Dead Cow Gulch

Way back in the '70s, I hiked through the New England Tablelands of NSW with a bunch of friends. It is a very beautiful area of Australian bush, but the stand-out memory is the rotting cow carcass. By instantly renaming the area to 'Dead Cow Gulch' we created for ourselves a short-hand nomenclature to last down the ages. Which brings me to Flat Rock Gully which from 1940 to 1985 was a municipal tip [or dump].

On the map, the area is split in two by Flat Rock Drive [we are nothing if not original!], with the left being Flat Rock Gully, and the right being Bicentennial Reserve, the location of Walter Burly Griffin's incinerator. The ash and debris from the incinerator was disposed of in the council tip. From 1998 to 2003 the tip was 'remodelled' into public reserve with walking and cycling tracks. This culvert goes under Flat Rock Drive and connects the reafforested reserve to the playing fields of Bicentennial Park. We will take a wander through Flat Rock Gulch in my next post.

Theme Day - The creative artisan

My creative artisan is one Walter Burley Griffin, an architect by profession, with a reputation built firmly upon the vision he and his wife, Marion, designed and drafted of Canberra in 1912, the Australian national capital. There is a lake in the heart of Canberra, named Lake Burley Griffin. He was born in 1876 near Chicago, and died in India in 1937.

Griffin is my fascination at the moment. I have just moved to a suburb of Sydney called Castlecrag, which Griffin developed from scratch starting in 1921. Griffin, his wife, Marion, and his business partner, Eric Milton Nicholls, designed dozens of houses for the estates, but only 15 were ever built. By them. These 15 are still in existence. I am introducing them gradually. Come on (beckoning). Sit down (gesturing). Listen to his tale (smiling).

View other contributions to this Theme Day from around the world.

Reverberating sewage and garbage

A reverberatory incinerator uses a vertical top gravity feed process. It was an Australian patented design by Essendon engineer John Boadle. It achieved much higher efficiency preheating and partly drying the refuse whilst it moved down a sloping, vibrating grate within the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber was designed to ‘reverberate’ heat on to the incoming refuse. The vertical top gravity feed process required incinerator buildings to be built on steeply sloping sites or embankments.

So, yes, in answer to Letty's query of yesterday, an incinerator for burning stuff, just not amputated legs! Household refuse and sanitation bins. As you can see from the clipping, there were NIMBYs in those days, too. Eventually these complaints became a crescendo and the incinerator was stopped in 1974. It was converted into a restaurant for a few years, then a set of offices for architects, then it remained empty for a decade. Then Willoughby Council came to the rescue, and voila, The Incinerator Art Space.

The attraction of twee to an incorrigible bag-lady

The houses over this way are solid, indeed, if it is not too malapropriate, they border on the stolid. Scottishly so. They are the conceits of Presbyterian burghers, rather than the aspiration of a Bermondsey gas-fitter, as I suspect was many an early cottage in Paddington. But, then again, the earliest establishment in Paddo was Robert Cooper's 'Juniper Hall' in 1828, whereas, Castlecrag was midwifed by the prolific walter Burly Griffin and his wife, Marion, between 1925 and 1935. Paddo is an urban-jungle-mishmash, whereas Castlecrag is a sedate, gentrified estate. In contrast, our little gingerbread cottage endeared itself by being quaint, indeed, twee.