Hogsback, 18 kilometres from Alice in South Africa’s Eastern Province, is just about the coldest place I’ve been to in sub-Saharan Africa, barring the mountainous Malealea region of Lesotho. In fact it is one of the few places in South Africa where it actually snows!
Auckland village, above M&C Falls (ECP)⋄The topography of Hogsback is characterised by dense forests, an extended mountain range (the Amathole Mountains), lush, verdant hiking trails (a veritable hiker’s nirvana) and teeming rivers, magnificent waterfalls such as the Madonna and Child Falls and the 39 Steps Falls, the Arboretum (a garden comprising a wide selection of international trees including a grove of Californian Redwoods over 100-years-old).
⋄In the period since JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books became famous, many acquainted with this part of Eastern Cape have drawn attention to the physical similarity of Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth with the town of Hogsback. Director Peter Jackson could as well have chosen Hogsback for the setting of “The Rings” series of movie epics had he not been a native of a country (New Zealand) with a landscape equally evocative of Middle Earth.
Even before “The Lord of the Rings” movie series some Hogsback locals did their best to capitalise on a handful of tenuous links with the celebrated Lord of the Rings author. The story goes, the ‘Rings’ books were inspired by the magical, enchanting physical form of Hogsback. The proponents of this theory point to the fact that Tolkien was born in South Africa (in Bloemfontein, Free State). The thesis loses traction when probed more closely. The famous author and avid philologist left South Africa at the tender age of three, never to return and having not ever visited Hogsback.
⋄Myth-making about the Master Mythologist:
Despite this inconvenient fact, it hasn’t stopped the local tourist industry from milking the supposed nexus at every turn! ‘Lords of the Rings’ themes pervade the town and its surrounds, driven obviously by an effort to exploit the enhanced fame of Lord of the Rings. Tolkienesque references are scattered throughout Hogsback in the names of lodgings, shops and outdoor activities – Rivendell, Gandalf’s Rest, Merrell Hobbit Trail Runs, The Shire, Lothlórien, The Rings Hardware and Bottle Shop, Hog and Hobbit, Away with the Fairies Backpackers, River Running, Camelot Cottages, etc, etc. The association can probably be traced back in 1947 with the establishment of Hobbiton-on-Hogsback, an outdoor recreation and education centre for disadvantaged kids just off the R345 as you come into the Hogsback township. The “fantasy and fairies” theme is underscored in the numerous pieces of town sculptures depicting these motifs.
The Tolkien Middle Earth connection is often emphasised in print, such as in the following: “The romance of Hogsback, is recognised by reading The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) which seems to capture the special atmosphere of the unspoilt Hogsback forests and of a time when peace will rule the world” [Trevor Webster, The Story of Hogsback, www.hogsback.com].
Talking to the staffer in the Hogsback Visitors Information Centre, she was unequivocally dismissive of the Tolkien LOTR nexus. So the lingering myth clearly wasn’t emanating from the likes of her! She also warned me against buying the primitive wooden toy horses and zebras in the street from members of the local Xhosa community. The street sellers, looking cold and dismal in the freezing conditions, were only asking R2 an animal, but the Visitors Centre lady explained that they are not properly gazed and sealed, making them a prohibited item to export out of RSA. Apparently a local artisan/sculptor had offered to glaze the artworks for the community at minimal cost so that they could charge more for the figurines, but his offer had not been taken up.
So, how plausible is the link between “Middle Earth” of Lord of the Rings and the sleepy, little village of Hogsback? Clearly, as stated above, JRR Holkien had no direct association with Hogsback, having left South Africa at age three. Information on Tolkien’s life however, suggest the existence of an indirect link. One of Tolkien’s sons, whilst in the Royal Air Force during WWII, was stationed at Hogsback and did correspond regular with the author with his reflections on the locale. These correspondences from Tolkien Junior included sketches and descriptions of the Hogsback ambience [Ibid.].
The Hog’s back!⋄Accordingly it is quite feasible that, at the very least, these glowing accounts of the mystical, magic-like countryside provided background material for the physical world of The Lord of the Rings trilogy published in 1954/55. The parallels existing present a strong case to say that the description of the Mirkwood forest in the Rings cycle may conceivably have been inspired from Tolkien having read the war-time accounts of the place provided by his son.
IF you didn’t know it was there, you would drive right past it. In a quiet back street in the Illawarra beachside village of Thirroul … No. 3 Craig Street. For two or so months in 1922, this inconspicuous bungalow with the jokey, alt-spelt name ‘Wyewurk’❂ was home to one of the 20th century’s greatest English-language writers, DH Lawrence. That Bert Lawrence resided briefly in a far-flung part of the world like Thirroul NSW was not exceptional in itself. In the course of his “stop-go” global peregrinations Lawrence lived in over 300 addresses across the world! What gives it import and binds the great writer to this country was that he used this sojourn in the Illawarra to write all but the final chapter of his 421-page novel about Australia, Kangaroo.
