Evan Walker

What we’ve done, and I’ll give this to you and Judy, I put together some notes about this idea, I don’t know whether Bruce explained to you what the general thrust of it is?

Only very briefly.

Yeah ok. Because the idea, or the intention of the work, is to talk to architects from, largely from the ‘60s and ‘70s. ‘Cause I graduated in the late ‘70s, and I was fortunate enough to work for Kevin Borland, Max May, and some other interesting people. And I met guys like Bruce. I met Daryl [Jackson] quite a lot, and I hadn’t really met you in the office. But that period was really important, certainly in Victorian architecture, and probably Australian.

The times that I probably spoke to Daryl [Jackson] was when the office was in Little Bourke Street. And the office before that was in East Melbourne, was it?

Ah, there was the factory in Collingwood.

Ah, the one in Collingwood yeah. Because Max [May] was in Collingwood. Kevin [Borland] was in Collingwood.

Ah yeah, that’s where Daryl [Jackson] was. But prior to that was Hotham Street?

And the intention was that we would just have chats with people about their life in architecture, and life in general.

One of the things that drove the conversation was - we were at an Awards, an Architectural Awards night a couple of years ago, and Des and I were having a drink and saying various commentary about buildings that had won the Awards that year, and the most interesting building in our view was the enduring 25 year Award, that was won by Graeme Gunn for the Plumbers and Gasfitters building.

But what was interesting about our observation of the audience was that most of them didn’t understand it because they looked at it through today’s lens. They hadn’t understood what it meant when it was being done, and in fact, our conversation grew to the point that most of the people in the room didn’t understand the shoulders that they were standing on. And in fact Des and I feel that we don’t understand the shoulders we stand on either, but at least know we’re ‘standing on shoulders’. A lot of the people don’t even understand that they’re part of an outcome of a broader cultural movement, and some buildings shouldn’t be assessed purely on ‘do you like it or not’. It should be, what was it doing, why was it done, what was the context and culture in which it was done, that actually makes it able to now practice in the city.

You’re it.

We spoke to Graeme Gunn - but we spoke to him about the idea. But he thought we were interviewing him, so he cleared his throat, and then we said, “No we just want to have a chat”. And we do want it to be a bit of a chat, really.

One of the things that I’ve mentioned is that, in your time as a politician you were still acting as an architect, because a lot of the time you were influencing what architect got what public building.

And therefore, your influence was carried forward in that process as well.

That sounds even better than the first employee.

You’re right though, I think the comment is that building a city requires more than drawing buildings. And it requires influence and advocacy at a whole range of levels, of which the pen is almost, it’s not quite the final one - that’s the pouring of the concrete or what have you - but the pen is almost the last part of the process, not the beginning of the process, so the context is fantastic. That is what we would like to talk about.

What sort of role did the Collins Street fight play in guiding you into politics?

Still intact?

Sorry, Warrick?

Still the problem, or still the authority?

Well it worked!

Right.

Yes.

That’ll be Graeme.

So did the ‘Save Collins Street Movement’ start at your house?

And did you invent the name?

And which bank are you talking about - the one on Collins and Elizabeth or the William and Collins?

Yeah.

Yeah, now which day is it?

For the CIA who are listening to this, Graeme Gunn has just appeared.

No, this is the Labor Party headquarters?

No, it’s the Save Collins Street headquarters.

Was it called ‘Save Collins Street’?

Oh, is that where it came from?

It was just after the Vietnam war wasn’t it?

Defence movements have a certain connotation.

Were you part of it Graeme? JUDY and

No.

We’d been through the Brookes Crescent, through the Housing Commission.

In Fitzroy?

Ah yeah. But that was about 1965 or ’67.

Ah, ok. So ten years prior?

Probably.

Have you?

Yeah, ‘cause a lot of that came out of the Institute of Architects, the public service committee they had there.

Andrew, Daryl and I were on the council. Andrew McCutcheon. That’s right.

And you’d have had lawyers?

Yeah, you see. We weren’t that smart.

So the Collin Street Defence Movement was that against developers, or the State Government, or the Melbourne City Council in a sense?

In a sense, yeah. Or was it sort of building by building really?

