340 p. : plain dark green cover, title and author's name embossed in gold on spinefictioncharles morgan, fiction

Art Gallery with mural painted by Clifton Pugh (1924-1990) at his Artists' Colony, Dunmoochin, Barreenong Road, Cottles Bridge. Following military service in the second world war, Clifton Pugh studied under artist Sir William Dargie at the National Gallery School in Melbourne as well as Justus Jorgensen, founder of Montsalvat. For a while he lived on the dole but also worked packing eggs for the Belot family saving sufficient to purchase six acres (2.4 ha) of land at Barreenong Road, Cottles Bridge. He accumulated more land and persuaded several other artists and friends to buy land nearby, resulting in a property of approximately 200 acres, stablishing it as one of the first artistic communes in Australia alongside Montsalvat in Eltham. It was around 1951 that Pugh felt he had '"done moochin' around" and so the name of the property evolved. He bought timber from Alistair Knox to build his house on the crest of a hill. Inspired by local goldminer's huts, it was a one room wattle-and-daub structure with dirt floor. Over the years it expanded with thick adobe walls made from local clay, high ceilings and stone floors. All materials other than the local earth were sourced from second hand materials, most found at wreckers' yards. Artists from across the nation were drawn to Dunmoochin, with several setting up houses and shacks on the property, maintaining their independence but sharing their artistic zeal. Artists who worked or resided at Dunmoochin included Mirka Mora, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Fred Williams, Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and John Olsen. In 2002, Pugh's house along with its treasure trove of art and a library of some 20,000 books was destroyed by fire. Traces of Pugh's home remain with the presence of the Victorian doorframe archway with leadlight of intricate design, procured from a demolished Melbourne mansion; and two bronze life-sized female statues created by Pugh and cast by Matcham Skipper. In place of Pugh's house rose two double-storey mud-brick artists' studios topped with corrugated iron rooves curved like the wings of a bird with accommodation for seven. The original studios, gallery and other buildings survived the fire. Covered under Heritage Overlay, Nillumbik Planning Scheme. Published: Nillumbik Now and Then /​ Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p153 It’s not surprising that artist Clifton Pugh was drawn to Cottles Bridge to establish his artists’ colony Dunmoochin. Undisturbed by the clamour of modern life at Barreenong Road, Pugh was surrounded by the Australian bush he loved, and where his ashes were later scattered. The 200 acres (81ha) of bushland, broken by glimpses of rolling hills, has more than 50 species of orchids and Pugh shared his property with native animals including kangaroos, emus, phascogales, wombats, and diverse bird life. Pugh encouraged these creatures to join him in the bush by creating, with Monash University, a holding station where the animals were raised. Dunmoochin inspired Pugh for such paintings as in a book on orchids and the Death of a Wombat series.1 But his love for the bush was accompanied by the fear that Europeans were destroying it and much of his painting illustrated this fear and his plea for its conservation.2 However it was his house rather than the surrounding bush that was to be destroyed. Tragically in 2002 Pugh’s house, with its treasure of art and library of 20,000 art books, was destroyed by fire. Traces of the beauty of Pugh’s home still remain, however, in the magnificent Victorian doorframe archway with leadlight of intricate design procured from a demolished Melbourne mansion; and two bronze life-sized female statues created by Pugh and cast by Matcham Skipper. Now in place of Pugh’s house, are two double-storey mud-brick artists’ studios topped with corrugated roofs curved like birds’ wings, with accommodation for seven. The original studios, gallery and other buildings remain.3 Pugh grew up on his parents’ hobby farm at Briar Hill and attended the Briar Hill Primary School, then Eltham High School and later Ivanhoe Grammar. At 15 he became a copy boy for the Radio Times newspaper, then worked as a junior in a drafting office. Pugh was to have three wives and two sons. After serving in World War Two in New Guinea and Japan, Pugh studied under artist Sir William Dargie, at the National Gallery School in Melbourne.4 Another of his teachers was Justus Jörgensen, founder of Montsalvat the Eltham Artists’ Colony. Pugh lived on the dole for a while and paid