The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

Author:Jill Ker Conway
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307797308
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-31T21:00:00+00:00

7.

THE NARDOO

STONES

IN THE 1950S, ONE’S first vision of the University of Sydney from its main gates was of a graceful sweep of lawn curving up a gentle incline to the point on the brow of the hill where the nineteenth-century Gothic quadrangle and Great Hall commanded the surroundings. Though the shape of the buildings recalled the misty light and the grey stones of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges so lovingly evoked by the founders of the institution, the tranquil golden stone quadrangle reflected the Australian sunlight and, in the late afternoons, its leaded windows glowed pink with the declining sun. Its planners were visionaries who dreamed, in the 1830s, of a great university for the Colony of New South Wales which would educate an elite of learning and cultivation. The founders gave the University an architectural form which proclaimed their reliance on the traditions of Oxbridge and paid no heed to the local environment. The University was to be an institution which transcended Australia’s geography, a bearer of the cultural standards of “home.”

One saw the grand view of the University only if one entered its main gates by car. The traveler by public transport traveled east or west along the bustling main Sydney thoroughfare of Parramatta Road, and climbed a flight of steps up from the road to enter the University’s main east-west path of traffic. From this entry one crossed a small courtyard to enter the quadrangle on its northern side, emerging from the heat of the day and bright sunlight to the inner view of the Quad, its cloisters providing cool paths of shade, and its warm balustrades and arches framing pools of light against dark shadow. Clusters of talkative students lounged along the balustrades. They leaned against arches, laid out full-length upon the stone embrasures, or sat cross-legged in the sun—perpetually in animated conversation. At certain times of day the griffins and other heraldic beasts which decorated the inner facade threw strong black shadows on the four inner rectangles of immaculate lawn, but the thick stone walls and paving blocks hollowed by the passage of generations of feet kept the classrooms and offices arrayed along the Quad’s four sides cool. The high ceilings and narrow mullioned windows allowed for ample ventilation, so that a style of architecture developed for another climate seemed admirably adapted to the Antipodes. The rest of the campus might be an undistinguished aggregation of brick and stucco reflecting the styles of the thirties, the permanent “temporary” buildings of wartime, and the hurried constructions of the immediate postwar period, but the Quad, which housed the Fisher Library and the offices and classrooms of the Faculty of Arts, was an architectural statement about a heritage from Europe which was totally satisfying.

In the late summer of 1952, arriving by taxi to consult the Adviser to Women Students, I felt a thrill of excitement at seeing this architectural expression of the European tradition of learning. Because I was too shy to ask people for directions, I got

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