Wild Wood Days of Panton Hill

Majorie Smith Motschall wrote Wild Wood Days at Panton Hill in 1983. A personal and historical recount of ‘work a day’ life in Panton Hill. Majorie is my grandmother, Joyce’s older sister.

Marjorie was born in 1910 at Panton Hill and lived all her life in the district.

The closing lines of her book….

“ Freemie left her little cottage to me in her will with instruction to sell it and take the trip overseas we had often talked of and neither of us could afford. After some time I did sell the cottage but it was five years before I could have my longed for trip.

I did have my tour abroad lasting five months. It was that wonderful holiday, with all the luxury of comfortable travel to exciting, famous places, in such contrast to my busy domestic routine, that gave me the idea to write about the way we lived and coped at Panton Hill for the first half of the century.

A new era began with increased wages and new innovations for comfortable living, changing the world living standards dramatically. I will end my recollections at this point. Panton Hill is unique; it is still beautiful.”

The stories that caught my attention most were about the koalas that lived along the gully where I grew up, and are no longer there. The rich array of insect life including diverse butterflies that slowly disappeared…as the men would come in from the orchard covered in blue pesticide spray.

My family home is still linked to the properties Majorie writes of. My parents are living there still and have been actively involved in revegetating their 10 acres of land and creek with the support of Melbourne Water and Landcare. Imagine if the koalas returned.

Joyce Pepper put together a book called ‘The Children of Cherry Tree Road’ in 2002, which includes family history.

Panton Hill is Woiwurrung country.  I pay my respects to the Woiwurrung, the Traditional Owners of this country, and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

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Take a Boyd or Two....

Norma Morton wrote the introduction to Take a Boyd or Two - the birth of a gallery memoir by Joyce Pepper, in 2003. Joyce, my grandmother writes about the early days of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery in her book, including recollections of the second Exhibition ‘Through-the-Generations - Boyd Family ’ in 1970, which showed Arthur Boyd’s Girl in Wimmera Landscape’ and John Perceval’s ‘Ducks on Regent Park Canal’. These were significant times for Australian Art, as Alan McCulloch had just published his resource The Encyclopedia of Australian Art  which started as a scrapbook of cuttings kept since the 1940s. Joyce and my grandfather Ivan worked closely along side Alan as committee members and artists/crafts-people.

In part….

“Joyce Marie Smith, who wished her name was Georgina, lived her young life in the Eltham district among an incredible wealth of writers, artists and craftsmen. The lives and works of many of these people have become part of the wider history of Australian art and Literature. ……

An appreciation of the vitality the artists, writers and poets had given to the life of the Eltham district came with Joyce to her new home in Mornington in the seventies and it was not long before she met Betty Meagher while assisting at the MPAC exhibition and joined the staff of Manyung Gallery in Mount Eliza….and spent most of her salary on the work of exhibitors there !”

“Paintings by Ulrich Staff, Lucy Boyd, Don Vidler, Joy Peck and Piers Bateman, a pottery goat and large Bacchanalian jug and goblets by Hatton Beck, mandala by Ted Moran, large tile and bowls by Lucy Boyd make up part of Joyce’s collection from the Manyung years”.

Threads of life stories from Joyce my grandmother and Norma my aunt, live on through family, self published books, the art collected, diaries and their own works of art. Lesley Mitchell my mother, holds many of the stories and interests, and together we enjoy evoking this shared love of the Arts together and within younger family members.

Norma - Postscript

“ The gallery is reality now on park lands outside the town of Mornington, an imposing and well-used monument to many a lovely people we worked with. Our first Director, the gentle Alan McCulloch, has died, as has Betty Meagher and so many of the initial workers, including my father Ivan Pepper, who did much of the structural renovating of the initial gallery in Vancouver Street…..”

Occasionally I have visual conversations with my grandmother’s paintings… looking to see how she achieved certain tonal values in her landscapes or perspective in her life drawings. Looking to understand what she may have been aiming to solve, sometimes hearing her patient dialogue persisting to a resolved point of joy.

Take a Boyd or Two

The Encyclopaedia of Australian Art

Australian Poetry

Louisa Bartlett wrote Eve: The Serpent the Snake and Others. A book of illustrated poetry. AKA Norma Morton b.1936 d.2012, my mother’s eldest sister was also an Art teacher at Eltham High School in the early 1960s. Norma was both witty and creative. She wrote poetry, short stories and drew (with her non preferred hand, after experiencing a stroke in early life). I think of her poetry as a dark Pam Ayers look at the world. Norma was part of establishing the Mornington Regional Gallery. Now that I am living in Regional Victoria, as Norma did towards the end of her life, I often think of her and how she drew on inspiration for her work.

Eve: The Serpent the Snake and Others

Melody Anne

Melody Anne

Though no one even stopped to see,

The meat-ants won the war.

Collecting all the food they could

They thronged the forest floor.

The Greenies came and then they left

When journalist departed

They’d chained them selves to trees

And sang as dozers started.

The drivers didn’t mind at all

It meant another break

They went off home to their dear wives,

A cold beer and a steak.

With several weeks of peace and quiet

The forest stood, all hushed

Except for meat-ants tiny tread

As back and forth they rushed.

Our Melody Anne still lingered there

With slightly sagging knee,

She’d chained herself up much too well

On the off-side of a tree.

Already a small and pale-faced girl

She sighed and lost weight fast:

The time for calling out for help

Was gone, forever past

She slowly, slid beneath the chain

As quietly as leaves fall

The ants enjoyed the rest of her:

She wasn’t missed at all.

Almost forgotten road home.

When I was eight I imagined friends back home in Melbourne being able to see me through a hidden camera, possibly pulling faces, sitting cross-legged at Macquarie primary. This was 1978, I was already the product of an alternative school my parents were part of starting in the leafy Nillumbik shire, and a mainstream classroom was a repressive disappointment. This was the first time I recall using my imagination to get me out of an uncomfortable situation, a way of escape…to expand my horizon.

Now in Vic Australia, we are all in lockdown due to Covid19. Now we have the tools (the camera on the wall) to bring us together… but do they ?

In the bigger picture, are we escaping without really going anywhere ? When this is over, I’m in favour of closing the laptop, packing my bags and following that almost forgotten road home. A place where I sit with being alone, a place where conversation can be robust and increases depth of understanding - where difference benefits inclusive healthy growth. I’d meet you there.