Evan Walker

He was in Sydney really.

Strong connections in Canberra. Yeah. Good. Okay. He made success out of Canberra. I rarely read stuff again, just the papers you’ve written. So that was real... yeah, you’ve got strong streams of people who are social architecture oriented. And there’s lots of them.

The pages [of ideas for the LUSTRE Project] suggest that Graeme [Gunn] brought that to the surface.

The enjoyable part of it is.

I wouldn’t call him left wing.

I wouldn’t know where to put Jim Earl. I mean he is a strong member of the Liberal Party, that’s how he functions, but there’s plenty of people in the conservative part of architecture. You sort of run out of puff with those people because you have to make it, if you’re going to be a left wing thinker, you really have to make it clear that you support...

Well Des, how do you take your tea?

You gotta remember Robert Peck.

Oh, you’re thinking of an older generation.

Yeah I did, that’s true. That’s true.

Who were right wing?

Oh right. Oh well Des, they’re not part of Evan’s generation. They’re just a little older than he is.

I turned 75 the other day.

That’s true. But they’re in their eighties now and they were, they weren’t the generation that went away, you know, and that’s, I think that’s a big divider.

Although some did go away.

Phillip Sargeant did I guess.

Yeah, he was Neil Clerehan’s second partner.

He lasted quite well with Neil, who is a difficult person.

...Enjoying being part of a group... I was surprised to see missing from your list was Denton Corker Marshall.

And that’s why Daryl’s not on it either.

I love that, “He’s been done”. What about Barry Patten?

He was such an ‘enfant terrible’ when we first got to Australia.

Now, the person I was working with... I worked for him for a year - and it was the year of the music bowl - he, and quite rightly...

No, Roy Simpson. He’s a charming man.

Reg Grouse is still alive. He was slightly older. He’s 80.

The thing about Reg was that he married his boss’ daughter, and was forced to make a decision about whether he would work for his father-in-law, or whether he would hike off on his own.

Leighton Irwin.

They were very generous to the university and the university library. They really extended the collection.

What about that guy who was the architect for Scotch College that you used to...

Scarborough. F D Scarborough.

Died very suddenly.

They were noted for their library work the generation ahead of us, two generations ahead of us.

And you could speak to Jack Gribble about it ‘cause he worked for... he came back from overseas and...

He left Mockridge Stahle Mitchell and went on his own. He was very built into...

What was the school he did? Caulfield Grammar?

He was the sort of person who keeps a client and does their work on the basis that they get along very well with the client. There’s quite a few people like that.

Interesting group of people. Just thinking of the names that would... when we first came back to Australia .. that you talked about as being ‘them’ as compared to ‘us’. And they were on the whole very conservative, and many of them hadn’t left the country. I mean they hadn’t had the experience that you and Daryl, and the others who had gone overseas because that was the thing to do. Of course, wasn’t it?

There were people ahead of us who aligned themselves with well known European, and sometimes quite a strong association with Scandinavian architects. I’m trying to think of... there’s an English architect who worked in Sweden...

Yes, that’s right. There is a strong influence on Melbourne architects from Erskine.

Yes. In Finland.

Alvar Aalto.

Kevin?

I thought he lived in stories. Kevin was a stories man.

Storyteller.

So, the people that I was thinking of, that were ahead of us, were people that went, or… you had to have money to go, too. They were people like...

Well, Phillip Sargeant was certainly a tourer.

Yeah. He went travelling with Robin Cunningham. Although Robin kept slipping back a year - it took him a goodly 10 years to complete and get registered.

Year ahead.

He is also gone.

A little older. Probably 70.... Yeah. I thought he’s a bit older. I always thought of him as a bit older.

They toured in this splendid car they brought. There was four or so of them, who had this Rolls Royce, this splendid vehicle.

A Hispano Suiza wasn’t it? Wasn’t it a Hispano Suiza? I thought it was. It was something very exotic here.

You might be getting mixed up with the lovely cars in the film Genevieve.

No, no, no. No you said Phillip Sergeant had this amazing car. I remember you telling me about it. Yeah. He toured in it. Daryl will tell you.

Yes. So you can’t talk of a whole era without that one car and the three people.

