David Yencken

…Pieces there as I said to you. I am sure I photocopied much more than you would want. Should I take you through them.

Ok. Right the first two are pieces when I was at the time that the Black Dolphin was running, so I had a lot of contact with Robin [Boyd] so that one and the next one were the first pieces on architecture that I ever wrote and they appeared as you can see in 1960, ‘70 rather.

In Architect.

Yeah, failure. Ok. Right. The next one is something I have been writing more recently on.

Well yeah, it might be a book.

Only about the motels.

That is a piece that I don't know who wrote it. Do you know Neil O'Reilly. Do you know Tim?

Subsequently, yeah.

And that - what's that?

That was something I wrote when ANSETT had bought the Black Dolphin, and I found out they weren't going to use Robin [Boyd].

So I wrote that piece talking about Robin with the hope that it would be published as an opinion piece, but they chose not to.

Something like that.

The reason that we only held it for five years is that there was a flaw in the title and in order to make it viable you really needed to make it bigger. And it was impossible to borrow money against it. The flaw in the title was known all the time. We had a solicitor on the board who told us that it wasn't important. Well it wasn't important in the sense of risking somebody else coming along and claiming the place, but it was extremely important when it came to getting people to lend us money.

No. No, it was just something that hadn't, you know, been transferred properly and it had a very complicated, long history that was quite a shock.

So that is another chapter?

The Heritage Commission.

That is just a piece of the paper I gave in Adelaide.

About, I guess it would have been 19 probably 86.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it was not properly sustainable. I wouldn't probably… thinking not quite so much in the way it would be looked at now.

That was when somebody in Adelaide, John Bryan, was asked to invite a number of people to write for the English journal The Planner, and he asked me if I would do one of those pieces.

Yes.

Yes Merchant Builders still going.

Now there is a piece there I am sure I photocopied it. Monash [University] put on a series of public lectures and Robin [Boyd] spoke. The first one was given by the Vice Chancellor there. He was an engineer at the time and he was highly critical of architects in, I think, a not very thoughtful way. Robin gave one of the talks, [Harry] Siedler gave one of the talks, and for some strange reason they asked me to give one of them. So I did have that paper.

Well you know, I wasn't an architect so…

Just hang on a second if it is not there I am sure I have got a copy, but can I just take a quick look?

I'll go and have a look downstairs.

You are going to end up with a huge library of stuff, even though you have got so much of it on disk.

[David returns with the papers]
The date is on the back.

Foolscap.

Would you like to?

That would be good.

We didn't get terribly far.

It is.

Yes we lived in Melbourne but my father, I don't know if I mentioned this, by some very strange series of accidents found himself in England, having just finished a degree at Cambridge, and then the First World War broke out and because he was there he enlisted in the British Army. And when the war was finished, and because he was lucky to survive. And just simply by attrition, because he enlisted as a trooper but ended up a Major in the army, he then, because he had done well at Cambridge, someone said to him why don't you apply for the British Foreign Office. Which he did. So he became an English diplomat.

Even though he was Australian. In fact, there was no Australian foreign service at the time. On that account we lived all over the place. I was born in Berlin, my sister was born in Berlin, my brother was born in London, and by some amazing series of accidents we all live here again. Even though I certainly can speak for myself, the last thing I wanted to do after I left Cambridge was to come back to Australia.

No he came later. He came on a trip around the world and he looked me up and then we made this very important trip together around Australia.

Well we didn't go all the way around, but we went right up the East coast and then we cut across from Cloncurry and Mt Isa, where I spent the only night I ever spent in gaol.

I was somewhat annoyed by that. We were staying in a pub and we did something unbelievably foolish. And that was when the pub closed, which wasn't that early, when the bars closed we went and knocked on the door on the basis that as we were staying there we were entitled to drink, to go on drinking even if other people weren't. But unfortunately, there were two policemen at the bar, and I don't think that they appreciated the fact that they had been found there, and they got immensely aggressive. And my friend stood about 6 foot 6 and weighed about 18 stone so they reached across him and grabbed me. Off to gaol.

We had been drinking and then we were refused service after a certain point but we felt that as were staying in the hotel we were entitled to go on drinking.

Then we went up to Darwin, and we had a look around. Not a very extensive one, then we drove down to Alice Springs, and then we put the car on the Ghan and travelled back down south.

No. I didn't go that far across.

Good question.

