A tribute to Booloominbah

A tribute to Booloominbah

Welcome I am very fortunate. I work in an iconic building deeply linked to the history of our region and the values of our university. Magnificent Booloominbah retains many of the original features that endeared it to generations of the White family. Their gifting of the building to establish a place of learning – thereby creating the first regional university in Australia – reflected their generosity and dedication to education.

Today, Booloominbah is home to the university’s senior executive and the venue for all University Council meetings, but it is also a social hub and touchstone for the generations of students who have gathered in its dining areas and graduated in its grounds.

Booloominbah is a powerful symbol of the contributions a family and a university can make to its community; the citizenship and service at the heart of higher education.

By respectfully maintaining this architectural landmark, we not only honour the Whites but also the ideals they espoused and demonstrated.

I warmly welcome you into this extraordinary building – a unique workplace, national asset and beacon for our Armidale campus.

Professor Simon Evans CEO & Interim Vice-Chancellor Image: Installation of UNE’s first Chancellor, Sir Earle Page, the former Prime Minister of Australia, 1955 (Photographer unknown).

Historical significance

Booloominbah is the grand face of UNE, and its historical and administrative heart.

Historical significance For more than 130 years it has borne witness to global events and private tragedies, weathering the transition from home to public institution and local landmark with considerable grace.

However, Booloominbah’s importance extends beyond the New England region. It is an historically significant national building, as one of the largest private country houses built in Australia during the 19th century. According to the National Trust of Australia (NSW), it remains “... a fine example of a rural mansion set in parkland emulating the residence of an English nobleman ...”.

Commissioned by pastoralist Frederick Robert White to accommodate his large family, Booloominbah impresses with its magnificent setting, sheer size and extravagant decoration. It took four years to construct, at a cost of some £6000 (about $830,000

Above: Frederick Robert White (Photographer unknown).

Opposite: From the album of Alice Dight, probably taken during World War I.

in today’s money), and, after its completion in 1888, became a busy home.

After the deaths of Frederick and his wife Sarah, Booloominbah became the nucleus of the New England University College when the New State Movement sought the secession of the New England region from NSW. Its transformation into the first regional university in Australia was a fitting outcome for the building, given the couple’s commitment to higher education and benevolence.

One thought is that the name ‘Booloominbah’ came from a local Aboriginal word for ‘Home of the Native Apple Trees’, in reference to the species Angophora floribunda that grew there.

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“Surrounded by shady verandahs, ivy-clad Booloominbah was a popular destination for summer garden parties and tennis matches hosted by the White family.”

Overview

Overview ‘Welcome to coming. Speed to parting guest’ The pastoral industry was booming when grazier Frederick White moved to Armidale in 1882. He and his brothers had built up considerable rural landholdings, stretching from the Hunter Valley to Queensland, and Frederick was looking to build a home that reflected his status and wealth.

Boasting 45 rooms, towering gables and chimneys, the imposing three-storey residence he imagined was the centrepiece of a 2000-acre (810-hectare) sheep station on the north-western outskirts of Armidale. Over the years it would become a “familyfilled house” for Frederick and Sarah White’s nine children and subsequent grandchildren.

Surrounded by shady verandahs, ivy-clad Booloominbah was a popular destination for summer garden parties and tennis matches hosted by the White family. Its lawns and famed flower gardens, private deer park, extensive vegetable plantings, orchard and livestock were tended by a considerable retinue of staff. The Armidale Express of 16 June 1933 described Booloominbah as:

“a lovable mansion, where homeliness breaks down repressive austerity” that was “dear to rich and poor, young and old alike”.

Opposite: White family annual portrait, Booloominbah, 1920s.

Handwritten names on back of photograph (Photographer unknown).

However, following Frederick’s death in 1903, the Booloominbah estate began to progressively contract in size.

Sarah lived another 30 years, even sharing her generous quarters with recuperating soldiers during World War I, when the house became a Red Cross convalescent hospital. However, upon her death in 1933, attempts to sell the property at auction were unsuccessful. Further land sales continued, until all that remained was the house and 183 acres (74 hectares). It was son-in-law Thomas Forster who came up with the idea to “solve the family dilemma over the future of Booloominbah while at the same time greatly assisting a public cause of which the family approved”.

