Held on Sunday 11 October 2009
Venue:  Linnwood, Byron Road, Guildford

Welcome & Apologies
John McKenna opened the meeting at 2.15pm and welcomed all in attendance, including our Guest Speaker, Margaret Elder.

In Attendance at today’s meeting, as per the Attendee Sheet:
Helen Olde, Dorothy Warwick, Coral Hamilton, Audrey Murphy, Michael Griggs, Angela Caire, Judith Moller, Dorothy Thomas, Lawrie Thomas, Sue Evans, Adela Donohoe, June de Zoete, Adriana de Haas, Phil Duffell, Margaret Elder, Raema Walker, Jan Thomas, Stan Thomas, Carole Davies, Julie Gorman.

Apologies:
Mayor of Holroyd - Clr John Perry, Russ & Beth Werner, Pam Richardson, Pat O’Brien, Gerry O’Brien, Christine McKenna, Flo McMaster, Irie Olde

Confirmation of Minutes of Public Meeting held on Sunday 9 August 2009
Michael Griggs moved that the Minutes of the meeting held on Sunday 9 August 2009 were a correct record of the meeting, and all present agreed.

Business Arising
There was no business arising from the minutes of the August meeting.

Correspondence
Helen Olde tabled the Correspondence folder and passed it around to members at the meeting, highlighting the special edition of “The Clanical”, newsletter of CLAN, in respect to the Federal Government apology to The Forgotten Generation - children who were raised in institutions.

President’s Report
Good afternoon and welcome to Linnwood on this supposedly Spring afternoon – it’s hard to believe it’s October with all this recent cold weather, so thank you for coming out today’s meeting.

As usual, we have some recent donations from members and community members to show you, so we will start with:

• Brenda Whalan has donated 2 Holroyd Council wine glasses (thought to be about 20 years old), a Royal visit 1954 doily in the shape of Australia, together with a traycloth commemorating the same visit, a box of T.K. Handcraft Collection cake forks, and a book commemorating the Queen’s visit to Australia and New Zealand.
• Barbara Mackenzie-Hunter has donated a large collection of haberdashery and clothing items – too numerous to mention individually, but some very interesting items amongst it all.
• From our friend Kevin Woodward we have received some interesting items of ephemera, plus a couple of metal rings used to tie horses to a post, and Kevin has also generously donated his grandfather George Woodward’s Income book – with the first entry dated 1899 and going through to about 1910. George Woodward had a dairy in Water Street, Wentworthville, which was operating well before the date of the book.
• Diane Jogia has donated some brochures and bits and pieces from the days of the old Prospect County Council.
• Helen Cooper has donated some more embroidered and crocheted doilies for our collection.

Once again our thanks to those who have donated items to our growing collection. We haven’t been able to do too much cataloguing over the past months, so we are looking at possibly making a concerted effort in January – the quiet month – to clear the backlog. If any members would like to help with the cataloguing, please let Christine or myself know – it’s not hard, and can be very interesting! We are also looking at possibly buying some shelving to store our collection – we are finding that having the items in boxes is not working as well as we had hoped, so we need to look at another way of storing the items to make them easier to find!

It’s been a busy couple of months since our last meeting – I’ll pass around the photo album with pictures from the September Open House, the Wentworth Quilters 2-day Exhibition, and also some photos of how we set up displays for when a tour comes through. We actually had a tour through last Tuesday and have left the rooms set up so that you can have a look after the meeting if you would like.

The Open House in September had a History theme which was quite successful and I believe the Quilters had over 400 people visit their exhibition, which again shows what a great venue Linnwood is for these types of exhibitions. The Sunday was not without some dramas – it was one of the days of the very high winds and unfortunately, the wind caught the fibreglass sheeting over one of the skylights in the hall which then started to lift and was bent back – leaving one very large hole! Luckily, Sam the contractor working on Faulds House was on site, and at some considerable risk to himself, climbed onto the roof and nailed the sheeting back down. We have reported the incident to the Department, but to-date have not heard if any more repairs have happened or are planned.

Pioneers are yet to move into Faulds House – there were some major plumbing problems with the building that put things behind schedule, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer before they move in.

Unfortunately there have been some other plumbing problems on site with part of the sewer line on the Tamplin Road side collapsing and causing all sorts of problems for new neighbours who had just moved in. In the course of repairing the line, it was found that the existing sewer line is not in a good position for the planned redevelopment of the rear of the property and it will now be relocated over the next couple of weeks.

The good plumbing news is that we now have a small hot water service installed in the kitchen – we now have hot water connected to the other 2 sinks – talk about progress! Many thanks to the Department for allowing this to happen. I’m sure all those volunteers who wash up at any of the functions held here will be very grateful!