⍙ “Valley of the Cabbage Tree Palms”
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After the 1914-18 War DH Lawrence (DHL), opted for a life of voluntary exile, eventually journeying to Australia with his German wife Frieda, the latest destination in a globe-trotting quest by the writer for a peculiar degree of spiritual fulfilment. They stayed two weeks in Perth⊞, before sailing on to Sydney. Lawrence’s initial plan was to live in Sydney for an extended time, however a day trip up to Narrabeen Lakes apparently convinced him that Sydney was decidedly not to his taste. The people with their displays of unbridled, rampant democracy, he found jarring to his sensibilities. He discovered little to enthuse about in the town…in the novel he describes pre-Harbour Bridge Sydney as “loused over with small promiscuous bungalows around which lay an aura of rusty tinned cans” (its fortunate that DHL didn’t pursue a career as a real estate agent on Sydney’s foreshore suburbs). He also rather extremely went so far as to wish that something akin to a tsunami would engulf the city. The Lawrences escaped from Sydney finding refuge in a small, coal-mining settlement 70km south. That Lawrence found a haven from the suburbia of Sydney in a (then) coalmine-littered Thirroul is a choice irony, given his hatred of coalmining, the vocation of his father back in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire.
⍙ The “Pale sea of green glass” at the front of Wyewurk
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Descriptions abound in Kangaroo of the bungalow in which they lived, and of Thirroul more widely. Lawrence evocatively depicts the beach directly below ‘Wyewurk’—which he gives the name “Coo-ee” in the novel—as “the pale sea of green glass that fell in such cold foam. Ice-fiery, fish-burning … full of brilliantly clear water and delicately-coloured shells … strangely sea-scooped sharp sea-bitter rock floor, all wet and sea-savage”. In the thinly-autobiographical novel Lawrence calls Thirroul ‘Mullumbimby’ – presumably he came upon the name ‘Mullumbimby’ on a state map as it’s the name of an actual town in the “hippie hinterland” of north coast NSW. The bungalow Wyewurk/Coo-ee is delineated thus: “The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed … overlooking the huge rhythmic Pacific.”
The hastily written and skimpily revised novel Kangaroo itself is not valued highly in the overall oeuvre of DHL by critics or academe, eg, “Kangaroo is little more than an egregious failure” [Macdonald Daly, 1997 Penguin edition of Kangaroo; “a generic gallimaufry with a primarily pastoral focus”, Joseph Lenehan Davis, ‘Place, pastoral and the politics of the personal: a semi genre-based exploration of D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo‘, PhD dissertation, University of Wollongong, 1992]. What the novel has attracted recent commentary for revolves around the thesis advanced by Robert Darroch and others – its depiction of a secret right-wing army in Australia which was allegedly planning a coup d’état. Lawrence in Kangaroo seems to have anticipated the advent in the late twenties and early thirties of semi-fascist groups in Australia such the Old Guard and the New Guard.
David Herbert and Frieda outside ‘Wyewurk’, 1922⍙
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In the isolated village of Thirroul—between the sea and the escarpment—DHL found an anonymity and ‘stillness’ that he had craved but had hitherto eluded him. The freedom, artistically, he found in Thirroul, enabled him to write over 3,000 words a day of his ‘great’ modern Australian novel [John Worthen, DH Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider] . Frieda and Bert left Thirroul and Australia in August 1922 for the US via Wellington, NZ. Settling near Taos in New Mexico, Lawrence completed the final chapter of Kangaroo and hastily edited the book. The serene native pueblos and western ranches of Taos were the next staging post in Lawrence’s lifelong “savage pilgrimage“, his descriptor of the relentless search for a more fulfilling lifestyle than that delivered by industrialised Western civilisation. Lawrence believed that “every continent has its own great spirit of place”. In the course of DHL’s terrestrial wanderings, both Taos and to a much lesser extent Thirroul embodied in their different ways aspects of the powerful life-spirit he was seeking.
⍙ ‘Lawrence wrestling with the Kangaroo on the veranda of Wyewurk’ by Garry Shead
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In the years after the Lawrences departed Australia Thirroul slowly extricated itself from its coalmining preoccupation. Largely, it has remained a sleepy holiday coastal town while building a thriving arts community for local artists and musicians. Wyewurk, bereft of the DHL aura, slumbered back into a cloak of invisibility. It continued to be owned by the Southwell family whilst a succession of renters occupied it. In the 1970s people (some local, some from further afield) started to take a renewed interest in the literary significance of the writer’s 1922 residence. Unfortunately for the growing public interest but hardly surprisingly, the occupants of Wyewurk at the time (a dentist and his wife) repeatedly denied visitors access to the house and grounds.
