History and Heritage- Who should Care? 

by Professor David Dolan

Curtin University

I have often been asked HOW I got interested in history and heritage, but when the editor of this journal asked me to write about WHY it was the first time. HOW is a personal story, easier to explain but ultimately of less importance. I grew up in Adelaide and as a typical teenage boy my chief interests were girls, football, photography and surfing, but also high on the list was personal mobility. I spent a lot of time exploring nearby suburbs and parks on my bike, and then later started to go further afield in a series of old cars (mainly Austins and Wolseleys). 

On the bike, I became aware that Colonel Light Gardens was unlike any other local neighbourhood, and soon became fascinated by the concept of the garden suburb. From the cars, I discovered many fascinating ruins including half-demolished mining buildings and abandoned farmhouses and rural chapels. I spent hours at these places, trying to imagine what they were like and how they functioned in their heyday, and taking photos on a box brownie before upgrading to an instamatic camera.

On my first visit to Melbourne, aged 14, I stayed with a widowed aunt who lived in Toorak. I would take a daily walk around the area, and discovered Wardell’s St John’s Toorak, and a some unusual flats and a house whose striking style was explained by their being designed by Walter Burley Griffin --- the story of whose international career instantly fascinated me.

Another aspect of HOW, was to do with the ecclesiastical connections of the maternal side of my ancestry. With four priests among my extended family, I spent a lot of time hanging around churches, of the neo-gothic variety, with Dodd pipe organs and windows depicting Holman Hunt’s Light of the World. One day my grand-father told me how, as a teenager on a visit to England, he was taken to Hunt’s studio and saw the large third (1904) version of this painting which later toured Australia before taking up permanent residence in St Paul’s cathedral, London. I was hooked for life on the Pre- Raphaelites, and eventually decided to study art and architectural history when I got to university.

The personal bridge from HOW to WHY was the discovery that it is personally liberating if your horizons and self-esteem are not dependant on competition for material goods and conspicuous consumption. Life and the world are just so much more interesting and enjoyable when you learn and know about past as well as present art, places and people. 

There are usually limits to one’s empathy, and sadly the history we were taught at school nearly deadened our arousal. Ancient cultures were intriguing, but as teenage students we felt no connection with European political history. It was hard to take seriously the stories of relatively historically recent people who wore silly hats and rarely washed undies, and believed in absurd religious dogmas or that a king who was really just a gang boss had two bodies and divine authority and was worth dying for.  And who could care about the nuanced spiritual concerns of someone called “the Landgravine of Thuringia” ?  You had to laugh.

This condescension diminished with life experience, though some of us would still nominate among our favourite books The March of Folly (1984) by Barbara Tuchman, despite the disdain of academic historians. But we consolidated a preference for Australian, British and imperial 19th and 20th century history, and in particular its surviving physical evidence available for direct experience and interrogation --- what we call heritage.

It freed the imagination to see that things and values had been different before, and therefore could be different again in the future. The present was not the only possibility. You didn’t have to accept the LBJ or George Bush version of geopolitics.

That’s the story of my generation and peer group; but why should anyone else care, especially today’s youth? If you are getting older and you still believe that history and heritage matter, it must be for the sake of others. We old conservationists won’t be here for long to enjoy the historic places we fight to save, and we won’t be here to endure the collapse of the natural environment circa 2040 if pollution isn’t curbed soon. But we do care for our children and grandchildren and all the people and animals yet unborn, and want them to have a decent future. 

Future generations can have an enriching and intellectually meaningful life and culture if we work now and continuously to encourage the ongoing study and promulgation of history and the preservation of heritage in all forms: built, indigenous, maritime, intangible, art and museum collections, etc., etc.. But we can’t expect the young to necessarily value it all while they are still young. A bit like organising to finance your children’s healthcare and education, it is the duty of each generation of those who have matured and learnt to ensure the survival of scholarship and art and heritage, so those who are younger can also learn from it as they mature – more than that, so that they CAN mature intellectually.

Federation of Australian Historical Societies Newsletter No 30/2009

 www.history.org.au