
But in
1890 we see nothing of the original landscape; the leafy land
disappeared much earlier. For knowledge of that, we would have to go
back fifty-five years and speak to Mr John Batman - or better still,
to the Kulin people who were at that time gratefully accepting
Batman’s knives, scissors, mirrors, handkerchiefs and flour for
their half a million hectares. They knew the spot very well -
Fitzroy used to be an important inter-clan gathering sight. But in
1890 we see a manufacturing metropolis producing flour, footwear,
joinery, timber, clothing, whitegoods, furniture and all is sold in
the booming retail sectors on Brunswick and Johnston Streets. It is
an industrious time and out over the rising plain towards the
Exhibition Building, established a decade ago, ten buildings a week
are being erected and the remnant patches of green are diminishing
by the day. The whole scene is offset by thin columns of
dove-coloured smoke rising like spiralling conduits to heaven. The
'big smoke' was aptly named. And the chimney's output amasses over
the rooftops, an ashen cloud of pollution that hangs like a bleak
forewarning to the Big Depression that is at this moment starting to
choke off the progress.
I
doubt that any of us can imagine what the landscape looked like when
only the Kulin people lived here. Today there is no equivalent
uncultivated land to compare it to. The coastal regions east and
west of us, let us say East Gippsland and the Otway Ranges, have
much higher rainfalls and different geological structures, so their
vegetation would not be like Melbourne’s. But it must have been
nice. In 1843 the Honourable Dundas Murray said of Fitzroy, "...
you might easily fancy yourself far away in the depths of the inland
forest... The shadow of giant forest trees here spread over the
ground like the ornamental timber of a park ..." Forested it may
have been, but I doubt that many of us back then would have regarded
this country as a patch on a good English parkland.
The large olive
rectangle I see from this window today is the Carlton Gardens, but
let us not imagine that this is in any way representative of
pre-colonial times. Not a single tuft of greenery is indigenous to
the site. In 1890 the Carlton Gardens was just a bare patch of
ground but it was in that year that the trees we see today were
first planted. Today there are at least six species of Eucalypt on
the northern side that can be seen from here, but ironically, they
are from every other mainland State except Victoria with the
exception of one. That is the Blue Gum E. globulus globulus
which, coincidently, did not grow here but in East Gippsland and the
Otway Ranges – and it is one of the species that the Lorne
timber-getters so diligently harvested, as they still do today.
But the Eucalypts
occupy perhaps two percent of the Gardens. In 1890, our exuberant
horticulturalists also planted all manner of European trees
including avenues of elms, oaks, poplars and plane trees, some now
with a collar of green tin to prevent the remnant fauna from
climbing into their branches. In amongst these trees there are
peppercorns, pines, cypress and a sampling of Moreton Bay Figs. But
I must say, it does look nice today, and I ride my bicycle through
there on the way to work at the University. Peddling through the
massive elms over the No Cycling sign on the asphalt, it is
hard to imagine that just prior to 1890 the area was a bare firewood
lot and a goat feeding area.
***
Today,
pointing northwards out over this garden plot of nostalgia and
neatness is the magnificent overhead blade of the new Melbourne
Museum. It is in fact the louvred canopy that overshadows the new
Forest Gallery enclosed on all external sides by stainless steel
mesh to control bird and animal species both inside and out. One of
the more ambitious brainwaves of the Museum, the Forest Gallery is
an attempt to artificially create a temperate Victorian rainforest.
The enclosed space is equivalent to two standard building blocks and
is home to the species of over one hundred plants, four frogs, six
fish, two reptiles and six birds. The forest also includes a cluster
of power poles just in case there is a visitor who doesn’t know that
many of our tallest, straightest trees are used for this purpose.
What
can we make of a designed space that reflects with architectural
precision what a typical forest should look like? Could it bear any
resemblance to the wild country near Lorne inhabited by my
grandparents? But perhaps this doesn’t really matter. Many visitors
might not even notice the irony of an indoor ‘rainforest’. We are so
used to wildlife parks - an oxymoron if ever there was one - croc
farms, butterfly enclosures, platypus observatories and walk-thru
aquariums and aviaries, that a living enclosure is a part of our
popular holiday amusement. Zoos in general are designed for the
thrill of seeing animals up close and personal, creatures that might
otherwise only be seen on TV. But native trees?
Once upon a time we
were amused by the prospect of a living tree as a museum exhibit.
Imagine, we said, going to the museum to be amazed by a gum tree!
Well here we have it – and we should not be fooled; it is here
because someone deemed it novel enough to draw a crowd. Of course
most museums are full of replicas but they are there because the
original, for whatever reason, is not available. The replica fossil
skull or gold nugget, the modelled aboriginal diorama complete with
possum skins, stone tools and typical family group, are all designed
to enlighten us in the absence of the real thing. But the landscaped
living forest is something else.
It is supposed to
convey the sense of a timeless, stable ecosystem from the tallest
tree to the invertebrate world and right on down to the stone, grass
and creek of uncontaminated nature. But naturally, it is an
illusion. Let us not allow the transplanted and strategically placed
shrubbery to fool us. This is artifice at its best, crossed with
meandering paths and underground wires, pumps and pipes buried in
nutrient-fed soil - and not a log, leaf or fallen twig to spoil the
setting. The possibility of encountering anything that is not
pre-arranged is as unlikely as finding a wild orchid in Myers.
Entering this new Forest Gallery with its
concrete and epoxy resin ‘earthen finish’ walls to represent the
planet’s evolution, walking up the swept paths through the
manufactured mist billowing from a hole in the wall, I cannot help
feeling a little foolish to be part of a culture that so readily
adopts the American predilection for replica over real. The Forest
Gallery will never be 'real' but perhaps that is not the point. No
museum exhibit is intended to last forever, at least not in these
times of economic rigour - what is entertaining and swells the
numbers today may have to be re-appraised tomorrow. Who knows, if
the experiment starts to look a bit dusty, the daily busloads of
school children may still have to take a trip to the Dandenongs to
see an actual forest.
© Robert Hollingworth |