Well I ... that’d be after I. M. Pei did Collins St, and I remember we had been on the council. It was Les Perrot who asked us to dinner at the Melbourne Club - which was a first for me.

When you say council, do you mean Institute Council or?

No, no. The ‘suburbists’. I don’t think all the councillors attended.

But like the Institute Council, or the Melbourne City Council?

Institute Council - to meet with I. M. Pei. Who was his offsider? Jeff Cobb?

A younger guy, anyway. So we met at the Melbourne Club for dinner, and I had never been to the Melbourne Club before. So it was quite a good thing to get there, but then I remember having an argument with Paine[?] about what he’d done, and what he’d pulled out, and what he had put up. I think we were more fervently religious about the thing than rational.

Hasn’t changed has it?

But then I think the fact that people were fervent must have been important as well, ‘cause I guess the developers were assuming that people didn’t really care?

Yeah, it’s true, but probably there were well entrenched people in Melbourne City Council. So if you look at some of those people then that were mayors, like Bernard Evans, and Meldrum [from Meldrum Burrows].

We’re talking architects aren’t we.

They were architects.

But that was ... the Institute was a bit like that then, wasn’t it? Because they had the four major players, the four major firms in Melbourne who really controlled the whole thing. It was just that Robin Boyd and Peter Mcintyre had come in. But other than that, it was people like Perrot Lyon Matheison, Spowers, and Yuncken Freeman, Bates Smart - Ozie [Osborne McCutcheon] had gone by then, though - Spowers were another... They were manipulating the whole practice issues throughout the ...

Yeah, we had a run at it. But then Robin Boyd was there, and so was Peter [MacIntyre]. And Peter was the activist with us on the Housing Commission then. We used to go up and see Jack Gaskin, who was the head ...

Yeah. And have all these talks, “No boys, no, no, just, you don’t understand”. All that sort of response. So that probably got us a bit agitated. And then they brought across Sharpie from Western Australia, who was an Englishman. Jack, what was his name? Harkin? But he was an educated person and had a degree of sensitivity, and he was brought in to somehow mediate everything. But it didn’t work out. He couldn’t get around Jack [Gaskin] so it ended up being this battle around this little place called Brookes Crescent. A little street. And that’s when they lost it.

So the Brookes Crescent battle was lost was it?

No, they won that.

That’s that little, tiny group of workers cottages which make a kind of street. But that, you said that was ten years before the Collins Street movement?

Yeah, Collins street was later. They were more sophisticated because they actually tabulated everything.

John Murphy’s special ....

It’s those rabid Canadians coming over here.

Park Tower?

Oh I see, well at least you met him, over there. ‘Cause they were a breed weren’t they? There was ah... who was the head of the public works department? It was, um ...

No, no, not public works. Waterworks.

They were sort of regal.

And was this, Gasket? Is that his name? Was he an architect?

No.

He was an engineer wasn’t he? I thought he was just really keen to work out how he could get precast thirty storeys.

I think he might have started on drainage.

So he almost definitely wasn’t an architect?

‘Cause I’m interested in, this is what we were hoping would happen - these conversations that just wander off. At that point were they saying that housing was a social issue, an architectural issue, or a ‘let’s just make it all go away and stack these people in boxes and we don’t have to worry about it’ engineering solution?

Oh, well it was slums, and then...

And then Perrot came back - Perrot senior - came back from overseas, and said this is the way to go.

This isn’t Les [Perrot]? This is Les’ father is it?

Ah, right ok.

It could have been Corbusier’s fault, actually.

Well that was my next question - were they saying the Corb model is the one to follow, or was it someone else?

The Radiant City.

Right. I was going to ask what you did.

I think they were very proud of their precast technology, too. And I remember them coming to speak to students. They would tell us about the diary farmer in Werribee who invented precast concrete to build a diary, and they had used that technology. And then they built this whooping big factory at Holmesglen, and the tail starts to wag the dog.

And then they had to use the factory to do all sorts of things - like public conveniences, and park fences, and precast pebble mix...

He awarded the South Melbourne building [Park Tower] one of the awards, even.

And we had a commission at the end, in it’s demise - Homesglen - to do single level housing. What are we going to do with these panels? So we, it was a concrete core bathroom kitchen and then a ring beam and panels, and ah, they were done. We did some prototypes actually.