Forster offered to buy Booloominbah from the White estate and to donate the building to the University of Sydney on the condition that the government establish a university on the site. After much political manoeuvring and a public fundraising appeal, legislation established the New England University College as a country campus of the University of Sydney in 1937.

Lectures for a handful of students began in Booloominbah in March 1938. The building also served as their residential college, and comprised lecture, tutorial and common rooms, a library and accommodation for lecturers. Several cottages and outbuildings in the grounds housed the cook, domestic staff and a well-known boiler-man (the plumbing and heating was notoriously fickle).

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Overview

Historian Bruce Mitchell reflected on the warm welcome Booloominbah afforded those students who came to know it intimately during the first decade. “The house seemed to be part of the meals, the learning, the friendships and the good fun of the young people as they grew up,” he wrote in House on the Hill. “Not surprisingly, many ‘paired off’ and later married.”

As early as 1939, the student population could no longer be contained, but Booloominbah remained the focal point of college life. Students and staff still shared all meals in the large dining room and many alumni recall a collegial atmosphere that inspired “close and friendly contact”, noting that the women’s common room was known colloquially as The Swoonery.

Student affection for the university’s foundation building remained rock-solid even as change threatened. In 1948, they protested a plan by administrators to give it a new lick of paint. “... please, dear Warden, don’t efface the scrolls, texts and decorations,” they implored in their student newspaper.

Although the University of New England officially became autonomous from the University of Sydney in 1954, it continued to rely largely on Booloominbah until temporary buildings were completed. By the 1960s, however, further infrastructure development (residential colleges, the Dixson Library, laboratories and lecture rooms in new faculty and department buildings) meant Booloominbah had

Above left: Tea and toast for returned servicemen on the verandah of Booloominbah (Elsie White Album).

Above right: University Common Room, 1955 (Photographer unknown).

Opposite: Returned servicemen, nurses and Sarah White, 1918 (Elsie White Album).

become less the seat of learning and more the administrative hub for the expanding university.

Today, Booloominbah remains the historic centrepiece of UNE, the office of the Vice-Chancellor and senior UNE staff, and the stunning backdrop for its memorable outdoor graduation ceremonies. As historian Bruce Mitchell duly noted, the building

“... has retained, perhaps miraculously, the feeling of being not just a house, but a home as well” and remains a “... comforting reminder of a more relaxed world”.

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A stately manor

A stately manor The ground floor was the working heart of the building, containing the main entrance and hall, library, drawing room, dining room, larder and kitchen, store and scullery, laundry and workshops.

All personal family accommodation – in some eight rooms and two nurseries – was located on the first floor, coupled with four bathrooms and an additional three servants’ bedrooms. The billiard room and four more servants’ bedrooms comprised the second floor.

Rumours of a Booloominbah ghost and secret passageways have persisted, but remain unsubstantiated. However, the building does possess two cellars not indicated on the original floor plan, once accessible via stairs. One lies beneath a sealed trapdoor in the present-day restaurant.

The labyrinthine nature of Booloominbah confounded many a visitor. It is reported that early UNE philosophy lecturer Frank Letters was rushing to a lecture on one occasion when he took a wrong turn and became locked in a cupboard.

He was later released by his students.

Right: Floor plans of Booloominbah Homestead

Detailed floor plans provide an insight into the inner workings of Booloominbah.

Ground Floor 1 Entrance porch 2 Main hall 3 Conservatory, added 1890s 4 Library 5 Drawing room 6 Morning room 7 Main staircase 8 Dining room 9 Office 10 Sunroom, added 1890s 11 Butler’s pantry 12 Back stairs 13 Lavatory 14 Smoking room 15 Larder 16 Space for general work 17 Ladies’ kitchen and servants’ dining room 18 Added to dining hall 1940 when kitchen chimney was demolished 19 Kitchen 20 Butler’s bedroom 21 Larder 22 Stairs to servants’ bedrooms 23 Store 24 Scullery 25 Stairs to billiard room 26 Laundry 27 Partly covered area for general work. Shaded area enclosed 1938 for Warden’s flat 28 Open area, fuel storage 29 Stores 30 Workshop

