From Deco Cars to Deco Furniture

Streamlining influenced automobile design in the Deco age, and changed the appearance from the old rectangular transporters into sleek vehicles with sweeping lines, symmetry and V-shapes. It didn’t matter that the decorative elements could hardly influence speed and effic­iency; it was enough that these elements suggested speed and effic­iency. Muscular and forceful elements, like high prow hoods, art-deco speed lines for chrome grilles and parallel bar trims were the rage in Deco cars!

Two examples can show us how the exterior and interior of a deco classic appeared Examine the Cadillac Sedanette from the outside, then have a look at the interior. And see the walnut dashboard of the 1938 Bentley. 

desk, Louro Preto and chestnut burl veneer, Brights of Nettlebed. Date?

I liked the car reviewer who acknowledged that more than exciting dials and switches alone, the dashboard was (and is?) also an important statement of personal style. The best dashboards were works of art where engineering met styling, and fact balanced fantasy. In his 1934 MG PA Midget, for example, the Art Deco dashboard made a pronounced play of MG's famous octagon badge: dials and switches were encased in chunky chromed octagons. And the speedo and rev counter were combined in one delicious looking dial. Can we say boys with their toys?

But not just cars. Soon designers were including speed lines and V shapes in other, totally unrelated objects eg clock faces. Monumental architecture and small art objects alike adopted the use of stepped forms, geometric shapes, chevrons, ziggurats and other motifs of the Art Deco era.

Cadillac Sedanette exterior and dashboard, owned by Cars for Films

Brights of Nettlebed has photographed an amazing Louro Preto and chestnut burl veneered pedestal desk, shaped just like a classic car. Coming from Central and South America, especially southern Brasil and Venezuala, Louro Preto veneer was used for interior design, furniture pieces and boat building.

The angled sides encloses a vintage leather inlaid hood with a car clock inset into the dashboard and recesses, above a steel detailed drawer, push action draw­ers with engine turned fronts. Each pedestal has two drawers with steel handles, while the side and front have grille bases. I know the width (212 cm wide) but I wish I knew who the designer was and in which year this amazing desk was made.

If this pedestal desk, by itself, doesn’t inspire memories of the vintage racing era, classical cars and stylish timber dashboards, the collector could simply add a painting of a 1930s car on the nearest wall.

Dashboard of a 1938 Bentley

Melbourne's Trams

Melbourne’s first form of public transport from the suburbs into the city centre, and vice versa, were the railways; they had started in 1854. This was quite impres­s­ive since Londoner Robert Hoddle had only arrived in the Port Phillip settlement in March 1837 and was appointed senior surveyor for the new town.

Another serious public transport system started up in 1885 when the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company grabbed a 30-year monopoly franchise for Melbourne’s new cable tram network. The first non-horse service ran from Spencer St/Flinders St in the centre of town, out to Haw­th­orn Bridge. It was a simple mechanism. The grip man/driver would grab one of the levers connected to the cable which in turn pulled the tram along the tram lines. When he want­ed to stop the tram, he’d let go of the grip on the cable and applied the brake.

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First cable tram, 1885

The network grew quickly and within six years of the first cable tram being on the road, 1891, the cable tramway network consisted of spoke lines running from the city out into all inner suburbs. However, as the population moved further away from the centre of town, it became clear that the cable tram system became could not reach further and further out, without any limit.

In 1906, the first electric trams were being built, not to replace cable cars but to extend the ends of cable tram lines to more distant suburbs. They “topped up” the cable car system. The initial monopoly ended in 1916 and, appropriately, the cable network was taken over by the State government. The newly formed Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board was now fully responsible. Almost immediately the MMTB started converting the old cable tram lines and the most famous of the new electric trams was the W class. From 1923 on, the W class was truly an Australian design, with compartments at either end closed by sliding doors and an open space in the middle. It was green, quiet, clean and wonderful.

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Melbourne's archetypal green tram

The final cable tram bowed out in 1940, only a year after World War 2 broke out. In time the entire population was serviced by tram lines that all started in town and extended as far as the outer suburbs. When most other cities in the world ripped out their trams and substituted smelly, smoke-filled buses, Melbourne kept her elegant, green ladies that were able to glide graciously through the tree-lined streets without petrol.

Of course Melbourne bloggers are very proud of their trams. I recom­mend you read “Review: Time-line history of Melbourne's Government Cable and Electric Trams and Buses” in melbourne on transit: April 2006.  And the beaut High Riser blog. Even foreigners unfavourably compare their own tram system to Melbourne's eg Poneke who wrote Bumblebee trams roll proudly through Melbourne while Wellington bumbles timidly on.

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Today Melbourne's trams are still petrol-free, but they are no longer green and are alas both ultra-streamlined and privatised. It feels like our city was taken over by foreign trams. In any case, there are other important public transport issues to be considered, as discussed by Hailing From Georgia blog in Guidelines for Effective Mass-Transit, discuss. However my favourite place to take overseas visitors is still a 3-hour tour in the splendidly refurbished 1927 Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.

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Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

Trains, whales, wines and wild New Zealand scenery

The rail journey offered by Coastal Pacific was the longest railway construction project in New Zealand, starting in 1875. Prior to its completion, there was no direct train service that ran between Picton and Christchurch.

The Coastal Pacific train with coast on one side, snowy mountains on the other

I had been on a scenic railway tour in the south island of New Zealand before, but I had assumed that the massive death toll and destruction from the Christchurch earth quake in 2011 would have ended the Picton-Christchurch trip. As Anthony Dennis reported, however, the Coastal Pacific journey is up and running again, better than ever.

The Coastal Pacific train journey travels between the delightful port of Picton and Christchurch, the South Island’s largest city. This journey is a scenic feast of New Zealand, with the Kaikoura mountain ranges on one side of the train and the Pacific Ocean coast line on the other. The scenery along this rugged coastline is enjoyed via either the large panoramic windows in the normal carriages or an open air, breezy viewing carriage.

