The Australian Homestead by Philip Cox and Wesley Stacey

The Australian Homestead

by Philip Cox and Wesley Stacey

Lansdowne Press, 1972, [First Edition], ISBN 0701804068, black and white photographs and full-page photographs throughout, large hardcover, dustjacket

Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, ex-library with stickers and stamps to endpapers, stamps to title page and publishers page, dustjacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing, bumping, chipping and creasing, small tears, discolouration (see photographs)

“Rural homesteads were once both the source and the symbols of an almost feudal authority in the Australian pastoral era.  From them emanated the direction, the power and resource that kept alive the great empires of wool and beef; and into them flowed the riches of reward – massive extensions or new buildings of vernacular or high style architecture; paintings, rich tapestries and furnishings; lavishly arranged grounds and gardens that could, in some instances, have been almost transplanted from an English country estate.
The squatter, in fact, often aligned himself and his affairs with the English rural aristocracy.  Although his first homestead may have been a bark or slab hut, and his personal labours in establishing his run arduous and dangerous, he made the transition to gentleman landholder with ease and distinction.
Often he was a man remembered today for achievement in pastoral development, in Government or in service in the national interest.  And often the homestead he built remains in family ownership, and with the vestiges of the autocratic hand of former years.
The Australian Homestead is a study of both style and function of these rural enclaves of power and prestige, of architectural influences and adaptation and, in the homesteads represented, of the personalities and achievements of the landowners who lived in them.”