William (Jock) Frater (1890-1974) was an an artist and stained-glass designer who had some associations with Eltham. Frater was born in 1890 in Linlithglow Scotland. In 1910 he arrived in Melbourne. With a passion for painting, he hadn’t been in Melbourne very long before he met Percy Leason and Richard McGann, who were both working as lithographers with Sands and McDougall who produced Melbourne Directories. Jock Frater asked them where, near Melbourne, he should go to paint, and they both replied ‘Eltham’. Frater and Percy Leason became firm friends; and with others they spent their weekends painting, at Eltham and other places. Many times, during those weekends Frater and Leason would camp the night near Bible and Pitt streets. Another favourite spot for their weekend sketching was along the Diamond Creek where Judge Book Memorial Village was later built. In 1916 Jock Frater married his wife Winifred Dow, a tailoress. They bought a house and small property on the corner of Arthur and Bible streets. They lived in Eltham for about a year, then moved to Alphington. Jock also became a stained-glass designer. The west window of Wesley Church, Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, he regarded as his most significant design. His contribution to art in Australia was, however, as a painter who introduced Post-Impressionist principles and challenged the notion that art was an imitation of nature. He visited Central Australia in 1950 and Port Douglas, North Queensland, in 1952. His later major exhibitions were at the Australian Galleries, Melbourne, in 1958, the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1963, and a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1966. Frater was a revered president of the Victorian Artists’ Society from 1963 until 1972, exhibiting annually with the society during the last decade of his career and filling three galleries at his final exhibition in July 1973. In 1974 Frater was appointed O.B.E. for his services to art. His work is represented in galleries and private collections throughout Australia as well as the Glasgow Art Gallery. He died at his home at Alphington on 28 November 1974 and was buried in Arthurs Creek cemetery. He was survived by four sons and a daughter. Reproduced Page 113 of "Pioneers and Painters: 100 years of the Shire of Eltham by Alan Marshall, 1971. This photo forms part of a collection of photographs gathered by the Shire of Eltham for their centenary project book,"Pioneers and Painters: 100 years of the Shire of Eltham" by Alan Marshall (1971). The collection of over 500 images is held in partnership between Eltham District Historical Society and Yarra Plenty Regional Library (Eltham Library) and is now formally known as the 'The Shire of Eltham Pioneers Photograph Collection.' It is significant in being the first community sourced collection representing the places and people of the Shire's first one hundred years.Digital image of colour print 12 x 9.5 cm. Also black and white printeltham local characters, sepp, shire of eltham pioneers photograph collection, "pioneers and painters", william frater, jock frater, artist, stained glass designer, immigrant, o.b.e.

This photo forms part of a collection of photographs gathered by the Shire of Eltham for their centenary project book,"Pioneers and Painters: 100 years of the Shire of Eltham" by Alan Marshall (1971). The collection of over 500 images is held in partnership between Eltham District Historical Society and Yarra Plenty Regional Library (Eltham Library) and is now formally known as the 'The Shire of Eltham Pioneers Photograph Collection.' It is significant in being the first community sourced collection representing the places and people of the Shire's first one hundred years.4 x 5 inch colour reversal film (2) Condition: May not be true to colour of original work. Scanned from a 4 x 5 inch colour transparency which was taken c.1970 (approx. 50 years old) and which has undergone significant colour degradation towards the red spectrum. Allowances made for colour cast correction in scan with best guess for white balance. In some cases, significant light flare is reflected off glossy surface of original work at camera lens causing quality issues. artist, pioneers and painters, sepp, shire of eltham pioneers photograph collection, william (jock) frater

William FRATER (1890-1974) Born 31 January 1890 at Ochiltree Castle, near Linlithgow, Scotland Arrived Melbourne, Australia in September 1910 In a lecture on modern art in 1925, Frater stated the basic position from which the rest of his oeuvre stems: 'Copying nature is not an art; … to copy effects of light tends to destroy form and colour'. Frater gave aggressive leadership to the small group of modernists in the 1920s. His example, teaching, lecturing and crusty style of polemic did much to disrupt the academic style as the arbiter of pictorial values and to pioneer a change of taste in the community.His approach in the 1930s was markedly indebted to Cézanne, especially in the portraits which predominated until his retirement from stained-glass designing in 1940. (L. J. Course, 'Frater, William (1890–1974)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/frater-william-6239/text10739, published first in hard copy 1981, accessed online 3 May 2016.) Jock Frater was on of the first modern painters who opposed the fashionable and academic schools of painting. During the 1930s he exhibited with the Contemporary Art Group along with Arnold Shore and George Bell. During a very conservative period in Australian Art John Frater advanced the cause of innovation and modernism. This item is part of the Federation University Art Collection. The Art Collection features over 2000 works and was listed as a 'Ballarat Treasure' in 2007.Framed seated nude study in oil on paper. Lower centre in pencil "W. Frater". In lighter pencil "painted 1932"art, artwork, frater, william frater, life drawing, nude, oil on paper, portrait, jock frater, william jock frater, available

Contents: • A Very Special Year by Jim Connor • A Very Different Year • Heritage Walk – Woodridge Wander – Saturday 6th March with Russell Yeoman • My School Excursion by Rose Dumaresq • Our Coronavirus Pandemic Year by Liz Pidgeon • Eltham Cemetery Shares Unique Christmas Stories by Rita Woolley • Mud Brick in the Nillumbik Shire by Frank Taylor • . . . from Dust to Dust by Neil Douglas • William (Jock) Frater • Eltham Cemetery Stories by Richard Pinn o John Wright Murray o Thomas Henry Orford • Contacts for the Eltham District Historical SocietyThe Shire of Eltham Historical Society was formed in October 1967. The first newsletter of the Society was issued May 1978 and has been published continuously ever since on a bi-monthly basis. With the cessation of the Shire of Eltham in late 1994, the Society's name was revised to Eltham District Historical Society and this name first appeared with issue No. 103, July 1995. The collection of the Society's newsletters provides a valuable resource on the history of the Society's activities, office bearers and committee members, guest speakers and subjects of historical interest pertinent to the former Shire of Eltham and the Eltham District.A4 newsletter distributed to members (Digital and A4 photocopy)newsletter, eltham district historical society, covid-19, coronavirus pandemic

Built by artist and cartoonist Percy Leason in 1927 in what was then New Street but renamed Lavender Park Road in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Covered under Heritage Overlay, Nillumbik Planning Scheme. Published: Nillumbik Now and Then /​ Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p121 Said to be a genius, cartoonist Percy Leason’s career was at its peak when in 1925 to 1926 he built his home at New Street (now Lavender Park Road) Eltham. The Herald newspaper owner, Sir Keith Murdoch, had hired Leason for his newly acquired Melbourne Punch magazine at a salary of £1750, making him ‘one of the highest paid cartoonists in the world’.1 With this salary and financial help from Murdoch, Leason was able to build his lovely home in Eltham. At the crest of a sweeping drive, the home now two-storey in white brick with a gabled grey slate roof and dormer windows is flanked by an extension built by another owner in the 1980s. Leason lived in the home with his wife, Isabel and children, until 1937, when he left for the United States of America, where he lived until his death in 1959. The four-bedroom house and garden would have been well-suited to bringing up his family and to entertaining their friends in style. Large airy rooms have high ceilings with moulded plaster, timber floors and several are brightened with bay windows. Leason made friends with many of the artists and personalities who gravitated to Eltham. Around 1931 Justus Jörgensen, founder of the Montsalvat Artists’ Colony, helped Leason build his large studio at the back of the house. Another friend was journalist Mervyn Skipper, father of jeweller and sculptor Matcham, and artists Helen and Sonia. Leason’s teacher, artist Max Meldrum, also visited and rented accommodation in Eltham, opposite Wingrove Park. Punch folded in 1925, but Leason continued as cartoonist for Table Talk. In 1926 Leason began the cartoons of a mythical Australian town Wiregrass, which were inspired by Kaniva, his home town. The art gallery in Main Road Eltham was named Wiregrass in Leason’s honour. Leason completed 1000 drawings from 1919 to 1937, which author Garrie Hutchinson claimed, were technically unsurpassed and had regional and universal interest. Leason’s acute observations of country life stemmed from his childhood in Kaniva in Victoria’s western Wimmera, where he was born, the son of a selector, in 1889. Meldrum claimed that Leason could name every plant and the habits of every animal.2 Leason also painted 28 portraits of the last full-blooded aboriginals in Victoria at Lake Tyers in Gippsland, most of which are in a private collection. In Sydney Leason illustrated Henry Lawson’s Selected Poems and worked for The Bulletin. Leason had begun his career at 13 as an apprentice lithographic artist at Sands and MacDougall. He attended night classes at the National Gallery and the Victorian Artists Society. Leason first visited Eltham in 1910 to paint with fellow artist William ‘Jock’ Frater. They camped near Bible and Pitt Streets and along the Diamond Creek on the site of the present Eltham Retirement Centre. Despite his success as a cartoonist, Leason wanted to be recognised as a serious painter and for his anthropological work.3 He was also conservative and felt uncomfortable with the modern art scene in Melbourne.4 So he left for the United States of America to work as a painter. Ironically his time in New York saw the burgeoning of modern art, notably by artists such as Jackson Pollock. But Leason found his niche by running an art school, painting society portraits and illustrating books and magazines.