First Floor

31 Landing 32 Bedroom 33 Dressing room 34 Bedroom 35 Bedroom 36 Small bedroom 37 Sunroom, glassed in 1890 38 Bathroom 39 Main bedroom 40 Bedroom 41 Dressing room and bathroom 42 Bathroom 43 Bedroom 44 Bathroom 45 Nursery 46 Night nursery 47 Servants’ bedroom 48/49 Servants’ bedroom

Second Floor

50, 51, 52, 53 Servants’ bedrooms 54 Bathroom 55 Billiard room

A stately manor

Ground floor 18

6

15

8

5

17

11

24

19

2

12

4

26

16

3 13

9

20

25

22

7

1

27

14

10

29

30

21 23 28

First floor 32

35

33

34

39

31

44

41

12

36 37

Second floor

38

40

42

46

45

22

47

25

43

7

48

50

49

52 12

51 54 53

55

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The White family home

Long before it became an educational centrepiece, Booloominbah was a bustling hub for the White family.

The White family home Although it appears to have started life as a summer residence for the large brood – they mostly retreated to the warmer climes of Sydney for the winter – Booloominbah soon became a permanent base for generations of the pastoral dynasty.

The White daughters and subsequent daughters-in-law traditionally spent some of their confinement before and after childbirth at Booloominbah, ensuring the beautifully appointed nursery was well occupied. Christmas was also a time of reunion, the obligatory annual family photograph and an extravagant meal, and family members similarly congregated to celebrate the birthdays of Fred and Sarah.

However, although it was regarded by many as a “showpiece of the district” Booloominbah was not exclusive. The sociable White

Opposite top: White family Booloominbah Christmas, 1896 (Photographer unknown).

Opposite: Night falls on Booloominbah, c. 1955 (William Webster).

family welcomed members of the wider community to play tennis, enjoy the deer park, or simply take tea in the well-kept gardens.

Newspaper reports tell of hunting parties for the menfolk – for deer, hare, kangaroos and even, in the case of a party of Japanese Navy officers, koalas. Regular visits by Anglican clergy are likely to have been more sedate.

The upkeep of the house required two or three domestic helpers, a cook and laundress. The extensive lawns, flower gardens, orchard and vegetable garden – bursting with grapes, gooseberries, red currants, loganberries and asparagus, among other produce – were the responsibility of three full-time and two casual gardeners. A coachman-later-chauffeur, handyman and chief male servant made up the balance of the workforce.

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The National Trust of Australia described Booloominbah as perhaps Hunt’s “greatest achievement in the field of domestic architecture.”

The architect

Booloominbah was conceived by one of the best known of Australia’s 19th century architects – John Horbury Hunt.

The architect Canadian-born Hunt was trained in the United States, arrived in Sydney in 1863, and was employed by dominant colonial architect Edmund Blacket. Over the next 30 years Hunt was highly sought by wealthy professionals and pastoralists to design cathedrals (including St Peter’s Cathedral, Armidale), churches, chapels and houses in Sydney and throughout regional NSW. Among them were a range of buildings for the White family, including a shearing shed at Belltrees and the house Kirkham at Narellan. However, none were so impressive as Booloominbah.

Frederick White also entrusted Hunt to supervise most of the construction by Armidale firm Seabrook and Brown. Among local craftsmen and labourers, Hunt was reportedly a demanding taskmaster. Historian Professor A.T. (Alexander Turnbull) Yarwood noted that Hunt ordered the first courses of bricks be demolished and rebuilt when they failed to meet his exacting standards.

A founding member, and later president, of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales, Hunt’s work borrowed heavily from English and American traditions in the Gothic Revival style. The National Trust of Australia described Booloominbah as perhaps his “greatest achievement in the field of domestic architecture”.

Yarwood considered Booloominbah handsome rather than beautiful. He wrote: “It expresses the architect’s essential modernity in its freedom from applied or useless decoration, using instead the ‘inherent qualities of the “natural materials” to charm the eye. In the same vein of honest planning, its arches, buttresses, ventilators, gables and chimneys are there not for embellishment, but to perform their true functions”.

Above: John Horbury Hunt (Painting by Norman Carter, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, New South Wales Chapter).

Opposite: Booloominbah c. 1900 (W.D. Solomons).

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Attention to detail

Booloominbah is very much a product of its location.