⍙ ‘Wyewurk’, the Craig Street bungalow
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This situation got worse from the perspective of the DH Lawrence “fan base” after a local real estate agent bought Wyewurk from the Southwells in 1984. The new owner categorically refused any access to the property at all. Lawrence scholars (who would later coalesce into the “Friends of Wyewurk” and also form the nucleus of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia) grouped together to lobby politicians resulting in an interim conservation order being placed on Wyewurk. Despite this the owner submitted plans with Wollongong Council to add a two-story extension to the bungalow (which if implemented would effectively “cape cod” it).
Thus began a protracted period of litigation, the outcome of which saw the Heritage Council of NSW reject the owners’ ‘Pavilion’ plan. The Wyewurk group rallied support for the preservation of Lawrence’s house in its original form from public figures like Patrick White, Manning Clark and Judith Wright, from various national and international DHL scholars, and the local community. Later, support was also forthcoming for its retention on architectural grounds after the architects’ council declared Wyewurk to be the oldest surviving example of the Californian bungalow style in NSW (possibly in Australia) [S Jobson, ‘How we battled to save Wyewurk’, Rananim, Nov 1995, 3(3)]
The Wyewurk saga dragged on for several years more with the community divided on the issue. With all the publicity about Lawrence’s house, the Sydney Morning Herald weighed in with a predictable LCD tag, referring to Wyewurk as “Lady Chatterley’s beach house” [SMH, 29 July 2003]. Submissions to the Commission of Inquiry followed including proposals to turn Wyewurk into a centre for arts activities, but none of this bore fruit. At one point the owner himself is believed to have approached Wollongong Council with a view to the Council purchasing the house. The Council, adopting a breathtakingly tunnel-visioned approach, rebuffed the proposal outright…it’s woeful lack of acuity signifying a real missed tourism opportunity! Despite the building’s literary and cultural significance, the Commissioner ultimately ruled that the owner be permitted to erect a one-story addition to Wyewurk. To everyone’s surprise, in the end the owner decided not to proceed with the approved changes to the bungalow![Jobson, ibid.]
⍙DH Lawrence Reserve
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Wyewurk today is still there in Craig Street, pretty much as it was (the exterior at least) in Bert Lawrence’s time, though more strongly fortified now – given its challenges a minor miracle of survival! The preservationists won, but since sightseers and Lawrence devotees are barred from viewing its lawns, verandahs and the jarrah wood table on which Kangaroo was crafted, it remains something of a Pyrrhic victory. Since the mid Eighties the estate agent/owner has done all he could to block the public’s view of the bungalow through fences, the planting of trees and dense shrubs, a garage and a marauding dog on the property ready to bark at inquisitive and unwelcome visitors. There are no plaques in front of the cottage proclaiming its connection to the great English novelist and poet. The only indication signalling that “Lawrence was here” is 35 metres away in a tiny reserve overlooking Lawrence’s “green glass” Pacific. In late 1998 the Council named the reserve in honour of DHL and installed a commemorative plaque.
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Footnote: the current inaccessibility of the bungalow to DH Lawrence enthusiasts and the ordinarily curious over the last few decades was not ever thus! After the Lawrences’ departure for America, the owners at the time, grasping the significance of their recent famous tenants, kept the house as a sort of shrine for the 20th century literary icon. They maintained the furniture that Frieda and Bert used during their stay, including the table on which Kangaroo was penned! They even kept a visitors’ book for the many literary “pilgrims” who undertook the trek to Craig Street [‘Wyewurk’, (built circa 1911) NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au].
⍙ Wyewurk with cute, friendly “dangerous dog” sign
Postscript: Lawrence’s visit and the publication of Kangaroo have exerted a profound influence on a number of Australian artists and other creative practitioners in the arts field. These include composer Peter Sculthorpe, Nobel laureate Patrick White, artists Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Garry Shead. Sydney artists Whiteley and Shead set up their easels in the backyard of the adjoining cottage to Wyewurk (with the similarly quaint name of ‘Wyewurrie’) in about 1973 and painted several Lawrence-themed pieces❈ including a diptych of the bungalow where Lawrence penned Kangaroo [Sandra Jobson Darroch, ‘Claws in the Arse’, www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au].
꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙ ❂ the ‘Wyewurk’ theme is extended to the house the Lawrences/Somers fleetingly stay at in Murdoch St Cremorne – which in the novel DHL called ‘Torestin’ (“to rest in”)
⊞ DHL penned a short story here while being simultaneously inspired and frightened by the WA bush
❈ the Shead paintings of DHL’s sojourn are memorably jocular ones, especially riotous is the one (see reproduction above) which depicts Lawrence frantically trying to ward off a frenzied attack from a large red non-metaphorical kangaroo on the back verandah of ‘Wyewurk’, while an unperturbed Frieda serenely admires the view
Walter Burley Griffin’s untimely death in India in 1937 provoked only passing comment, even in Australia where he and Marion had lived a high-profile existence, practicing their particular craft for over 20 years. Mahony returned to Chicago from Australia around the end of 1938, and set about the valiant but ultimately fruitless task of trying to consolidate Walter’s reputation. The vehicle for the restoration of WBG’s name (principal among which was defending Griffin against the poisonous invective of one Frank Lloyd Wright) was Marion’s epic memoir (The Magic of America), a massive work of over 1,400 pages and 650 illustrations [www.artic.edu]. Marion was dissuaded by a family friend from her intention to try to have The Magic of America published. Regrettably, the ‘friend’ advised her than there was insufficient interest in Burley Griffin within American architectural circles at that time (the 1940s).
Burley Griffin’s main period of productivity in America amounted to a narrow corridor of time, from about 1905 when he went into practice on his own to 1914 when he and Marion left to take charge of the Capital City project in Australia, entrusting their US work to new partner Barry Byrne. Griffin spent the entire second half of his life living and creating structures and communities outside of America, denying himself the opportunity of recognition and esteem that he would otherwise have likely received from his countrymen and women had he stayed.
Consequently a note of ambivalence about the extent of the Chicagoan’s architectural significance persists in America. As recently as 2002 and 2003 two of the early Illinois houses designed by Griffin were demolished without any real public clamour (it is difficult to imagine this happening to one of Wright’s houses in this day without a resounding hue and cry) [‘Silence deafening as home by noted architect razed: Elmhurst teardown fails to stir outcry’ (N Ryan) Chicago Tribune, 19 May 2002)].
Notwithstanding this, Walter’s lavish abilities as a planner, designer and landscaper are more widely recognised today. He is acknowledged as an outstanding innovator in domestic architecture, and is credited with having invented the carport, developed the L-shaped floor plan and the use of reinforced concrete. WBG was a pioneer of open plan living and dining areas. His work in the Prairie School was characterised by his attention to vertical space, contributing critically to the development of split-level space interiors (not in widespread use until after WWII) [M Maldre & P Kruty, Walter Burley Griffin in America]. As I enlarged on in an earlier blog, Griffin also invented the Knitlock construction method in Australia in 1917 which had the practical advantage of enabling houses to be built quickly and cheaply [M. Walker, A. Kabos & J. Weirick, Building for Nature: Walter Burley Griffin and Castlecrag].
Marion L Mahony, as a pioneering woman in the field of architecture, encountered all of the prejudices and assumptions that was commonplace about female professionals in the day. The first staffsperson to be released from her cousin Dwight Perkins’ architectural office when there was a downturn in business. Despite Frank Lloyd Wright’s (perhaps) begrudging praise of the sublime quality of her architectural rendering, Marion was never treated as anything close to an equal by the great architect. After Mahony returned to her homeland at the end of 1938, her efforts to turn her talents to community planning and to re-enter architecture in the US met largely with discouraging indifference.
Marion’s silkscreen watercolour of Walter’s plan for Griffith, NSW
Since the 1990s there has a renewed focus on the work of pioneering women architects, especially in the US [eg, “The 10 Most Overlooked Women in Architecture History”, www.archdaily.com], and Marion has been a beneficiary of this, receiving overdue acknowledgement of her contribution to modernist art and architecture. American architecture expert David Van Zanten made the case that Mahony’s extraordinary delineating talent ranked her as “the third great progressive designer of turn-of-the-century Chicago after Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright” given that the Chicago School placed an extraordinary emphasis on drawings [D Van Zanten in D Wood (Ed), Marion Mahony Griffin: drawing the form of nature].
After her marriage to Griffin, Mahony was perfectly content to live in the shadow of her more illustrious partner, to be “a slave to my husband in his creative work” [quoted in J Wells, “The collaboration of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin”, www.griffinsociety.org/]. Notwithstanding Marion’s freely-chosen subordinate role, she and Walter worked smoothly and cohesively as a team. The respective strengths each brought to architecture and planning were different, but on specific projects these abilities were pooled together to produce a harmonious and advantageous fusion. WBG’s imagination allowed him to conceptualise complex ideas and solutions for building problems and plan intricate landscaped communities, but his talents as a draughtsman, a delineator of great schemes, were at best modest. MMG with her superb draughting technique filled this void perfectly. Former Castlecrag resident, Wendy Spathopoulus, recounted the pair’s peculiar style of co-working, “silent communication … a kind of fusion … expressing the same ideas, the same philosophical ideas, but coming at them from a different angle” [interviewed in ‘City of Dreams: Designing Canberra’ (2000 documentary).