You can see it from here.

He’s on our list.

You mean a real minister?

So were the slums really bad?

Where the Park Tower one is, or the ones in Fitzroy? Was the housing really bad in your memory?

There’d be plenty of information on it, but I’d imagine also that they were badly serviced. And...

So they would have been neglected?

They would have been neglected, yes. It must have been a wonderful place for kids.

You hear sort of the horror story of how bad they were, written as contemporary accounts from the angle of, “we need to knock them down and do something better”, so you hear that sort of one act per street type stuff. But whether or not they were actually...

The question is interesting, ‘cause then there were whole lots of those areas that weren’t pushed over - like near Park Towers - which were great houses.

Or in Richmond. These are now $800,000. [Oh how times have changed.]

One of the transition points must have been when you did City Edge, ‘cause that land was accumulated by the Housing Commission.

Was that a private commission? Or was that public work?

I think Merchant Builders won the bid, didn’t they?

They put it together.

Kevin Greenhatch had to start it with them.

Yeah. Was Kevin at Merchants, was he?

Yes.

I remember Kevin Greenhatch from when I was at Max May’s office. Kevin used to drop in every now and again.

Yeah, it was too.

And when is City Edge? Is that in the ‘70s? Mid ‘70s?

And that also won an award, didn’t it?

Yeah, it was the only thing of its kind...

It was extraordinary.

.... of reasonably high density housing, as distinct from the towers.

And what was the model for it? Architecturally where did those ideas come from?

Was that the Span?

But it was an architect though...

So it was British model, not a ..?

Well that might have been the default. Well they had a density and a DFA I suppose, so that was how you designed within ... Probably the architect might have actually...

Ah yeah, I was just...

It could well have been a unique idea.

Ah, yeah. That was kinda my question. Did it come out of a particular problem and a particular way of thinking that might have been localised?

But it’s such a unique site that it probably did generate its own resolution.

But again, David Yencken is crucial to it, ‘cause he spots the possibility? Is that what happened?

No. I think Greenhatch would have dug it up, offered it to David, cause that’s what Greenhatch was doing. He was putting things together all the time.

He’s a dealer.

But Kevin’s an architect isn’t he?

Yeah, he was an architect.

But it wasn’t originally a site clearance though. The site was accumulated by government intervention. And I can’t understand how the switch then occurred with the government accumulating it and then handing it to a private developer.

Ahh, well they do that. They still do that. They just get expressions of interest and go into bidding.

I think Tract do it now.

It’s very common.

Millton Keynes?

And Andrew started his planning practice then.

This is Andrew McCutcheon?

Yes. So he was on that team.

Urbis?

No.

As a planner though, not as an architect.

Is this the same McCutcheon?

I’d never stuck that together before

Oh, he was a great disappointment to his father.

Haha. I’d never even linked them before.

What about James Stirling and those guys then? You said you went to England?

So you would have been to Oxford [Queens student housing], and Leicester [Engineering School] and...

Oh, Grand Designs.

I make a point of not watching it, but it is fun.

Unfortunately clients don’t.

I think they lie.

“It came in at about budget” As the eyes flicker.

Yes that rights - “my man”.

Or else the architect comes in at an early stage and then they leave the architects behind. And then when it all goes pear-shaped - which we as architects can see coming after the credits roll - this is gonna end badly.

Yes.

Oh. He is, is he?

They were going to have one here weren’t they.

They have - with Peter Madison.

It’s coming up. DES directed at

A local Grand Designs show. Peter Madison is the local host.

Has it started being broadcast yet?

I think so.

It’s called Grand Designs.

We were on the Discovery Channel the other day, [turns to Evan] The discovery Channel did a show on [?].

What?

Rectangular Pitch. AMII Park.

Ahh, the bubble.

Did they ask the tricky question - like, “Why is the rectangular stadium made out of circles?”

No, no... they did ask - how much did it cost? Laughter

I think the bees made an error of judgement on that one.

Yeah, but their bums are hexagonal anyway. I always thought that the hexagon was never going to fly. If Frank Lloyd Wright couldn’t get it to work, then most of us are going to struggle. We tend to warn students off those.

