Home in the Glen

"Former restaurant and residence in Horsham 'Glen Logan' on the market

If you head along Dooen Road in Horsham, there's an imposing two storey red-roofed homestead that will probably catch your eye.

That's Glen Logan, a historic house which has been a major landmark in the city's east for almost one hundred years.

It has connections to several prominent Wimmera families (the Boltons, Langlands and Cranages) and has recently been put on the market.

The agent in charge of the sale, Gerry Smith, told ABC presenter Rebekah Lowe about the history of Glen Logan."

Article and audio from ABC Wimmera Radio.  Audio here

Photos from HRE Horsham Real Estate

Have seen some beautiful wedding photographs taken at Glen Logan back when the front facade of the building was covered in Boston ivy. 

Have been to functions, even presented functions there - Glen Logan is an institution in Horsham, and hopefully it will get a buyer with plans to continue the tradition.

Saving TV

Article copied from ABC Wimmera's Facebook, (if you follow the link to the ABC's website you can also view the 2 short videos and reminisce)-

Treasure trove of historical Mildura footage saved in WIN TV building clear-out

A historian has saved approximately 80 per cent of the historical footage stored at Mildura's original local TV bureau from being thrown out in a clean-out of the building. Archival news footage taken of the town in the 1960s and '70s, documenting important local events such as flooding of the Murray River, has been salvaged from the former WIN TV building.

WIN TV Swan Hill

The other 20 per cent of the historical footage has been donated to other historians.

Local history enthusiast and founder of Frames of History Ian MacWilliams says he received a call from the station's staff manager Steven Menegaldo to rescue the documentation.

The establishment was occupied by Sunraysia Television 9 (STV8) in 1965, then was used by WIN News from 2006 before the station was forced to close in a statewide restructure in 2015.

"The footage goes all the way back to the STV8 days, when of course back at the start that was shot on 16-millimetre film, and eventually became tape all sorts of different type formats," Mr MacWilliams said.

"The original materials are news film, and then later on, there was news film and commercial film, which used to make the ads so all of that material has been stored at WIN TV, since it was on TV.

"That material has over time become available to me. I got hold of the 16 millimetre footage and last year in 2022 I've been able to get access to the remaining footage, which is mostly tape, all sorts of different tape."

Oftentimes, Mr MacWilliams said, videographers at STV8 and WIN News were responsible for capturing the only footage of Mildura events.

"It was then the only source of local news because the stations weren't networked," he said.

"Everything was created for local TV. It was for local consumption so when something happened in history, a news item happened in town, STV8 was sent out and they filmed it.

"Pretty much every event that we've got as a news story would never be seen again if it hadn't been rescued because it's really the only footage if it hadn't been shot by a private person, that was the only coverage of the event."

Part of a bigger picture

The Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) is working with partner institution Ballarat Television 6 (BTV-6) to save their archive under a similar circumstance.

Head of collections and preservation at ACMI Melbourne Nick Richardson said regional material was a critically important part of the national screen museum's collection.

"Congratulations to [Mr MacWilliams] for going and salvaging the footage," Mr Richardson said.

"We've been instrumental in taking quite a bit of that [Ballarat's] original footage from the past six years and attempting and beginning to preserve that.

"What's really important is that there's so much content out there that no single institution can hope to preserve so having a network of organisations and interested individuals who can share that burden, I think is really important.

"And there's an opportunity for us all to share our information around technology and how best to preserve that."

Mr Richardson said the regions were under represented in ACMI's national collection.

"Our earliest item goes back to the 1890s but certainly the majority of that Australian-based footage tends to focus on the bigger centres," he said.

"So, the regional material is incredibly important. It gives us an insight into the social and economic history of those regions and I think it's a really fascinating way for emerging current and emerging generations to connect with the past and with their area.

"It's often been said that we can understand the personal look towards the future without fully understanding our past so the material is incredibly important to the country."

You learn from the past

Historian Pam Cupper grew up in Mildura and said she was delighted to hear about Mr MacWilliams' rescue project.

"I'd actually heard over the years that the material from the STV8 and WIN studios had been lost, or some of it had been lost anyway, so when I heard I was so delighted that a lot of the material seems to have been kept and hopefully now it's going to be maintained, which is such a great historical record," Ms Cupper said.

Ms Cupper said she was hopeful to see footage of inter-school debates in the 1960s recovered.

"And the [coverage of the] floods on the Murray River are really big at the moment and the marching girls were a phenomena in the late 1960s, early 1970s and I have become more interested in it from a historical point of view," she said.