We have once again applied for a Federal Government Volunteers Grant – we were unsuccessful last year, so maybe this year we will be lucky. We applied for funding to buy some decent ladders (needed for changing light globes which seem to blow with monotonous regularity), a bookcase, a new barbeque and gas bottle, and a combination tool kit to have here in the house permanently.

We also received a phone call from Mr Tripodi’s office encouraging us to apply for a NSW Community Building Partnership Grant for capital works. Unfortunately the grant had already closed but they were accepting late submissions up to close of business on the day that his office called. We were encouraged to apply without supporting documentation and were able to send it in – with 13 minutes to spare! Since then, we have had to provide quotes and supporting documents and now wait to see what happens. We applied for funding to do some repairs to the front veranda tiles, cleaning and painting of the underside of the verandah roofs, cleaning of the marble steps, repairs to the ceiling and painting of the front room, replacement of floor covering in that room, painting of the dining and billiard rooms, and replacement of floor covering in the old kitchen. It all came to a substantial amount of money and was an interesting exercise, if nothing else! We had each item quoted individually, thinking that if our application is not successful, then there may be some items we can afford to pay for ourselves – but will keep our fingers crossed! When filling in the application form, I had to refer to the Heritage Office’s website about Linnwood and came across some information I had not seen before - “Linnwood and the associated buildings on the site are significant for their association with the large number of state wards and truants that resided, and were schooled there, between the years of 1917 and 1999, notably the gangster Chow Hayes.”

When I did some research, I found that John Frederick “Chow” Hayes’ most daring crime was the 1951 shooting of boxer William “Bobby” John Lee at the Ziegfeld Club in King Street, Sydney. Lee died of his injuries but refused to identify Hayes, who was not convicted of the murder. Hayes must have been one of the boys here in Linnwood’s life as a Truant School. There has also been a book written about him – “Chow Hayes, Gunman” by David Hickie.

We have also been informed that the work to relocate the power supply to the property has been approved – but we are still waiting for it to happen, and that the car parking area on the north side of the house is supposedly going to be levelled out – again we are waiting to see it happen and we still wait for progress on the Memorandum of Understanding to give us tenure on the site.

Mr Tripodi held a neighbourhood ‘meet & greet’ meeting in the carpark of the Leagues Club recently and a couple of the committee members attended and spoke with him – he still seems to be supporting the idea of the Club using the Tamplin Road frontage for a carpark.  One has to wonder if any of the relevant Ministers actually have any idea of what is going on regarding this property.

We did receive a response to our queries regarding the future of McCredie Cottage, stating that “no decision has been made about the sale, leasing or otherwise of McCredie Cottage”. However, it does appear that a subdivision to excise McCredie from the rest of the site is very likely and we have made it very clear to the Department that we will not support this further subdivision. The Department notes our opposition and states that “continued feedback of the Friends is welcome”.

We are at a point now that the committee needs some feedback from you, the members, as to how far the Friends go in opposing this plan to further subdivide the property…………………………….

Our November Open House is coming up in the next few weeks – a display by the Carnival Glass Collectors Society (and they will also do assessments if you would like to being in your own pieces), plus a display of Vintage Ladies Underwear ‘From Bustles to Bloomers’. We are also hoping to have the Toongabbie Music Club back to entertain us, and will add them to the flyer as soon as we know for sure.

We would like to acknowledge Dorothy Thomas, a Friend and member of the Holroyd Arts & Craft Society, for her contributions to our Open House Days over the past years. Dorothy’s jams and spreads have become famous amongst our visitors, and the Lucky Door prizes she has provided have been absolutely wonderful. Dorothy has informed us that she will no longer be able to provide these treats and we would just like to thank her for everything she has done over the past years. Thank you, Dorothy.

Planning is already underway for 2010 and we are hoping to be able to continue with our very successful Open Days. We also have to start thinking about 2011 – Linnwood will be 120 years old – so definitely deserves a big birthday party!

But for now, please enjoy the rest of the afternoon, and stay and have a cuppa and a chat after the talk by our guest speaker, Margaret Elder.

Thank you.

Treasurer’s Report
John McKenna then presented the Treasurer’s Report. 

                                                                       August 2009     September 2009
Income                                                               $273.90                $2,405.30
Expenditure                                                        $ 67.20                $   834.38

Opening balance at 1 August 2009, including Interest Bearing deposit and cash - $23,647.28
Closing balance at 30 September 2009 - $25,704.32
Current liabilities - $251.53

We’re moving ahead again slowly, following the major expenditure at the end of the financial year to repair the floor of the back room.  A very successful September Open Day, with 250 people through the door.

On behalf of the Committee, John thanked Dorothy Warwick for the major effort she put in, pulling together the quotes and other information required for our application for the State Government’s capital works grant.

John also reminded members of the Members’ Christmas Luncheon on Sunday 13 December.  Costs remain the same as last year - $10 for members; $12 for non-members.

General Business
There was no general business raised.