It was a car. I think it was a Holden, I am pretty sure it was a Holden. A very dangerous Holden.

Really dangerous. In fact I nearly killed myself with one. Came so unbelievably close. I was going down the way to Ballarat. I was going down a part of the Western Highway there where there was a steep slope down, absolutely straight road, and the car started to swing. I think I was probably travelling too fast but not hugely too fast, and then it really got into this big swing and I found I simply couldn't control it. And I went over a part of the road onto the side into an area below. It did a complete somersault. Stopped about a couple of metres before some kind of small ravine, and all I can remember when it was happening. I was told that Holden’s doors flew open. It was long before the days of seatbelts, so I clung to that wheel in ways that you can rarely imagine, and I didn't realise how hard I clung on until the next day when I simply couldn’t move. I emerged unscathed. A truck stopped, and he come across and the driver shook his head said, “You must be the luckiest man alive. Go and buy yourself a Tatts ticket”.

No. It was a bit of effort to actually get it out of where it was.

Yes.

I think that is right. I should perhaps say that my father had a posting in Spain during the War [WW2], right at the end of the Spanish Civil war, and when the war broke out, we had been in England for a short break. And my father then drove us back through France after the declaration of war, and we managed to get to Spain, which was lucky. My parents then decided, as did many other diplomat parents - allied diplomat parents did, in fact all I think - to evacuate their children. And because we were Australian, we were sent back to Australia for two and a half years. When I was from the ages of 9 to 11 and half. That was absolutely crucial, because when I had a car - this same terrible Holden left to me. The second-hand Holden at Sydney - I don't know quite how it happened but there was this car up there - and so I drove it down from Sydney. And as I went through this landscape I knew there was something incredibly significant about it. Something I really loved about it, and I wasn't ready to admit it for quite some years. Quite some time really. It was absolutely without question very strong in my blood.

Down the Hume?

Yeah, just going through the whole wide landscape.

It wasn't a single moment, but it was just the whole experience of that drive over a couple of days, and progressively going into the landscape. I did know that it was familiar and well loved. So that was very powerful. And then, yes, it had to do with opportunity. You see things that are very interesting. I was really interested in paintings. That was important. But the painting in turn drew me really powerfully into Australian culture because it was illustrating… relating to and reflecting Australian culture in ways that were unique to Australia. So that was very important, and the people were extremely important. And then when it came to actually doing something like building and the choosing of architects and so on - although not immediately - choosing an architect because that architect seemed to reflect things that were obviously very key to Australian culture. Because I don’t think I would have been sufficiently well informed by that time to be able do that, or doing the… I am talking about now the choice of John Mockridge. But progressively you start to think more as you become exposed to architects and know how architects work, and as I got to know John extremely well, and after that Robin [Boyd], to get to know what he was doing.

Yeah. Boyd obviously was reacting to the site thinking about how he could give expression to a building that reflected those qualities of the site, and which could be seen to be the best possible way for an Australian building in an Australian setting. And as I think I may have mentioned, you will see it in the piece there, that that motel was used very frequently in trade promotion. Overseas trade promotion. It really did have that kind of… people were… all over it when it was finished. And I think I mentioned it…

Yeah.

I am talking about the people who stayed. My fellow directors I think for the most part, were pretty shocked. What ended up was that the people of Merimbula were greatly shocked by it to begin with. But, I think, it wove its magic in time, and I have also mentioned in that piece and, I think I may have mentioned last time, that when Graeme [Gunn], after the building was sold, Graeme came to design the house that I have now a little bit further north. Which is an absolutely fantastic house, and which used some of the same elements - some of the poles in this instance. I was working to a very simple idea but given very extravagant expression. That house has been admired by everybody. The people who have worked on it thought it was fantastic. That wasn't true about the Black Dolphin. And everyone who is roundabout has come to that, so I think that it was something very important that had happened in the meantime.

Syd Ancher before that probably.

I am not quite sure that it was quite like that. I think that, first of all for me, making the first motel work by getting it built, for the amount of money that became available, and the way that I was involved as somebody who knew absolutely nothing about building, or architecture or anything, and then finding that I could make it work. And learning an awful lot in the process. Not just an awful lot, an unbelievable amount. It gave me incredible confidence, and I don't mean ridiculous confidence - but confidence that it was possible to make things work. And when you read some of this stuff you see the argument reflected again and again and again, through what I have written about. The inaccuracy of the statements of the current Australians don't want, or won't accept, or won't like, and I keep saying in what I have written that it is simply not true. They don't necessarily speak out about something that they haven't yet experienced, and that is very understandable, but when it is put in front of them and if it is interesting or some superior model, then a decent percentage will react in a very favourable way.