Attention to detail The massive stone foundations were made of local basalt, and Booloominbah’s bricks were manufactured on Dumaresq Creek, just below the house, from clay dug on site. The original shingle tiled roof was of Walcha quarried slate, while red cedar from the ranges to the east of the New England was used to create the windows, doors and main staircase.

Booloominbah is renowned for its glazing and it was largely manufactured by the Sydney firm Lyon, Wells and Cottier, which was also responsible for all interior painting and extravagant decoration. In addition to the Gordon Window, the building contains what is regarded as one of the largest collections of pre-Raphaelite and early Australian flora and fauna motif stained glass. In the nursery, 20 small glass panels replicate illustrations from contemporary children’s books. Portraits of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott adorn the windows of the library, and traditional meats and farming scenes designate the dining room.

The variable roof shapes and floor levels undoubtedly produced challenges for the interior designers. Historian Yarwood wrote:

“It appears that once the basic outside shape had been settled, the tortuous corridors, labyrinthine staircases, and awkward unusable areas followed by necessity.”

The stair hall – featuring one of three magnificent staircases – is dominated by a large, Gothic-style fireplace and English oak overmantel. Interior designer Andrew Wells, himself, is thought responsible for the hand-stencilled gold stars, fleur-de-lys and Australian birds in several rooms, as well as the two mythical lion-like creatures that flank the inglenook (recess adjoining the fireplace) in the dining room.

Above left: Booloominbah council room, former drawing room (Photographer unknown).

Above right: The gleaming oak mantelpiece in Booloominbah’s main hall (Photographer unknown).

Key architectural features

For its sheer size, complexity and distinctive features, Booloominbah is unsurpassed in Australian domestic architecture.

Key architectural features Modelled on a fashionable English gentleman’s residence, Booloominbah was considered extremely avant-garde for its day.

However, it is also steeped in tradition. It speaks volumes of the White family’s standing in society, Anglican beliefs and reverence for the British Empire.

Originally set in park-like gardens, tended at one time by three full-time gardeners, Booloominbah commands views to the south from the brow of a low hill. As historian Bruce Mitchell wrote: “In commissioning a splendid house in the latest architectural style, Frederick White was not seeking merely a more elaborate Australian farm house. He was building, in the tradition of the English country house, a place from which to display his status and to exercise his influence”.

Measuring 234 feet [71 metres] from west to east, Booloominbah is large by anyone’s standards. Some of its pointed arches

Above: Booloominbah from the north-east, 1904 (Photographer unknown).

and doorways are of cathedral-like proportions. While Hunt’s asymmetrical design, natural brickwork, large gables, buttresses and prominent chimneys reflect the English Gothic Revival and Queen Anne traditions, one feature of the building is distinctly Australian and befitting our summer climate – the extensive, south-facing open verandah.

With four reception rooms and ample bedrooms, Booloominbah commonly hosted White family and visitors. Frederick and Sarah’s Christian ethos is written all over it, literally, in the form of mottoes boldly painted over archways, fireplaces and mantelpieces, and captured in stained glass panels. Painted glass is also used widely throughout the building, often to reflect the use of specific rooms.

However, the undisputed centrepiece of the impressive glass collection is the Gordon Window.

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The Gordon Window

Dominating the entrance hall, above the magnificent red cedar staircase, is the Gordon Window.

The Gordon Window Featuring seven scenes from the life of Victorian war hero General Charles Gordon, it is recognised as the most outstanding example of domestic stained glass in Australia.

Frederick White commissioned the glass in about 1900, at the height of the Second Boer War, just as New South Wales troops were being sent to fight alongside the British in Sudan. Gordon’s death in 1885, while leading the defence of Khartoum during the Mahdist War (1881-99), was the subject of great colonial pride and must have been fresh in White’s mind.

Historians believe he sought to honour Gordon’s virtues of persistence, generosity and endurance, which he so admired.

Right: The Gordon Window (Photographer unknown, UNE Collection).

➀ Woolwich MDCCCXLVIII: The earliest glass panel depicts Woolwich where, in 1848 at the age of 15, Gordon entered the Royal Military Academy.

➁ Sebastopol MDCCCLV: The next scene shows him in 1855 at the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, where, as a military engineer, he supervised trench-building and reconnaissances of the Russian fortifications.