The Coastal Pacific train takes visitors through some of New Zealand’s finest horticultural and farmland areas, to see amazing wildlife such as dolphins, seals and penguins.

Whale watching in Kaikoura, on board the Tiki Touring boat

Along the way the train passes though Kaikoura. As far as I can see in the town’s web pages, Captain Robert Fyfe became Kaikoura's earliest European settler in 1843. He established Waiopuka, the first shore whaling station near where his house, built in 1860, can still be visited. Other whaling stations soon followed at South Bay, but after 1850, whale numbers steadily declined and the industry became uneconomic. Today all marine mammals are protected in New Zealand.

The town actively promotes itself a popular stop off for those passengers who choose to immerse themselves in the sheer drama and beauty of this place with its majestic alpine scenery, beautiful rugged coastline, Maori culture and amazing ocean wildlife. Visitors can and do break their journey to sail on the whale watching boats or to swim with the dolphins, literally.

vineyards in Blenheim

Or jump off at Blenheim to see the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre. Built around one of the world’s largest collections of original and replica World War 1 aircraft, the collection includes rare, crafted trench art, personal items belonging to the Red Baron and realistic scenes created for the Knights of the Sky exhibition.

The service runs in both directions between Christchurch and Picton daily, stopping enroute for passengers at Rangiora, Waipara, Mina, Kaikoura, Seddon and Blenheim. The trip takes 5 hours 20 minutes, one way, with new café cars to sample the local food and wine.

 New Zealand's South Island.

I have marked Picton, Blenheim, Kaikoura, Waipara, Rangiora and Christchurch

From May to September, KiwiRail’s Coastal Pacific train service between Christchurch and Picton will operate a reduced winter timetable i.e only on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. So while winter scenery is more spectacular, summer is the most flexible time to travel.

Gold fever and stage coaches, California and Victoria

Freeman Cobb (1830-1878) joined Adams & Co., the American express agents, in 1849. He worked with the coaching line which had established itself during the Californian gold rush, starting only one year earlier. Adams and Co’s rival, Wells Fargo & Company's Atlantic and Pacific Express, also moved gold, transported passengers and carried freight between the cities of New York and San Francisco, and around California. Guards rode shotgun on the stage coaches, to protect the gold and the passengers.

Wells Fargo, driver, armed guards and passengers, California

Just as gold fever was starting to die down in California, it was about to start in central Victoria. Coach services in Australia had been irregular and unreliab­le. So it was not surprising that Freeman Cobb wanted to establish a branch of Adams & Co. in Melbourne. In fact several American coach drivers had arrived in Australia, rep­resenting the interests of either Adams & Co. or Wells Fargo. Neither of these two American companies did carry traffic to the Victorian gold diggings, in the end. So the very entrepreneurial Freemen Cobb joined three of the new arrivals to create a new partnership, Cobb & Co. They were John Peck, James Swanton and John Lamber.

By the end of 1854 Victoria had a somewhat better system of roads, with toll gates on all high­ways leading to the goldfields, and booking offices in all the bigger towns. Cobb and Co still struggled a bit during the first five years of service, but the company boomed when it was bought in 1858 by another recently arrived Amer­ican, James Ruth­erford. Rutherford had been the manager of one particular Cobb and Co line before he and the new partners re-organised and extended the Victorian services, and secured a monopoly on the mail contracts.

The coach drivers pro­vided mail and passen­ger serv­ic­es to the out­back, facing a tough life of rough roads, difficult weather condit­ions and even bushrangers. Soon specially sprung coaches that could handle Australia's very rough conditions were imported from America.

Every 25 ks the horses were replaced at a changing station, to get passengers to their destinat­ions faster and safer. Chan­ging stat­ions were important for the horses, but for the passengers as well since they provided an opport­un­ity for food and rest. A few examples will do. The American Hotel in rural Creswick was described as a 2-storey timber structure. During the gold rush period, the hotel operated as a Cobb and Co station, gaining prominence as one of the leading est­ablishments in the colony. And providing drinks to thirsty travel­lers! Some changing stations were not in pubs. Just west of rural Beaufort, for example, there was a free standing Cobb & Co changing station, built in 1869. In Barraba near Tamworth NSW, Cobb & Co stage coaches had a clearly marked changing station in the town’s post office.

Barraba postoffice and Cobb and Co station, NSW

I have no idea why Cobb and Co headquarters were moved from Victoria to Bathurst in New South Wales in 1862. Workshops were built at Hay and Bourke in NSW, and Castlemaine in Victoria, and the service was expanded to include Queensland. The first Cobb & Co coach in Qld ran from Brisbane to Ipswich in Jan 1866. Holties House blog gave photographic proof that in the dry sandy regions of Queensland, the innovative Cobb & Co. company sometimes used camels instead of horses to move the mail and passengers.

A clue comes in Sam Everingham's book Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, published by Penguin in 2007. It says while Freeman Cobb established the company in 1853 to cater for travellers between Melbourne and the Victorian goldfields, it was Frank Whitney and James Rutherford who turned it into the most extensive coach network in the world, covering the all of Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Just as the name Wells Fargo went into the American psyche, so the name Cobb and Co became known by every school child across Australia. New Blog described a Queensland museum dedicated to this company in Team visits Cobb and Co museum in Toowoomba.

Cobb and Co Museum, Toowoomba Qld

The expansion into New Zealand was sensible. In 1861, the discovery of gold in Gabriel's Gully in Otago prompted yet another gold rush, includ­ing Australian gold-diggers who sailed for Dunedin. Among these was the Cobb & Co. coach proprietor Charles Cole, who had been running the Ballarat service. Cole landed in Dunedin in 1861 with a coach, 5 wagons, a buggy and dozens of horses. Almost immediately Cobb and Co's first coach left the Provincial Hotel Dunedin for the Police Com­mis­sion­er's Camp at Gabriel's Gully, as described by Otago Gold­fields Heritage Trust blog in Dunstan Trail. The initial journey took three days, but the time was soon reduced to a one day trip by the introd­uction of stables and relays of horses. There was usually an over­night stop at Styx where the lock-up was built to protect the gold bullion.

