Case study：Wingecarribee historic landscape study (1)

Now we’ll finish with a case study that I was involved in a number of years ago with colleagues.

It’s got this strange Australian name of Wingecarribee. Now that’s the name of an aboriginal group of people who used to live in this area. And the area is for those of Australian geography, is between Sydney and Canberra where I live, this distance is about 300 kilometers. So the study area is in between Sydney and Canberra.

This is an example where the approach that I’ve outlined to you, it was used. It’s a process applied to a practical case in which research inquiry involved archival and on-site investigations. When you come to Wingecarribee Shire, let’s look at the context. When you come to Wingecarribee Shire, is about 2700 square Kilometers in extent. it’s part of what we call the tablelands region in New South Wales, as I say, midway between Sydney and Canberra. And the Shire or this is a region we called the shires in Australia, has a large number of items and places of heritage value, which is significant locally, regionally and nationally. And as a result, the area is a main tourist destination.

And development pressures have been experienced due to overspill growth from Sydney. People are coming to live here, then commuting into Sydney, even though it’s an hour on the train or more. And there’s been concerned that the changes over the time, and lost to this kind of rural character, is sort of open pastoral landscape surrounded by eucalypti forest or woodland, which is quite dense. When European arrived, they started to settle in these less densely treed areas. They did remove some trees, or you see what you have to imagine here is these areas with scattered tall trees on them and tall grass growing underneath. And that was an aboriginal cultural landscape as a result of thousands of years of burning.

Here’s a photograph, and this land was settled by this man. And there’s a plaque there on this view commemorating this man settling in this area. And what are you doing a study like this, And you got on the side, you could use your eyes, you could be and the background you had, you might think this is just a jumble of stones, stones but it’s not.

It’s done by the side of this road here. And this was a road built by convict labor, because convicts were shifted from England to Australia in the early 19th century. And they were put to work on the land, building roads and other things. Because this is steep land on this side, there are water covers training or this is one of the colbert from the public area. And the local people value this sort of thing, is part of their history. You often get the engineers coming along you know, and turning these into a concrete type. One of the things the local said when we’re doing this study, we want these cultures to be saved.

So in response to growth population pressures and visit, this is very popular with visitors in spring, summer, and autumn. And to ensure that the historic character, the Shire was not eroded. The Shire Council got funding for a heritage study back in 1994. And I was part of a study team to inform practice and real-world decisions. What was the significant parts of this landscape for the future? And the main aims of the study included those of identifying and analyzing environmental heritage of the Shire, and providing practical record recommendations for the conservation and management of its heritage resources. And a major component of the overall study was historic cultural landscape assessment involved.

It involved me as a landscape historian, a landscape architect, and an archaeologist. We had look at landscape like this, that extended over 800 square kilometers, 40 by 20, it’s a big area, and start to get troops. So what did we do? We look at the documentation. Then we went out on site. For me, this is always, this is the best part of it. You go out there and you start looking. You think, look, there’s something there, I need to research that. And you take photographs, make sure you document where all the photographs are. So the apart from being one of the earliest parts settled after Sydney, as people came here around in about 1820.

There are historic homestead, this one called Rossby Park, sitting in the middle of this kind of landscape. There are other historic properties with important historic tree planting. This is a driveway into 1820s property. And these English elms that were planted here over a hundred hundred and 2 hundred and 30 years ago. There are small towns and settlements like this one here of a place called barrel. So what we’ve got is a study area 40 kilometers long, by about 20 kilometers wide, occupying this undulating hill and valley topography, at a height above sea level about 650 to 850 meters above sea level, bisect it by the Wingecarribee river.

The undulating topography is punctuated by a number of landmark hills, and its historically significant towns and villages. And the area is almost, as I said, also famous for its historic gardens. And in spring, people flock there to go to look at these historic gardens, and the place becomes inundated, not quite to the extent of places in China, but it becomes crowded. And the central rural area setting is surrounded, as I said, by these you clip cloud hills. So this was the study method that we use based on that other that long big diagram that I showed you. Looking at the documentary evidence, site visits, then looking at settlement patterns and settlement themes.

Then we divided the area into a series of cultural landscape units, then assessed each unit, according to these criteria, then analyzed interpretive value, associative value, continuity, and integrity. Then we define key historic units and towns, then proposed conservation and management guidelines. Instead of using all the criteria in that big diagram that I showed you. we sided because it’s such a large area, and the units are fairly big to look at overall landscape patterns, building clusters, circulation routes, and historical associations. Circulation routes are particularly important because the early settlers explored this area following aboriginal roots that have been there for (you know) thousands of years. But you can see from the slides that I showed these overall landscape patterns.

It’s a fairly large-scale landscape with large what we call paddock of fields.

And we looked at historical resources. One of them was this 1836 painting of frosty park, homestead that I showed you. And here it is sitting in the landscape. There’s throws be park on the top of the hill. And the painter is on a small hill looking across this landscape. We almost find the exact spot where the artist had stood to sketch it, and then go back to the studio to paint it. And this is it because it’s changed a bit. This down or ponds barn weren’t there then. But there are the shepherd looking after his sheep and castle. And there are still sheep and cattle in this area. There’s thrust be part, there is on this painting.

You can see in front of it, this is great sweep of grass going down. Now that would have been, as it was when Europeans arrived. This area often had large grassy areas that were open, that were due to aboriginal burning. And the average of people control the landscape. They would have lightly wooded areas and the areas cleared of trees. So they could hunt kangaroos, and they can hunt. They can get the kangaroos out or into these open areas to hunt for them.