Gold building saved but who will save church?

A SHORT way out of the town of Beechworth you can find the powder magazine. It was built in 1859 out of local granite to store gunpowder used in underground mining which began shortly after easy alluvial gold had been extracted.

One hundred years later, in 1959, I, my mother and five siblings arrived in Beechworth having taken six weeks to travel from England on the SS Strathaird. I am not a 10 quidder; children travelled for nothing.

My father had gone before on Qantas to take up the position as Anglican Rector. It took five days to fly from England.

Fifty years after that, last weekend, most of the siblings and most of their offspring and their offspring and even a cousin who happened to be out from England, gathered in Beechworth to mark the 50th anniversary of our arrival in Australia – to, in the words of my parents, “seek a better life for you children”.

I mention the powder magazine because it was a ruin on private land when we played cowboys, Indians and bushrangers there in the early 1960s. I remember breaking some of the slate on the roof and pushing large granite blocks from the perimeter wall.

Indeed, in 1963 or 1964 the owner of the land offered the ruin to my father for fifty pounds to extend the church. He said something like, “You’ll never get good granite blocks like that for that price. You could replace that wooden vestry with matching stone.”

The architecturally undistinguished Anglican Church was made of the same stone.

My father told him he would not take the stone, even if it were free because it would destroy a priceless piece of Australian architecture. I think the local newsagent, Roy Harvey, had told my father about the powder magazine’s design. Thick granite walls – thicker at the bottom than top – with a thin slate roof meant that any accidental gunpowder blast would go harmlessly up rather than murderously horizontal.

“Well I’ll go to the Catholics,” the owner said.

Fortunately, the Catholic priest carried more authority than my father, for the owner was notionally Catholic.

“Move one stone of that building and I’ll have you ex-communicated,” the priest said.

And thus the powder magazine was saved. It was restored in 1966 by the National Trust of Victoria.

My parents also had a hand in saving Beechworth’s splendid granite street gutters. After more than 40 years and a lot of secondhand telling, I cannot vouch entirely for the accuracy of what follows. Nonetheless, I’ll tell the story.

Every year or so when Holden put out a new model there was somewhat of a competition to be the first local to buy the new model a drive it up from the nearest car-seller in Wangaratta.

In, I think, 1964 EH Holden came out, or perhaps it was the EJ in 1963. Anyway the then Shire President, J. J. Macaulay, proudly drove his new Holden into Beechworth, some hours before some struggling Beechworth soft-drink factory employee had raised enough money on hire purchase to get his new EH Holden.

JJ parked his car outside Tanswell’s Hotel – front in 45 degrees. Alas he scrapped the underside of the shiny new chrome bumper bar on the high granite guttering. So he vowed that at the next council meeting he would move to pull up the gutters and replace them with smaller cement kerbs – just like the ones in Benalla.

My mother, a geology teacher, rallied the rate-payers to stop this assault on the heritage of Beechworth. And the gutters were saved. The add a touch of authenticity to the historic town.

In the 1960s Beechworth was an economic backwater. The tannery closed in the 1961 recession. Many shops were used only as residences. Now the town thrives. The environment has adapted to it and it to the environment. The place bustles with tourists interested in the gold years and its architecture – the powder magazine, the courthouse, old jail and old telegraph station, all done in local granite.

The main two streets are lined with shops selling highly disposable trinkets to people with high disposable incomes from Melbourne and further away.

The interest in the gold rush, the fate of the Chinese miners and the indigenous people, and the bushrangers (Ned Kelly’s committal proceedings began there) will not wane.

However, the Anglican church has neither adapted nor flourished. Indeed, the inside is almost exactly as it was 40 or 40 years ago: brass, pews, pulpit, altar and rail and so on, even the gas heaters. But nor can the church adapt because the Anglican liturgy and teaching, of their nature, are immutable. The large granite structure is far too big for the congregation. The Hull visitors trebled the congregation’s size last Sunday.

The average age of the few remaining Anglicans would be in the 70s. Nearly all worshipped there in my father’s time (1959-1977), in their primes. Last Sunday there was scarcely a breeding-age couple among the endangered species that is Anglicanism in Beechworth.

The congregation cannot support the upkeep and the rector’s stipend. What was the fairground in the large tract of church land has been sold as two housing blocks.

Like so many churches around the country it will inevitably close in the next decade or two and be put to other uses: a restaurant for tourists, perhaps.

Who knows, the National Trust might ask the church if it can buy the building for its splendid granite blocks so it might repair the powder magazine, the gutters and the other architectural gems of the gold rush.