We can find unexpected snippets of Cobb and Co history all over the blogosphere. The Humble Blog who wrote about The Coffee Palace in Barwon Heads. After describing boating, fishing, picnic parties and other touristy pleasures, visitors in the 1890s were invited to visit the lake. People wanting to participate had to apply to the manager of Cobb and Co. who had well-appointed stables and horses. Coaches left Geelong twice daily, at 9AM and 2PM, during the summer season. Poetry Galore blog included The Lights Of Cobb and Co., written by one of Australia’s most loved poets, Henry Lawson. It was stirring stuff. And art historians have argued that with his revolutionary approach to depicting the Australian bush and our light, Tom Roberts’ Bailed Up was a painting that helped define Australia’s national identity.

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Tom Roberts, Bailed Up, c1894

Desperate Refugees: 1940 and 2001

Phillip Adams is a columnist in one of Australia’s most prestigious newspaper and a film producer of note. He wrote the most amazing column just recently (The Australian, 18th Feb 2012) that I would like to reproduce and then comment on.

The newspaper article started here. "The remarkable Australian writer-director Ben Lewin being carried shoulder-high through cheering crowds at the Sundance Festival. Lewin's latest film, The Surrogate, should now enter Oscar contention. At the same time, Australia’s wealthiest woman, Lang Hancock's daughter Gina, was upping her strategic media holdings with a tilt at Fairfax. The two stories strangely connected – mining magnate Lang Hancock was a secretive player in the Australian film industry. And, having backed Australia's most famous film Mad Max in 1979, he agreed to back Ben Lewin.

Adams had long loathed Hancock’s bank-rolling of right wing Queensland premier Joh BjeIke-Petersen; his enthusiasm for business partner and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu; his contempt for Aboriginal land rights; his insane attempts to have the Treasurer of Australia ban the writings of Ralph Nader and John Kenneth Galbraith; and his lunatic plan to create new deep-water ports in Western Australia with nuclear bombs. But Lewin and Adams were finding it hard to finance a feature called The Dunera Boys - and suddenly Hancock came knocking. Waving a cheque for the entire budget.

The Dunera Boys, National Library of Australia

The film would have told why Australia used a prison camp for Jews at Hay. They'd been among a few thousand refugees from Germany and Austria that Churchill had interned during the UK's darkest hours - and then shipped them here on HMT Dunera. He bizarrely believed that the Jews, many of them men of great distinction, might be Nazis. The camp was as surreal as Churchill's notion. On good terms with the guards, the Jews re-created Viennese cafe society in southwest NSW. After the war, many Dunera boys stayed on to make immense contributions to Australia.

All but forgotten, the Dunera story is one of the oddest episodes in our history. Ben Lewin's script was masterful and Phillip Adams was the producer.

The initial approach came from a go-between who'd neither confirm nor deny that Hancock was his client. But he was well known as the magnate's man. Were there any projects that would qualify for the 10BA tax concessions? Yes but, suspecting that Hancock's right-wing views probably included anti-Semitism, Adams warned that his nameless client might not like the story. "He won't be concerned. It's all about tax planning, not the content of the movies. Nor will the size of your budget be the slightest concern."

So in the early 1980s they signed heads of agreement, booked a marvellous cast including Bob Hoskins and Warren Mitchell - and started building a replica of the Hay camp. But before the first take of the first scene there was a phone call. "My client has instructed me to tear up the cheque." No reason was proffered; no discussion would be entered into. "He's found out that our film is about a boatful of Yids, hasn't he?" Once again the lawyer would neither confirm nor deny. Infuriated, Adams warned that the film director and producer would call an immediate press conference to denounce his client as an anti-Semite. The measured response was to say this would lead to an immediate libel action.

They scrambled to save the film, trying to raise the funds within the Jewish community. But time beat them. They had to release the cast and crew, and dismantle the sets. A few years later in 1985, Ben Lewin rejigged The Dunera Boys as a mini-series under a different producer. It remains one of the finest achievements in the history of Australian television. But the backstage story of the Hancock investment scandal appears here, for the first time.

Ben Lewin's success at Sundance was wonderful but his brilliant career has not come easy. He greatly deserves his latest triumph - and to be recognised as one of our best, up there with Weir, Beresford and Schepisi." End of the newspaper article.

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To my mind, Lang Hancock was perfectly entitled to back any film project he fancied and could have stayed well away from any project he did not like. So why did he seem to at first accept the Dunera Story, a tragic episode in Australian history that is still fresh in the minds of people old enough to remember World War Two, Nazism and terrified refugees?

I have of course seen the final mini-series that Ben Lewin directed, The Dunera Boys, and thought that Bob Hoskins and Warren Mitchell were indeed amazing.

Let me leap forward a few years to 2001 at the Maritime Museum in Sydney, when the 61st reunion of the Dunera Boys their families and friends was being held. Its not far from the place they first landed in Australia on the transport ship Dunera in 1940.

As already noted, they had been 2000 of the Jewish refugees who fled to England from Germany and Austria. England was afraid they might be a security risk so put them into internment camps and later shipped them to camps in Australia; a miserable cargo - unwanted and uncertain of their future. Many of the Dunera Boys went on to become prominent lawyers, doctors, businessmen, professors and artists.

At the Dunera reunion there was plenty of talk about the past, but also about current world headlines regarding the asylum seekers on board the tragic ship, Tampa. Think of events that rocked Australia at that moment and consider the coincidence of place (Sydney wharf), time (2001) and theme (desperate refugees)!

