Download a PDF copy of this issue for free, or buy a print copy for $40, including postage. Print issues are subject to availability.
Become a member of the
You will automatically become a subscriber to the Australiana journal, and receive four issues every year, as well as exclusive access to events and benefits.
From Clive Lucas OBE: I very much enjoyed Robert Stevens’s article on Elizabeth Hudspeth, and would like to draw attention to her involvement with Australia’s first picturesque “Italian” villa at Rosedale near Campbell Town. Miss Hudspeth visited the house soon after its completion in the 1840s to the design of architect James Blackburn. The sketch she did is illustrated in Clifford Craig’s Old Tasmanian Prints published in 1964.
In 2012, the very substantial archive of the late Leslie Nicholl Walford AM (1927–2012) was acquired by the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection. Walford was one of the most influential interior designers in Australia, especially in society circles in Sydney. He was widely known through his weekly newspaper columns for the Sun-Herald, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Telegraph, running from 1967 to 1984.
The star item of furniture in the late Caressa Crouch and Carl Gonsalves collection was a cedar sideboard, of very early date, made about 1815–20. The sideboard, which they loved and had left virtually untouched, summed up all that was exceptional in Caressa and Carl’s collection, which focused on Tasmaniana.1 The sideboard has been known to collectors since the late 1980s, and featured in Fahy & Simpson’s Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary.2 A prominent Tasmanian collector bought the sideboard at the 2015 auction and returned it to Hobart. The new owner commissioned this article for Australiana, which traces its provenance back to Hobart and speculates about its original location and maker. We hope that readers may add to this research.
The artist Miguel Mackinlay/McKinlay has been variously described as Spanish, Scottish and Australian and all three descriptions are partially correct. Born in the province of Guadalajara in Spain to a Spanish mother and Scottish father, he arrived in Western Australia as a ten year old and undertook his major art training there. On moving to London to further his career, he mixed and exhibited with Australians in his early years. However, marrying a Londoner, he stayed and enjoyed considerable success as an artist and illustrator. Most of his family remained in Western Australia and we still like to think of him as West Australian.
Trevor Kennedy AM has always been larger than life than most people, both in his business career and now his eclectic Australiana collection. Born and educated in Western Australia, he became a prominent Australian journalist, businessman and company director, serving on many company boards. As a journalist Trevor Kennedy was editor of The Bulletin, founding editor of The National Times in the 1970s and from 1986–91 served as editor in chief and managing director of Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd. For his services to the media, he was appointed a Member in the Ordinary Division of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1983. In 2003 he resigned his positions as a director of seven public companies and dedicated his time to his collection. He has long been a member of the Australiana Society, and avidly reads our magazine Australiana.
For someone who worked in Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland, NSW and Western Australia between the late 1870s and his death, the prolific scene painter and artist John Campbell (1855–1924) deserves to be better known. Dianne Byrne reveals a number of impressive watercolours which are mostly portraits of the houses of prominent Queenslanders, painted during his brief residence in Brisbane c 1887–1890.