for his first six acres (2.4ha) at Barreenong Road by working as an egg packer for the Belot family. Pugh accumulated more land and persuaded several other artists and friends to buy land nearby, resulting in the 200 acre property. They, too, purchased their land from the Belot family by working with their chickens. Around 1951 Pugh felt he had ‘Done moochin’ around’ and so the name of his property was born. Pugh bought some used timber from architect Alistair Knox to build his house on the crest of a hill. Inspired by local goldminers’ huts it was a one-room wattle-and-daub structure with a dirt floor. It was so small that the only room he could find for his telephone was on the fork of a tree nearby.5 Over the years the mud-brick house grew to 120 squares in the style now synonymous with Eltham. It had thick adobe walls (sun-dried bricks) made from local clay, high ceilings and stone floors with the entire structure made of second-hand materials – most found at wreckers’ yards. Pugh’s first major show in Melbourne in 1957, established him as a distinctive new painter, breaking away from the European tradition ‘yet not closely allied to any particular school of Australian painting’.6 Pugh became internationally known and was awarded the Order of Australia. He won the Archibald Prize for portraiture three times, although he preferred painting the bush and native animals. In 1990 not long before he died, Pugh was named the Australian War Memorial’s official artist at the 75th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Today one of Pugh’s legacies is the Dunmoochin Foundation, which gives seven individual artists or couples and environmental researchers the chance to work in beautiful and peaceful surroundings, usually for a year. By November 2007, more than 80 people had taken part, and the first disabled artist had been chosen to reside in a new studio with disabled access.1 In 1989, not long before Pugh died in 1990 of a heart attack at age 65, he established the Foundation with La Trobe University and the Victorian Conservation Trust now the Trust for Nature. Pugh’s gift to the Australian people – of around 14 hectares of bushland and buildings and about 550 art works – is run by a voluntary board of directors, headed by one of his sons, Shane Pugh. La Trobe University in Victoria stores and curates the art collection and organises its exhibition around Australia.2 The Foundation aims to protect and foster the natural environment and to provide residences, studios and community art facilities at a minimal cost for artists and environmental researchers. They reside at the non-profit organisation for a year at minimal cost. The buildings, some decorated with murals painted by Pugh and including a gallery, were constructed by Pugh, family and friends, with recycled as well as new materials and mud-bricks. The Foundation is inspired by the tradition begun by the Dunmoochin Artists’ Cooperative which formed in the late 1950s as one of the first artistic communes in Australia. Members bought the land collaboratively and built the seven dwellings so that none could overlook another. But, in the late 1960s, the land was split into private land holdings, which ended the cooperative. Dunmoochin attracted visits from the famous artists of the day including guitarists John Williams and Segovia; singer and comedian Rolf Harris; comedian Barry Humphries; and artists Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and Mirka Mora. A potters’ community, started by Peter and Helen Laycock with Alma Shanahan, held monthly exhibitions in the 1960s, attracting local, interstate and international visitors – with up to 500 attending at a time.3 Most artists sold their properties and moved away. But two of the original artists remained into the new millennium as did relative newcomer Heja Chong who built on Pugh’s property (now owned by the Dunmoochin Foundation). In 1984 Chong brought the 1000-year-old Japanese Bizan pottery method to Dunmoochin. She helped build (with potters from all over Australia) the distinctive Bizan-style kiln, which fires pottery from eight to 14 days in pine timber, to produce the Bizan unglazed and simple subdued style. The kiln, which is rare in Australia, is very large with adjoining interconnected ovens of different sizes, providing different temperatures and firing conditions. Frank Werther, who befriended Pugh as a fellow student at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, built his house off Barreenong Road in 1954. Werther is a painter of the abstract and colourist style and taught art for about 30 years. Like so many in the post-war years in Eltham Shire, as it was called