Teaching Heritage - Saving our Heritage

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	Focus questions

	What do Susannah Place and Kelly’s Bush reveal about the influences on life in contemporary Australia?

	How do the influences revealed by these places contribute to our understanding of: the meanings of citizenship and civic participation in Australia; the role of governments in heritage preservation; past and present values of Australians towards preserving heritage?

	What is being preserved in these places; who decided what was important and should be kept; and how is it being done?

Click the icon to view maps of these heritage sites

The green-ban period was a time when community groups mobilised to save parts of Sydney's built and natural environment. Verity Burgmann describes the background to the struggles:

[It] is the story of the destruction of Australia’s major cities in the 1960s and early 1970s, when vast amounts of money were poured into property development: giant glass and concrete buildings changed the face of our cities and valuable old buildings were razed in the process. The interests of homebuyers and architectural heritage lost out before often purely speculative construction. At one stage there were ten million square feet of office space in Sydney’s business district, while people looking for their first homes or flats could find nothing.

Against this backdrop, 42 greenbans were imposed in Sydney by 1974, holding up well over $3000 million worth of development. The Rocks area and Kelly’s Bush are places where community members acted to save Australia’s heritage from redevelopment.

Click on the icon on the left to hear Kath Lehany's views on heritage.

Built in 1844, Susannah Place – located in The Rocks – is an example of the urban consolidation that occurred in Sydney during the 1840s. An early Victorian terrace row of four individual dwellings – including a corner shop – Susannah Place survived the demolitions that followed the outbreak of the plague in 1900. Resident resistance saved the row of terraces from demolition in the early 1970s.

Susannah Place was saved from redevelopment when the Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF) enforced a green-ban on the area. Green-bans were only imposed in areas where union action received community support; the bans represented an alliance between unionists and community activists.

Click on the icon on the left to hear Tracy Ireland's views on heritage.

The Greenbans Movement began in 1971 with action to save Kelly’s Bush. Six hundred people attended a public meeting where they voiced opposition to AV Jennings building homes on native bushland on the foreshore of the Parramatta River. The action was spearheaded by a group of thirteen women – known as the ‘Battlers for Kelly’s Bush’ – and the Builders Labourers’ Federation.

On 4 September 1983, the Premier of New South Wales announced that Kelly’s Bush would be set aside for full public access on a permanent basis.

Focus questions