But there was a whole group of them that arrived in Europe and stayed in London. ‘Cause when we went to London from Canada on a very brief trip Evan had a British console… um, scholarship...

I represented Canada as a British Council.

You represented Canada on a number of occasions.

The Canadians are so generous. They looked a bit funny about it, but...

George Tibbitts was there and um... and Andy Begg was in London.

Well he... he actually is a very, um... he’s painting in Evan’s studio, but he is a very, acute commentator, I think, on things, and you’d find that he would have another perspective. And I think he would love to, to be...

Well that’s a huge benefit. I think it’s a, it’s a wonderful project that you’re embarking on. I was just saying to Bruce, that I don’t know whether you want to go even further because you know when you do your research project you have to constantly narrow down. But clients, some of the important clients of the era...

Yeah. Well I’ve mentioned to Evan, Max Beck. He was quite the supporter for the work that ...

What’s he driving?

And then of course, there’s the Van Trompff.

He lives in up in Dunkeld. He’s given up architecture.

Well, he’s now calling himself Van Trompff. I don’t know what his first name was. What was it Evan?

Henry Van Trompff, but he doesn’t use the Henry.

He has an interesting perspective on that era because he gave up architecture to become a farmer, and he’s a very good farmer up there. Then of course there’s Howard McCorkell up there too, if you want to go for a trip to the western district…

His dad was a builder in the Box Hill district. I remember the night I got a phone call and it was Henry Van Trompff. He wanted to come and talk to me about being an architect.

No, that was Howard wasn’t it? They came to ask you about being an architect, not Van. I think it was Howard who came to see you.

Yes, you’re right. “What should I be?” was his question.

Yeah, you’re earlier than he is, but not by much.

He had a wet cloth placed so that the warm air went down one side of it. And through the... what do they call it? Hessian. It was a very wet system.

He has built his house in Dunkeld now... and it’s the most beautiful property. Would it be worth it to keep going and see him, and also going to see what Howard designed, and he lives in his place. He lives in Hamilton. Hamilton and um… he has two places... two properties.

Horsham?

There are quite a few of that... that description, “sort of rurally brought up and raising sheep”.

Hmm. I think he’s got a farming background.

Yes, and Geelong.

They were very loyal to Geelong. And the schools they went to in Geelong - I don’t know whether it was Grammar or College. They represent,... they were quite a different group of people from the East and Gippsland, South Gippsland and so on where we are. The state divides quite clearly.

No, it’s horizontal as well. That puts...

Certainly down the middle of Melbourne you’ve got your West and your East. I mean, it doesn’t seem, people who go out West don’t tend to go East and vice versa. It’s quite interesting.

Yeah. Probably.

Yeah… I’d say you get the Wimmera and the Mallee, that certainly give rise to grain farmers.

One bite of... what’s the saying about dry seed being a much better bet than wet seed...

Yeah. One mouthful of seed north of the Ballarat Highway...

...is worth two of the same thing south of it, isn’t it? It’s to do with nutrition.

Oh, it is the other way around.

[inaudible] The North East doesn’t get a big gernsey.

Yeah, but architects becoming farmers... there’s quite a good story. These young fellas who start with a reasonable slug of set up money. Van Trompff, HenryVan Trompff Senior, had...

Didn’t he own a paint shop?

Paint shop and wallpaper and curtains. That sort of interior stuff.

Van’s big Influence was India. His timing was with Chandigarh wasn’t it, Evan?

Did he work for Corb?

Yes he did.

He was totally involved with Chandigarh, that’s for sure. Okay. Wow. He’s an interesting person to talk to because he, he doesn’t, he never adopts the accepted norm of looking at something. He’s been a rebel in, in his language anyway, all his life. Whether it is as a farmer or it’s as an architect or, or anything. I mean, he’s always the one who says, you know, he kind of goes against the general flow of things.

That would be absolutely right. Absolutely right.

He would be, he would love to talk to you about those days, I’m sure.

Well certainly somebody worked for...

Daryl did. He worked for Paul Rudolph didn’t he Evan?

Oh, the Swede that I mentioned...

He was a famous individual. Well he employed two or three Australians sequentially. The story went that he liked Australians because they were fairly cruisy.