then, Werther built his home in stages using mud-brick and second-hand materials. The L-shaped house is single-storey but two-storey in parts with a corrugated-iron pitched roof. The waterhole used by the Werthers for their water supply is thought to be a former goldmining shaft.4 Alma Shanahan at Barreenong Road was the first to join Pugh around 1953. They also met at the National Gallery Art School and Shanahan at first visited each weekend to work, mainly making mud-bricks. She shared Pugh’s love for the bush, but when their love affair ended, she designed and built her own house a few hundred yards (metres) away. The mud-brick and timber residence, made in stages with local materials, is rectangular, single-storey with a corrugated-iron roof. As a potter, Shanahan did not originally qualify as an official Cooperative member.This collection of almost 130 photos about places and people within the Shire of Nillumbik, an urban and rural municipality in Melbourne's north, contributes to an understanding of the history of the Shire. Published in 2008 immediately prior to the Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009, it documents sites that were impacted, and in some cases destroyed by the fires. It includes photographs taken especially for the publication, creating a unique time capsule representing the Shire in the early 21st century. It remains the most recent comprehenesive publication devoted to the Shire's history connecting local residents to the past. nillumbik now and then (marshall-king) collection, art gallery, clifton pugh, dunmoochin, cottlesbridge, cottles bridge, barreenong road

Following military service in the second world war, Clifton Pugh studied under artist Sir William Dargie at the National Gallery School in Melbourne as well as Justus Jorgensen, founder of Montsalvat. For a while he lived on the dole but also worked packing eggs for the Belot family saving sufficient to purchase six acres (2.4 ha) of land at Barreenong Road, Cottles Bridge. He accumulated more land and persuaded several other artists and friends to buy land nearby, resulting in a property of approximately 200 acres, stablishing it as one of the first artistic communes in Australia alongside Montsalvat in Eltham. It was around 1951 that Pugh felt he had '"done moochin' around" and so the name of the property evolved. He bought timber from Alistair Knox to build his house on the crest of a hill. Inspired by local goldminer's huts, it was a one room wattle-and-daub structure with dirt floor. Over the years it expanded with thick adobe walls made from local clay, high ceilings and stone floors. All materials other than the local earth were sourced from second hand materials, most found at wreckers' yards. Artists from across the nation were drawn to Dunmoochin, with several setting up houses and shacks on the property, maintaining their independence but sharing their artistic zeal. Artists who worked or resided at Dunmoochin included Mirka Mora, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Fred Williams, Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and John Olsen. In 2002, Pugh's house along with its treasure trove of art and a library of some 20,000 books was destroyed by fire. Traces of Pugh's home remain with the presence of the Victorian doorframe archway with leadlight of intricate design, procured from a demolished Melbourne mansion; and two bronze life-sized female statues created by Pugh and cast by Matcham Skipper. In place of Pugh's house rose two double-storey mud-brick artists' studios topped with corrugated iron rooves curved like the wings of a bird with accommodation for seven. The original studios, gallery and other buildings survived the fire. Covered under Heritage Overlay, Nillumbik Planning Scheme. Published: Nillumbik Now and Then /​ Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p155 It’s not surprising that artist Clifton Pugh was drawn to Cottles Bridge to establish his artists’ colony Dunmoochin. Undisturbed by the clamour of modern life at Barreenong Road, Pugh was surrounded by the Australian bush he loved, and where his ashes were later scattered. The 200 acres (81ha) of bushland, broken by glimpses of rolling hills, has more than 50 species of orchids and Pugh shared his property with native animals including kangaroos, emus, phascogales, wombats, and diverse bird life. Pugh encouraged these creatures to join him in the bush by creating, with Monash University, a holding station where the animals were raised. Dunmoochin inspired Pugh for such paintings as in a book on orchids and the Death of a Wombat series.1 But his love for the bush was accompanied by the fear that