images of Scottish-Australian history

Tough and resourceful, the Scots were more literate and educated than most early settlers in Australia and were less likely to be convicts, so they flourished in their new land. The Scots, with their success­ful estab­lishment of economic and cultural networks, occupied signif­icant posts in the social and political life of the early colon­ies. In particular Scots were prominent among the naval and army officers who ran the NSW penal colony, and they were able to take advantage of generous land grants worked by free convict labour. It is not a coincidence, Patricia Macdonald noted, that three of the early governors hailed from Scotland.  

The exhibition brings together artworks and objects from across Aus­tralia and overseas. What I had not expected was a passion for early Aus­tralians to cast their minds to Scottish culture back At Home. When standing next to the Robert Burns statue in the middle of Bal­larat, the guide said that only Queen Victoria was memorialised more than Burns in Australia. And more than that. The poetry and writings of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns had a sub­stantial infl­uence of our most famous Australian poets eg Banjo Patterson.

Curated by Dr Alison Inglis and Patricia Tryon Macdonald, the ex­hibition has been advertised as a fresh contribution towards building Australia’s understanding of its extraordinary cultural inheritance. A collection of paintings of wildlife, Aboriginals and views of Sydney by artist and forger Thomas Watling is worth the trip to Ballarat by itself. His paintings have been sitting in the Natural History Museum in London for well over a hundred years and have never been shown in Australia. Macdonald reminded the viewers that as with so much of that wonderful early art, Watling's works all went back to England and we have very little of it here.

In particular I am grateful (as always) for compreh­ensive catalogue that includes essays by leading scholars on aspects of the Scottish presence in Australia. The closing day will be Sunday 27th July 2014.

Visitors to this Ballarat exhibition might also be interested in a Sunday-visit Villa Alba Museum in Melbourne (Kew) which was built by the Edinburgh-born William Greenlaw in c1884. The notable decorations were done by the Scottish-trained Paterson Brothers; they include an eclectic mixture of painted, stencilled and gilded decoration and feature a 40’ painted mural of Edinburgh and a dining room frieze decorated with scenes from Sir Walter Scott’s novels.