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, landscape, lavender park road, percy leason, new street

Warrandyte artist, Clara Southern, features on the Artists Trail. Published: Nillumbik Now and Then /​ Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p189 Since early in the 20th century this district has attracted artists and other creative people. So much so, that Eltham has been compared to the Left Bank in Paris, New York’s Greenwich Village and London’s Bloomsbury. That is until the 1970s when Eltham rapidly expanded into a suburb. However many artists still flourish not only in Montsalvat, Dunmoochin and the Bend of Islands but elsewhere in Nillumbik. Some artists who have worked or lived in Nillumbik are well-known nationally and internationally. Artists are attracted to the hilly district’s subtle colours, unique light and the Yarra River and Diamond Creek. The railway’s extension to Eltham in 1902 brought artists to paint for the day or to camp. Then many settled in Eltham, perhaps also because the poor quality land, far from the city, was cheap. Following World War Two they found they could build houses and studios cheaply by making their own mud-bricks. The flexible material, with its warm tones blending into the bush, also satisfied their aesthetic sensibilities. As early as 1900, Will Longstaff, known for his painting The Ghosts of Menin Gate at the National War Memorial in Canberra, lived at Stanhope in Peter Street, Eltham, later to become the home of intellectuals Clem and Nina Christensen. Members of Australia’s first significant art movement, the Heidelberg School of Artists, painted in Eltham, Warrandyte and Diamond Creek. Walter Withers lived at the corner of Bolton and Brougham Street, Eltham and taught Sir Hans Heysen, who for a short while stayed with the Withers family. In Warrandyte were Clara Southern, whom Frederick McCubbin taught at the National Gallery School and Penleigh Boyd, who is represented in all Australian state galleries and the National Collection in Canberra. May Vale, daughter of politician William, lived in Diamond Creek. With Jane Price they feature on the Heidelberg School Artists Trail, part of which runs through Nillumbik. The trail includes signs each displaying a reproduction of a painting by an artist and located near where the artist lived or painted. In Nillumbik the trail includes parts of Warrandyte, Eltham in the Alistair Knox Park, Main Road shopping precinct and Wingrove Park, the Research walking track on Main Road and the Diamond Creek Reserve. In 1916 artist William ‘Jock’ Frater lived at the corner of Arthur and Bible Streets, Eltham. Before then, Frater, with other artists including Percy Leason (who moved to Eltham in the mid 1920s) painted in Eltham on weekends. They camped near Bible and Pitt Streets and along the Diamond Creek where the Eltham Retirement Centre now stands.4 In 1921, painter Peter Newbury (father to painter David Newbury, who was born in Eltham) moved to Cromwell Street, Eltham. Max Meldrum, the first Australian painter to formulate a consistent theory of art largely based on tone,5 taught local artists Alan Martin, Clarice Beckett, Peter Glass and Justus Jörgensen. Meldrum visited Eltham then rented a house there for 18 months opposite Wingrove Park. In 1934, artist and architect Justus Jörgensen and his doctor wife Lil and friends built Montsalvat, the artists’ colony. Montsalvat has played an important part in attracting artists to Eltham and its mud-brick, pisé, stone and recycled building materials has had a major influence on Eltham’s built environment. Jörgensen’s students who also helped him build Monstalvat included Arthur Munday, Lesley Sinclair, Helen Lempriere, Joe Hannan, Helen, Sonia and jeweller/sculptor, Matcham Skipper. Among artists who visited Montsalvat were Clifton Pugh and Angry Penguins’ artists Albert Tucker and Arthur Boyd. Some who painted after World War Two were Alan Martin of Eltham and Warrandyte artists Frank Crozier and Harry De Hartog6, one of Melbourne’s first painters influenced by Cubism.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, clara southern, main road, research (vic), heidelberg school artists trail