Well, to begin with when I start to write about this, I was writing in response to Robin Boyd's .. Australian Ugliness. There he was saying there was a fifteen-year time lag for anything in Australia, following on from the American model. And so I was, perhaps not so much, trying to say he was wrong about the fifteen-year time lag, but more to say that’s not the full story, and in some instances of course it is not the case like that. I certainly know that when I was involved with the National Estate Program that led to the Australian Heritage Commission, I was on first of all a committee of enquiry. And I happened to be going to Europe at the time, I was on the committee of enquiry, and because I was doing that I decided to go to North America to see if there was anything interesting happening there because North America has a system of government that is more akin to ours than that of the United Kingdom. I went to Heritage Canada and they sent me down to visit a body in Washington, and that body was a very impressive one. And I met the guy who ran it, and I thought there was something very interesting there. So I carried that idea back to Australia, and we, in the drafting of the Heritage Commissions Act, which then I had a lot to do with because by this time I was the Chair of the Interim Committee, we borrowed from that and we borrowed from some other provisions in the Act in the Environment Protection Act, United States. But we did something that none of these people had done in that we included in the program, and in the legislation, not just historic areas and historic structures as in the United States, but natural and prehistoric and everything as well. So, it was an absolutely comprehensive so…

Well not in that way. And I recall with amusement, receiving a call from someone in the States, someone in quite a senior position, saying I am thinking of coming out to Australia next week can you see me urgently because we want to do what you have done in perhaps changing the legislation here and putting together all these things. So, I laughed, and I said, are you aware that we started off by borrowing from you. I used to have lots of disagreements with the then director of the Heritage Commission. They were sometimes very serious disagreements and he sometimes would say "ah well things aren't as good here as they are in other places", and I would say " I don't agree with you". And in fact in the Heritage Commission legislation there is something really significant, really unique. It eventually got replicated in the World Heritage Convention, which has got listings of natural areas, natural properties of prehistoric, and historic, properties and areas.

Wonderful process, and I was lucky enough to be involved, just at the time when it was all happening. So I attended a couple of the meetings and found it very interesting.

No, I am not really. Because as you'll see if you bother to read what I have written there, in the Howard years the Australian Heritage Commission Act was abolished. And although it had remained relatively intact across many different coloured governments, for twenty something years, and it was replaced by the Heritage Council Act - admittedly there were some benefits - but the council was stripped of a number of very important powers. The Australian Heritage Commission was a body having a great deal of independence. We were not able to be directed by the minister, except in very strange circumstances. And I know that Tom Uren often said that was one of the things he was most proud of - that he did agree when I argued with him that this is the way he should go - that you should leave the listing of a property to an expert body because listing should be based on expert criteria. But then what happens to it, it is a political matter and so it is reasonable that politicians have under certain circumstances the final say. So that did in fact happen. That is taking you away from where we were, but it is an illustration of an argument that you will see reflected all the way through these different pieces of writing that I’m giving you.

No.

Oh it is absolutely fascinating. As far as my change of attitude to living here is concerned, it began with the opening of the gallery [Brummles]. Up to that time I had stayed for a large part of the time I had been there, at my brother and sister-in-laws house and they were wonderful to me. I was meeting their friends, and their friends were delightful in many ways, but there weren't necessarily the people I wanted to meet and congregate with debate with, and do things with. Opening the gallery opened up a completely new world to me. It opened up a world of people who were doing creative things.

Yes, I think that is absolutely correct. I should know though. This is probably directed at me, David Yencken. I was 23, or something like this, and very correctly aimed at me. People kept saying to me when I was telling them about the motel “oh Australians don't want this” and “they are born thieves”, and some of the most amazing things, which were directed at me. As I say they were probably trying to say that you will never make it. But nevertheless, I think there was some element of conviction in what they were saying. But for me, coming from England I think one of the things that I felt very strongly was that there was scope ‘to do’. Just the point that you are making - scope to do all kinds of things that would be immensely difficult in England.