The Norwegian freighter, The Tampa, rescued and protected the refugees, 2001

In August 2001, the Howard Government of Australia refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, carrying 438 rescued but unauthorised Afghans from a distressed fishing vessel in international waters, to enter Australian waters. The Prime Minister ordered the ship be boarded by Australian special forces and the refugees taken out of Australian waters. Later that same August, the Prime Minister introduced an emergency bill entitled the Border Protection Bill 2001. The government subsequently acted to excise Christmas Island and a large number of other coastal islands from Australia's migration zone. It was arguably Australia’s most immoral legislation since becoming a nation in January 1901.

The timing of the Tampa disgrace was exquisitely painful. The surviving Dunera boys, now men in their 80s, wanted to shake the Prime Minister, John Howard, saying “we were tragic refugees. Don’t you forget it. You must never turn a boat away with refugees”.

The Ultimate Cultural Experience: Leonardo and Michelangelo

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan is the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held. The exhibition brings together wonderful international loans never before seen in the UK, or never seen anywhere in such an impressive single location. Inspired by the recently restored National Gallery painting, The Virgin of the Rocks, this exhibition focuses on Leonardo as an artist, rather than as an inventor or scientist. In particular it concentrates on the work he produced as court painter to Duke Lodovico Sforza in Milan in the late 1480s and 1490s. The exhibition is the penultimate cultural experience.

Orient Express's elegant dining car

The ultimate cultural experience is in turn inspired by the National Gallery's Leonardo exhibition. The Orient Express tour begins on 16th May 2012, but be prepared to spend your children’s inheritance now.

Day 1 Meet a National Gallery expert and visit the British Museum in London for a private viewing of selected drawings by Leonardo & Michelangelo. Then visit the National Gallery in London, to view the Leonardo's altarpiece painting The Virgin of the Rocks and the gallery’s two paintings by Michelangelo.

Days 2-3 Depart on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express for a luxury train journey to Verona. Explore Verona. Then travel to Milan.

Days 4-5 Visit the 15th century Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, home to Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Last Supper. After lunch, tour the Ambrosiana Library to see Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus. In the evening dinner is arranged at one of Milan’s most famous restaurants, Savini (naturally!). In the morning visit Castello Sforzesco, home to Michelangelo’s late Pietà, before an afternoon tour of the Brera Art Gallery.

David, by Michelangelo, in Florence

Days 6-8 Drive to Florence with a stop en route to visit Villa San Donnino. Arrive at Villa San Michele for 3 night stay. Enjoy dinner on the terrace overlooking Florence. The next morning, tour Florence commencing with a visit to Chiesa di Ognissanti to view Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper and later the Accademia to view the statue of David by Michelangelo. After lunch, visit Santa Maria Novella. The next day, tour the world famous Uffizi Gallery. After lunch, visit the Church of San Miniato al Monte. On the final morning, guests fly home.

I suggested to my beloved that this would be a great tour for us to enjoy, since we both love art, architecture, Italy and fancy train trips. He agreed that it would be great, as soon as we win the lotto. If you can persuade your beloved, go to Venice-Simplon Orient Express.

Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, Milan

Harbin - China's Paris of the Orient

Harbin was once a small snow-bound village, 1000 ks northeast of Beijing. In 1898 a city was established because the Russians needed to build the Chinese Eastern Railway. This railway line was to be an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway, greatly reducing the travelling time across northern inner Manchuria to the Russian port of Vladivostok. I wonder if the planners saw any problem in having a Russian railway line, using Russian currency, a Russian timetable, Russian passports and Russian equipment going through a foreign country!

The Harbin section of the Chinese Eastern Railway was built 1898-1902.

It seems not. In 1896 China gave permission for the railway to be built and for Russia to control a strip of land along both sides of the long railway. In a very short time, some 70,000 Russians and other citizens had moved to Harbin – railway workers, engineers, architects, shop keepers, teachers and road builders. By 1910, they had built a fully functioning, lovely European city de novo. Those who did well built themselves lovely villas and art nouveau apartment houses.

European architecture, Zhongyang Dajie (High St)  in Harbin's old quarter

China Travel proudly reports that so many businesses were doing well that Harbin established itself as an international metropolis, a the centre of north eastern China. The Russians established a top class educational system for their citizens and published Russian language journals and newspapers. Other nations set up hundreds of commercial and banking companies in Harbin. The surrounding area had enormous reserves of gold, diamonds and timber, providing a reliable basis for new industries to be developed.

Saint Sophia Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1907.

The city became a centre of commerce, of course, but also of religion and culture. The Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Sophia was given a majestic front with large doors and great arches. Completed in 1907, the traditional Russian architecture would have felt at home in Moscow or St Petersburg.

Because of its rich cultural life and ornate, European-inspired architecture, this Paris of the Orient became the City of Music.

Among the people who flocked to Harbin, Russian Jews arrived in their thousands. It is difficult to tell if they arrived because the Russian authorities were encouraging shop keepers, doctors and small business owners to move to Harbin, and so Jews were likely to be recruited. Or if the horrific pogroms in Eastern Europe forced young Jewish families, in particular, to look abroad for safely. What is certain is that in Harbin, Jewish citizens enjoyed all the economic, political and residential rights unavailable in Czarist Russia. And of course these rights were guaranteed (to all citizens) when the Soviet Union acquired the railroad zone later on.

Jewish cemetery and model of Old Synagogue, 1909

Jews in Harbin were furriers, bakers, shopkeepers, café owners, teachers and musicians, timber mill owners and factory workers. They built a moderate sized prayer centre, Old Synagogue, in 1909. When the community became bigger after the Russian Revolution, they built a larger prayer centre, New Synagogue, in 1921 (now a museum). The community also built its own school, hospital, music centre, sports organisation and welfare facilities.

By the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Harbin started to look like a safe haven for about 150,000 refugees, largely White Russians, making the city the largest Russian community outside the Soviet Union. And the Jewish community grew and grew. Between 1918 and 1930, 20 Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in Harbin, mostly written in Russian. Russian was the shared language for all ex-pats, as well as for their Chinese business associates and employees.

