by Verity Firth, President, 2019
I feel very privileged to have been the President of The Glebe Society in its 50th anniversary year. The week-long community festival in late June was a wonderful example of the capacity of the Glebe Society to organise, mobilise and throw a good party.
The launch of the Glebe Community Festival was held in the Tramsheds on 23 June. The hall was packed with Glebe Society members, local residents, representatives of community organisations and local government agencies, founding members of the Society and local politicians. All of the Councillors from the City of Sydney Council, bar one, attended the launch, alongside our Federal Member Tanya Plibersek, State Member Jamie Parker and Lord Mayor Clover Moore.
The Glebe Society’s Management Committee wanted to use this milestone anniversary as an opportunity to capture the legacy of the great work done by the Society over the past 50 years. We wanted to celebrate the history of community activism in Glebe and garner momentum for the building of a future vision for our area. I am confident that we succeeded in this mission.
Over 2,500 people attended the Festival’s exhibition and 1,100 people attended a series of events throughout the week. Events included panels and talks; audio-visual displays; photographic exhibitions; a local school competition; walking tours of the suburb; and the exhibition in the community room at the Tramsheds. This exhibition consisted of 11 different displays covering all areas of the Glebe Society’s activism and the history of our suburb.
The Festival also saw the launch of two new publications – the beautiful The Villas of Glebe & Forest Lodge pre-1870, documenting early villas of the Glebe Forest Lodge area, lovingly compiled by Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw and Lyn Collingwood. The second publication was launched by John Faulkner and documents the life story of Glebe identity, Sadie King – From Glasgow to Glebe – Sadie King’s story by Glebe Society member Janice Challinor.
All of the displays in the exhibition were fantastic, but there are two that I would like to highlight. The first was the display dedicated to Glebe’s Indigenous heritage and that examined the pre-settlement history of Glebe. The display identified the remaining physical evidence of the Wangal people of the Eora nation – including middens that can be seen today around Blackwattle Bay and Johnstons Creek near Annandale.
Alongside the Gadigal people, the Wangal people were the first to experience the brutal effects of British colonisation, and they were decimated in the first few decades after invasion. Those who did not die were forced from this land and evidence of their culture and connection to the local area was destroyed by the new settlers.
However, in the 19th century Glebe became the home of other Aboriginal people moving to Sydney from the west and north to work in the shipyards and timberyards along Blackwattle Bay. Many Indigenous workers lived on the foreshores near where they worked, until they too were forcibly evicted by the government of the day.
Glebe then played a significant role in the Aboriginal Civil Rights movement, with the Freedom Ride of the late 1960s ending at Charles Perkins’ house in Catherine St Glebe. Tranby Aboriginal College in Glebe is a meeting place for senior community members and has been the scene of key issues in the history of Indigenous activism, including meetings which led to the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody and the move towards land rights legislation in the 1980s.
But Glebe isn’t just the home of Indigenous political movements – Glebe has hosted the birth of significant cultural and sporting icons – the Bangarra Dance Company started in St James’ Church Hall, and the famous boxer Dave Sands trained in a Glebe gym.
Glebe today has many Aboriginal residents and a strong tradition of community-wide NAIDOC events. The Yabun Festival is held on Glebe’s doorstep at Victoria Park every January on Invasion Day, and is well attended and supported by Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents of Glebe.
The ‘Glebe Society in Action: 1969-2019’ display was a fabulous record of the Glebe Society’s 50 years of activism and the timeline that formed the main part of the display was available for members at the 2019 AGM.
The timeline summarises the Glebe Society’s major actions since its inception. The 1960s saw the start of organised resident action in the inner city. The Balmain Association was formed in 1965 and the Annandale Association in 1969. At this same time Glebe was threatened by two major proposals which would destroy the distinctive Victorian character of the suburb by demolition of terrace houses to make way for three-storey flats; cut the suburb into three to make way for expressways; and destroy Lyndhurst, a fine Regency villa.
The Glebe Society was formed in March 1969 to fight these proposals. Our Society, led by the eminent art historian from the University of Sydney, Professor of Fine Arts Professor Bernard Smith (1916-2012) and his talented wife, a teacher, Kate (Challis) Smith (1915-1989), successfully opposed these threats.
Since its inauguration, the Glebe Society has achieved significant successes by lobbying, conducting local campaigns and collaborating with council and other bodies.
In the early 1970s the Society prepared a Master Plan for the area which resulted in the National Trust’s listing of Glebe with the Heritage Council of NSW in 1974 as a Conservation Area . Also in the 1970s the NSW government abandoned its proposal for expressways and the Glebe Estate was preserved and refurbished as public housing.
The Glebe Society was active in the development of the concept of a light rail link through Glebe utilising a former railway goods line. We lobbied for the gradual acquisition of major waterfront parks – Bicentennial Park and Blackwattle Bay Park. We succeeded in gaining the extension of the foreshore walk and cycleway from the northern end of Glebe Point Rd to Bridge Rd near the Blackwattle Bay campus of the Sydney Secondary College. We fought for a Glebe Point Rd revitalisation project and the Council’s restorations of Bellevue and the restoration and interpretation of the Walter Burley Griffin incinerator on Blackwattle Bay. Society members are active on social justice issues for our community, running a kitchen pack program for women leaving Elsie Women’s Refuge and men re-establishing their lives after prison, providing other support for women’s refuges in our area and supporting Centipede, the Before and After School Program at Glebe Public School.
The Festival was a massive volunteer effort. Special thanks must be paid to the 50th Anniversary Steering Committee consisting of Judy Vergison, Dorothy Davis and Virginia Simpson-Young. They were supported by a larger working group consisting of Janice Challinor, Lyn Collingwood, Jane Gatwood, Jude Paul, Allan Hogan, Ted and Alison McKeown, Lyn Milton, Robert Hannan, Neil Macindoe, Asa Wahlquist, Peter Crawshaw, Jan Macindoe, Janet Wahlquist and Sarah Fogg.
In addition to these key people were dozens of community volunteers who can’t be thanked separately but who know who they are.
On top of the work of the Festival, The Glebe Society has continued to do its ‘business as usual’ activities throughout the year. Our subcommittees (Bays and Foreshores; Blue Wrens; Communications; Community; Environment; Heritage; Transport and Traffic, and Planning;) have been working hard, meeting with stakeholders, creating plans of action and preparing detailed submissions for Council in relevant areas. The Society has continued to represent the opinions of its members to Council and other government authorities and we have been updating members with our monthly Bulletin, thanks to the hard work of our editor, Virginia Simpson-Young.
The plans for next year are big. The Society wants to campaign around the new Sydney Fish Market proposal, ensuring that there is no further alienation of public land. We are also keen to help revitalise Glebe Point Rd and support local businesses and to contribute to the Council’s strategic planning process for its 2050 vision. Alongside our work around public amenity, we are committed to continuing our social justice focus, helping out with community projects and supporting Glebe Public School.
I have enjoyed my time as President of The Glebe Society enormously. Working alongside passionate, committed and community-driven people has been an inspiring experience. I am blown away by the professionalism and quality of the work of the Society and aim to be a very committed (ordinary) member from now on.
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