Oh, Elistone. Yes.

That was actually planned by Shaw with the Heidelberg Council. It was a golf estate. And he did the subdivision.

Which Shaw, Graeme Shaw?

Graeme Shaw, yeah.

Is this the one that you refer to as, the Rosanna project?

Yes, that’s Rosanna. And then Merchant Builders picked it up and introduced to this a couple of programs. One was that - well David [Yencken] said - would I be happy working with more architects? So that’s when I selected those four/three other groups - Jackson and Walker, and McGlashan Everist, and then there was Charlie Duncan. Charlie was recalcitrant. We all set off to use similar basic elements that would be put together in different ways so they would be subsequently easy to program. But Charlie nodded his head, and then went off and did his own thing. Although I must admit, Charlies things probably sold better than any of them. We bent over backwards not to be ourselves I suppose.

Now that’s interesting.

Now that was one of the first developments with servicing runs underground - the lighting - David fought for that. They only did about a third of the estate when the couldn’t justify keeping it. It just wasn’t selling enough.

So was that a cluster project?

No.

Cluster [housing] was Winter Park.

It was cul de sac down to a park, and then there were a couple of manoeuvres made that sort of infiltrated and integrated the park better than normally would have happened. And then there was the first display area we did. There were two streets with two blocks of houses in it, and we hived off the centre of the blocks and made it a ‘ride’ - kept the titles retained to the boundary, but the ‘ride’ was common. And ah, that worked very well as a sort of public integration space. People used to eat there and have barbeques and stuff, and that went off to the park and went very well. I remember though, it stopped about two thirds up because one of the purchasers of the block of land said, when we suggested it to them, said, “That, that tree, this massive gum tree will be in the ride, and it’s my tree so I’m not doing it. So you can get stuffed”. Well we argued, and he just got redder and redder and he said there’s no way. So in the end that’s where the ride stopped.

So how come it was his tree?

Because it was on his title.

So is that project the same time as City Edge?

Oh, it could have been. Well it was the biggest project they’d done in that sense, because it didn’t have the built continuity that something like City Edge had where you just keep building. This was a planning and big landscaping program, and in fact it was all beyond Ellis Stones’ capabilities. He didn’t have anywhere near the capability to do it. So it went through, and we got Robin Edmonds over from England. He came out to run the projects.

As in Maggie Edmonds Robin Edmonds?

Yeah.

He then went on to Hassell. He died last year.

He fell down the stairs, as good architects do.

Yeah, but who was the other one that went over?

Burley Griffin fell off a scaffold in India.

Did he?

Yeah, got wounded. Died of blood poisoning a couple of days later.

Well that’s what should have happened to Ruskin too - then we wouldn’t have to read his work, ‘cause he used to do that in Venice.

Well they got it right

So that where Samarance got it from then, “And the winner is.. Syney!” Hey, it’s the tenth anniversary of that.

John Meyer fell over a balcony, and he died too.

Really? Goodness.

There was a suggestion that Carlo Scarpa backed off a scaffold too, but I’m not sure if that is true.

Well, Gaudi certainly backed into a tram.

Yeah. And they nearly killed the tram driver too, apparently. Did you hear that one? JONATHON: No. And no-one knew who he was. He died a pauper two days later at a hospital for the destitute. It wasn’t until sometime later that they realised who it was.

Ah right. I thought they’d be up in arms.

Like Louis Kahn.

What happened to Louis Kahn?

He was in the toilet at the station, and they didn’t know who he was.

No one needed him back at the office. Laughter ensues.

Well the suggestion is that Corb did the one-way swim, but I’m not sure about that. He did drown, but whether it was a suicide or not, I’m not sure. Mies - was just one too many cigars, wasn’t it?

The Merchant Builders houses out at Springvale?

Oh was that xx?

Oh, a real romantic.

It was an amazing run. Well it launched my career too, I suppose. ‘Cause it was the only one ... who was the writer of the Home Beautiful? Eric Wilson? He used to splash it around all of the time.

Jennings had it all.

I think Peter Hollingworth had the first house.

No. In Glen Waverley.

But wasn’t he a priest?

What inspired David Yencken?