I don’t know much about Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in Sept 1931. But I do know that the Chinese army were forced to retreat from Harbin after bombing from Japanese aircraft. In 1935, the Soviet Union sold the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Japanese, which resulted in the first exodus of Russian emigres from Manchuria, in general and Harbin, in particular. Many ex-pat Russians went back to the Soviet Union, or to Shanghai.

New Synagogue, 1921, now a Jewish museum

Nor is it clear what happened to Harbin after WW2. Clearly the city's administration was transferred to the Chinese People's Liberation Army in April 1946 and became part of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. Within a couple of years, the rest of the European community quickly returned to their home countries or emigrated to Australia, the Americas or Israel.

Today Harbin's population is 10 million people, making it China's 8th largest city. Yet despite two generations (1896-1946) of Russian culture and development, nothing remains except the European architecture. Visit Harbin's old quarter today, near the Songhua River,  and you will find many intact baroque and byzantine buildings that were constructed by the Russians.

Read Passage Through China: the Jewish communities of Harbin, Tientsin and Shanghai, written by Irene Eber. This catalogue accompanied the 1986 exhibition held in Tel Aviv’s Museum of the Jewish Diaspora.

map of the Chinese Eastern Railway

Railway workers in New Swindon - utopia?

In 1835 Parliament approved the construction of a railway between London and Bristol, to be designed by the Chief Engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1840 Brunel chose Swindon as the site for the railway works he planned for the Great Western Railway. The town was perfectly located, half way between Bristol and London. As a result, the tiny market town of 2,000 residents became a substantial railway town of 50,000 within a few decades.

Swindon railway workshops, now a railway museum and shopping centre 

Swindon’s first facility, the locomotive repair shed, was completed in 1841, then multi-storeyed Swindon Junction station was quickly completed and opened only one year later. Both of these facilities made sense since every train, in either direction, stopped for at least 10 minutes to change locomotives. As a result, Swindon station hosted the first recorded railway refreshment rooms. It must have been a rather fancy railway station since there were refreshment rooms on the ground floor for hasty access, and the more leisurely station hotel and lounge were available upstairs.

The boiler and tender making shops opened in Swindon in 1875, necessary to produce parts for locomotives, and marine engines for the GWR's fleet of ships and barges. These workshops were critically important for the Company, but I am more interested in the workers’ needs.

New Swindon, workers’ cottages

The Great Western Railway built a small village to house some of its workers, 1.5 ks north of Swindon town. These railway workers’ cottages in New Swindon were built in limestone by one firm, based on a single model. The cottages may have been small, but they were considered to be of a good standard.

Later in the 1860s iron rolling mills were established at the works, so a new type of skilled worker was required; this resulted in an influx of men from Wales and its iron industry. Only when hundreds of these new railway workers flooded into Swindon looking for permanent work did overcrowding and poor sanitation become problematic. In 1864 New Swindon saw its first gas street lights installed and in 1868 the workers gained a fresh water supply, piped to the cottages.

This was a remarkable project, set up to look after the needs of workers and their families – partially to be Christian and charitable, but mainly to maximise the workers’ productivity. Since Swindon had few services before the railways arrived, the entire town benefited from the new educational and health facilities.

I suppose that for the workers, the top priority was for education. Firstly they built and staffed a good primary school for the workers’ children. And within a couple of years, in 1843, Swindon College was founded as a technical school for railway families.

Swindon Mechanics’ Institute, opened in 1855 and extended 1892

The Mechanics' Institute, probably started in 1855, was the critical service that helped workers towards self-improvement and created well educated manual workers. And another educative component was even more impressive – Swindon had the nation's first lending library.

Health care was also critical. Important community services within the village were the GWR Medical Fund Clinic at Park House and its hospital. From 1871, GWR workers had a small amount deducted from their weekly pay and put into a healthcare fund. In 1878 the fund began providing artificial limbs made by craftsmen from the carriage and wagon works, and nine years later opened its first fully equipped dental service.

GWR Medical Fund Hospital, Swindon, opened 1872

Even retired railway workers continued to receive medical attention from the doctors of GWR Medical Society Fund, which the Institute had played a role in establishing and funding. This responsive and extensive provision of health care services apparently provided a model for the NHS in the next century. Decades later, in the 1890s, the health centre housing clinics, a pharmacy, laundries, a pool and some baths opened Near Park House.

The Steam Railway Museum and English Heritage, including the National Monuments Record, now occupy part of the old works. They are worth seeing.

A useful book to read is The English Urban Landscape by Philip J. Waller. Waller concluded that New Swindon was not a workers' paradise. Although the health and educational facilities provided excellent services to workers and their families, life in a company town could be difficult. If the GWR was doing badly, and staff were laid off, the entire family would lose its cottage in New Swindon, its income and any ability to argue with the railway authorities. Air pollution was endemic and noise was constant throughout the day and night. Nonetheless New Swindon was altogether rather impressive for workers in the mid Victorian era.

Museum of the Great Western Railway, today

The Brunel Shopping Centre was first built in the old, disused railway workshops in 1978. Later it was revamped and turned into Brunel Arcade and Brunel Plaza (in the 1990s).

Tasmania's West Coast Wilderness Railway, restored

In this blog, I've been fascinated with the explosion of top quality, long distance public transport systems in the later Victorian era eg The Cairns-Kuranda Railway in tropical Queensland.

In Tasmania, the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Company also knew that a reliable, efficient transport system was crucial for large-scale, economic mining. Without a railway to cart in heavy mining equipment and to get its ore out to the seaboard for access to markets, the fledgling Mt Lyell mine would fail. The company clearly knew about the shortcomings of trails in the rugged landscape that had tested gold prospectors, surveyors and packhorse teams as far back as the early 1880s.

The West Coast Wilderness Railway today

In 1892 the company posted a public notice, flagging its intention to build some sort of railway. But all attempts to secure investors to finance the company seemed to fail. British investors were the most probable investors, but they were wary in the face of the collapse of Australian banks in the mid 1890s and a downturn in the mining industry. And the situation didn’t change until the Company made an unexpected discovery of high grade silver. This seam yielded both sufficient silver and the necessary publicity to spark the revival of the Company's fortunes.

