SPOTLIGHT ON HORNSBY

PhD Candidate in Human Geography, educator at the Australian National Maritime Museum and all round museums enthusiast, Rebecca Bilous gives us the news on what's happening in Hornsby, a neighbouring council to Ryde, the home of Macquarie University. 

I came to "the bushland shire" (Hornsby) to raise a young family. After many years spent working in galleries and arts centres in the UK, Hornsby seemed a cultural wasteland. My initial response was to regularly traipse into the city with my young daughter to find relief in Sydney’s museums and galleries. Now as a parent of three children, I find this increasingly difficult and my focus has finally turned to the local area in which I live, an area that contrary to my initial impressions has much to offer. Margaret Preston, William Dobell, Terry English, Margaret Woodward and John Olsen are all well known artists who live or have lived in the Hornsby Shire. Hornsby’s well established arts community is welcoming and inclusive and there for those who choose to look for and engage with it.

The Bushland Shire.Image courtesy Flickr.

For many years this arts community has been dreaming of and talking about a purpose built arts facility within the Shire. A feasibility study (CC08/06) commissioned by Hornsby Shire Council, however, found that support for this project from the wider community was lacking. The concession to the arts community was the creation of the ‘Hornsby Cultural Plan’ (2008, available at http://www.hornsby.nsw.gov.au/ourcommunity/index.cfm?NavigationID=1310) and the establishment of the ‘Hornsby Shire Arts Reference Committee an eclectic group of community members with an interest in the arts. One of the aims of Hornsby Shire Council, the Cultural Plan and the Arts Reference Committee was to consider alternative options to the arts centre dream.

The 'new' Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre in Hornsby.

Photo courtesy Hornsby Shire Council website.

The most recent result is the development of ‘Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre’. Built in 1903, ‘Wallarobba’ (an Australian Indigenous word meaning ‘damp gully’) was the grand home of a succession of Hornsby families including Sir Alfred Parker, former Hornsby councillor and Sydney Lord Mayor. It was Sir Alfred Parker who changed the house’s name from ‘Wallarobba’ to ‘Willow Park’ and it is as ‘Willow Park’ that current Hornsby residents know it as the home to groups including ‘St John’s Ambulance Australia’ and as a popular Hornsby Council venue. My own children know and enjoy the complicated arrangement of verandas and back buildings, exploring them as they wait to attend their dance class in the hall immediately behind the building.

Hornsby Shire Council has begun work on ‘Willow Park’ to provide a community art studio, dry and wet production spaces, meeting rooms, offices, gallery space and an artists’ lounge. Later this year the Hornsby Art Society will take up residence, moving from their current premises on the Pacific Highway and a succession of exhibitions are already in the planning. Hornsby Shire Council has been and continues to work with the Hornsby Shire Arts Reference Committee to provide a space that will meet the needs of the existing and emerging arts community.

Another aim of this project however, and a priority identified in Hornsby Shire Council's Cultural Plan is "to encourage participation in cultural activities by those not currently involved with the arts" (2008). This will be a much more difficult objective to meet. A glance at responses to the Advocate’s (Hornsby’s free local paper) report on the project shows predominantly negative responses from readers. Rather than seeing ‘Wallarobba’ as an opportunity for the greater community to become more engaged with the arts, readers’ responses have focused on the issues and impact surrounding the rehousing of groups like ‘St John’s Ambulance Australia’. The arts community has some hard but not impossible work ahead to ensure that ‘Wallarobba’s’ potential as a vibrant arts and cultural centre, where every member of the Hornsby community feels welcome, is fulfilled.

Rebecca's article has been approved and edited by the Hornsby Council.

Hornsby town centre (complete with the 'controversial' fountain ...

Images courtesy wikipedia commons.

 

THE NSW SCHOOL HOUSE MUSEUM IN RYDE

Macquarie University is part of the greater community of Ryde and within that community is the excellent NSW School House Museum of Public Education. 

Paul Bentley from Museums Australia NSW recently organised for a group of museum types to tour this important museum and we also urge you to go along and explore the history of public education in NSW.

NSW Schoolhouse Museum of Public Education in North Ryde, NSW.

Photo courtesy NSW Schoolhouse Museum website.

The NSW Schoolhouse Museum of Public Education provides a glimpse of schooling from the past. Housed in restored early schoolrooms, the museum collects and preserves objects relating to the history of public education in NSW including furniture, objects, books, documents and photographs dating back to the 1870s.

Included are samples of pupil work and teaching equipment and resources. These items have been collected from closing public schools, Department of Education and Training donations, purchases, and personal donations.

A popular excursion venue for schools, visting students may participate in the hands-on education program run by qualified teachers and experienced staff.

The Schoolhouse Museum was the first building of North Ryde Public School. The original schoolroom was built in 1877 for 45 pupils with extra rooms built in 1883 and 1910. The museum is also open for group tours and the general public by appointment.

History of the Museum

The museum buildings are the first school buildings of North Ryde Public School, dating back to 1877.  The school started as a single schoolroom with separate teacher’s residence built on one acre of land donated by Richard Wicks in 1877.  The school, names City View Public School, opened on the 25^th January 1878 to 45 pupils taught by teacher Charles Crew.  Its name changed to North Ryde Public School in 1879.

By the early 1890s up to 76 students were crowded into the single schoolroom so a second room was added in 1893.  Two more rooms were added in 1910 as the school population reached 133.

A 1910 classroom in situ at North Ryde in 2010.

Photo courtesy NSW Schoolhouse Museum website.

Over the years the 1877 and 1893 rooms had various uses such as library, staffroom and headmaster’s office while the 1910 rooms were used as classrooms until 1985. The teacher’s residence was demolished in the 1960s.

In 1986 the rooms were converted to district offices for the Department of Education and when they were vacated, school and community members successfully lobbied to preserve the buildings and establish a museum. The building and rooms were restored by a group of volunteers during 1992 using the original plans.

James Crew was the first teacher at the original City View Public School.

Photo courtesy NSW Schoolhouse Museum website.