Europeans were destroying it and much of his painting illustrated this fear and his plea for its conservation.2 However it was his house rather than the surrounding bush that was to be destroyed. Tragically in 2002 Pugh’s house, with its treasure of art and library of 20,000 art books, was destroyed by fire. Traces of the beauty of Pugh’s home still remain, however, in the magnificent Victorian doorframe archway with leadlight of intricate design procured from a demolished Melbourne mansion; and two bronze life-sized female statues created by Pugh and cast by Matcham Skipper. Now in place of Pugh’s house, are two double-storey mud-brick artists’ studios topped with corrugated roofs curved like birds’ wings, with accommodation for seven. The original studios, gallery and other buildings remain.3 Pugh grew up on his parents’ hobby farm at Briar Hill and attended the Briar Hill Primary School, then Eltham High School and later Ivanhoe Grammar. At 15 he became a copy boy for the Radio Times newspaper, then worked as a junior in a drafting office. Pugh was to have three wives and two sons. After serving in World War Two in New Guinea and Japan, Pugh studied under artist Sir William Dargie, at the National Gallery School in Melbourne.4 Another of his teachers was Justus Jörgensen, founder of Montsalvat the Eltham Artists’ Colony. Pugh lived on the dole for a while and paid for his first six acres (2.4ha) at Barreenong Road by working as an egg packer for the Belot family. Pugh accumulated more land and persuaded several other artists and friends to buy land nearby, resulting in the 200 acre property. They, too, purchased their land from the Belot family by working with their chickens. Around 1951 Pugh felt he had ‘Done moochin’ around’ and so the name of his property was born. Pugh bought some used timber from architect Alistair Knox to build his house on the crest of a hill. Inspired by local goldminers’ huts it was a one-room wattle-and-daub structure with a dirt floor. It was so small that the only room he could find for his telephone was on the fork of a tree nearby.5 Over the years the mud-brick house grew to 120 squares in the style now synonymous with Eltham. It had thick adobe walls (sun-dried bricks) made from local clay, high ceilings and stone floors with the entire structure made of second-hand materials – most found at wreckers’ yards. Pugh’s first major show in Melbourne in 1957, established him as a distinctive new painter, breaking away from the European tradition ‘yet not closely allied to any particular school of Australian painting’.6 Pugh became internationally known and was awarded the Order of Australia. He won the Archibald Prize for portraiture three times, although he preferred painting the bush and native animals. In 1990 not long before he died, Pugh was named the Australian War Memorial’s official artist at the 75th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Today one of Pugh’s legacies is the Dunmoochin Foundation, which gives seven individual artists or couples and environmental researchers the chance to work in beautiful and peaceful surroundings, usually for a year. By November 2007, more than 80 people had taken part, and the first disabled artist had been chosen to reside in a new studio with disabled access.1 In 1989, not long before Pugh died in 1990 of a heart attack at age 65, he established the Foundation with La Trobe University and the Victorian Conservation Trust now the Trust for Nature. Pugh’s gift to the Australian people – of around 14 hectares of bushland and buildings and about 550 art works – is run by a voluntary board of directors, headed by one of his sons, Shane Pugh. La Trobe University in Victoria stores and curates the art collection and organises its exhibition around Australia.2 The Foundation aims to protect and foster the natural environment and to provide residences, studios and community art facilities at a minimal cost for artists and environmental researchers. They reside at the non-profit organisation for a year at minimal cost. The buildings, some decorated with murals painted by Pugh and including a gallery, were constructed by Pugh, family and friends, with recycled as well as new materials and mud-bricks. The Foundation is inspired by the tradition begun by the Dunmoochin Artists’ Cooperative which formed in the late 1950s as one of the first artistic communes in Australia. Members bought the land collaboratively and built the seven dwellings so that none could overlook another. But, in the late 1960s, the land was split into private land holdings, which ended the cooperative. Dunmoochin attracted visits from the famous artists of the day