The contractors began recruiting labourers in late 1894. Locals, aware of the conditions and the harsh climate, wouldn’t touch the work with a barge pole. Instead outsiders were hired, but unfortunately the men who surveyed and built the railway risked their health and lives in the difficult, isolated conditions. Earthworks for the many deep cuttings were largely carried out by hand, with labourers moving thousands of cubic metres of rock and soil. The largest cuttings were very deep.

The climb to the summit was far steeper than any railway in Australia had tackled. Considering the impenetrable and unmapped territory, the harsh climate, the remote location and the need for a huge budget, no-one expected the service to get going. And indeed there were construction crises, scandals, rivalry and more financial problems. Yet first locomotive steamed into Queenstown for the railway's official opening in March 1897.

With the final link officially opened at the new Regatta Point station in 1899, the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co Ltd went on over the next decade to become Australia's largest mine. The railway, built against the odds, was earning its keep. And the original railway continued to operate for 67 years, despite natural disasters such as bushfires, catastrophic floods, broken bridges and a world flu epidemic. For those who lived in scattered bush settlements along its route and in Queenstown, the railway was a communication lifeline.

The popularity of the railway continued, even with the 1932 opening of the first road out of Queenstown that linked the Lyell community to Hobart. But by 1963 the railway closed and the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co. Ltd became a company with a railway in name only.

Queenstown railway station

A private company eventually acquired the railway but when restoration work began in early 2000, supported by $20.45 million from the Federation Fund, little of the original railway remained. In three years the restoration team rebuilt original steam and diesel locomotives, completed 40 reconstructed bridges, made exact replicas of original carriages with hardwood panelling and clerestory roofs, and re-created stations. The West Coast Wilderness Railway's full service between Queenstown and Strahan opened in Dec 2002. They have since bought Strahan Village accommodation and Gordon River Cruises.

From the glassed-in rear doors with balcony, the view is spectacular as the train passes over bridges high above the rivers below, through massive hand-hewed rock cuttings, under the canopies of ancient rain forests and along the edge of plunging gorges. Clearly the West Coast Wilderness Railway continues to memorialise the resourcefulness, endurance and frontier spirit that developed Tasmanian’s west coast. Visitors can see the impact of early pioneers who tamed this very wild country.

Galley Museum, Queenstown

The round trip leaves Strahan at 10.15 am every day, arriving in Queenstown at 2.30pm; at 3.00pm the coach leaves Queenstown, arriving back in Strahan at 4.00pm. A lunch stop in the heart of the dense forest at Dubbil Barril allows passengers to wander along forest paths and discover remote creeks running down to the King River and see first hand the beauty of the majestic Tasmanian wilderness rainforest. At Lower Landing, passengers can taste Tasmania's special leatherwood honey, from the rainforest hives of the Tasmanian Honey Company. Fettlers' lunches and afternoon teas are available on board the train.

The rebuilt Queenstown Station is modelled on the original building with its high, curved roof. It features a café, retail store and information centre resembling a railway carriage. The Eric Thomas Galley Museum in Queenstown features memorabilia and extensive photographic displays of West Coast history and a range of interesting literature about those famous decades.

A very useful book by Lou Rae is called The Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Co, a pictorial history 1893-1993, Ulverstone, 1993. The author concluded that restoring the railway showed long forgotten aspects of our mining and railway heritage, along with the lifestyles of the isolated West Coast mining communities. Australians are now gradually beginning to realise that there is far more to national heritage than convicts and sandstone buildings.

Note Strahan and Queenstown on the west coast of Tasmania

Machu Picchu in Peru - luxury exploration

Cuzco (pop 360,000) is located 1089 ks south east of Lima. The gateway to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley,  Cuzco was an administrative, military and holy city, capital of the Inca Empire (1200s-1532).  Over the centuries, Cuzco has come to display several different cultures - pre-Inca, Inca, Colonial and Republican.

The first Spaniards arrived in the city in Nov 1533. Francisco Pizarro named it the "Very noble and great city of Cuzco”. The Spanish destroyed many Inca buildings, temples and palaces, and used the remaining walls as bases for the construction of a new city. It became a beautiful colonial city, filled with European monasteries and cathedrals. As a result, you can expect to see many splendid but diverse styles of architecture, layers of cultures in one town.

Many travellers now spend several days in Cuzco itself, seeing the most important sites eg the Cathedral of Santo Domingo 1654 in the main square. The Cathedral, as well as its official status as a place of worship, has become a major holding site of Cuzco's colonial art and artefacts. UNESCO World Heritage status was granted in 1983.

The Hiram Bingham train, climbing the Andes
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Hiram Bingham was the American explorer who revealed the remains of the Inca citadel, Machu Picchu, in July 1911. He had traced Simon Bolivar’s footsteps, including the historic trade routes through Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, funded largely by his wife, an heiress to the Tiffany jewellery fortune.

He and his party hit pay-dirt when they heard in Cuzco that there were extensive ruins high in the mountains nearby. He excitedly wrote that “suddenly I found myself confronted with the walls of ruined houses, built of the finest quality of Inca stonework. The ruins were overgrown but the white granite walls were carefully cut and exquisitely fitted together. The scene fairly took my breath away”.

How does the modern traveller get to Machu Picchu? There is no direct road between Cuzco & Machu Picchu and although there are many ordinary trains, there is only one luxury train: The Hiram Bingham!

The Hiram Bingham departs from Poroy Station (20 minutes outside Cuzco) at 9am. Travellers are greeted with a fun display of traditional dancers and musicians, and Orient Express employees serve champagne. Inside food and drinks are served in the bar car.

The blue and gold carriages are filled with elegant decoration, a la 1920s Pullman trains. Note the polished wood, gleaming cutlery and glittering glass. The train consists of two dining cars, an observation bar car and a kitchen car, and can carry up to 84 passengers. 