➂ China MDCCCLXIII: The third scene is of Gordon in China

in 1863, where he commanded the ‘Ever Victorious Army’ of mercenaries that assisted the Manchu rulers to suppress the Taiping Rebellion. He made good use of gun boats on the canals and creeks of the Yangtze River delta region, and the scene recalls these tactics.

➃ Abyssinia MDCCCLXXIX: The 1879 incident depicted is the futile negotiation he conducted with the King of Abyssinia.

It was a minor business but showed something of Gordon’s persistence, endurance and bravery.

The Gordon Window

➆ ➄ Gravesend MDCCCLXVII: With his reputation as a Victorian

hero well established, Gordon spent about six years in charge of the erection of new fortifications to defend the Thames. He was based at Gravesend and spent much of his time, energy and money trying to help the poor children of the area. He clothed and fed hundreds of boys and, as the scene depicts, taught many in his home and in the ragged schools. The year depicted in this scene, 1867, was in the middle of this period, which he counted as the happiest of his life. ➅ Darfour MDCCCLXXVII: In 1877 Gordon was made GovernorGeneral of the vast region south of Egypt, including the Sudan. In the Darfour area of the Sudan he had a dramatic controntation with Suleiman, one of the main slave-traders, and managed by little more than the force of his personality to end a threatened rebellion.

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➆ Khartoum MDCCCLXXXV: The scene at Khartoum in 1885

shows Gordon in the moments before his death at the hands of the rebels led by Mohammed Ahmed, who had proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi. The pose of Gordon, calm and unarmed while trying to reason with his enemies, was the one which became central to the legend built up around his death; the exemplary British and Christian hero whose death was a martyrdom that required British military action to restore the honour of the nation, and to make some moral compensation to his memory. This image of Gordon’s death, captured in the Booloominbah window, was to endure and to have a great influence on British and world politics.

Above: The window’s panels were made by leading London craftsmen Lavers, Barraud and Westlake.

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A Red Cross convalescent home

The outbreak of World War I saw Booloominbah assume another important role, as a Red Cross convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

A Red Cross convalescent home Sarah, by then 74, and her last unmarried daughter Adelaide (herself a member of the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment), remained in residence as a team of volunteer nurses moved in to help rehabilitate some 370 men from 1916-19.

The “beautiful grounds” and “splendid appointments” were said to be ideal for the purpose and The Armidale Express of 16 June 1933 described Sarah as a mother to them all.

“Every man she greeted at the entrance hall with a warm handshake of welcome and every man carried her blessing when the time came for him to take his departure,” the article said.

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Apart from the family end of the house occupied by Sarah, Adelaide and a few servants, the soldiers had full access to Booloominbah, including its billiard room and grounds, during their recuperation, and enjoyed weekly church services on the verandah. The signing of the armistice was reportedly celebrated with a big bonfire and fireworks, launched by the firing of a double-barrelled shotgun.

It was drought and the onset of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919 that spelled the end of the convalescent years. After a deep clean, and at least one soldier enduring a quarantine in the deer park, Booloominbah was returned to its family function. However, the White estate that Sarah continued to preside over soon shrank even further.

Above: Returned soldier self-isolating in Booloominbah’s deer park during the Spanish flu outbreak, early 1919 (Elsie White Album).

Opposite top: Voluntary Aid Detachment members and returned soldiers join Sarah White in raising the Red Cross flag to mark the second anniversary of the opening of the convalescent hospital, late 1918 (Elsie White Album).

Opposite left: Red Cross nurses, late 1918 (Elsie White Album).

Opposite right: Returned soldiers take tea with the matron in the grounds of Booloominbah, late 1918 (Elsie White Album).

An educational institution

Upon Sarah’s death in 1933 the family tried, unsuccessfully, to sell Booloominbah several times.

An educational institution All remaining home contents, stores and stables were dispersed and sold in 1935, and another 970 acres cleaved from the family holdings. It was Thomas Forster (married to the eldest White child, Kate) who came up with an ingenious plan for the 183 acres that remained.

By now, proponents of the New State Movement, dissatisfied with the level of political representation afforded by distant Sydney, were enthusiastically campaigning for the New England to secede from NSW. Establishing a university college was considered a prerequisite for statehood. In a bid to force the government’s hand, Thomas offered to make a gift of Booloominbah to the University of Sydney, on the condition that the NSW Government establish a country university.