"Who would have thought that a boy born in 1889 from the Victorian Mallee would become a successful artist on New York’s Staten Island? This finely illustrated, exhaustively researched and beautifully written biography on Leason features the artist’s entire career as a painter and cartoonist renowned for his depictions of Australian society in the 1920s and 1930s. Leason’s story is a poignant one tracing his beginnings as a cartoonist, to the bohemian Melbourne art scene in the early 20th century, to his involvement in the artists’ camps of Eltham, to his important series of portraits of Lake Tyers Indigenous Australians, and his eventual move to the US where he has been acknowledged as making an enormous contribution to the New York arts scene. This story, as yet untold, fills a gap in the history of art in Australia and offers a new perspective on Australian art in the first half of the 20th century." - Thames and Hudson website A NEW HOME IN ELTHAM Once they had settled back into Melbourne, Perry and Belle began to look for a place to make a permanent home. Having enjoyed the bush setting of Mosman, they decided to explore the rural fringes of Melbourne. Each weekend they packed a picnic and travelled to the towns in the nearby hills - such as Ferntree Gully, Sassafras, Lilydale and, of course, Cockatoo Creek. Eventually deciding these places might be a little too far from The Herald office, they searched closer to the city. The Heidelberg and Box Hill regions that had inspired his old teacher McCubbin, had become busy, urban areas but further east, towards Warrandyte and Templestowe, there were still large tracts of bush. Finally they settled on Eltham, an area Percy knew very well, having often painted there with Jock Frater. Perry's old friend Dick McCann and his wife Margery had also settled in Eltham. The township was fifteen miles from Melbourne and serviced by an electric train that went to the central Melbourne station of Flinders Street, near where The Herald offices were located. Eltham was a small village in 1925, separated from Melbourne by the Yarra River, and surrounded by orchards and large tracts of bush. Small farms dotted the landscape and the main businesses revolved around ironmongers, blacksmiths, and farming supplies. Of particular appeal to artists was Eltham Park, a large expanse of bushland bounded by the Yarra River on the south side and the Diamond Creek on the east. The park included a playing field that was busy on weekends with cricket or football matches, but for the rest of the week it was mostly empty and an ideal place to paint. The scenery there provided the inspiration for many paintings by Leason, Meldrum and other artists such as Colin Colahan and Peter (A.E.) Newburv. The Leasons found a rundown old farmhouse on four-and-a-half acres of land in New Street, now known as Lavender Park Road. The site was splendid, at the top of a gentle slope which gave panoramic views east to the Dandenong hills, south over the Templestowe orchards and north to Kinglake. The front lawn was taken over by onion grass (or wiregrass as Leason called it) and scattered about the property were many wattles and gum trees. Aloe cacti covered much to the front of the house, while old quince and lucerne hedges separated the house and out-buildings from a rundown apple orchard. Here they would build a new home. ·with financial assistance from The Herald, Leason bought the property and immediately commissioned an architectural firm to design a new house in the popular bungalow style of the time. The old farm house was demolished but Percy saved the siding boards, bricks and corrugated iron for the outbuildings of his new home. The new house was a two storey, triple brick with a large, gabled, terracotta tiled roof. It was situated at the very top of the slope. The paint and varnish were barely dry when the family moved in during the summer of 1925-26 and the fumes were overpowering in the heat. Despite the house being wired for electricity, power poles had not yet reached the area and initially the family had to rely on kerosene lamps and candles. When electricity did arrive, Leason reflected on the community's reception of electricity at the expense of the old growth gum tree corridors in his cartoon, Electricity comes to Wiregrass. The family had now grown to seven. Jack was nearly nine, Jean was seven, Marjory was four, Nancy was two and the baby Patricia was seven months old. Jack and Jean were enrolled in the local primary school down the hill. A retired farmer, Jock McMillan, came to live on the property and help out with the general maintenance. Jock built himself a shack and Belle provided him with meals. He was kept occupied building structures around the property·, such as the garage, the outside toilet, garden beds, trellis arbours and a number of ponds. The elderly, bearded Scotsman with his old hat and baggy pants also provided the inspiration for one of the characters Leason regularly included in his cartoons. Like Leason, Jock smoked a straight stemmed pipe. A neighbour was employed to help Belle with domestic chores, and so the family settled down to live comfortably in their new Eltham house. Two dogs, Maginary and Wodger, completed the large and vibrant household. “Percy Leason; an artist’s life” by Margot Tasca, Thames & Hudson Australia Pty Ltd, Port Melbourne 2016, pp 63-64 Hardback Bookpercy leason, margot tasca, biography, artist, landscape