The fight for Judith Wright’s house

Christine Milne

Judith Wright is one of Australia’s best known and loved poets. She moved to a property of approximately 100 acres near Braidwood on land she called “Edge” in her later years or the edge of her life. It provided the inspiration for a great deal of her poetry and writing. It was the inspiration for her essay, From the Ridge to the River published in 1990.

Minister for Environment and Water
Parliament House
Canberra
ACT 2600

14th September 2007.

Dear Minister Turnbull,

Re: Emergency Heritage Listing of Judith Wright’s property “Edge” at Braidwood.

Judith Wright is one of Australia’s best known and loved poets. She moved to a property of approximately 100 acres near Braidwood on land she called “Edge” in her later years or the edge of her life. It provided the inspiration for a great deal of her poetry and writing. It was the inspiration for her essay, From the Ridge to the River published in 1990.

She gave the property to the Australian National University which then in turn gifted it to the Duke of Edinburgh Foundation. On the Deed of Trust it specified that the property not be sold before 2014 unless there was a necessity to do so.

The Duke of Edinburgh Trust has decided to sell the property on the open market without any caveats pertaining to its cultural significance and future management and has put it in the hands of a real estate agent in Braidwood for auction after trying unsuccessfully to subdivide it. It has not been assessed for its heritage values. None of the receipts of the sale are being directed to the ANU for the scholarship fund that was established in Judith Wright’s name.

I believe the property qualifies for emergency listing (under the EPBC Act) on the National Heritage List as place that fulfils Division 2, Section 10.01 A, subsection 2, (c), and (h); (c) the place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Australia’s natural or cultural history; (h) the place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in Australia’s natural or cultural history;

The national heritage values under threat are those listed above. The residence and property as a place where Judith Wright sought inspiration for her work and where she entertained other poets such as Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal tribe is clearly under threat as if it is sold under the current arrangements it will be removed from public access and there will be no conditions relating to what may or may not be done to either the home or the property in general.

Several of the references in Wright’s writing relate to landmarks on the property and these must be retained. There is nothing stopping the demolition of the house in which Oodgeroo in Judith Wright’s own words, “pinned a poem to the wall in Nellie’s memory and that of her poor, poor country, bordering the text with eucalypt twigs and leaves that look like tears falling.” (From the Ridge to the River).

The property is essential in developing a better understanding of the poetry of Judith Wright and should be protected by heritage listing. I have attached several scholarly articles on the significance of the property in Wright’s poetry. It is best expressed by Katie Holmes when she wrote, Gardening at the “Edge”: Judith Wright’s desert garden, Mongarlowe, New South Wales, Eco-humanities Issue 36, July 2005.

Writing in 1990 for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Judith wrote of the need for Australians to see the country differently: ‘Instead of ‘seeing the country’, we despised it and dubbed it a ‘mere
wilderness’…. we are floundering now in the results of our lack of ability truly to ‘see the country’ and its past and future.’ With multiple meanings Judith referred here to the geological history of the
land, to its Indigenous history, and to the violence of the settler assault. Knowing its past and ensuring its future, was, in contrast, central to Aboriginal people’s sense of responsibility to the land. In
order for white Australians to see differently, they needed to ‘learn to look’. Edge became an important place in Australian landscape consciousness; it provided Judith with the time and place to shift her gaze. It is as if the very lushness of the Calanthe garden had restricted her vision. The garden there formed part of an imperial landscape, where she inherited and shared the colonial gaze. At Edge, I would suggest, her vision sharpened by her deafness -enclosed by silence-, Judith learned to look in a different way. With no ‘green foliage’ to ‘hide the rocks, the earth’, she could see the land, feel its history. Her fracturing of the colonial gaze was a ‘gold like revelation’. In a paper titled ‘Learning to look’, Judith suggested that if we could see the past encapsulated in a lichened rock, we might think more carefully before destroying it. The geological history of the continent was awe-inspiring: ‘Look back once more on the very beginning of life, through those millennia, and know that it is not ours to destroy.’ In her poem ‘Lichen, Moss, Fungus’ she writes:

Lichens, mosses and fungi-these flourish on this rock ridge, a delicate crushable tundra: bracket, star, cup, parasol, gilled, pored, spored, membraned, white, chestnut, violet, red.29

I urge you to immediately give the property emergency listing and to refer it to the Australian Heritage Council for assessment. I am currently seeking a map with specific boundaries and will forward as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Christine Milne