Well, we, inspired each other. I hadn’t met David until I was at Robin Boyd’s, and he was doing the Black Dolphin. And the last bit was being done when I was in the office, and David came down and I just met him briefly. And then we all travelled by plane once - the [Roy] Grounds office - to Canberra, Merriumbula, and then to Canberra with Allan Nelson. He was a part of Roy’s offsider. I met David again, and then I didn’t see him for a while. And I didn’t have any work and thought I better do something positive, so I started Chinese. Harry Simons had started a course in Melbourne. And there was David - he was doing Chinese because when he sold his first motel he went to Hong Kong for five months and had a knowledge of Chinese Mandarin. So we met and we had lunch - a couple of lunches - and we talked about housing. And he said well, the fact that you couldn’t get well designed housing at a reasonable costs and not have to pay the architects fees - which were pretty onerous for a lot of people. I mean, you still can’t borrow the fees for architecture. You can borrow fees for construction, but not the fees for architecture, unless you do something clever. And so he said “When I’ve sold the Black Dolphin” - which was up for sale then - “I’ll have some money and we’ll start it”. I didn’t think it would happen but it did. Then I didn’t think it would happen because when I signed the contract for royalties - I was reasonably naive. I didn’t have a lawyer, hadn’t seen a lawyer, I don’t think I had a bank at that time... [Laughter] So I said to David, “Can I use your lawyer?”, and he said, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea” [Laughter]. But anyway, we did, and I signed the royalty agreement for five years. And of course it went for about twenty years or more. And Jonny Ridge, who was a very lovely fellow and always very fair and he on his side erred on his balance sheet. And he said “No, that’s the end of the contract. Five years. You don’t get any more royalties”.

I don’t think that’s erring... I think that’s -

He was very philosophical about it when I raised it with him.

Did you become philosophical about it too?

No, I didn’t. I’d moved on... in fact after about ten years I’d had enough of houses.

As in senator John Button?

Yeah. He was one of the Hawthorn Labour pusch. He lived over here.

“Look Here!”

With Bruce Weatherhead, they rampaged around the state, didn’t they?

Who put that book together?

No, I don’t think so.

“Look Here!”?

With the broken bottle on the cover?

Yeah, I think Daryl is in it.

Yeah. My memory says that Daryl’s name is on the cover. But I remember the broken beer bottle. I’ve still got it. Not the broken beer bottle...

When it came out, there was another book at the time too.

It was also a social book, wasn’t it?

It was about the confluence between social structures and events, and how the design of the environment could make that better, that’s what I ... that’s what my memory says it was about.

I just remember the broken beer bottle cause it seemed to be anathema to the content of it.

Well Bruce Weatherhead - he and Button got on very well. Strangely enough ‘cause Bruce doesn’t have a great social conscience. And they shared a farm together up at Woodend -he and Button - so they must have had something in their personalities that linked them. In fact Bruce, who is still, still there, but he lives in a Housing Commission house down in Dreyden or something, um -

He hasn’t done anything for years. When computers came in he ran away.

Couldn’t accept that you had to use them.

Yeah, that’s right.

That was ‘Jigsaw’, that was.

Who started that? JUDY and

Alex Stitt and Bruce.

They were partners then. They fell out when they brought the big house down here.

But Bruce said on that trip - when they did the Look Here! Trip, he and Button - it was Button’s job to find the nurses at every stop. He would ring up and... He said he was pretty good at that.

But John Button was a federal politician?

Ok, so did that give people a foray into federal work, or not necessarily? If John Button was a federal politician at that stage, did that link Victorian architects with federal or national work? Did that happen?

What’s his background? JUDY and

He was ‘Morris Blackburn’.

Yeah, He is May’s father in law

You know May Lam?

oh um... my first real girlfriend was May’s sister...

So I’ve known May for years...

See I’ve never heard John Button’s name associated in these conversations before, so this is quite new for me. Any of the other characters you speak of, I have kind of heard of, but I didn’t know John Button was in that mix at all. ‘Cause this is pre-Whitlam? JUDY and

‘Cause Button was a Whitlam minister?

Yeah. He had some great stories about Whitlam.

Bill Hayden or Bill Hartly?

And Bill Hayden as well?

Bill Hartly is a union man, have I got the right person?