including guitarists John Williams and Segovia; singer and comedian Rolf Harris; comedian Barry Humphries; and artists Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and Mirka Mora. A potters’ community, started by Peter and Helen Laycock with Alma Shanahan, held monthly exhibitions in the 1960s, attracting local, interstate and international visitors – with up to 500 attending at a time.3 Most artists sold their properties and moved away. But two of the original artists remained into the new millennium as did relative newcomer Heja Chong who built on Pugh’s property (now owned by the Dunmoochin Foundation). In 1984 Chong brought the 1000-year-old Japanese Bizan pottery method to Dunmoochin. She helped build (with potters from all over Australia) the distinctive Bizan-style kiln, which fires pottery from eight to 14 days in pine timber, to produce the Bizan unglazed and simple subdued style. The kiln, which is rare in Australia, is very large with adjoining interconnected ovens of different sizes, providing different temperatures and firing conditions. Frank Werther, who befriended Pugh as a fellow student at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, built his house off Barreenong Road in 1954. Werther is a painter of the abstract and colourist style and taught art for about 30 years. Like so many in the post-war years in Eltham Shire, as it was called then, Werther built his home in stages using mud-brick and second-hand materials. The L-shaped house is single-storey but two-storey in parts with a corrugated-iron pitched roof. The waterhole used by the Werthers for their water supply is thought to be a former goldmining shaft.4 Alma Shanahan at Barreenong Road was the first to join Pugh around 1953. They also met at the National Gallery Art School and Shanahan at first visited each weekend to work, mainly making mud-bricks. She shared Pugh’s love for the bush, but when their love affair ended, she designed and built her own house a few hundred yards (metres) away. The mud-brick and timber residence, made in stages with local materials, is rectangular, single-storey with a corrugated-iron roof. As a potter, Shanahan did not originally qualify as an official Cooperative member.This collection of almost 130 photos about places and people within the Shire of Nillumbik, an urban and rural municipality in Melbourne's north, contributes to an understanding of the history of the Shire. Published in 2008 immediately prior to the Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009, it documents sites that were impacted, and in some cases destroyed by the fires. It includes photographs taken especially for the publication, creating a unique time capsule representing the Shire in the early 21st century. It remains the most recent comprehenesive publication devoted to the Shire's history connecting local residents to the past. nillumbik now and then (marshall-king) collection, art gallery, clifton pugh, dunmoochin, cottlesbridge, cottles bridge, barreenong road

Plum Cottage is covered by Heritage Overelay HO256 in the Nillumbuk Planning Scheme This two-lot land holding was created as a subdivision and sold to Charles Stuart McNeil by May 1955. Sometime in the period 1955-1960, the builder-designer, John Harcourt had created a pise house on the site, straddling the two subdivision lots. The designer, John M. Harcourt was a pioneer builder in pise-de-terre and mudbrick in the Eltham Shire, Eltham being synonymous with alternative lifestyles and building practises until the onset of suburbia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This hipped-roof house is set high above Main Road on a V-shape plan characteristic of the Arts & Crafts style, with rammed earth or pise walls, timber joinery and a cement tiled roof. The V shape plan was used by important English and Eltham Arts & Crafts designers. The use of natural materials such as stone and timber construction is an essential part of the Arts & Crafts style and Harcourt’s work. So too is the application of the style on both the exterior and interior of the house as a holistic concept. The house adjoins the Lim Joon adobe house built and designed by Alistair Knox in the same era (HO119), thus forming a distinctive pair, both using an uncommon plan form. This house was identified in the Shire of Shire of Eltham Heritage 1992 as contributory to the Eltham Gateway Conservation Area, then proposed as an urban conservation area (now Heritage Overlay Area). Land Ownership Emily Jane Smith of 12 Woodside Street Fitzroy owned Crown Allotments 1 & 2 Sections 14, 27 by August 1918, selling to William Henry Smith of 12 Woodside Street, Nth Fitzroy May 