I think that is absolutely correct. I think that to do the sort of things we were doing, it needed first of all absolute conviction about what you are trying to do from on top. It needed the best possible team you could find. Best group of designers you could find, and then it needed very good training, of your own staff, so that they also became totally convinced of what was attempted. That included, very specially, the people who were selling the products. I may have mentioned to you - I am not sure what I have mentioned and what I haven't - that when it came to the cluster schemes and the project housing schemes such as Elliston and Winter Park and High Street, we, in each instance, gave ordinary estate agents or local estate agents, the opportunity to sell our products. We paid them or offered them full scale commission. In the three projects they would have possibly sold 2 or 3 houses only. They simply didn't know how to sell them. They were so different, and the whole concept of the development was so different. Whereas it wasn't easy to sell them, not because young people, because they were mostly young, were not attracted to them but often they brought along all kinds of advisers who said, “We know. I don't think that is… you know it will probably be risky. You may lose capital gains”. And the new buyers might be parents or something like that, you know. So, it wasn't easy to sell them. But at least our people did sell them, and there was a sense I think right through the organisation that this was something really great to be doing and everyone was happy with it. And there was a marvellous sense of camaraderie between the designers which still exists, and we still very regularly meet. Obviously, Ellis Stone has long been dead, but Graeme [Gunn], Steve Calhoun, and Rodney Wulff, and to a slightly lesser degree Jan Faulkner, and I we regularly interact with each other and it’s…

They were a strange couple Pettit and Sevitt. I don't know the full story, but I know they were associated with a firm called Sunshine Homes before Pettit and Sevitt opened. I am not quite certain how Ken Woolley got involved with them, whether it was a prize or something, but whatever it was he did a marvellous job for them.

We later had a group of, we were a member of, a group of four project builders, one from Queensland Pettit and Sevitt from NSW and one from Western Australia. Without question Pettit & Sevitt were the most difficult to work with, because we were never really sure whether they were telling the truth or not. And the whole basis of this exercise was that we would expose everything. All our finances, everything. You do have to take a deep breath before you do that, I know that I did, and I know that my partner did but anyway we decided to do it. It was in our best interests to do it, and once you've done that of course it makes your discussions very much more interesting and open and so on. But we were never sure what we got from Pettit & Sevitt was true. And then they seemed also at times, to have difficulty getting along together.

Oh yeah.

Courses in Western Australia. Much more traditional. Not really especially interested in design. I am just trying to think what the hell the name of… there were three people in… I think two might have been engineers… very well run, and so was Courses.

Yes.

No. No. We were just comparing information for our mutual benefit.

I don’t think we ever wanted to do that. Certainly, I never did.

Oh yes, we did. We opened an office in Sydney. But only selling kit houses.

How long were we in existence? Well we… ‘65. 21 years. So I would have thought that, at a guess, 100 houses a year.

2000? Over 2000…

No.

Yep. And they seemed to get themselves into quite a bit of trouble. At some stage they must have been so, so unbelievably successful, but for some reason they didn't quite know how to manage that.

Oh. Yeah.

No.

I think they understood the benefits that came from working with Ken Woolley, and I think that the company that I referred to, Sunshine Homes, had probably gone a little bit down that path. I know they tried to get other architects to do design things for them, and I don't think that was particularly successful. I think they asked… I am just trying to think who they did ask.

We did do some. We did do the townhouses before we did the cluster houses. We did a whole series of townhouses which I think were very interesting. They were relatively small developments, but there must have been about 8 or so of those. At least 8. We did one high rise building overlooking the park just close to Kensington Street in South Yarra.

Yeah.

At a guess 10, 12 stories something like that.

And then towards the end we did quite a lot of ski lodges. We did start a division that involved more of that work, and my partner was very keen to get more into more standard construction work. We would tender. I was not at all keen to do that, and I don't think we were properly equipped to do that. I don't think we had the people with the right skills, particularly the ability to cost correctly.

Fully in control.

Well there was Nexus. We started off Graeme [Gunn], and Jan Faulkner, and I started Nexus. And the initial idea for Nexus was that we would try and develop modular kitchen cabinets. It didn't really work because none of us had the time to devote to it. It sort of struggled along for a while and didn't really end up in anything that was worthwhile. We eventually closed that down. Syd Spindler who became a senator, know him? Painting contractor. He took on the running of, part time, Nexus for a while and then Jan took it over and developed it as an interior design and… Attley as a graphic design enterprise with great success.

No.

