This is an extract from 'An Architect's Story', by Tim Shannon, based on a series of essays that first appeared in the Bass Coast Post.
By Tim Shannon
WHILE swimming, art and photography have provided solace and inspiration in this architectural life, it has been a relationship with Phillip Island that has provided balance. Not far from Melbourne, the island sits in the mouth of Western Port Bay.
Its coastline is complex and varied, and while one half faces Bass Strait, the other faces north across the bay and to the Mornington Peninsula across the Western Arm where the bay meets the Strait. Its northern beaches are strung along a beautiful foreshore; sandy coves and open beaches occasionally strewn with seaweed, separated along its length by tidal reefs and rock pools. The air is clear and smells of the ocean mixed with tidal shores, bursting with goodness, it carries the sights and sounds of a wonderful mix of birds from the land and the sea. Its southern coast looks out from basalt and granite cliffs into Bass Strait with its blustery winds and moody seas, and the land between is mostly rolling farmland fields.
WHILE swimming, art and photography have provided solace and inspiration in this architectural life, it has been a relationship with Phillip Island that has provided balance. Not far from Melbourne, the island sits in the mouth of Western Port Bay.
Its coastline is complex and varied, and while one half faces Bass Strait, the other faces north across the bay and to the Mornington Peninsula across the Western Arm where the bay meets the Strait. Its northern beaches are strung along a beautiful foreshore; sandy coves and open beaches occasionally strewn with seaweed, separated along its length by tidal reefs and rock pools. The air is clear and smells of the ocean mixed with tidal shores, bursting with goodness, it carries the sights and sounds of a wonderful mix of birds from the land and the sea. Its southern coast looks out from basalt and granite cliffs into Bass Strait with its blustery winds and moody seas, and the land between is mostly rolling farmland fields.
This relationship began with day trips to a place which stretches from Flynn’s Beach to Cat Bay where the remains of the first squatter’s jetty poke through the sand and emerge from the water at low tide. Around the head lies Shelly Beach, then a great terrace of rock pools before reaching the rugged basalt coast that is home to The Nobbies at the western tip of the Island. On summer holidays we would rent a house, and with our children we swam, surfed, walked, enjoyed picnic lunches, played, and lay in the sun until it set in a golden sky. We recorded this beauty with drawings, paintings, photographs and memories. We came to like the house we rented in a place where Saltwater Creek meets the beach just along from Red Rocks next to a wonderful bay for swimming where the outgoing tide warms the water; we adopted this Ventnor Beach stretching west from Red Rocks to Grossard Point. Sometime later we bought a house not far from Saltwater Creek, built of asbestos cement fibre in 1960, which is called a Shoreline House. Measuring just forty feet by twenty feet it is held among the treetops by a handful of skinny steel poles, one of the first holiday houses to be built on the Ventnor Estate. It has become etched into our being. All through the seasons, we have ventured out from this home and retraced our steps, slowly creating a web of experiences and memories. Close by there are friends and acquaintances, artists, familiar shopkeepers and restaurant owners, a winemaker and a cook. Then there are nearby towns: Bass for its milk and cheese, Kilcunda with its stunning coast, Wonthaggi for nursery plants and electrical appliances, Koonwarra for organic fruit and vegetables and a walk around its intimate cricket ground, Kongwak for its market, Loch for its distillery, and Meeniyan for a meal and a visit to its art gallery. Further away lies Foster on the road to Walkerville beach and Fish Creek with its artisans and grand art deco pub. Further still is Wilsons Promontory and the beautiful world of Gippsland and its invitation to the high country, the lakes, and Mallacoota beyond. This ritual of return journeys leaving our Shoreline haven to explore new places which have become familiar over time has expanded the refuge that we sought on the beaches of Phillip Island. This has become a part of our being, and for me it has been an essential foil to the intensity of practising architecture.
There is much I can share about Phillip Island thanks to of the insights it has provided me. Islands are places of fascination for stories of treasure, desertion, paradise, and refuge, they are the subject of research by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers who tell us that the evolving culture of Island societies is shaped by the way they were first inhabited. The first people known to live in Western Port Bay are the Bunurong, an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation who travelled with the seasons around the bay from the tip of Mornington Peninsula, up and around Koo Wee Rup swamp and down to Phillip Island, only to retrace their steps again and again. The island provided them with food from the sea, mutton birds, and a variety of animals, but it was not able to sustain them permanently so they came once a year and ate what they could before moving on.