1921. (John) James Isherwood of Main Road, Eltham owned the property by 1928 (the year of his death) with the beneficiary of his estate and next owner of this site being his widow, Minnie Maria Isherwood of Cemetery Road, Eltham. His holding in Main Road included parts of what was described in rate records as allotments1 & 2 Section E6. In the late 1930s, early 1940s her son Alfred John Isherwood was also rated for the land around this site, with the rated nett annual value varying between £2 and £5. Alfred Isherwood also lived at Main Road, Eltham with his wife Ellen: her early death at the age of 24 was reported in the Argus of 1923. Part of the Isherwood land was divided off and sold to Charles Stuart McNeil by May1955. Sometime in the period 1955-1960, the builder-designer, John Harcourt had created a pise house on the site, straddling the two subdivision lots. The house is visible on an aerial photograph from 1960s. Reputedly the house was called Plum Cottage and erected for Harcourt’s mother-in-law. A garage was added in 1959. Charles McNeil died in1971 aged 87: he was the son of Don McNeil and Margaret Arkell. Available rate records from the construction era start in the of the 1970s (1972-3) and list Mr H.C. & M/S A.V. Charity at 616 Main Road Eltham of this property with a nett annual value of $740. More recent valuer's data describes the property as lots 1 & 2 LP25668, located in the Central Riding of Eltham Shire, owned by Ann Valerie Charity and later, in 1990, by the Chincarini family. Building Description This hipped roof 11 .5 square house is set high above Main Road on a characteristic-shape plan and has rammed earth or pise walls, timber joinery and a cement tiled roof. The V-shape plan was used by Important designers such as C.F.A. Voysey (UK) who interpreted medieval domestic architecture as part of the Arts & Crafts style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The pise walls are covered with a textured render while the cement roofing tiles are also seen in the Harcourt Hill examples. Reputedly the ceiling joists are of a deep section and span long lengths with no need for hanging beams in the roof space. The ceilings are low and panelled in main rooms with apparently Caneite soft board infill panels between the exposed ceiling beams. These are painted white but may have been stained at one time. The focus of the house is the large living area with its vast random stone fireplace. Significance Plum Cottage is significant to the locality of Eltham because: Historically: • Plum Cottage is closely associated with the important historical theme of earth construction evident in Eltham and elsewhere in the Shire since theear1y Arts & Crafts inspired creations at Penleigh Boyd's The Robins (1912, HO101) and those at Montsalvat (1934-, HO82) but more prominent from the Second War period when earth building in Eltham was promoted in national periodicals as an alternative building method that avoided the building materials shortages of that era; • The choice of the earth building technique also expresses the theme of refuge or alternative living, synonymous with Eltham in the early to mid 20th century; • as a good example of domestic architecture from John Harcourt who was the first major post Second War figure in an important phase of Eltham’s earth building development, using his characteristic Old English or Arts& Crafts style that relies in this case on the pise wall construction, pitched roof forms, exposed ceiling joists, half timbering, random stonework, and panelled internal wall finishes. Architecturally: • Plum Cottage's pise wall construction is uncommon among the early earth-walled structures in the Shire, that are mainly of adobe or mud brick, and as a building material is uncommon among the Shire’s suburban dwellings generally which are clad typically with either fired clay bricks or timber boarding. Aesthetically: • Plum Cottage is a good and well preserved example of a modern Old English or Arts & Crafts style earth-walled building in the Shire • For the proximity of the significant Lim Joon adobe house designed by Alistair Knox adjoining to the north, providing a distinctive earth wall house pair, with uncommon plan forms. Reference Heritage Assessment of Plum Cottage, 616 Main Road, Eltham; Graeme Butler & Associates 2010main road, eltham, property, houses, (john) james isherwood, alfred john isherwood, ann valerie charity, arts and crafts style, charles stuart mcneil, chincarini family, eltham gateway zone, emily jane smith, h.c. charity, heritage assessment, john harcourt, john m. harcourt, lim joon house, main road eltham, minnie maria isherwood, pise construction, plum cottage