Wright’s residential magnum opus: Fallingwater, Penn.
The Griffins were part of the Prairie School style of architecture, the best-known practitioner of which was the prolific and highly-revered F L Wright. An interesting point of comparison between Wright and Griffin is that the greatest architectural achievements of Wright’s career, the Fallingwater house in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (chosen by the American Institute of Architects in a national survey in 1991 as “the best all-time work of American architecture”) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, occurred long after FLW had turned 60, the age at which Griffin died. It remains a speculative consideration but a reasonable question to ponder, what more might WBG have accomplished had he lived on into old age as FLW did? (Wright worked productively in architecture till the age of 91!)[‘The Griffins – Canberra’ (PBS broadcast), www.pbs.org; www.griffinsociety.org].
A balanced evaluation of the achievements of the Griffins in Australia as architects and planners reveals a mixed legacy. The plan for a capital city in Canberra was stunningly original in its vision of an unseen land, and the pictorial and diagrammatical representation of the city by Marion was an artistic accomplishment in itself of the highest order. As we know the implementation of Griffin’s plan for Canberra remained unrealised. This can be attributed to a combination of factors, bad luck and timing, political opportunism by both sides of parliament using WBG as a pawn, outright sabotage by vested interests (sectors of the public service, envious Australian architects), and idealism and naivety on Walter’s part. As a result, the shape of Griffin’s original plan was heavily distorted by successive politicians and bureaucrats, key components of the plan were excised altogether in the name of expediency. Perhaps worse of all, not one of the designed buildings for Canberra on WBG’s drawing board were ever constructed!
Castlecrag: Griffin Country
If we turn to Castlecrag, the Burley Griffin imprint on the ‘would be’ suburban bush utopia again met with mixed results. The Griffins did manage to engender a sense of community and cultural affinity in Castlecrag from adherents who like Walter and Marion came to cherish the virtues of living in a natural environment. This was realised by WBG’s careful planning of houses within a thriving organic landscape. Having established the aesthetic miliéu conducive to artistic activity, Mahoney provided a great deal of the community leadership (and the infrastructure) that led to the flourishing of creative energies. To top this off, Marion and Walter, far from being remote leaders of the community perched high above everyone else in an ivory tower, were committed participants in the everyday life of the early community. They joined and were actively involved in the Castlecrag Progress Association from its inception in 1925.
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
There were other issues with the form and character of the Griffin house which suggest that the American architect did not fully appreciate the local, Australian conditions. The absence of practical features like verandahs, eaves on roofs and hoods on doorways, did not address the exigencies of a harsh environment and climate. Similarly, some critics pointed out that Griffin did not apply himself sufficiently to the specific problems arising in Castlecrag such as drainage on horizontal roofs and the challenges of building on a rocky terrain [Walker, Kabos & Weirick, op.cit.].
Marion’s drawing of Walter’s design for an Indian-inspired “Sydney Opera House”
The final chapter of the Griffins’ life together, in Lucknow, India, saw the reuniting of the old creative team – with Walter as innovator and Marion as delineator. Their work in collaboration, produced a prolific harvest anew, a churning out of plans and designs for a host of new buildings which married the ancient architectural forms of India with the Griffins’ take on modernism. In less than 18 months the couple designed some 95 projects for India ranging from university buildings to exhibition pavilions to palaces to bungalows, even finding time to create a design for an ‘Opera House for Sydney’ featuring an Indian-influenced central domed roof [A Kabos, ‘Walter Burley Griffin’, www.griffinsociety.org].
Through the efforts of interested groups like the Walter Burley Griffin Society (NSW), the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America (St Louis, Mo.) and local historical and architectural groups in the Castlecrag/Willoughby (Sydney) area, the legacy of the Griffins’ have been preserved. These organisations, through their publications and websites, have promoted the couple’s accomplishments to newer generations.
The Griffin footprint in Castlecrag & Australia
The Griffins’ story, spanning three continents, has all the elements – drama, tragedy, political intrigues, obsessions, spurned love❈, the clash of great personalities – that would make it eminently filmable. At centre, two temperamentally different but like-spirited idealists, highly gifted if flawed artists striving against convention to articulate their distinctive beliefs and feelings of nature and democracy through the practice of their architectural and artistic pursuits. In Australia they were ground-breakers in a number of areas, as trailblazing environmentalists, as passionate landscapers, as creators of affordable, ready-to-assemble homes for the average person. Had the Griffins returned to the US as originally intended, after the expiration of WBG’s contract with the Australian Government in 1917, they would undoubtedly have left a much weightier artistic and cultural footprint on the built environment in America.