In my experience there was an Australian sort of Yucken Freeman type, they’re gentlemen. If you follow an Australian, if there is an Australian going ahead of you, if he has a good name you get a long line of architects wanting to be introduced to you if you have others like yourself. In that sense you get quite a few travelling architects who find it easy to get a job.

We had Laszlo Moholy-Nagy from the Bauhaus come and have dinner with us one night in Toronto. That was a really interesting time. It was when you and George were going down to meet Lloyd Wright at a dinner in New York.

Oh yeah. That was supposed to be... we had ‘Four Great Makers’ it was called, a dinner at Columbia University in New York. And *George Hume and I paid our hundred bucks.

It was a lot of money those days when you were students. Who were the makers?

The four great makers, you can name them, they were Corb, Frank Lloyd Wright, Groupius...

Was Louis Kahn there?

No, and Mies Van der Rohe. It’s not a bad foursome. So we paid our money and we brought bowties and we tried our best to look the way... it was formal, and architecture students travelling don’t normally carry... we were hurtling down... George had a car. It wasn’t a very good car… Bruce knows George quite well..

We’re talking about the 60s, early 60s.

George is a chapter by himself. He is a most unusual architect.

He’d be quite happy to be an Australian. We went down the New York State throughway, off to see the world. We got to New York and came down to the Hudson River Parkway, or whatever it is, to get a sculptors view of Manhattan... these tall buildings and wonderful bridges leaping across the Hudson. It was gonna be a great night. We tried to hide George’s car though we were fairly sure that it wouldn’t get stolen. Sure enough it didn’t. But the event itself was an unmitigated disaster. The first apology came from... the four of them had apologies. They weren’t related apologies. They were just simply not willing to come to a dinner in their favor and run the risk of being the only ‘great maker’. It celebrated the appointment of the head of the architecture school of Columbia. They’d put together quite a nice second team, but us architecture students, we could be nothing but appalled.

What we did get back was an invitation to visit Philip Johnson’s house at New Cannan.

That’s right.

Yes, it started a really detailed tour of the United States. The best university work and the best houses over two and a half months.

We went on tour.

Evan,George, and his sister. *

I was anchored in Toronto so we had a home to come back to. In my case it was a university college - Whitford[?] College - which was very suitable, fairly senior students in my case doing masters degrees. We learned a few tricks that we used to get into people’s houses.

Lloyd Wright houses.

You went to the Taliesen didn’t you?

And Taliesen West. I did a course in architectural history - American Architecture 1890-1914 - and it was brilliantly presented by H. Allen Brookes who is a very well known historian who showed us the North Eastern United States - Buffalo, Chicago.

He was Evans’ teacher.

We did properly,and ended up with permission. The one missed, that was hard to get permission for was Fallingwater. They had very strict times, and we had to continue, so we missed that.

With Philip Johnson, you said you went to see him and he had wonderful nubile young men, and they’re flowing half naked. I think it was quite an experience.

It was sort of like that.

Sort of like a film set.

Philip Johnson’s house is well known, it’s the glass house. It’s the ultimate glass house second only to Mies Van de Rohe. He had this house up on this escarpment and a very deep drop to a pool at the bottom of the escarpment.

It was terraced wasn’t it?

We approached it, a very beautiful house, I should point out. It was a nice day and there were a couple of, probably architecture students using the pool, not actually swimming, just draping themselves. And we sat about overlooking the pool and the glass house, and the whole thing was quite splendid. I took George, and this was near the beginning of our tour, and my sister and her friend who were good company but not quite the young person that... girls were treated as if they didn’t appear, and they were invisible.

Yeah. And he wasn’t interested in women. I shall put it that way. Anyway he came to the house with us and looked around the house, and then he took us inside and he... what was the remark... we went into the main space... and he said to Frank - this was a story Philip Johnson told of himself - he was showing Frank Lloyd Wright around and he said, “Can I take your cape Frank”, and Lloyd Wright said “Oh, are we inside?”

What about the night that we met Jim Stirling.

Well remember, I think it was John Andrews, one of John Andrews’ parties.

Who?

Jim Stirling the English... very crude, rough.

Stirling was a messy eater.

He was messy at everything he did. Crude, but brilliant.

He wasn’t as gross as some.

