- Home
- About Susanne
- I Am Jack
- Butterflies
- The Cave
- Other Books & Writing
- Reading Notes
- The Hughenden
- Writing News
- Contact & Author Sites
- Susanne's Blog
Susanne's Published Articles
The Creative Life of The Hughenden
Although established as a penal colony, NSW and the Australian colonies attracted a new breed of men and women. People who saw the colonies as the new world, far from the restrictions and privations of the industrial mother country, England. The colonies offered a challenge to the restrictive class dominated society of England and Ireland. It offered opportunity for those who wished to work and who had the capabilities to achieve a successful future.
Barzillai Quaife, who was to become Australia's first philosopher, was one of these migrants who came to this country seeking another future. A farmer's son, he became a Dissenting minister in England, and thereby raising his class and status. He challenged the traditional class structure of the time, viewing all men as equal before God. Wanting to spread his brand of religion, to the fledgling colonies, he traveled by ship with his family to Adelaide, arriving in 1840.
Barzillai Quaife was to leave his mark on both Australia and New Zealand as one of our earliest newspaper editors, a minister, our first Professor of Divinity, an advocate of Aboriginal and Maori rights, an author and our first philosopher. The latter part of his life was spent in Woollahra where he wrote and preached while his son, Dr Frederick Harrison Quaife built the gracious Victorian Italianate home, The Hughenden.
Dr Frederick Harrison Quaife continued his father's legacy of the intellectual life. A scientific author, a founding father of the first Astronomical Society and one of the founders of the British Medical Association in the NSW colony, he brought the first x-ray to the colony and was a significant figure in the Sydney in the 1880's.
In the spirit of Barzillai Quaife, Dr Frederick Harrison Quaife and more recently, sisters Susanne and Elizabeth Gervay, who restored The Hughenden, the promotion of creativity and philosophy have a home at The Hughenden.
Susanne Gervay is an Australian author, with her novel Shadows of Olive Trees (Hodder Headlines) set in Queen Street and its environs. Authors regularly meet at The Hughenden, promoting the culture of Australian literature. There are numerous literary events including book launches and meet-the-author events. Partners in Crime, crime writers, meet for murder and mayhem over Devonshire tea.
Art also has a special place at The Hughenden. Elizabeth Gervay, an artist herself has a selection of her pastels on display in the Reading Room. However many of Australia's most respected artists have exhibited there included Wendy Sharpe the 1996 Archibald Prize winner; Peter Pinson, Australia's first war artist in peacetime's; young emerging artist Stephen James whose paintings depict Australian character and life.
The Hughenden fosters the emerging creative life with small theatrical productions in its Victorian sitting rooms, Opera nights accompanied by Sir Victor playing on the baby grand, Murder mystery nights where theatre becomes an audience experience.