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❈ there is a suggestion that Walter may have married Marion on the rebound. Griffin originally proposed to Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, Maginel, but was rejected … this rebuff can hardly have lessened the growing animosity between the two rivals (WBG and FLW)
The type of dwelling Burley Griffin envisaged as the model house for the new bush suburb of Castlecrag was based on a new technological innovation in building called Knitlock Construction, or as Griffin more grandly termed it, Segmental Architecture. The American had pioneered and co-patented (with D C Jenkins) the Knitlock system in 1917 whilst working on the Canberra Capital Project. The Knitlock technique was to become the archetype for all of WBG’s subsequent domestic architecture.
Griffin’s Segmental Architecture was a quantum step forward from previous building technologies used in Australia (eg, Mack Slab) [M Lewis, ‘Knitlock’, www.mileslewis.net]. Intended by Walter for use on workmen’s cottages in Canberra (before the disintegration of his Capital City dream), the technique heralded a variety of radical advances in construction. With a simplicity and economy of design, the Segmental Architecture method constructed walls from ‘segments’ of precast reinforced concrete which were easier and quicker to construct than other methods (Griffin was one of the early developers of prefabrication). The Knitlock bricks, machine-manufactured on the southern side of the ‘Crag estate in a shed set up on the corner of The Redoubt and The Rampart, were light yet compact and sturdy. The bricks were reinforced with a dual ‘vertebrae’ structure which forms a concrete skeleton. The sections were easy to transport, easy to assemble as walls and cheap to make [W B Griffin, Australian Home Builder, No 1 (August 1922)].
Added to this, another major advantage of Knitlock was the convenience. The bricks did not require cutting, bedding or plastering, working instead on an interlocking join to connect them together (the prefab concept). A further advance was that Knitlock technology allowed for greater diversity in shapes for features of the house [‘Landmarks: Urban Life’ (National Museum of Australia) www.nma.gov.au/.].The beauty of Burley Griffin’s domestic construction using this system was that it could produce buildings that were simply designed and quickly constructed – non-standard workers’ cottages which were affordably priced. Affordability was an important requirement for the Griffins, the capacity of workers to afford their own home squared with their own espoused egalitarian and democratic principles.
The prototype for all of the Knitlock houses built in the Castlecrag and Haven Estates by WBG was ‘Pholiota’, the Griffin’s own small, ultra-modest home set among red gums and bush in Heidelberg, Victoria, before they moved to Castlecrag. This most basic, pared to the bone, single-roomed, utilitarian house, provided an example that any layman self-builder could follow. As proof of this, ‘Pholiota’ was erected in double-quick time apparently by Walter and Marion themselves with the assistance of a local chicken farmer! [P Y Navaretti, ‘Melbourne’, www.griffinsociety.com; Jenny Brown, “Humble ‘humpy’ masters miniature”, (19 May 2012), www.news.domain.com.au/].
Fishwick
Burley Griffin’s finest architectural achievement in Castlecrag is probably Fishwick House (№ 15 The Citadel). Because of his client’s requirements (large budget, expansive house), Walter deviated from his usual prescription of a small-scale “no frills”, minimalist, unembellished cottage. Fishwick House is a more grand house, emphasising horizontal eaves and porticos. At the sides and rear of the house judicious placement of large picture windows and glass doors permits cascades of filtered sunlight to enter the living room from varying angles [www.griffinsociety.org/]. This aspect of Fishwick House echoes the interior courtyard of Stanley Salter House in Toorak, Melbourne, which some architectural specialists rate as WBG’s best residential building [eg, James Birrell, cited in ‘Stanley Salter House’, De de ce, www.dedece.com]. Griffin’s use of open-plan interiors demonstrates the architect’s belief that the house shouldn’t be a haven for withdrawal from the outside world, but rather “a place for reflection and engagement with the surrounding environment” [ibid.]. WGB defied the conventions of the day for home design, putting “living rooms at the rear and opening to the landscape and views, and had utility rooms such as kitchens and bathrooms fronting the street” [M Petrykowski, ‘Architecture’,www.griffinsociety.org/].
Duncan
The attitudes of pioneering residents of the Castlecrag Estate to the Griffin signature home were mixed. Some like Frank and Anice Duncan were delighted with the nature-centredness and functionality of Walter’s dwellings. The Duncans lived in no less than four of the houses over the years. The fourth one, the Duncan House at 8 The Barbette, specially commission by them, was the last Griffin-built home in Castlecrag.