No, no, it was just that he was fairly drunk when I met him.

Yes. He, he makes his presence felt. That’s jumping the Altlanic.

Sorry, just that I remembered the story when you talk about Paul Rudolph... about his story. I’m not sure when it was...

Ate his wife, including the soap.

Daryl Jackson lived for, would’ve been about 10 months, in Paul Rudolph’s apartment. It wasn’t being used so he was feeling very generous. So Kay and Daryl spent the good part of the year there in his wife’s haven. That’s an Australian tale on the great Americans. Rudolph’s a big name, certainly was then.

Whatever happened…’whatever happened to’ could give you the basis for telling stories. If you contacted people that are still alive...

I would think it was probably a goodly number of the Australians that went overseas, during the early sixties, um, would have had experiences like that because it was so fluid and so accessible. I mean, um, now, it doesn’t seem that way now. But, uh, Evan would you tell us... he also went and visited, um, when you and Daryl were traveling... was it, Aalto, in Finland? Who did you visit?

Ravel.

You, you visited a series of architects and the... and their offices were open, and they’d invite you back to their homes.

A lot of the circles around famous... the Toronto City Hall.

Ravel, he won the competition. Beat out John Andrews by an eyelash, as John tells it anyway.

John himself was pretty, one of the outstanding architects of his time. The little boy from Sydney.

The second floor of Colban Street where I was on my way to see... I was recruiting. Guelph university wanted me to recommend... we had done a plan for student housing, and I wasn’t registered at that point. I became registered not long after so I could claim to be the architect for the few bits of architecture that I was responsible for. So I was visiting a couple of architects, Ron Thom was one of them - he was on the third floor, I was climbing the stairs in this old building that was slowly being taken over by Australian architects as it happened.

In Toronto, downtown Toronto. Very rundown part of Toronto, Bruce knows it very well. Anyway, you were climbing the stairs.

We had a great thing going. Yes, I was going to see Ron Thom, a well regarded West Coast architect, whose timber houses in the West were beautiful, then he shifted to Toronto and did the Massey College, and then Trent University there. And we were doing lesser jobs functioning out of Toronto. It was all very exciting work.

We is my firm.

Evan Walker International. And George, George came to work.

There was a point at the peak of things where I was employing something like 10 architects. It got to that sort of...

But you were basically the expert in Canada at that stage on student housing cause that’s what he did his Masters thesis on. He did all that work in the U S and Canada. But you’re climbing on the stairs up because you had a job. Well, and he wanted to get an architect.

So I’m at the second level and there was a secretary sitting. It was Betty, and I can’t remember her other name.

You heard that there was an Australian architect in the building, didn’t you?

That was named, he was from Sydney and it was John Andrews. He was talking to Betty when I appeared at the second level. They said, “What do you want?”

“G’day mate. What do you want?”

I said I’m looking for somebody to talk to about a job I’m responsible for. And he sparked up - he was very much in need of a job himself - although he had done Scarborough College which put him on the front page at Time just about. And very exciting, he got talking about what he really needed.

He said, “Come in”.

“Come and have a look at what we’re doing”. And in the meantime Ron Thom who was going to get the job lost it.

Never got to the third floor.

My firm, which was me and George and possibly another... Phil Let came and joined us or was it Rob Gard[?]. Jamie Learmoth came. He got in touch with me back here.

You tried to get Daryl involved in that job too, because it was a huge job. Well Daryl came out to have a look, and he and John Andrews [sounds of strangulation!].

Guelph in Canada. Sorry, Ontario. Yeah, we just assume you know where all these places are. But that’s how Evan met John.

Canada was really roaring ahead. We had some terrific work to do there. Anyway we met on the second level and it was a delight because people were very talented and they were good architects, whether they were the boss or whether they were just students. It was the kind of office you’d give a lot to be related to because they are very exciting in the way that they put buildings together.

30, yeah. ‘Cause we were just married.

Yeah, he was older.

Andrews is two years older.

Yeah, big jobs. Yeah.

Part of Canada at the time. As Evan says it’s a boom time.

Very young.

You had a thing going yourself. [To Bruce.]

When you came, you came in 1969, four years after...

You had an MBA .

