The modernist RSL club, the Art Deco cinema, the stilted Queenslander or the elaborate Edwardian. The iconography of Australia’s regional towns is familiar to many of us, whether we live, work & play in these places, or just journey through. A distinctive Australian architecture has developed, less glamourous or coherent than the grand public buildings in the capital cities, but no less classic or important to our sense of identity. The images in this book are a snapshot of the Australian town, from Warrnambool to Broome, captured by the National Library of Australia’s photographers in the 1990s. Each building is a reflection of the local climate, history, landscape & people and yet there are commonalities. When we make a pitstop at a town on our summer pilgrimage to the coast or to visit relatives, recognise the surf lifesaving club, the public pool, a milkbar because we know the architectural language. These are our towers & spires. An Australian town might contain more or fewer Victorian, Edwardian, Federation, Colonial, Italianate, Modernist, Contemporary & Art Deco buildings. Its suburbs might have been built in a gold rush fervour in the 1850s or have sprawled in the 1960s or big blocks and old homes replaced with blocks of flats in the 1980s. But the design mishmash that so upset Robin Boyd in the 1960s today can move us and make us feel at home. Here is the Great Australian Beauty of our towns, in all its nostalgic, iconic, recognisable glory.