"I don't have great kind of particular things that I want to want to see but I would like to see my old home as it was 50 years ago.

"It's important if you grew up there or you didn't grow up there. I'm a historian so I have a view that we can learn from the past."

By Tamara Clark ABC Mildura-Swan Hill

Hope the BTV-6 film is also saved, digitised and made available. (One of the old station identifier commercials has great video of the Wimmera's mobile library travelling to Laharum, would love to see that again).

Lizzie's dreads

The ABC have posted an old Landline segment on 'Big Lizzie'.

 
Big Lizzie was built by Frank Bottrill, in Richmond, in 1915, with a 60hp Blackstone water-cooled crude oil engine and fitted with Bottrill's Dreadnought wheel, patented in 1906. Lizzie worked in the Mallee clearing fruit blocks, and traveled down through the Wimmera to Glendinning near Balmoral in 1924.
There she ended her days on a share-farm, pieces sold off and forgotten.
Then in the 1970s came the task of finding the fate of the huge chunk of machinery, and returning it to the Mallee and to Red Cliffs.

The Northern Border

The start of the Black-Allan Line, in the Alps (image ABC)

The Number One border cairn (image ABC)

In a previous post, we looked at the history of the ‘Disputed Territory’ the strip of land along the Victorian-South Australian border (see the “Border clash” post)

One would think that such a dispute would be enough for Victoria, but in fact the state would later be arguing with New South Wales along the Black-Allan line – the straight line on the map between Cape Howe on the coast and the headwaters of the Murray River.

How surveyors Alexander Black and Alexander Charles Allan were set the task, and between 1870 and 1872 battled the mountainous terrain to delineate a border between the two states, has been told by ABC Radio National

Black's calculations for the border (image PROV)

Alexander Black (image PROV)

'In the wilderness of the Australian Alps the border between NSW and Victoria isn't marked out by a fence, a road, or the Murray River. It’s simply bush. And, deep inside that bush, unless you know about the Black-Allan Line, and where to find its 150 year old border cairns, it's difficult to know what state you are in. This line, the straight section of the current border between NSW and Victoria, is named after the original surveyors Alexander Black and Alexander Allan, who in 1872, mapped their way to the coast.
The line runs from the source of the Murray River to Cape Howe, on the east coast of Australia. It is still considered to be a triumph of surveying. As the result of extended legal disputes, this border was not formally ratified until 2006.
If you can find Alexander Black's number one border cairn at the start of the line, you will see it has been lovingly restored.'
Listen to the ABC podcast, and watch the short ABC video.
   
So thanks to both the ABC, and Public Record Office Victoria for access to original maps, letters and notebooks from the 1870 surveying parties.

And if you are a Geocacher there is a cache (“Black-Allan Line”) near the monument to the Black-Allan line on the highway near Genoa.

ABC Dooen

This video is from the ABC Western Victoria's Facebook page:
"In honour of our 80th Birthday today we thought we'd share this video that was created for the #Dooen transmitter's 75th birthday"
To add a little more history to the story 

The original transmitting station building for 3WV at Dooen, was erected in 1936. It began broadcasting in February 1937. During World War II a 24-hour V.D.C. guard were posted at the site. 
The original building was demolished and replaced by the current building in 1988-89.

Some little known facts:

• the soil conductivity in different directions from the transmitter showed widely different values (this influenced the selection of the station site)

• the 201metre high radiator (a guyed structure surmounted by a horizontal armature, the base of the mast stood on a group of tubular insulators) was installed in 1937. Dooen was the first station in Victoria to operate with an armature radiator

• the transmitter upgraded in February 1937, the Standard Telephones & Cables 10 kW transmitter consisted of 2 separate units (the oscillator-modulator, and the linear power amplifier) constructed of a metal framework faced with polished slate panels. 
• In the 50s a 50 kW transmitter was installed unusually the station generated its own power on site for the 10kW transmitter. In the 30s it had a large low speed heavy engine set plant.

The Art Deco style building with portecochere (an entrance or gateway to a building large enough to permit a coach/vehicle to be driven through) was built on a 20 hectare site, it housed the transmitters, an office, lunch and change rooms, store room and workshop. Modern technology has enabled transmitters to be housed in small metal frame buildings with unattended facilities.

All this techo data comes from John Ross' "Radio broadcasting technology" book.

Caretaker George Koschmann & technician Ray Leskie outside the building in 1988

(Photo from "Road Board to restructure")