Yes. ‘Cause that was notable. I don’t know too many students, recently graduated that did what you did.

Well see. It was, that was what was happening at the time. The interesting thing about John Andrew’s office at that time - his partner was Jack Diamond... Oh, a pretty extraordinary sort of individual, who still is doing... I mean if you look him up on the website to see some of the stuff he’s doing - it’s quite amazing.

They had a huge falling out, which was very dramatic. Both of them tried to get Evan on their side. It was very difficult at the time, wasn’t it? ‘bout 60...

It wasn’t long before they were battling with me as the meat in the sandwich. I made the very good decision not to join either of them.

Jack was very much like that. Highly, highly, highly sophisticated urbane sort of person who’d married the... Jillian was the daughter of the British ambassador to something or other, and they set up...

Classy people.

Very, very beautiful cultured home and their relationships with, with people in.. of course, he strove to be the top of this sort of society of architects here in Toronto and the whole of the East coast of North America as far as I can tell, Rhode Island.

He was Jewish.

He came from South Africa. Was educated in South Africa in actual fact. Very Gifted.

He was a very talented architect.

Don’t ever mention Jack Diamond’s name in John Andrew’s company. Otherwise he’d chop you dead. I mean it still goes. Even after all these years, it still goes.

And some of his work is brilliant.

No. It was a part of the University of Toronto.

Oh, because he came second to Ravel. You see, he came to Toronto because of the competition for the town hall, which was huge, the competition was a real crossroads for architects because, um, John was a student at Harvard at that stage doing his postgraduate work there and he entered the competition and came second to Ravel. And...

He was well regarded.

Didn’t Ravel then get John to come to Toronto to work with him? It’s an interesting story. He came to Toronto anyway on the strength of that competition where he came second and whether he came to do some work with Ravel or whatever. But the city hall on the strength of that, um, the University of Toronto, they had a very enlightened, very sophisticated president then by the name of Claude Bissell, who was the president [what we would call Vice Chancellor-Evan] he was a very sophisticated person. And uh, he um, met John. John of course, was hustling for work. Yeah. Cause he’d come, he was just married, a new wife and you know, trying to establish himself and deeply, deeply in debt. And um, the University of Toronto appointed him to do Scarborough college, or he hustled for it.

How come an Australian though?

‘Cause he was there and he was talented and he came second.

Well, he got an office pretty quick, didn’t he.

He borrowed the top floor of the architecture school over that summer.

That sounds right.

But he’s a hustler too.

It’s difficult to explain but he was the master of salesmanship and flattery. He said to Bissell, “we can do it the traditional way, with a quite involved series of meetings... it takes time to design a building when the client is as involved as you would like to be”, and Bissell said, “the site is well known, go and have a look at it and give us your opinion as to how we should get the architecture done”. In something like two weeks...

He drew it up and designed it. Working furiously around the clock.

He shortcut. It was sort of OK in those days. What we were doing... my firm were becoming known as, functioning as a brief writing.

Yeah, that we became expert in and it gave rise to good… it suited John. He liked working with our stuff because, obviously we’re selling very good pre-design work and pretty strategic...

John was saying though Evan, didn’t he, that he used to just put a skin around your...

He liked my stuff.

He said, “I’ll just put the skin around what it is that you’ve worked out already, predesigned and the big”, and they used to argue about what it would be - movable furniture or immovable furniture in rooms and things at the student residences. But it was a very, um, dynamic, very dynamic relationship, that they, the two of them had. Um, and um, the student, well, the big, the big thing...

Sixteen hundred beds.

Yeah. At a Guelph university, student residences and uh, which were written up all over everywhere.

Guelph was the, it was easy to say that it was the nation’s best university. They tend to go away to university in North American situations. Quite a different situation. Nothing, nothing like our version of the English college. Toronto had a bit of that ‘cause the agricultural college, which is what Guelph was, meant building a huge number of...

They could be put together as apartments though. Groups of six with a kitchen, bathroom, living room. A house. We made a practice on the basis of my work and us recruiting George who was quite a special sort of person who could do anything I drew up in sketch design.

Yes, very new.

Yes, but it’s also ancient.

But, you brought that back to Australia too Evan. Because, I remember you and Jules Wiggley working out the predesign and all that stuff to do with... oh ,those questionnaires and things like that.