Then Minister of Education, David Drummond, was instrumental in driving the legislation through State Parliament.

The New England University College officially came into being in late 1937, and while the state of New England did not eventuate, NSW State Heritage documents assert that the

“... pressure did begin the process of decentralising services, allowing a greater portion of the NSW population to access higher education.”

Altering the old house to accommodate lecture and tutorial rooms, a library and additional bedrooms and bathrooms for the new residents (and flats for the first warden and matron) occupied a large team of tradesmen for some weeks. Additionally, they wired Booloominbah for electricity, created a large dining hall and new kitchen.

Opposite top left: Family and friends at UNE Graduation, April 1967 (Paul Barratt).

Opposite top right: Details unknown (MRU Collection).

Opposite: Installation of the Chancellor and graduation procession, 1955 (Alan Voisey).

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Carols by Candlelight, lawns of Booloominbah, December 2016 (Terry Cooke).

UNE comes of age

Lectures at the New England University College (NEUC) for the first 16 full-time students began in March 1938.

UNE comes of age Learning at such close quarters and taking three meals a day together in Booloominbah’s spacious dining hall soon forged the pioneering college’s communal spirit. Historian Bruce Mitchell reported: “The house seemed to be part of the meals, the learning, the friendships and the good fun of the young people as they grew up”.

The first graduation ceremony – of seven women and three men – was held in the northern court of Booloominbah on 19 April 1941. As WWII intensified, administrators staved off attempts to transform the campus into an AIF field hospital, but a manpower shortage meant students were conscripted into helping with basic jobs such as milking and mowing lawns. With the war in the Pacific intensifying, air-raid precautions were made and students dug and sandbagged slit trenches in Booloominbah’s grounds.

(in 1954), further renovations and extensions to Booloominbah were required. Reports of student “race meetings” on the southern lawns and the (in)famous student occupation of November 1973 were notable moments in the building’s colourful history. However, by now all permanent occupants had moved into new residential colleges and staff into dedicated faculty and departmental buildings, leaving space for the university’s administrators to take office.

Befitting a building of its age and substance, Booloominbah has undergone subsequent restoration and alteration as the needs of the university have changed. Ongoing maintenance is part of UNE’s operational budget and commitment to preserving this national landmark.

As the NEUC student population grew and the University of New England achieved autonomy from the University of Sydney

Above: Booloominbah, as viewed from the top of the Dixson Library (UNE Collection).

Opposite: Professors Simon Evans and Kerrie Mengersen, UNE graduation ceremony, 2022 (David Elkins).

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Booloominbah remembered “There was such an ambience about Booloominbah; I loved it, right from the very start.

When student numbers were small in the early days, the building had this intimate, hospitable atmosphere; it was very much their home.”

Former UNE Secretariat Pat Chapman worked in Booloominbah for 34 years, between 1951 and 1985.

“There were only about 130 students, mostly women studying Arts and Science, and one knew everybody. Booloominbah helped us all to belong, somehow. And we all felt we belonged to it. This was especially important during wartime; I felt safe at Booloominbah.”

Muriel Gorrie (nee Fairhall) studied for a Bachelor of Arts at UNE during the war years of 1942-45.

“Frederick White was making a statement about his family’s success by constructing Booloominbah in the late 1880s, but it really was a family home, and it was well loved.

Fred and Sarah both saw education as very important, and they valued their community.

I think they would have got a buzz out of seeing the building become the centre of a university and the community meeting place it is today.”

Honorary Prof. James Harris, UNE Chancellor, great-grandson of Thomas Richmond Forster.

Opposite: A glass plate photograph of Booloominbah (UNE Collection).

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Following pages: Booloominbah lawns during an outdoor evening concert (Terry Cooke).

Carols by Candlelight, lawns of Booloominbah, December 2016 (Terry Cooke).

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Carols by Candlelight, lawns of Booloominbah, December 2016 (Terry Cooke).

“It offers a focal point of great interest and distinction to town, gown and visitor, and serves conservationist and educational functions which would have been applauded by the original owner.”

Historian and author Alexander Turnbull Yarwood.