Yes, he was.

I think I have read some of this stuff in [Graeme]Freudenberg’s biography. Have I got the right character? Mark Freudenberg was the speech writer?

So that’s the run that Gough didn’t win? Cause he won in ’72.

We don’t talk about those things these days. [Laughter]

Did he win more seats in ’69?

Got more of the popular vote?

That’s probably a blessing though..

But Button was interested in talking about very personalised discussions. He would be at you all the time. Talking and then...

He was obviously putting lots of stuff together.

He had lots of mannerisms in his whole body movement, that if you walked down the street he was telling you a story.“Yes John”, and if somebody in front of you stopped you’d have to [claps hands] stop! - so he’d finish the punch line. The one story that stood out to me though, was he was bitching with Gough in Cabinet, and Gough was dismissive of what he was trying to get up, “Forget about it!” Button said, “I have to keep going on this, I’ve gotta get it.” So when the Cabinet meeting finished, he said “I waited down the hall and sprang out at Gough as he came down the hall, just to get him and make this point.” And Gough just swept him aside and said “Get out of my way you fucking little cunt”. [Laughter]

Well that’s interesting. He had a propensity to do that because, do you remember the Last Laugh? EVAN and

Oh yes, tell us please.

Is this the Last Laugh meeting?

Well, John was under the table that night.

So was he at the Last Laugh? The famous ‘carafe pitching’ Last Laugh?

He was there. He was at the head table.

Was she there?

Really?

Was he able to speak?

A missile.

It was a very bad throw, actually.

It was probably empty, too.

I don’t know whether John was the chairman, or if Andrew was supposed to be the chairman. You started it all, because we had that office opening at Shellier Street up here in Richmond, our new office. And we had a number of architects then, and it was the first time that there had been that sort of grouping of ...

I knew that. I’ve been to Shellier Street a few times. I wasn’t at the Last Laugh.

No this was the opening. We had the bankers one evening, and then the architects another evening. And then you said after that - ‘cause everyone got on very well - “why don’t we work on the others in architecture”. Like Noel Logan the geographer, and people like that, and possibly Button was there, “why don’t we get together and start to work something out, a strategy for dealing with Melbourne”.

It was going to be a new way of approaching Melbourne’s development. And it was about ideas, and so we had a big list. And I think Corrigan, Norman Day and myself drew up the list. But you said, let’s do it, and ... ahh, even the AR were there. So they were there in the cloisters, in the Gods. They were a bit shocked.

Was that Rory Spence, or someone else?

Oh, I forget who it was. But it fell about in the so called debate. That’s when it started. Corrigan’s actual physical expression of the angst that developed was another thing. But the debate got off the rails between Bernie Joyce and Kevin Borland and Corrigan, probably. So there was a group talking about, and this was the objective, to talk about the broader issues and what we might do, and how you might develop strategies. And I think it was Bernie and Kevin got going on the basis of design, and good design was the only thing that mattered. By that ... at that age we’d all seen the social issues as perhaps more than the design issues. It was very heavily influenced by this lot, talking about social matters. So we were vulnerable in that sense, and I think that is where it really got off the rails.

Oh, that’s it - the morbid little lepricorn....

Is Corrigan left wing leaning or is he a right wing guy.

Oh. I don’t know if he is either...

I hadn’t thought of it before, and just when you were putting Kevin and Bernie Joyce together, ‘cause Kevin was probably still a card holding member of the Communist Party by then, and Bernie Joyce I imagine was probably pretty leftish... or certainly on the ratbag fringe? And Corrigan, I don’t know.

But who was Corrigan throwing it at?

Bernie.

Ohh. He was throwing it at Bernie Joyce.

So did Bernie. Bernie had the names.

Well, I’m pretty sure I was working for Max at the time, Max May, and I had, I must have just ... when was it ’78 or something?

Ah, yep.

‘Bout then, ‘cause in ’77 I worked for Kevin. I was in my year out for Kevin and then I remember I was at Max’s office. And Max came in - I must have been at work the day after, I still remember really vividly - Max coming in and saying about this thing at the Last Laugh, and he was really annoyed that this incredible opportunity had just being pissed up against the wall by Corrigan throwing a carafe at someone, and the whole thing dissolving. I just remember Max saying it was an embarrassingly wasted opportunity for us as architects to have a real...