Yes, we very much subcontracted. We subcontracted all the trades work but with one very important qualification, and that was that the carpenters that we used, the subcontracting carpenters were, I suppose, in two different categories. Those that we knew to be of really high quality and which we knew, also, we could guarantee work to - come summer, or come winter. In the sense that there were going to be variations in the demand for houses and so we used to keep them by guaranteeing them work. And that worked really well.

That worked well for them and worked well for us. We had earlier agreed Johnnie [Ridge] and I. And certainly from my experience with motels, and I think he came to the same conclusion, that if we were going to do this we had to be builders. We could not simply come with the idea and allow the construction work to be carried out by somebody else. It would be too expensive, and they wouldn't necessarily understand what was wanted. All the experience that I had was that, there is a premium put on architectural designs, at the time, by normal builders. That was the case when we got the first costing of the first serious house that we wanted to build. Which was the ‘Terrace House’ - Graeme’s [Gunn] terrace house. We gave it to a quantity surveyor and the quantity surveyor duly produced the result. I think that the house cost 5,000 pounds, we built for a fraction over 4,000. My view of that is not that the quantity surveyor was wrong, but rather that he had included a premium that would be charged by an ordinary builder.

Yes.

Not a huge number. We might have had in sort of head office functions, you know finance and accounting and so on, up to 10. There would be probably 4 or 5, say 5, sales staff and typically a sales manager, and architects.

Yes, we did. We didn't start off like that. But then we had two. Barry Gray, who was an architect who continued to practice in Brighton, and Leo Deyung[?] who came across…

Yeah, that’s right. And they did really good work for us. What we decided to do, which was a bit different from other people. First of all, the architect, based on a site survey that was done by a surveyor, had an interview with the client. To begin with, that was Graeme [Gunn], and then subsequently there was someone working in Graeme's office, and then subsequently Barry or Leo. And at that meeting the client requirements, and the siting of the house was discussed and so forth. And then that would be developed further and sent to the client. When we agreed with the client we would follow the usual process. We also gave the client, later on, a meeting with a landscape architect, which would be quite unusual, to discuss ways in which they might landscape their site with the hope that some of them would actually employ the landscape architect, which was initially Ellis Stones, and then later someone from Tract after we had started Tract. And then Jan Faulkner also did some work of that kind, advising clients of what they might do. So, we tried to provide them with that kind of advice.

So right from the beginning we were concerned not just to have a group of people working for us who represented the totality of the design professions needed to do a very fine job say on our display houses, we also tried to replicate that in the way in which we dealt with clients once they decided to buy one of our houses. Then later, when we got into group houses - the town houses, Elliston project and cluster houses - we did the same thing again by bringing back all these talented people to work together.

First of all the siting of the house. Which they needed to have discussions with the architect about, and then it was a question of their special requests, needs or whatever.

Always. That became probably more so as we went on. Probably, it was inevitable. But it tended to happen that people who were more affluent started to buy our houses, and they of course wanted more changes and we weren't able to stick so rigorously to a perhaps simple design idea that was expressed in the initial display houses.

Absolutely.

I think that probably Robin Boyd’s work for Stegbar preceded the motel. We used a new form of joinery development in the motels. We didn't actually use Stegbar, but we used other people who were developing window joinery using the same sections.

Absolutely.

Oh, yes.

Robin designed…

No, I don't think in the world.

We didn’t use Stegbar but we used the same sections, I mean similar sections, and used another joinery for cabinet supply.

He did, but he wasn't involved in joinery.

Yes, he did.

Yes.

We might have used hardwood framing to begin with but then as treated pine became more available and easier to work with…

I think we would have moved to that fairly soon.

Yes. The ceilings were timber lining, or pine lining board above the rafters.

Mostly adaptations but there were instances where they might have done that.

We did a few schools. I am not so sure if they were public ones. And we did, I think one, at least, it was of houses that were for the public agency. But we weren't really approached much.

Schools on the Mornington Peninsula somewhere.

I think Wooley is right.

I think we did the whole scheme.

Well it didn't happen perhaps as much as we probably would have liked. It would be nice to carry through some of the work we were doing into the public sphere.

I am really sad that nobody else has picked up the mantle and gone on doing this. I really am sad. I think the trouble is that this kind of work is not something that can be done with a conventional attitude. It really has to start with the conviction, and if the conviction is not there at the beginning and the understanding that in order to make it work not only do you have the conviction, but you also have to bring together a kind that we did, and infuse them all with the same conviction. You have to get first of all the design, but all the other people as well, or it really won't work. And in that sense, it is a sort of boutique business, and it is very, very difficult to get other people who may come in later to make a success of boutique businesses. Exactly the same problem with the Black Dolphin after it was sold. Exactly the same problem.