However other residents were less sanguine about the houses – some with very good reason. The flat roofs on the early Knitlock constructed homes had a tendency to leak. Ellen Mower, first occupant of № 12 The Rampart (Mower House), was plagued by leaking roofs and eventually Griffin had to buy back the house from the owner [www.griffinsociety.org]. Mower House, incidentally, was the last home Marion lived in after her return from India after Walter’s death in 1937. Similarly, Mrs A E Creswick, who commissioned the small house built at 4 The Barbette (Creswick House), was similarly dissatisfied with the standard of her home and the Griffins had to re-purchase this dwelling as well [Castlecrag Progress Association, www.castlecrag.com.au/].
WBG fountain memorial
Dr Edward Rivett, who converted the King O’Malley House in Sortie Porte into Castlecrag’s first hospital, also commissioned the Griffin-designed 148 Edinburgh Road, however he altered the original plans to add a pitched tile roof and interior walls which were brick rendered. Griffin through GSDA, his company, sued Rivett for breach of Covenant and a lengthy legal battled ensued which was eventually won by Dr Rivett. Other potential buyers also had problems with the Covenants imposed by WBG and many turned away from Castlecrag, opting instead for the railway-serviced suburbs on the Upper North Shore which didn’t have restrictions on the size or type of house or on how or whether you landscape your property [‘Castlecrag’,www.sydneyforeveryone.com.au/].Because of the restrictions and other contentious issues surrounding the construction of GSDA dwellings in the estate, banks became less willing to approve loans on Griffin houses. The onset of the Depression strangled the economy which affected development everywhere in Sydney, but subdivisions that were less popular like Castlecrag suffered its effects hardest [ibid.]. Castlecrag had to await the postwar building boom to achieve significant inroads in development.
Another factor holding back Castlecrag’s development at this time was getting to and from the Middle Harbour promontory! In the 1920s the Middle Harbour promontory was severely hamstrung relative to transportation options. Before the Sydney Harbour Bridge was constructed it was a very long haul by road to Castlecrag (cars in the 1920s were in any case still fairly scarce), and the eastern part of the Northern suburbs lacked a main arterial road (Eastern Valley Way was a post-war development). In addition, trams on the north side of the harbour did not go as far as Castlecrag in the interwar period [G Wotherspoon, ‘Ferries’ (2008), www.dictionaryofsydney.org/]. A story told by the son of Edward Haughton, Burley Griffin’s Melbourne estate agent and valuer, is instructive. The father and 10-year-old son came to Sydney to assist WBG in promoting the Castlecrag Estate. Haughton’s son later recalled how difficult it was and how long it took to reach Castlecrag (from the city: walk/ferry/elevator/tram/walk) [recollected for M Walker, et al, ‘forming the Greater Sydney Development Association’, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au/].
Burley Griffin’s attitude towards building materials was every bit as rigidly purist as his attitude was to how the finished product should look. He championed the use of concrete and stone (particularly local Castlecrag sandstone which blended in with the natural setting). Conversely, he railed against the popularity of the standard building materials of the day, brick and tile, which he rejected.
Marion was equally purist in her aesthetic preferences. Bernard Hesling, a Castlecrag resident in the Thirties recalled Mahoney “scrambling the hills like a billy goat” and pointing southwards to the predominance of red roofs and lack of trees in Northbridge, exclaiming loudly in her thick Midwest American accent “It’s hoorabul, hoorabul! Walter and I wanna keep the Crag voigin bush!” [‘Willoughby Walking Tours’ (Willoughby City Council), www.walks.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/].
The proportion of Burley Griffin designs converted into houses by GSDA over a 14 year period was quite low. Only 15 built in the Castlecrag and Haven Estates (none built north of Edinburgh Road, the area known as the Wireless or Sunnyside Estate) with about four or five other houses designed by one of WBG’s acolytes but approved by him. In what is somewhat of a trademark feature of Griffin’s oeuvre, many houses proceeded no further than the drawing board. WBG designed in the vicinity of 35 or so others for the ‘Crag that were not carried through to completion [‘The Idealists: creating Castlecrag’, ABC RN, Hindsight, 8 July 2012]. There was a host of reasons for this as outlined above, but sometimes sheer bad luck played its part in Griffin’s fortunes. Global developments had a tendency to intervene to stymie his noble intentions. Just as his vision for a physical landscape in Canberra worthy of the capital city of “a nation of ‘bold democrats” ran smack into the war effort of WWI which redirected valuable Australian resources away from WBG’s project, the development of Griffin’s estate in Castlecrag had its momentum undercut by the crippling effects of the Great Depression [‘Creating a new nation’s capital: The Griffins’ vision for Canberra’, (National Archives) www.naa.gov.au/].
