Country Culture Community – AIA Conference
Nipaluna (Hobart), 2024

The solidifying of a feminist, atheist, post-colonial, sustainable mindset.

This was a three day event held in Nipaluna, with predominantly Indigenous speakers and designers. There were over twenty speakers and we experienced Country, Bruny Island through the guidance of First People custodians.

Some notable speakers:
+ Shaneen Fantin, People Oriented Design (POD) and Uncle Peter (Bumi) Hyde (gimuy walubara yidinji)
+ Dr Michael Mossman (kuku yalanji)
+ Poppy Taylor + Mat Hinds, Taylor + Hinds Architects with Rebecca Digney (palawa), The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania – Truth Telling at  Wybalenna – about the massacres and the abuse by the Christian Missionaries at Flinders Island – Wybalenna
+ Marni Reti (palawa and ngāti wai) (Kaunitz Yeung Architecture)
+ Troy Casey (kamilaroi) (Blaklash Creative)
+ Bianca Scaife (Cooper Scaife Architects)
+ Kevin O’Brien (kuarareg and meriam)(BVN)
+ Aaron Roberts (Edition Office) and Daniel Boyd (kudjala, ghungalu, wanggeriburra, wakka wakka, gubbi gubbi, kuku yalanji, yuggera and bundjalung) (artist)
+ Simone Bliss (SBLA Studio)

Full day tour Bruny Island (lunawanna-allonah) visiting Murrayfield Station a 4,100 hectare coastal property independently controlled by the Weetapoona Aboriginal Corporation. We ate Abalone caught and cooked for us on the back of a ute, while hearing about the history of the area – what a privilege!

How to work on colonial buildings in Australia ?
I had a job offer at a very successful heritage practice in Melbourne in early 2024 that, with my own views on colonialism being Irish, both damage done to my culture but also the damage the Irish did here, the current genocide in Gaza and this trip to Nipaluna- in the end it was an easy refusal.

How can you want to preserve these buildings? Can they be preserved in an anarchist way – the old court house now an Indigenous community centre for example – but would you want to sit in a space where your people were hurt so badly – would you want to ‘reclaim’ it?

For example, visiting the Sacred Heart Convent in Abbotsford ‘reclaimed’ but still having the history told is powerful, yet incredibly painful to see how women were treated. The Christian damage in Ireland is so great, with the high numbers of Magdalene Laundries, and burial chambers of un-named babies – would a project like this work there? Is bulldozing more cathartic?

As an architect working and living on Country, I want to work with a light touch. Learning so much at the conference of the intrinsic sustainable and community focused way of being of First Nation cultures – there is so much to learn from how things were.