Well, it was as if there was a big pile of rats there, and a big pile of food, and instead of eating the food they ate themselves. It was mortifying. I remember David Yencken rang me two days later saying, “You’ve got to get it going again before it goes off the boil. The idea is great”. And I said, “No, I’m not doing that again”.

Well that’s what struck me, cause Max was hardly ever animated about collective operations. He’s a bit of a loner, anyway. But I still remember it so vividly, him coming in and going, “We had this amazing opportunity with all these people basically on the same side, with lots of different interests, and then it just fell apart in a drunken mix up”. And he was so annoyed.

Well, I think that was what Max was also thinking, because he said the profession just looked ...

When I went to RMIT. That’s right.

And when was that?

That’s ’72.

Ok .... It must have been time Graeme

Hmm?

‘It’s time’.

How do you mean? JONATHAN and

That was Gough’s slogan in ’72.

Oh was it? Oh well it wasn’t long before he was out. And I interviewed all the staff and got through that, ‘cause they knew nothing about education, or the system, or the process of what monies they had anyway. So I thought I better start at the basics. At the grassroots level, and it occurred to me then that the only way to get this group, which I didn’t have a lot of time. To all go away together and have some key people - and Evan was one of them - to come down. Were you on the council then?

You were on the council, yeah.

So we had a facilitator, and we had Barry McNeil who was the guru in education. Barry was a great devotee of all of the good thinking at the time. So he was very helpful. And we went to this place which is about one hundred and fifty years old.

Whereabouts?

Inverloch. It’s no longer there which is - probably just dissipated into a pile of dust. In fact I worked on it about three years ago with a developer, so there’s nothing there. It was the Inverloch motel. And we couldn’t pay so it was the cheapest thing we could find. But that was what got RMIT going - that little coffin.

Yeah, ‘cause there was, they were all entrenched, as you know, in their own pockets. And it seemed a good way to re-energize it. Get them to forget what they were doing and somehow get together. An example was Ron Centum. Ron was a guy who had lectured us when we were students back in the ‘50s early to mid 50s. And Ron was on the perch by this time. And they used to go - the orientation week was when the teachers would go away. Peter Wilson, Ron and another couple of them and they’d say, “Alright, here’s the camp”. They’d all go up to the pub, and, ah they’d been doing this for years. But this particular year two students objected to this and came to see me and said, “We are fling a complaint”. And I said to Peter Wilson, “you know this is a problem. Um, I am going to have to report Ron Centum”. And he said “You can’t do that”, he went off, and he came back and, “I had to take a pill” he said, “this is very upsetting”. I could see that. I didn’t know what to do in the end so I decided that I would get Ron in and talk to him and just go over it. I said “This isn’t good” and he stuttered and that sort of thing. “We’ve been doing this .... and it’s not bad it’s... and you can’t do anything anyway”. And I said, “Well, what I would advise you to do is get hold of the students and meet them and talk to them about it”. And he did. He got them out to his place, and his wife was a beautiful woman I think, and they all had a talk, and he came back and he said they said it’s all fixed. They all understood where they were at and then at this conference there was Ron with his arm up going “Go, go, we’re going for the students”. He was very revolutionary.

Are you an RMIT graduate?

And is Daryl[Jackson]?

No, you got a diploma. But you do the three year full-time, and the three years part-time.

And Patrick [McCaughey] would’ve not been there then, would he?

Well things haven’t changed.

Brutal honesty.

Nothing like that participants, if you’re on the receiving end.

So you got the prize money for that?

But yours was invested for six months before you got it?

Did you say the Picton Hopkins Prize? Are they the plaster people? So they handed out one of the architecture prizes?

Well you were a year ahead of me. I was a year later.

Yes. We were, what do you call them, mature aged students. We were 22 when we started.

Yeah, Bill was a more refined expert than I.

Well he was a carpenter.

Yeah, well, my father was a builder and I spent six years, but I mostly drove the truck. I didn’t like carpentry.

You didn’t like?

Nup.

It was my father. The whole family are builders going back to, ugh, 1850.

Mmm, well I was 22, so.