Machu Picchu ruins in the mist

The scenery is always different, always fascinating. From the agricultural plains of the Sacred Valley, to the crashing waters of the Urubamba river, and the soaring mountains. The Hiram Bingham travels slowly enough to see everything. The train arrives into the tiny town of Aguas Calientes where private minibuses await passengers to escort them on the trip up to the citadel. A guide tells speaks about Inca history.

Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, is one of the most famous examples of Inca architecture and is located 112km from Cuzco, 2,350 ms above sea level. The ruins, probably built in the mid-C15th by the Inca Emperor, are surrounded by lush jungle. The ruins are situated on the eastern slope of Machu Picchu in two separate areas - agricultural and urban. The latter includes the civil sector (dwellings, canals and sophisticated irrigation systems) and the sacred sector (temples, mausoleums, squares and royal houses). The Machu Picchu citadel combines stunning natural scenery with a historic treasure trove, and is now recognised as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

During the Inca Empire, Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of the Emperor who conquered the region. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru, it served as a strong-hold for Inca resistance. The region was only abandoned by the Incas some time after the Emperor’s death in 1472. Now it is an important tourist attraction because of its stunning stonework Inca buildings. And as one of the most common starting points for the 3-day, 4-night hike called the Inca Trail. Trains run between Ollantaytambo in The Sacred Valley of the Incas and Machu Picchu.

The Incas built several storehouses out of fieldstones on the hills surrounding Ollantaytambo, complete with ventilation systems. Their location at high altitudes, where there is more wind and lower temperatures, defended their contents against decay. The guide said they were used to store the production of the agricultural terraces built around the site. Grain would be poured in the windows on the uphill side of each building, then emptied out through the downhill side window.

Moray is a small village, c50 km NW from Cuzco, down the road leading to the town of Urubamba. Moray is quiet and a nice way to reach Moray is by Peruvian Paso-style horseback riding. Riders travel across the hilltops above the stunning Sacred Valley backed by the distant snow-capped Andes. Here the Mares salt mines are a great spectacle, worked since pre-Inca times and still in use today.

Hiram Bingham train, dining car

In the evening, The Hiram Bingham leaves Machu Picchu at 6PM. Guests are welcomed back on board with pre-dinner cocktails and music served in the Bar Car. Later a 4-course, à la carte dinner is served in the dining cars. The train returns to Poroy station near Cuzco at 9.30 PM.

My husband did this trip years ago but there have been two changes since. Firstly the hordes of tourists these days cause so much damage that apparently a limit will have to be put on their numbers. Secondly Yale University has signed an agreement that will return to Peru of some 5,000 artefacts taken from Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham and his party. The objects have been in the possession of Yale University’s Peabody Museum for 100 years.


 

Thomas Cook, inventor of the package tour.

We know that during the C18th, only privileged young Europeans could fill their time between university education and career with an extended tour of Italy. Only the upper class had the time and the money to travel, and the classical education to interest them in Italy.

But by the early C19th the industrial revolution created a new market for travel: improved roads dramatically shortened journey times; industrial expansion generated greater wealth in the cities (not for everyone); and a limited working week brought with it the concept of leisure. Steam-driven vessels began to link Dover and Calais in 1821, and by 1840 an estimated 100,000 travellers were using them annually. In the same year the steamship Britannia crossed the Atlantic in 14 days. Steamers started to ply the Rhine in 1828, the Rhone and the Danube a few years later. And the spread of railway systems speeded up, democratised and extended the range of travel.

Cook's Excursionist poster

Thomas Cook (1808–92) was born in Melbourne Derbyshire. Brought up as a strict Baptist, Thomas joined the local Temperance Society at 17. Over the next few years he spent his spare-time preaching, campaigning against the demon alcohol and publishing Baptist and Temperance pamphlets. In 1833 Thomas married Marianne Mason and had a son.

In 1841 while walking to Leicester, Thomas decided to arrange a rail excursion from Leicester to a Temperance Society meeting on the newly extended Midland Railway. So he chartered a special train and charged his 570 customers 1 shilling, to cover the costs of transport and food. They travelled in open tub-type carriages, walked into the town centre, and enjoyed tea and games in the town's park.

Although his profit margins were small, the venture organising cheap train travel for working families was a great success and Cook decided to start his own business running rail excursions. Within 3 years of that historic 1841 temperance trip, Midland Counties Railway Company had a permanent arrangement with Cook who had to find sufficient passengers to fill the train.

In 1846 he took 500 people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland. They each paid a guinea to travel by train & steamer to Glasgow and Edinburgh, where they had vouchers for their hotels and were greeted with brass bands and cannons firing. Cook found many opportunities for people to uplift themselves culturally and morally via excursions to other places. Another of his greatest achievements was to arrange for 165,000+ people to attend the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.

He soon went up-market and by 1865 was escorting to Italy “clergymen, physicians, bankers, civil engineers and merchants.” So up-market that in 1865 Cook moved his business to London. His son John managed the London office of the company that became known as Thomas Cook & Son. They organised personally conducted tours throughout Europe and procured hotels for tourists making independent trips.

Naturally Cook and his excursionists were attacked by traditionalists as “hurried observers, visible representatives of a modernity that was bringing intrusive crowds into formerly self-sufficient villages, towns and regions.” Times were changing. The new tourists, those “red-nosed people carrying red books [Murrays] in their hands”, were by virtue of travelling in a certain organised way, “incapable of the appropriate aesthetic response to the places they visited. They profaned the very sanctity of the monuments they visited”. Speed was seen as nasty.

Tour books included images of the sites the tourists would visit eg sphinx

International success happened when they arranged tours to Egypt. The Suez canal, which opened in 1869, was the door to the Empire of the East, and became a turning-point for Cook tourism. Egypt became a favoured winter holiday destination for wealthy travellers. This was due to the improvements in transportation AND to the status of Egypt as a British protectorate. During the fashionable winter season, Cairo was the playground of all cosmopolitan Europeans, as well as the new middle class tourists who were eager to participate.

