The WA Minister for Environment and Heritage has announced the state heritage listing of a rare surviving boundary tree, still growing on the banks of the Upper Swan. The Minister said that "This tree represents one of the earliest efforts by the British settlers to mark out the area that would become Perth". The tree was identified by University of Notre Dame Australia archaeologist Dr Shane Burke and local historian Harold Loton, who nominated the place to the State Register.

"We are fortunate to have such committed professionals and locals who have gone to great lengths to uncover these important links to the early days of British settlement," the Minister said. 
"It's quite unusual for single trees to be recognised on the State register; however this tree is very rare as a place directly associated with founding members of the colony Captain James Stirling and John Septimus Roe." 

The Australian reports (31 October 2015) the closure of the Victorian vineyard that was founded 150 years ago and is famous for its underground “drives” - cellars tunnelled out by gold diggers in the 1860s. “It’s an iconic old winery,” says fifth-generation vigneron Ben Thomson, managing director of nearby winery Best’s Great Western, due to celebrate its own 150th anniversary next year. “I can’t imagine what it will be like … it’s been there my whole life, my dad’s whole life, my grandpa’s whole life.” The corporate owner, Treasury, has announced that it will consider selling the old Seppelt winery and cellars, but not the brand or vineyards.

(Source: The Australian, 31 October 2015)

Picture: Ian Munro/The West Australian

The West Australian reports (30 October 2015) that diaries written between 1856 and 1875 by Mathew Blagden Hale, the first Anglican Bishop of Perth, have been returned to Perth. The diaries, which had been inherited by Hale’s great-granddaughter were returned from Britain and entrusted to the care of Hale School, which grew out of a school Bishop Hale founded in Perth in 1858.

(Source: West Australian, 30 October 2015)

To be held on the 26-27 November 2015 at the University of Sydney, the Academy’s 46th Annual Symposium will explore new frontiers in humanities research centred on intersections between objects and timescales. Scholars from across various disciplines will investigate the ways in which the material world is used, shaped and negotiated over timescales of vastly differing depths. Expanding beyond texts and visual media, materiality also encompasses memories, objects and landscapes. Histories that draw on this broader palette offer new means of envisioning the past, including novel conceptions about ‘Deep Time’ or ‘Big History’. The Symposium will address a wide range of perspectives on time and materiality in the fields of art practice, cultural studies, philosophy, history, linguistics, heritage, and archaeology. The intersections between these varied perspectives will provide a forum for productive discussion and debate.