You’d get in Bruce to write it. And if you’ve done the homework...

You know what you’re gonna do.

You can consolidate being the client in one sense and being the architect or... What goes through my mind is several years of... let me start without overstating the case. We had a good practice.

Here, or in Canada?

I was really thinking about Canada.

I told that story.

That is definitely true.

The psychology of it.

We all went, we’d finished an important model in the process on the way towards the start of this big housing project.

It wasn’t Gund Hall, it was the Guelph project.

Guelph was rural in style, it was quite a big council, of farmers and academics. And John didn’t tell us what he had done. It was the same day he borrowed a cigarette from the president of the council who was a smoker. John had an awkward style. When he’d say hello he’d try and break the ice in a very Australian way. It came time to start talking and present the model, very generously made by Jim Sykes. And John pulled it... the idea was to unveil, and there was a gasp of breath around the table as the model is produced, as you pull the canvas was pulled off and then he grabbed the model, he had Jim Sykes leave a, I think did it first by accident prior to starting the meeting. In any case there came a moment when he pulled the canvas off the model and shifted it on the boardroom table which was beautiful... and a bloody great scratch appeared on it and he was all apologies and they were very generous and they felt sorry for him. I felt like saying, “tell them the truth”. But then he could make a situation work for himself like that. The cigarette thing went on for quite some time. He didn’t ever ask for another cigarette but sitting in front of his spot at the table next time for a meeting were a handful of cigarettes.

We, we’re in touch with John Regularly. Yeah. He lives in Orange, New South Wales and uh, he’s um, still, um, dreaming of the next big job. He’s, but he’s not very well. Right.

There probably is. Doorbell rings and Judy talks over the intercom.

Oh, in Belconnen. I just don’t dare.

I’ve talked to him about it quite a bit.

In why he’s, he’s um, strikes me as a person who’s... he’s never really felt that he’s been recognized or given the, um, the accolades in his own country that he had received elsewhere in the US and Canada. And, and the highlight of his life, I think it would’ve been the Canadian time. And he’s actually said, I said to him once... cause we’ve taken a whole bunch of tapes of John and he’s been down to our place... and well Evan was doing a whole series of, he’s done a whole series of tapes about that period of time with people. Yeah. He’s got one in which John describes minutely what actually happened in the build up of his practice and, and um, and the business arrangement of it all, everything. And also, um, Jerry Gladstone who’s the, you know, the artist here before he died, and a whole bunch of people. So we’ve got a whole series of tapes. And during that taping time, Evan asked him about, you know, what, what he regrets, you know, what kind of, what were his regrets. And one thing that John did say was coming back to Australia. Yes that was the biggest mistake he ever made. He should’ve stayed in Canada.

Well he came back because he... he dreamed of as a boy... his father was a spectacle maker and he grew up in very poor working class circumstances in Sydney. As a kid, he used to spend some time on Palm Beach, you know, and said to himself, one day I want to live here. And when he’d spent the - he is a natio - and during his national service, he somehow shot his leg. Um, and he had, he spent a year in hospital...

And he spent a year in, in rehabilitation. And it was just, he was heading nowhere up to that point. And, uh, and while he was there he met a whole bunch of these returned service guys and they spent a lot of time talking to this young kid.

John was about 18.

And yeah, the way John tells a story, it changed his life because he decided at that point he’s going to do something with his life. And I don’t know why, how he decided on architecture. Maybe...

It was, he showed some talent in high school.

In high school, right in drawing and things like that. So that’s no, you know, you went to Sydney Uni and everything, but always had this dream of coming back to Palm Beach. And he had the resources then, and he had these four kids and he wanted to have them to have the Australian experiences. And um, so, and Ro comes from Australia as well. So he and the family came just before they left Canada, just before we did. Early, late 68, I think, wasn’t it Evan? And he came and bought a house in Palm Beach. A huge place. They call it the pink palace. And um, Ro...

It sits where you see both sides of The Spit.