When Walter’s private and GSDA commissions started to dry up, he increasingly took on industrial building design work. By the mid-1930s, frustrated by the lack of work in Castlecrag, Burley Griffin took up an invitation to design buildings for the University of Lucknow. The move to India, only intended to be a temporary one, served to re-energise Griffin’s architectural ambitions, allowing him to explore the fusion of ancient Eastern architecture with Western modernism. WBG engrossed himself in many new Indian projects but unfortunately, in a familiar story, the local colonial bureaucracy obstructed the realisation of most of the projects [G Sherington, ‘India’, W B Griffin Society, www.griffinsociety.org/].
‘Camelot’
EM Nicholls: Keeper of the Griffin flame
After the Griffins left Australia, his protege-cum-associate Eric Milton Nicholls took over the running of GSDA in Sydney and became the “keeper of the flame” for Griffin’s architectural vision. Nicholls soon started to design houses in Castlecrag in his own right. The pick of Nicholls’ work are probably Camelot (formerly called Pangloss) at № 3 The Bastion, and the all-white Moriaty House at № 215 Edinburgh Road. Camelot, with castle features including a Martello tower, is distinctively Nicholls’, but its circular stone design shows the clear influence of WGB’s earlier design for the Symington Parapet project [‘Castlecrag’, (Willoughby Dist. Hist. Soc.), www.willoughbydhs.org.au/].
Nicholls was a prominent architect in the Willoughby area, designing many domestic and public buildings in Sydney and Melbourne. An Anthroposophist like the Griffins, he was involved in the establishment of Steiner Glenaeon Schools in Middle Cove and Pymble [‘Eric Nicholls’, (Willoughby City Council), www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au]. Burley Griffin’s influence lives on in Castlecrag and elsewhere … The Griffin (8 Rockley Street), designed by Alex Popov in 1990, won the Robin Boyd Award (Australia’s leading residential architecture prize) – the building was described by the judges as “a reverent tribute to Griffin” [WDHS, op.cit (‘Castlecrag’).].
8 The Barbette
FN: The WBG sales pitchThe sales brochure of the Greater Sydney company (the Griffin’s firm) reads: “Castlecrag architecture has struck a distinct bold note in Australia. In place of the high peaked tile roofs … the handsome landscape style, with the stone walls and flat roofs, has been introduced in harmony with the great amphi-theatre of stone and forest”.
Auckland village, above M&C Falls (ECP)
Even before “The Lord of the Rings” movie series some Hogsback locals did their best to capitalise on a handful of tenuous links with the celebrated Lord of the Rings author. The story goes, the ‘Rings’ books were inspired by the magical, enchanting physical form of Hogsback. The proponents of this theory point to the fact that Tolkien was born in South Africa (in Bloemfontein, Free State). The thesis loses traction when probed more closely. The famous author and avid philologist left South Africa at the tender age of three, never to return and having not ever visited Hogsback.
The Tolkien Middle Earth connection is often emphasised in print, such as in the following: “The romance of Hogsback, is recognised by reading The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) which seems to capture the special atmosphere of the unspoilt Hogsback forests and of a time when peace will rule the world” [Trevor Webster, The Story of Hogsback, www.hogsback.com].
Talking to the staffer in the Hogsback Visitors Information Centre, she was unequivocally dismissive of the Tolkien LOTR nexus. So the lingering myth clearly wasn’t emanating from the likes of her! She also warned me against buying the primitive wooden toy horses and zebras in the street from members of the local Xhosa community. The street sellers, looking cold and dismal in the freezing conditions, were only asking R2 an animal, but the Visitors Centre lady explained that they are not properly gazed and sealed, making them a prohibited item to export out of RSA. Apparently a local artisan/sculptor had offered to glaze the artworks for the community at minimal cost so that they could charge more for the figurines, but his offer had not been taken up.
So, how plausible is the link between “Middle Earth” of Lord of the Rings and the sleepy, little village of Hogsback? Clearly, as stated above, JRR Holkien had no direct association with Hogsback, having left South Africa at age three. Information on Tolkien’s life however, suggest the existence of an indirect link. One of Tolkien’s sons, whilst in the Royal Air Force during WWII, was stationed at Hogsback and did correspond regular with the author with his reflections on the locale. These correspondences from Tolkien Junior included sketches and descriptions of the Hogsback ambience [Ibid.].
The Hog’s back!
⍙ ‘Lawrence wrestling with the Kangaroo on the veranda of Wyewurk’ by Garry Shead
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
The sales brochure of the Greater Sydney company (the Griffin’s firm) reads: “Castlecrag architecture has struck a distinct bold note in Australia. In place of the high peaked tile roofs … the handsome landscape style, with the stone walls and flat roofs, has been introduced in harmony with the great amphi-theatre of stone and forest”.