I know they got themselves into some financial trouble and then Pettit came down to Melbourne to set up a Pettit and Sevitt group down here. That didn't work, and it was not the smartest thing in the world to do. If you have got a financial problem the last thing you should do is try and set up another empire in another state, particularly when in a state where you have got really strong competition, as we obviously would have given them. So, I don't think we ever thought that was going to be a serious threat to us. And indeed, it wasn't. I don't think it lasted much longer after that.

Well after I got to the university and took to it, and some of the graduates coming through… and there were some who came to see me and said, “I would really love to do something similar to Merchant Builders and develop that.” I remember one young woman who was doing a building course and went away to do her PhD somewhere else, and she was absolutely determined that she was going to do it, and I imagine that she would have done very well. She had some of the right qualities as far as I could judge them. I don't know maybe one day someone will have a go.

No, I don’t think so at all. I think there should be as strong a demand as ever for something like that because people are still buying project houses.

No, I don't think political background was of any consequences at all. After all we were practising, and came into being in a period of extreme conservatism. Liberal conservatism.

I got drawn into the work of the Liberal government when it came to power but by that time Merchant Builders was well established so it wasn't reliant on having a Labour government with lots of interesting ideas in the background, anything but. In Victoria, of course, it wasn't until the Cain government got appointed that there was a Labour government of any kind for twenty years or more.

No, he came much later.

As far as I was concerned it was the other way around it was because Merchant Builders had a very considerable reputation at the time that Whitlam came to power in 1972. People weren't wandering around Australia looking for what was happening and looking for people that might be involved in some of the initiatives that were being considered. Because of the work we had done, I was one of the people they came to talk to. And also, by that time, because of the work we had done, I had been invited across to South Australia and had quite a few discussions with Hugh Stretton. Do you know Hugh Stretton?

Yes.

I met him later. But Hugh Stretton was very interested to try and persuade me to think about joining the South Australian Housing Trust, to take it over when… Ramsey, who for a long time was an outstanding director of the Housing Trust. A very interesting body, the South Australia Housing Trust, and I did very seriously consider it, because it was doing such interesting work.

Much more interesting, and much more expensive work.

Yes. Yes he was.

No, he is a social scientist.

They very nearly did.

Ramsey in South Australia was terribly keen about the idea because I would have to go in as his Deputy to begin with. So I did a little bit of work for him and for Hugh Stretton looking at Elizabeth. That was quite interesting. All these things help to create in my mind the sense that there was an opportunity to create another kind of entity, related to Merchant Builders, which ended up by being Tract. Which would in part, turn into the roles played by Ellis Stones because he was reaching the end of his life. And I, at a certain point of my working life. The other part related to town and regional planning, which I was getting drawn into. That led to the creation of Tract. And Howard McCorkell being a fellow who worked in England and then worked for the NCDC. He was the first person that I got to join Tract. Then Rodney Wolf. I tracked him down - he was in the United States. There didn't seem to be anybody in Victoria that seemed to be doing especially good work at the time. He joined, and then I had got to know in a rather extraordinary way somebody called Pete Walker, who was the principle of Sasaki Walker in the United States, and subsequently the head of the graduate School of Design at Harvard [University]. And I got to know him by going to San Francisco on a trip - at one stage going across to Sausolito, and walking along the street and seeing a sign… I think I mentioned that last time?

…I do this. And I met an interesting group. I knew nothing about them. They were incredibly warm and encouraging and I had something with me that Merchant Builders was doing, and out of that process I got to know Pete Walker very well. He came out many times, and he considered starting a practice out here and he decided, no he wouldn't do that. And then later I wrote to him and I said is there anyone on your staff that would like to come out for a year or something like that. And he cast around and Steve Colhourn put up his hand, and Steve came out for the year. That turned into the rest of his life.

Yeah.

Tract have done really well, and it is just fantastic to think that Tract, on the one hand, and Nexus on the other, have been so successful. It has been really lovely. Very nice to feel that you were there at the beginning and then see how other people have taken things on. Because it so often happened in my life, that I have been involved with something and people that followed have done something awful and haven't been able to make it work.