Oh, it’s just the most amazing house. And then he, he bought, he bought a boat dock, a boat.. Marina. A little, little, little place where he made his office. Fantastic, and Ro bought a little shop and she set up. She’s very talented Ro, or Rosemary. Wreggs. And she was just very early on, Australian handmade stuff. You know, it was made by local artists. She was selling there. And so we used to visit them in Sydney, and it was this incredibly plush and comfortable life. Um, but he was always restless. John has always been restless. And um, and then I guess he got the Canberra job, and he kept bringing Canadians across. He brought Jerry Gladstone across to do the great sculpture and, but um, so he was still very attached to Canada. Yeah. And he somehow didn’t actually settle into a friendship. Very competitive with people like Harry Sidler, and he and Daryl just did not hit it off. In fact, they’ve had an ongoing sort of antagonism for years. So he didn’t really... he didn’t really settle back into Australia. Australia was very conservative at that time. And he did the big terminus down in... was it Florida? And he was doing a lot of work still in the US. He’d go back and forth, but he hated flying. So it was always this dilemma. But I tell you what, the best parties we have ever, ever been to are the Andrews’ parties. I tell you what, he could throw a fabulous party. Do you Evan, do you remember? Oh, anyway that’s John, it’s got nothing to do with Melbourne.

We found him the millhouse in Alloura, next town to Guelph. He brought the millhouse and in the middle he built his squash court.

I know he had such a wonderful... he could make... he’s... his houses where he lived were some of the most beautiful, comfortable l houses I’ve ever been in. He had a capacity to his domestic architecture... I think it was even better than his monumental stuff. He knew how to put spaces together. I think he’s just... why he’s one of, in my estimation was one of the most, um, comfortable architects... you know, a lovely place to live. Yeah.

Eugowra. That was his first. Beautiful place.

Ooh...[gasping]

He had some rude words.

Oh more than that. He tried very hard to get Evan to stop it. Do you remember. ‘Cause Evan was in... he tried to, and Evan was saying, “I don’t do that sort of thing”. He was hurt as well as everything else. I mean he just couldn’t believe it because what he had there was terrific. It was, it was very small. Because I was a student during that period of time. I was at the RMIT during that time.

It was too little, the base of the building. The library was what RMIT wanted and it worked as a...

That worked really well as the student center. It was terrific. Kids really loved it. ‘Cause I remember as a student going there and we used to go there after classes and go to the cafe, and it was terrific. It was really a lovely place to be.

Oh really it was ready.

For more of the same... which he thought he would do.

No, his life in Melbourne hasn’t been a happy one.

We have different names for them, but the King William building, which was the building that had...

The Hooker building, the one with the shades.

Yeah, the cleaning ladies took to throwing rather corrosive washing fluid through the windows. They had trouble cleaning it. So they tended to throw the water on the downside through the window and wipe it off. It’s a handsome building, but had this major flaw.

On the shades, and it got corroded.

I think he’s, I think he’s, he does it because when you’re looking, when you go to where he lives it’s just, it’s clever. It’s very clever.

I haven’t seen...

Would you like another cup of coffee?

I’d stopped being Minister for Planning at that point.

So John Cain, you remember during John Cain’s era. That, um, was it Costigan who he got to do a study of whether there should be a casino in Victoria or not, and they came down definitely against [Two studies]. Yeah. And they came down against the casino because of money laundering and everything, so the casino was given the tick under Joan Kirner and that was after Evan had retired. So the casino and all of that came after Evan had retired as minister for planning. So that whole Southbank was supposed to be a pedestrian walkway right through. And of course, um, I, sorry Evan, I’ve just, because we were just discussing that this morning actually about Southbank and the dream of Southbank was to have the museum where and the, and the, um, the foundations that have already gone in - where Jeff’s Shed is - and there would be this connection between Spotswood and the science museum down there and the museum at Southbank and it would be connected by a boat. And you’d walk as far as you could down there. And so the dream of Southbank was... it was never realized because of the change of government.

Yes.

Oh, look it was a heartbreak. Heartbreak.

Well I always called it the four poster bed. There would be development of the two cultural parts - the music and concert halls and the art gallery. There were two legs, and down the Spencer Street end the museum and the world trade centre. The idea was to have people generators so you attracted people to come and move between those key points. Well that theme gave rise to connecting the four posters. We got well under way. Dick Hamer is responsible for the Concert Hall. The museum was won by Jackson - which I got rubbished for. Any job that came from the state, there was always the question for me, “how come Jackson gets a building and we don’t get a chance”.