The first Europeans to set foot on Phillip Island were sealers and whalers who also came and went and while the town of Melbourne grew, the Koo Wee Rup swamp kept Phillip Island inaccessible and protected from settlement, until two Scottish brothers named McHaffie squatted on the island and used it to graze sheep. The isolation and inaccessibility suited the McHaffies who shunned Melbourne and set about clearing the land by burning much of it bare and turning it into rolling fields for their sheep to graze on; they found the weather harsh, fresh water was not plentiful, the soil was not suited to growing crops, and it took resilience and cunning to make their grazing a success.
Some thirty years later the Government began turning squatters land into farms for settlers throughout Victoria, and the Surveyor General drew plans of patchwork which covered the land with rectangular allotments varying in size; the well-meaning plan for Phillip Island turned a single grazing property into a few hundred small farms intended for growing crops and raising a few animals where families could sustain themselves in some sort of idyll. However, the plan ignored the surrounding seas, topography, the soil, sources of fresh water, vegetation, aspect or weather; it ignored the lessons of the Bunurong people and the McHaffies who came to respect the limited resources that the island had to offer and the delicate balance that existed between land and sea. The plan created a variety of farms that were destined to fail, and it set the scene for hope and disappointment amidst a great struggle for survival.
There is much I can share about Phillip Island thanks to of the insights it has provided me. Islands are places of fascination for stories of treasure, desertion, paradise, and refuge, they are the subject of research by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers who tell us that the evolving culture of Island societies is shaped by the way they were first inhabited. The first people known to live in Western Port Bay are the Bunurong, an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation who travelled with the seasons around the bay from the tip of Mornington Peninsula, up and around Koo Wee Rup swamp and down to Phillip Island, only to retrace their steps again and again. The island provided them with food from the sea, mutton birds, and a variety of animals, but it was not able to sustain them permanently so they came once a year and ate what they could before moving on.
The first Europeans to set foot on Phillip Island were sealers and whalers who also came and went and while the town of Melbourne grew, the Koo Wee Rup swamp kept Phillip Island inaccessible and protected from settlement, until two Scottish brothers named McHaffie squatted on the island and used it to graze sheep. The isolation and inaccessibility suited the McHaffies who shunned Melbourne and set about clearing the land by burning much of it bare and turning it into rolling fields for their sheep to graze on; they found the weather harsh, fresh water was not plentiful, the soil was not suited to growing crops, and it took resilience and cunning to make their grazing a success.
Some thirty years later the Government began turning squatters land into farms for settlers throughout Victoria, and the Surveyor General drew plans of patchwork which covered the land with rectangular allotments varying in size; the well-meaning plan for Phillip Island turned a single grazing property into a few hundred small farms intended for growing crops and raising a few animals where families could sustain themselves in some sort of idyll. However, the plan ignored the surrounding seas, topography, the soil, sources of fresh water, vegetation, aspect or weather; it ignored the lessons of the Bunurong people and the McHaffies who came to respect the limited resources that the island had to offer and the delicate balance that existed between land and sea. The plan created a variety of farms that were destined to fail, and it set the scene for hope and disappointment amidst a great struggle for survival.
'The Island’s lean and natural beauty speaks with the loudest voice, it does not need or want the distractions of ostentation and sophistication, there is no need for its buildings to compete with this gift.' |
So, you might say that the culture of Phillip Island has been shaped by isolation, hardship, and the camaraderie of the people who took the chance they were offered. It enjoys a spirit of freedom, is suspicious of external interference, and is proudly self-reliant. It has been enriched by its history and natural beauty, and it continues to acknowledge its obligation to protect this for future generations. There is a vernacular of purpose and toughness, while respecting the fragile balance that the Bunurong people understood. The desire to live on an island has attracted all sorts of folk, who have made for themselves all sorts of homes from mansions and guest houses to shacks and caravans, understated houses dot the Island with their rich memories. The Island’s lean and natural beauty speaks with the loudest voice, it does not need or want the distractions of ostentation and sophistication, there is no need for its buildings to compete with this gift, they just need to show respect. Phillip Island’s people speak of the calm, the passing of the seasons, cloudy skies on windy days, the wildlife, the moods of the sea, and the passing of the sun, the moon, and the stars; they say that it is the Island that sustains them. It is a place of things that matter and is rich with memories.
Limited edition copies of 'An Architect's Story' are $60 plus postage. Email
[email protected] for details.
Limited edition copies of 'An Architect's Story' are $60 plus postage. Email
[email protected] for details.