Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the weekend past I had the great privilege of being able to launch the beginning of Ten Days on the Island in Tasmania in a project called Trust, which essentially was a partnership between Ten Days on the Island, the Tasmanian School of Art, the University of Tasmania and the National Trust of Australia, Tasmania. This project highlights a number of prominent homes in Tasmania: Oak Lodge in Richmond, Clarendon in Evandale, Home Hill in Devonport, Runnymede in Hobart and Penghana in Queenstown. If anyone has the opportunity to visit Queenstown, an extraordinary mining town on the west coast, you will find perched up on a hill the home called Penghana—which is an Aboriginal term meaning ‘where two rivers meet’. Robert Sticht, a mine manager specialising in smelting, came from the United States and lopped the top off a hill in Queenstown—he literally took the top off the hill—to put a house there which is Penghana today. He had a reign of 25 years as the mine manager at Queenstown. He used to survey the mine and the town from his hilltop fortress of Penghana.

On Saturday, I travelled to Queenstown with my wife to launch an exhibition by Martin Walch, a very fine artist from Hobart who specialises in digital art. Martin was able to make a digital presentation of a 30-kilometre radius from Penghana of the streets and major houses in Queenstown and beyond. I would invite everybody to go to visit Penghana and also to look at the digital art exhibition along with some other magnificent photography by Martin Walch.

On Sunday, I went to the home of the former Prime Minister Joe Lyons and his wife, Dame Enid Lyons. That home is called Home Hill and is in Devonport. It is quite a remarkable home, because it is completely original, furnished almost as a personal museum by Dame Enid Lyons herself to perpetuate the memory of Joe Lyons, our former Prime Minister from 1932 to 1939. The career of Joe Lyons is coming to fore more and more because of research into the history of his political contribution. I think that is a fine thing. He was Prime Minister at an extraordinary time in Australia’s history. He literally died in the job; he died from overwork. He dedicated his life to politics.

Dame Enid was quite an extraordinary woman too. Their early romance, by the way, is an extraordinary story on its own. In between being Joe’s wife and looking after their home, she managed to have 12 children, 11 of whom survived. She had 12 children in 17 years, looked after those children and supported Joe Lyons, who was a former Premier of Tasmania as well as our former Prime Minister. She then went on to become the first woman to be a member of the House of Representatives and the first female to be a cabinet member in the Commonwealth parliament. She was an extraordinary woman. She once said, famously, ‘The foundation of a nation’s greatness is in the homes of its people.’ She shared those values not just through her own life to influence those around her but also in the political sphere; she shared home values and perpetuated them at the national level. I had the great privilege of attending the launches at Home Hill and Penghana, and I would thoroughly recommend that, if you visit my beautiful patch of the woods, you visit those homes. (Time expired)