It was a proper competition though that he won.

It was all done impeccably.

But when the election came along and we lost it all. [Mark] Birrell took over major projects. It was an unfortunate situation which didn’t... it was buggered up in a sense. Trying to get that walkway that Judy talked about really from pretty much...

It was from the bridge wasn’t it?

What’s that development?

Federation Square now.

No, not that end the other end.

But you had to battle. I remember you had to battle with um, Jamie Learmouth about, was it the Esso Building?

Oh, the Esso Building!

Because of security. They’d had a, somebody… a terrorist attack.

Their international president was kidnapped.

Suddenly there was supposed to be a walkway, right past the Esso Building and everything, and then they decided they couldn’t allow that to happen because of terrorism.

We’ve tried to get them to keep the ground floor open and they would have a kind of jungle you could walk through. But they cut that out. David Yencken and I took a meeting with the head of Esso, and had a rather willing sort of conversation where they said that they had a company policy not to put at risk their senior management, therefore there would be no public access above ground level. And we thought that was quite hostile to the open idea. You were correct - Jamie had a hand in that.

It was almost the end of a beautiful friendship actually.

We... how did it work? There was....

Victor Versito did a lot of the work, didn’t he?

He was very good but he comes from Uruguay or somewhere, and the language is almost non-understandable. And he is one of the minor heroes in getting it strategically going, how to best put a backdrop to the Southbank.

You had to acquire it didn’t you? The land?

Most of what the government did was to prepare sites for development.

But you had to acquire it. Didn’t you? Wasn’t there something?

Yes. The road which gave access to the whole southbank made a big difference. You couldn’t... it was... the road works had to be redesigned and a decent amount of car parking had to be produced but...

There’s a lot of persuasion that went on, and I mean there’s a... it was a... when you think how little disturbance... Um, there’s nobody marching in the streets. So there was no platform. Nobody, nobody sort of saying, you know, you’re not doing the right thing, or whatever. It was just quietly, um, managed. And it was all managed by the government, other members of the planning department. And they did a fantastic job. Lots and lots of people worked on it.

Yeah, precisely.

Remember there were the Gas and Fuel buildings. But Evan says he remembers it... Evan, if I’m just jumping in... because you were talking about this this morning. See as a young, um, as a young person he lived in the Y, in that flatiron building, the YMCA, which was on Southbank. And he used to walk along all that area.

And, it was a wonderful building, but he’s, he lived there for a year.

And you used to say that passed all the smells of Alan’s sweets and things. You know, you look at the city, and think this is crazy here on this side of the river is the better side of it. Really. Yeah. So that came back from a long way so that when you first... that was one of the things that needed to happen when the Cain government came in... was going to do something about that side too, otherwise it would have been a wasted opportunity. I was just going to say one more other thing, to slide across it, just because there were some other projects that never, never had the light of day that didn’t get... for instance Bayside. That was a fascinating and wonderful project that didn’t...

The way that we put together in the original?

Yeah, with the canals...

When I was the minister we pressured that to get a good result.

Yeah, that’s right. And it was the first one... Robert Peck in the end won the competition for it.

Well they bought... they bought the right to develop that piece of Port Melbourne. It was a pity in a way because the preliminary work was good, and should’ve been persevered with. There are development vultures in Melbourne who keep an eye out for big time work, big expenses.

But then there was also Docklands. Docklands works started under Evan.

That’s what I was thinking about. It’s all comes together pretty well, if you walk down there the department has established a....

They know about that Evan...

I’m not sure they do know.

But I was just thinking about the docklands areas. They had to clean all the soil and it’s kind of a big job.

Were you part of Smith Tracy Lyon?

Blacket is an architectural name.

Well that solves our...didn’t you say his name was Smith?

Definitely not Smith and Tracy, cause they beat me for a job recently, and you’d be walking home.

Peter has the most amazing estate down there. Just amazing.

I was thinking to myself the last time when we were down there... just as well it doesn’t snow. But it’s a great property. Just an amazing property. He’s remarkable.

Yeah, of course. Did you record with the clever…?

We would like a copy.