Minutes of Public Meeting held on Sunday 14 February 2010

Venue: Linnwood, Byron Road, Guildford

 

 

Welcome & Apologies

John McKenna opened the meeting at 2.12pm and welcomed all in attendance, with a special welcome back to our Guest Speaker, Heather Bentley.

 

In Attendance at today’s meeting, as per the Attendee Sheet:

Pam Richardson, Judith Moller, Angela Caire, Dorothy Thomas, Lawrie Thomas, Olive Wicks, Jan Thomas, Adriana de Haas, June de Zoete, Pamela Zopf, Noelene Brown, Christine McKenna, Michael Griggs, Margaret Moulds, Pat O’Brien, Coral Hamilton, Peter Warwick, Margaret Warn, Sue Evans, Flo McMaster, Kaye Weaver, Del Donohoe, Heather Bentley, Jim Grainda, John McKenna, Helen Olde, Dorothy Warwick, John Walz, Margaret McKenzie, Wendy Wharton

 

Apologies:

Russ & Beth Werner, Ann Ravenscroft, Stan Thomas, Irie Olde, Julie Walz

 

Confirmation of Minutes of Public Meeting held on Sunday 11 October 2009

Michael Griggs moved that the Minutes of the meeting held on Sunday 11 October 2009 were a correct record of the meeting - seconded by Pam Richardson.

 

Business Arising

There was no business arising from the minutes of the August meeting.

 

Correspondence

Helen Olde tabled the folder of Correspondence, and passed it around to members for their information.

 

President’s Report

Good afternoon everyone and welcome back to Linnwood for 2010.  Hard to believe it’s February already –

and it’s already been busy!

 

Once again, we have had some interesting donations come in:

 

•          From Clr Ezzy we have received an Olivetti manual typewriter, with 2 ribbons, a treadle Singer sewing machine, and a very interesting Sports First Aid Kit – intriguing! Makes you wonder what magic potions they put in all those little bottles!

•          Brenda Whalan has donated her Aunt Kitty Mulcahy’s nightie, 2 embroidered aprons and some lovely embroidered doilies. Aunt Kitty was a local resident and lived in Lockwood Street, Merrylands.

•          Kaye Weaver has donated 2 transistor radios, made to look like Kodacolor 400 cameras.

 

Again we would like to thank those who have donated items to us, we really appreciate it. We are often offered pieces of furniture or other large items, which we obviously can’t accept, but we have now had to make the very hard decision that we may have to also restrict the type of other donations we receive. Unfortunately, even though Linnwood is a large house, we are running out of storage space (just like home!) and we are finding it difficult to store everything. We will still accept donations, but they will have to be relatively small in size or relevant to the area. Unfortunately, January seemed to disappear all too quickly and we have still not caught up with the backlog of cataloguing (besides, it has just been TOO hot to do it).

 

It’s been quite a few months since out last public meeting so there is a bit of news to catch up on, so please bear with me as I try to go through it all.

 

I have the photo album here and have updated it with photos from the November Open House, Christmas Luncheon, some general photos of Linnwood and some photos of Mr Tripodi’s visit here in January – but more of that later.

 

Both the November Open House and Christmas Luncheon were successful days and I would like to thank all those who helped on each of the days, especially the luncheon – with special thanks to Coral, our Commander in Chief in the kitchen, she did a wonderful job of co-ordinating the food and us!

 

Before I start on the Linnwood news and updates, I would like to you to join with me in congratulating one of our committee members, Mrs Patricia O’Brien, for recently being named jointly with Mr Bob Downing, as Holroyd City Council’s Citizen of the Year, for 2010. The award was announced on Australia Day as part of the Council’s celebrations. Pat received the award for the many years of work she has done for Mays Hill Cemetery, and for researching and preserving the history of the Holroyd area. Congratulations Pat! (and there are some photos in the album as well).

 

Now, on to Linnwood.