And I had to matriculate there at RMIT. They had a prelim year in those days, where you did nine subjects, and then to continue.

Bit of an introduction, isn’t it!

Yeah, we used to do many more than the students do now.

I remember we had to do chemistry, physics, as well and maths 2B. B was the calculus, which I never did and never have done. And with chemistry that year I decided after a while I wasn’t going to be able to get there with that either. And just on the night of the exam, by that time we were into the ... we’d been pill popping, not for recreation purposes, for work purposes to keep awake. Bentadine. Truck drivers used it anyway. So I decided to strategize this exam - went through the old papers, decided there was about 30% that had a good chance of coming up again and stayed up all night and went over that 30%. And that was my first take, and I got 50% for that.

It could have meant you got 46%...

I was just going to go there...

They heaved me over the line, ‘we don’t want him back here, get him outta here’. [Laughter]

That’s cool. Well we have probably annoyed you enough for one day Evan.

Oh, it’s fantastic.

Is that coming off well?

And that works?

Oh, yeah. Recognises your voice?

That’s exactly the intention of these ones.

Is there a good afternoon?

Well, if you’d like. ‘Cause I’d like to have another conversation. What we have done is we’ve scribbled up some notes, and you know you can have a look through them. And that’s the list of people that we would like to talk to. There are some questions here that we thought we might run past people, so you and Evan might want to look through them, and then if you want to have another chat with us ...

No. Well Daryl has already been done.

What we thought we would talk about is the people that haven’t been so published, or at the forefront of self-promotion.

If people have done books and...

You know what I mean?

Oh yeah.

He emptied the carafe before it got thrown.

So we thought we would focus more on people like Bill Ryan, for example.

Well he is on our list.

I am sure that every time we speak to someone there will be more names that come forward. So look, we have put some questions down.

Ah, yeah.

What tech component?

No, that’s not a filter of ours.

It’s interesting ‘cause when I went there, I just came down without any plan. And I just rolled up at RMIT and said I wanted to do Architecture and saw Harry. All we had then was the Taylor[?] book, which was a little book they put out for university subject entrants. That’s all I ever had, so I got this. Knew I couldn’t get into Melbourne University. I didn’t have any money anyway, so went to see him. There was Harry sitting behind this column in his office. And me sort of doing this, and said, “I want to do part-time architecture”. And he said “You can’t”, and I said “Well I need to ‘cause I don’t - I need to get a job and work during the day”. And he said, “No. You can’t do it”. And I found out later you could do it.

And I said that stuffs that, and I walked around the city for about two hours. And I went back in the afternoon and it wasn’t him then, it was Max Freeland, and I said “I’ve decided to do full-time”, and he said “Good. Good luck”. So that was Harry. If it wasn’t for Harry I’d probably still be walking those streets.

I must go. We should do it again. Goodbyes ensue.

So if you have a look through the questions and what we’ve said, and if you’d like to do it again we might roll into some of those.

Ah yes, that’s right. I had heard about that. Lygon Street?

There was some interesting graffiti in that period too. [Indescribable line about “Pullen”.] [Laughter]

That’s a very distinct memory you’ve got there.

A car named desire, or a street named desire was another one, too.

Well that’s why Graeme is on our list, but that’s also why we had the initial conversation with Graeme to see if he thought it was a cool idea. Ah, and then he was interested to come and talk with Evan and a few of the others. And the whole idea, as you’ve spotted, is that’s it’s actually supposed to be a conversation - the history and it’s value.

And again it’s interesting that the last ... ‘cause I think Evan brought up the Last Laugh issue. And that came up talking to Graeme, and now I’ve found out that it involves more and more.

John Button and others. Extraordinary.

Well, he would have had plenty of raw material.

It’s a history of the Last Laugh night. We’ll need a re-enactment.

And this is why it’s a conversation, ‘cause it goes like this.

It’s as much to do with the matrix as it is with any one of the threads.

So we can say that that was Evan and Judy Walker?

And Graeme Gunn, Des Smith, Bruce Allen, and Jonathan Gardiner on the 15th of September 2010, which is the Battle of Britain date for those that remember.

And the tenth anniversary of the start of the Sydney Olympics.

And how many sleeping nights until the Delhi games?