By 1880 the Egyptian Government was so pleased with the Cooks’ operation that they granted them exclusive control over all passenger steamers on the Nile. In return, the Cooks undertook in 1870 to invest large sums of money in rented steamers, owned by the Ottoman sultan’s viceroy, and to manage the service.

By the 1870s Cook's Tours offered hugely successful trips to all parts of the world, opening up the Grand Tour to the middle classes. By 1872 Thomas Cook & Son was able to offer a 212 day Round the World Tour for 200 guineas. The journey included a steamship across the Atlantic, stage coach across the USA to the westcoast, paddle steamer to Japan and an overland trip across China and India. Posters and advertisements depicted the more exciting places that the tour would visit eg Cook’s Excursionist and Home and Foreign Tourist Advertiser. Guide books were sold in their shops, chockablock with details about booking, transport, hotels, tourist sites, health care, diet, dress and financial arrangements. Most travel needs could be found as well.

British tourists visiting Giza

By the time Ottoman power was coming to an end, Turkey was seen as exotic and artistic. Certainly Istanbul was becoming an important destination in the 1860s and 70s, but it boomed once the Oriental Express went on its maiden voyage in 1883. The return trip was of course fearfully expensive, but it was so famous and luxurious that there was always a long waiting list for tickets.

Thomas Cook retired in 1879. While Thomas had maintained the grand view, John was innovative and  understood that no detail was too small in the travel industry. At a time when popular tourism had been frowned upon, Thomas had struggled to make it acceptable, while John (after 1865) strove to make it respectable. They had succeeded in making travel easier, cheaper and safer for millions of people via what we would now call The Package Tour.

There was no problem in changing the management over to John Mason Cook and HIS sons. John had an ability to organise on a large scale, so he set about transforming his father’s business into a global name. Thomas died in 1892, his legacy for travel around the world assured.

Thomas Cook building in Leicester, built in 1894

There are several memorials still standing. Melbourne Derbyshire has the Memorial Cottages which were built in 1890-1 by the Cooks. They include 14 cottages, bake house, laundry and Mission Hall, and still provide accommodation for some of Melbourne's senior citizens. Thomas' birthplace in Quick Close Melbourne was demolished in 1968. In Leicester, Cook’s other house still stands, as does his statute outside Leicester rail station.

Built as a memorial to The Man himself, the 3-storey Thomas Cook Building in Leicester (photo above) was designed by Joseph Goddard with carved archways that are separated by small stone balconies and columns. The four stone friezes depict four of Cook's significant trips between 1841-91.

statue of Thomas Cook, by James Walter Butler, outside Leicester Railway Station

"A railway station with a town attached".. in the gold fields.

The town of Maryborough’s history had emerged in the Gold Rush days of 1851-1854 when gold mining was becoming the predominant industry in the region. But it wasn’t until the railway lines were being laid down across the state of Victoria in the late 1860s that travel to rural cities became easy.

When the railway line first arrived in Maryborough, the tender specified a station building that was made from red brick with significant bluestone foundations. The building had to provide a platform for the trains, a flat for the station master, waiting rooms for travellers, offices, a dining room and verandas. So it was to be expected that one of the most significant events for Maryborough was the grand opening of the working railway station in July 1874. Everyone in central Victoria turned up.

But by the 1880s, Parliamentarians were already asking for a new station since extra trains were going to Geelong or were linked to the Ararat and Warrnambool areas. Maryborough may have been a small rural city (pop in 1854 was 25,000; now 8,000), but it was seen as a very important central junction, 165 ks from Melbourne.

Second version of Maryborough Railway Station, completed 1891

The new station was built for four times the budget of the original station. Red bricks came from a nearby kiln; roofing slates were shipped in from England; plate glass for the skylight came from Melbourne. The stucco trimming, I assume, was just for contrast. A goods shed and goods platform were built last of all.

Veranda covered platform on cast-iron columns

This second station was built over the top of the old station and was completed in August 1891. It was HUGE – 25 rooms and a gorgeous clock tower that was added just before WW1 started. I am not sure how to describe the architecture; the station’s own history page says the distinctive roofline and offset tower display the Anglo-Dutch style. Even now the viewer can see the different types of Dutch gables with tall faceted rendered chimneys. On the business side of the station, the very long platform covered by a veranda with a hipped roof stands out. The veranda is partly cantilevered and is supported by cast-iron ribbed columns. Locals were very proud of the fact that their platform was the longest single platform outside the capital city (1010 ms under cover).

Inside, visitors notice the impressive, carved ticket box windows, a very interesting tessellated floor, a lovely timber ceiling and quality iron gates at the entrance.

Novelist Mark Twain visited Maryborough in the 1890s. He wrote "you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have room for more. You haven’t fifteen stations in America that are as big, and you probably haven’t five that are half as fine. Why, it’s perfectly elegant". He described Maryborough as 'a railway station with a town attached'. I hope he really did say that - it was very clever. And true.

Cafe and wine centre, opened in the Maryborough Railway Station in 1993

The station is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, but it could have sunk into quiet oblivion anyhow. Trains still operate regularly from Maryborough to Ballarat (to connect to the Ballarat-Melbourne line). But the line that was opened in 1874 from Maryborough to Castlemaine (to connect with the Bendigo- Melbourne line) is not used by regular traffic any longer. And the Mildura line, that was opened from Ballarat to Maryborough in 1874, was closed in 1993. Rural cities suffered badly as a result.

Fortunately in 1993 a local business sub-leased the southern half of the station from the town council and established an antique emporium, regional wine centre and café, open daily. A $2 million restoration of the station was carried out in 2006-7, making the visitor’s experience both historically and aesthetically pleasing.

Old waiting room with tessellated floor, high timber ceiling and beams, stained glass.