Guest Speaker
John then introduced Margaret Elder, who members may remember from last year when she who told us about Florence Taylor, Australia’s first female architect and engineer.

Maybanke Wolstonholme Anderson was born Maybanke Susannah Selfe.  She was a feminist, suffragist and federationist, and were it not for people like Maybanke, women would not have been given the right to vote.  Whereas she was a feminist (though not a radical one), she was also a person who saw things in life and worked to try and improve them.

She was born in Surrey, England in 1845, and had two older brothers - one of whom, Norman, was an engineer (the suburb of Normanhurst was named after him).  Hers was a very middle class family, and Maybanke was aged 9 when her family decided to move to Australia for social reasons.  At that time, England in the mid 1850’s was experiencing chaotic changes due to industrialisation, and social inequity due to over-population.  However, the family soon found that conditions in Sydney were just as bad as those they had left behind in England - and her father contracted tuberculosis.

Maybanke (which was the surname of her great-great grandfather), was a very bright girl who was interested in the work of Caroline Chisholm who founded the Family Colonisation Loan Society, through which the Selfe family was able to emigrate to Australia.  They settled in The Rocks, which in those days was a particularly bad area, full of vice, depravity and extreme poverty.  It was the plight of women and children in The Rocks that first stimulated Maybanke to see what she could do to bring about change.  At first she was schooled at home, but later attended one of the area’s church schools.  As one of the brighter students, she was selected to be a teacher.  Although she was poorly paid she put a lot of work into her profession - it was a respectable position.  It was her mother who told her to develop a career in teaching but learn to be independent.

Her father was a dreamer, and unfortunately drowned in the Nepean River flood in 1867.  In the same year Maybanke married Edmund Wolstonholme, a timber merchant from Maitland.  They went to live in West Maitland.  He turned out to be an alcoholic and waster, and was the black sheep in his family - and was eventually disinherited.

They moved back to Sydney and lived in Balmain with other members of Maybanke’s family.  They had children - there seems to be some connection with tuberculosis - as only two survived to adulthood.  In order to deal with her grief, Maybanke wrote some beautiful poetry about her children and losing them.  Seeing all the poverty in Sydney’s streets prompted her to write about sex education.  She also had a strong focus on inner-city programmes for children living in poverty.

Australia was ahead of UK in those days in passing laws regarding property ownership for women, and Maybanke immediately had the house changed into her name, turned it into a boarding house, and then started a school for young ladies, in order to support her family and her mother.  In 1892, when the Divorce Amendment and Extension Act was passed, she petitioned for a divorce from Edmund. 

Louisa Lawson (Henry’s mother) became editor of the first feminist paper in NSW and wrote about the plight of women - particularly “marry in haste and repent at leisure”.  Maybanke started her own newspaper “The Woman’s Voice” and wrote honestly and frankly of marriage, sex, divorce and property.  Some men tried to stop the paper, but she survived all that and carved a career for herself in public life.  She was a very soft woman and believed the best way of getting around men was to appeal to them and make them feel important.

The media, “The Herald” and other newspapers, supported the marriage and divorce reforms but these were always opposed by the church - “physical union without spiritual union was immoral”.  Maybanke wrote prolifically on the subject of law reforms for women, sex education, infanticide, illegitimacy, education and poverty, but was always very feminine in her dress and demeanour, never confrontational to men, using persuasion, logic and reason.  The success of her school and publications gave her confidence as a public speaker.  She was able to get like-minded women together for her cause - she saw a pressing need for kindergartens for destitute and impoverished children.  She emerged as a leader in education, and as a suffragist saw the importance of women gaining the vote. 

After one of her son’s died from drowning, she started to have doubts about some of her views.  Theosophy was starting in Australia at this time - this was a concept about religion being a form of spiritual Christianity.

In 1896 she located cheap premises to establish the first free kindergarten for street children - there was no sanitation, it was cold and draughty, but it was all she could afford.  That set the groundwork for other free kindergartens to be established - caring for children while their mothers worked.  Landlords tended to lock the doors so the children had to stay out in the streets till their mothers came home.

In 1899, Maybanke married Francis Anderson, who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney.  He offered her financial and emotional security which she had never known.  He supported her in all her endeavours to establish kindergartens and child care in NSW. 

At the turn of the century the women’s movement was immersed in “Federationalism” after the vote was won, but her catch cry was always “What are you going to do to help little children?”.

When she was 81, Maybanke and Francis and a friend, Josie, were travelling in Europe when Maybanke became ill, and after some time in a Paris clinic she died in April 1927. 

Next Meeting
The next Public Meeting of The Friends of Linnwood will be on Sunday 14 February 2010 at 2.00pm.  Guest speaker will be advised once known.
 
Raffle
The raffle was drawn by Margaret Elder, and won by Michael Griggs.

Meeting Closed
The meeting closed at 3.45pm.