 

You may have seen in the local papers a few weeks ago that Mr Tripodi came out to Linnwood for a visit as part of an announcement that the Friends had been successful in their application for a grant under the NSW Community Building Partnership scheme. We are to receive $89,500 in the near future to do some repairs to the house. Whilst this is great news, it has opened up a whole new can of worms for us – we now have to actually get the work done! We have held discussions with the Heritage Branch and Office of Strategic Lands, owners of the property, and they have agreed to help with some of the Project Management of the works to be done. There is lots of paperwork still to be done as you can imagine, but we do hope that by the end of the year, you will see an appreciable difference to some of the rooms and verandahs. We will be trying to arrange to have the work done between Open Days so as not to disrupt our Calendar – but it should all be worth it!

 

While we were successful with this grant application, we were unsuccessful with the Volunteers Grant from the Federal Government that we had applied for.

 

We are now also negotiating with the Heritage Branch and Office of Strategic Lands, to formalize our position here at Linnwood. We have been given a draft Memorandum of Understanding to go through and take back next week for further discussion. We have also taken the document to a solicitor, who has agreed to act on our behalf, and will take his suggestions and our own queries to the next meeting.

 

The relocation of the power supply to the site was to have started last week, but still hasn’t happened – maybe because of the weather. They will be digging a trench inside the northern boundary and then coming across the property to service Linnwood, the Dormitory Building and Faulds House. McCredie Cottage will be serviced separately, which leads us to believe that further subdivision of the property is being considered.

 

As there is another Minister now handling the Heritage/Planning portfolio, since Ms Keneally’s appointment as Premier, everything seems to have come to a halt regarding the future of the property, until the new Minister has been briefed. We will be writing to him ourselves in the very near future.

 

We also recently had a meeting with Mr Jason Clare, the Federal Member for this area, to keep him up to date with what is happening with the site. Mr Clare is a very great supporter of CLAN, the support organization for children who were brought up in ‘care’, so knows of this property and its significance to the Lynwood Hall girls and also to those children who lived at Faulds House and McCredie Cottage.

 

As mentioned at the last meeting, Linnwood will be 120 years old next year and we are now in the early stages of forming a Planning Committee to decide on what form the birthday party should take. We hope to have representatives from the Council and the Heritage Office on this committee as well.

We have just about organized our Calendar of Events for this year – just waiting for a couple of groups to reply and then it should be just about set. Don’t forget to take a copy with you today – but we will update it regularly as exhibitors are confirmed. March and May will be great for model train enthusiasts, with an HO gauge layout on display in March and an ‘N’ gauge display in May.

 

Well, I think that just about wraps it up for the moment – unless you have any questions?

 

Please stay and enjoy Heather’s talk and then have a cuppa and a chat and we hope to see you all back here on the 14^th March for our first Open Day for the year.

 

Thank you.

 

Treasurer’s Report

John McKenna then presented the Treasurer’s Report for the months of October 2009 to January 2010. 

 

             Total Income                                   $3,358.00

             Expenditure                                      $2,812.78

 

             Profit for the 4 months                   $   545.22

 

Major income - November Open Day, raffles, tours etc, members’ Christmas luncheon. 

Expenditure - members’ Christmas luncheon, subscriptions and memberships to Royal Australian Historical Society and History Council of NSW, purchase of bookcases and display boards, and Linnwood calendars.

 

             Current total Cash in Hand         $26,719.30

             Current Liabilities                         $     584.00

 

There was a large amount of expenditure early in 2009 due to repairs to the back room floor, however there is no major expenditure planned for the rest of this financial year.

 

General Business

There was no general business raised.

