Of ceilings and Sylphs

I have been very remiss. Every day while I resided at The Nunnery I looked out the window and saw the elegant and stately Royal Exhibition building, built in 1881 for the first great international exhibition to reach Melbourne. Every day my eyes were blessed waking to see the vision of gold cresting the dome atop the Classically cruciform building, yet another example of extravagant Victorian architecture that built this city of dreams. Every day I told myself I would see inside it, soon. This is how remiss I have been. My stay in Melbourne is in its ninth week and as some will already know, the novel is finished though the book is still being written and I am preparing to come home. The chapter that created the novel is complete but the adventure continues as life always seems to find new ways to delight and inspire me even at this hour.

So it is late in the piece that I finally find the time for the feast I promised myself so early on, the Royal Exhibition Building. Melbourne was still finding its feet in the early 1880s. By this stage there was plenty of gold wealth funding projects to improve its standing in the world. Money bought artists, musicians, gardeners, architects, those who added beauty and culture. And money also sponsored events such as the two international exhibitions that launched Melbourne into the world of great cities. The Royal Exhibition of 1881 showcased everything new and great from around the world and you saw it here first folks, in Carlton.

When it was built the Exhibition hall was the tallest and grandest building in Melbourne.. From the balcony at the top of the dome the world could be surveyed in every direction, una bella vista. The highest point of the gilded dome stands 64m high above the city. The neighbouring Melbourne Museum was designed more than a century later to mirror the shape and literally reflect the original building in its exterior bringing the two together in a harmony of old and new. It is a striking effect. I do not care much for the look of museum building myself but when I see facets of the other reflected in its frontage, I appreciate it more.

Over the years the Royal Exhibition hall has served the city and people in many ways. A second exhibition took place in its cavernous spaces in 1888 and then in 1901 it was refurbished for the opening of the Federal Parliament by the visiting Duke of Cornwall and York. One of the state landaus transported over from England for the occasion can be seen on the tour of the building. During an early twentieth century conservative refurbishment artworks were covered up with the usual lack of care when bygone beauty is deemed old fashioned. A prime example of this are the Sylphs. These very Victorian paintings were eight panels of classical female characters depicting night and day, truth, justice and the four seasons. They are reputed to bear the faces of eight ethnic races and were originally nude but Edwardian modesty required gauzy coverings to be painted in.

During the 1918 flu epidemic brought back by returning service men and women, the hall was sadly put to use to quarantine the sick. A convenient underground passage removed the dead to the morgue in nearby St Vincent's Hospital. Some twenty years later in WWII it was again commandeered this time as a base for the RAAF. The doors of the hall are so expansive that they could drive small airplanes right inside to work on. The building has also been often hired for private use with one of the most notable occasions in 1930 when philanthropist Sidney Myer hosted a huge Christmas dinner for those struck by the Depression. Incidentally Sidney also donated the Music Bowl outdoor venue in the King's Domain to the city in the 1950s. Later in that same decade in 1956 the Royal Exhibition Hall was again host to a huge civic event. That was another year when Melbourne burst on to the world stage hosting the Olympic Games. The fencing, wrestling and basketball events were held in the hall. I'm imagining looking up whilst lying on a mat in a half Nelson head lock and seeing the Teutonic Romantic ceiling towering above me. How incongruous, my neck feels stiff just thinking about it!

The interior of the building was surprisingly Germanic given the Classical exterior. Returning to the antique, the forecourt houses Colonial Square, a tumbled display of Arcadian ruins much like those in the park at the top of Ponsonby Road. These are the remains of the Colonial Mutual Life Building preserved now as works of art and archaeology.