Childhood
Childhood memories become more important the further away you grow from them, and they become particularly poignant after you lose your parents. They may not be art photographs, but childhood photographs have depth of memories that can only be conjured by the subjects. The quality and poses of Box Brownie snaps evokes an era, just like an FJ Holden. Summer at Bridport and wading in a canvas pool...the see-saw, swings and chicken coop that dad made....hay bales and baby lambs, birthday parties and Sunday School, a toy clothes line and cousins......
Mt Rumney
I had a surprise visitor on Friday 28 March. David Thomas, a successful businessman, who now lives in Noosa, had travelled to Tasmania with a particular interest to revisit some people and places from his past. He lived in Hobart in his early 20s and was a friend of Graham Martin, the designer of our house. David had been to parties here and had spent time in it visiting Graham and his architect friends. That was around 50 years ago. David has had a life long interest in architecture and was interested to look at the house again. It was built in 1958 when Graham was a student architect.
Graham Martin was a peer of local architect Ray Heffernan. Ray graduated from the Hobart Technical College with a Diploma of Architecture in 1959. Sadly for personal reasons Graham dropped out three months before he graduated. Both men found inspiration in the functional aesthetic of the 20th century modernists like Richard Neutra and Gordon Drake, who were working in California at that time and whose work focused on the fundamentals of light and space. Gordon Drake died in a skiing accident in 1952 aged 34, but left a body of work that was the envy of many older architects. Graham Martin and Ray Heffernan worked in partnership in the early 1960s, which is when this photograph of the house was taken. The photograph is dated 1963.
Mt Rumney 1963
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