 

Guest Speaker

Heather commenced her talk by saying that not one person on Captain Cook’s voyages died of scurvy.  She then went on to talk about Magellan circumnavigating the world - looking for spices (his coat of arms displays 12 cloves, 3 nutmegs and 2 cinnamon).  Not many people know that Magellan was actually killed in a local war in the Philippines.  In fact his captain sailed the “Vittoria” home - full of cloves.  When they got back in 1522, of the five ships that went out on that voyage, only one returned.  Of the 280 men, only 31 survived.  The others died of starvation and scurvy.  As they rounded the Cape, they started to eat the sawdust and leather fittings on the ship. 

 

On an average voyage, with about 160 men on board, a ship’s captain would expect to lose 100.

 

Vasco de Garma is credited with opening the sea routes to India, however the Phoenicians and Romans actually did that thousands of years ago.  They were all looking for spices.  Over time, many of the voyages undertaken by the Royal Navy, the Royal Merchant Navy and the East India companies, were also looking for salt, sugar, slaves for the plantations, and silk - and these all changed the world.

 

Cromwell’s records show that ships rations during the 17^th Century had to be limited to what people liked at home - meat, bread and beer:

 

Salt meat - though it does go off eventually, especially travelling through warm weather.  Two pounds of meat a day, 1½ pounds of fish a day.  The men were always thirsty, and there is no nutritional value in salt meat at all, except for protein.

 

Bread - was a type of biscuit, twice baked.  Sometimes stored for up to 50 years(!) before they made it onto the ships.  The biscuits were soaked (but weevils still got in), salt meat and a dash of vinegar were added, and then it was mixed into a pottage.

 

Beer - Still went off even in cooler climates, so needed to be replaced with rum.  By this time sugar plantations were being set up and the bi-product, molasses, was distilled in order to make rum (“a hot, hellish and terrible liquor”) - 96% alcohol. 

 

Water was kept in a cask called a “scuttle butt” (modern version is the water cooler).

 

Scurvy - the ancient Romans already understood scurvy and knew they had to eat citrus, fresh fruit and vegetables.  Also that freshly killed meat is a source of Vitamin C.  Europeans understood scurvy and knew that you had to eat anything green, even grass. 

  

Scurvy was a terrible disease, and many of the people who died of scurvy on sea voyages were cabin boys - some as young as 10 years old.  Symptoms were debilitation, receding gums, yellow and purple patches appearing all over the body, indentations in the skin due to circulation problems, constipation, terrible pain, the body smelt awful, teeth started falling out, open wounds didn’t heal - and then you died!  Scurvy was the greatest killer - over 1million people.  To put it into perspective, at that time London had a population of 200,000.

 

Why didn’t the British have these foods available?  Probably because citrus was very rare at this time, it couldn’t be stored very well, and the Royal Navy perhaps just didn’t care - they had a criminal disregard for human life.

 

In 1795 lime juice became available in Britain - which is why British people were often called “Limeys”.

 

Captain Cook used sauerkraut on his voyages - he used reverse psychology on his crew, i.e. officers only to eat it, therefore the sailors wanted it too.  Wherever possible, Captain Cook made sure he visited ports where he could take on fruit and vegetables.

 

A breakthrough in the cure for scurvy occurred in 1753.  James Lind, RN, conducted the first experiments using a control group and recording data.  Six groups of 2 men suffering from scurvy were used.  The group which received lemon juice were cured within six days.  Ironically, he actually set up these experiments to disprove that lemon juice was the cure.

 

Buccaneers were the unofficial inhabitants of the Caribbean - “Brethren of the Coast” - mostly misfits, pirates, criminals, disaffected sugar plantation owners.  There were lots of animal foods on the islands of the West Indies, which they could also kill and make into moccasins, jerkins and other clothing.

 

Next Meeting

The next Public Meeting of The Friends of Linnwood will be held on Sunday 11 April 2010 at 2.00pm.  Guest speaker will be Mr Greg Brace from the Antique Bottle & Ceramic Collectables Club, and his topic will be “Eclectic Collecting”.

 

Raffle

The raffle was drawn by Heather Bentley and won by Del Donohoe.

 

Meeting Closed