It think the difference really was, not that there had been no talented landscape architect in Australia before Tract came, cause there clearly had been, and Ellis had been one and there had been plenty of others…

They had all been one. They had also been one, and none of them had had the sort of design education that would be typical of good design education, good landscape design education, in the United States. None of them came with that broader perspective of using or thinking of landscape architecture. Not simply being the design of garden, of open space, or something like that, but large-scale landscape planning projects.

There was a lot of education that Tract needed to give to the architects, too. That was to stop architects, as a matter of course, thinking that they could do the landscape work as well as the properly trained landscape architects were.

There was a lament, a constant lament at the beginning.

Certainly, it is interesting in the United States, in many jurisdictions, if architects with plans for any projects of any size, they also are required to submit a landscape design, and then produce the landscape architect who is going to do it.

Oh yes. That wasn't Ian McHarg.

He did his work mostly on the other side of the continent, but to begin with, who is the architect from… architect… famous architect…

The thing that struck me most about going to see Sea Ranch, was to look at the first building designed by Charles Moore, sitting all on its own, without landscaping around it really of any consequence, in a reasonably bleak surrounding, and how perfectly that building worked. Absolutely perfectly. I thought to myself I couldn't have imagined it. Very striking.

Yes.

Yeah. I think it is probably not worth going to now, because there will be lots of large allotments. I think it ended up being a big subdivision…

No. He wasn't there.

I did meet [Luis] Barrigan.

When I went to Mexico on the way to Europe. I spent the most amazing week in Mexico City. Amazing on many counts. I had been specially interested in Barrigan because I had seen some of the things he had done, and my mother had just been in Mexico, and she found out where I could contact him. So, I got in touch with him and tried… I actually have found that walking in on people is unbelievably successful. It really is unbelievably successful. And I didn't actually quite walk in on him, but I certainly went to see him, at his house, and it was very - well it was a typically Spanish house, built right to the street frontage and no front garden or anything like that. A very small courtyard behind it. And in the courtyard he had the minimum planting and he had a big bowl and there was just a single drip that was dripping into it. And I went to have a look at his other landscape architectural works, and I got to know him extremely well over that week, as far as you can get to know anyone over a week. His assistant - his young assistant, we were the same age - and he was wonderful to me. He took me everywhere and introduced me to someone he said had been Barrigan’s ‘guru, master philosopher’ and met him. It was a rather strange friendship, because he spoke no English and I've got virtually no Spanish, and so that was really, really lovely.

I got to meet Barrigan. Yeah.

When I went, the other thing that struck me so very powerfully [about] his work, his public work, was so often neglected, was in bad shape. And it really reinforced the thing that I was saying to you before - that things in Australia, not being as good as they are overseas, you know. There was, right from the very first time I was writing for Robin Boyd, I was trying to disagree with the review. The assumption things are always done better somewhere else, is I think, a very enervating and unhelpful one.

What is that sorry?

He got work, but he never I think, got work that he wanted. He didn't get the work he really wanted, and I think he was very bitter about that.

No, not nearly as good.

I think one of the reasons for that though, is that he took on work he just simply shouldn't have taken on. It wasn't appropriate and made him compromise. I hear he died really quite bitter about some of those things.

I think you are absolutely right.

He was a marvellous writer.

But there is also something else, I think, that is at stake. And that is, that if you are going to do what he was doing - he was very disciplined. He would start the day by devoting, as I understand it, devoting two or three hours to writing, and then he would go into his architectural practice. You would have to ask other people but that’s what I understand he did. What he told me he did - You are really splitting the energy, aren't you, the creative energy, in a really significant way? I felt that at the Black Dolphin. Once when I was away, because of the demands on his time, he didn't perhaps stew over things enough when there was something that was a bit tricky, that needed to be dealt with. Or it was a personality thing that he needed to resolve. ‘Cause I went away and while it was being constructed and something needed to be altered, only a small thing, but I sort of felt that he had given in a bit too early. And I think it is a bit because of that sense that he really didn't have enough time to do it, or he - not that he couldn't be bothered - but the requirement for more emotional energy to solve that problem on the one hand, or, to deal with a personality, which will take time you know.

I think it is different.

I think that is the point I am making about Robin.

I wonder if you would be kind enough to tell me what the time is?

It’s interesting.

I think it is very, very interesting.

Yes, I'd love to. I enjoy it greatly. We are going to be away, so it may have to be at the end of January. Does that matter?