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The Hermitage Panoramas
Two photographs by Wesley Stacey, Australia 1941-2023
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, Wesley Stacey spent much of his life either on the road or at his permanent camp on the NSW South Coast. During these times he and partner Narelle Perroux would appear from time to time for a meal and a chat at my home in Sydney and later in Canberra. They would then head to the nearest forest to camp in their van.
During a couple of his visits to our Canberra home, we worked with Wes to upload special pages for him on our website to highlight several stages of his works plus a couple of other essays and links (see links below).
Wes was generous with gift of prints to all. This is how I acquired a few. Over the past decade I have gifted most of these prints to institutions. Three large black and white prints remain on the wall at home and cover his legacy as a photographer of historic places and buildings and his embrace of nature and wilderness.
My two panoramic images are of The Hermitage in Narbethong north east of Melbourne. This is an area noted for forest, pastoral grazing and scenic vistas of the ranges. It was originally a timber getting area but by the late 19th century it was well established as a tourist destination.
The Hermitage was built in 1894 on 32 acres at Black Spur as a home, guest house and bushland resort by famed German born photographer J.W. Lindt (1845–1926). It was operated as a guesthouse over successive owners from his death in 1926, then as a rented holiday accommodation and more recently restored as a private property. (see links below).
The Hermitage garden was reputedly laid out by German naturalist Ferdinand von Mueller then Victorian government Botanist and developed by Lindt with paths, elevated walkways and lush fern and flower native and European shrubs and tree plantings.
Lindt was seeking to create something of the environment of alpine Germany. He actively promoted tourism to the area as well as his establishment but also the idea of the restorative value of being in nature.
Lindt died in 1926 as The Hermitage was threatened but escaped destruction by bushfire The buildings and site survives to the present but not currently available to the public. My friend Catherine de Lorenzo has written a suite of articles on the site (link below).
My first visits were to a lush and moist forested site. My last about 15 years ago it was bone dry and I feared then and now for its long-term future. Especially the studio cum men’s cave based on a New Guinea hut that Lindt erected near the main house. A massive sequoia now buts against the studio.
Given his interests in old architecture and the bush, Wes Stacey was bound to visit The Hermitage. My pair of Hermitage panoramas, a format Wesley adopted in the 1980s, are inscribed to me and dated 1990. Perhaps he made earlier visits but the dwellings are not quite colonial era historic or vernacular rustic enough for his 1980 Rude Timber Buildings in Australia and the garden too developed to have qualified for the earlier 1977 Timeless Gardens Stacey’s book with Eleanor Williams.
The two photographs sit above a side desk and it has now struck me what a fascinating and possibly uniquely contrasting pair they are.
One view is majestic with powerful large straight tree trunks including one mammoth soaring upwards and a sense of a lush almost wild landscape. The image recalls the style of detailed colonial paintings for example Louis Buvelot’s 1873 Near Fernshaw (se below).
In the painting exaggeratedly tall Australian trees are seen amongst ferns and we glimpse a light filled valley with tiny tell-tale signs of pastoral development in the distance. The image speaks like its 19th century predecessors of pristine nature even though largely constructed by Lindt. Yet not intimidating it is inviting.
The other image is by contrast of the collapsing gate through which guests in the heyday of the resort were welcomed by Lindt. The trees in this view are splayed and rickety like the gate. The undergrowth is taking over and there is an air of abandonment. Here is an image of the original structure the welcoming entrance to a well choreographed domain of Australian and European landscape and lifestyle.
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Victorian Collections: Postcard, John William Lindt, "The Hermitage on the Blacks Spur" via Healesville,
Victoria, Australia: A Perfect Pleasure Resort, 1900s |
It must have been quite wonderful to be a guest at The Hermitage. I have not yet found a study of it as a resort but the many images and postcards evoke a jolly healthy escape form the city for a respectable crowd. There are many turn of the century postcards of the Hermitage by Lindt and other photographers.
As time passed the clientele probably became broader. In Lindt’s time he would have been a genial host his own life being an exemplary model of blended European and Australian life and successful acclimatisation just like the introduced plants and trees.
Wesley Stacey’s archive is held by his son. I wonder how many more revealing pairs of images like The Hermitage panoramas await discovery.
Notes: My third Wesley Stacey photograph is a night view of Rutherglen's main street.
I mention above that it has been a few years since I visited The Hermitage. Now that I live in Melbourne, this destination is on our list of places to revisit.
Links/ references:
Catherine De Lorenzo and Deborah van der Plaat: Sublimity and amenity at Lindt's Hermitage
2006 Wesley Stacey on photo-web
Victorian Heritage - Statement of Significance for The Hermitage
J. W. Lindt - entry Australian Dictionary of Biography
Gael Newton on Landscape Photographers
J.W. Lindt: Coontajandra and Sanginguble, Central Australian Aboriginals
Landscape of Virtue: The Life and Work of Photographer Wesley Stacey Ziv Cohen, Research Paper–June 2003
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| Isaac Whitehead 1880, A spring morning near Fernshaw |
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| Louis Buvelot 1873 Near Fernshaw |
Postcards of Lindt's Hermitage and nearby landscapes
more of Gael Newton's essays and articles
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