By Janice Newton
In the years 1903-1907 ‘Walden Hut’, adjacent to the Olinda Creek Reserve in Swansea Road on the border of Lilydale, Mooroolbark and Mt Evelyn was a hub for naturalists and for ideas. Three young men, E Brooke Nicholls, Charles Barrett and Claude Kinane, made it their base for weekends and holidays. They wrote a series of illustrated articles about their engagement with nature and the local people there (See Tom Griffiths Hunters and Collectors). The hut was named for Henry Thoreau’s book Walden (1854) written after he lived for two years in a hut he built near Walden Pond, Massachussetts.
Barrett, Kinane and Nicholls called themselves ‘The Woodlanders’ and captured the imagination of friends, field naturalists and intellectuals who visited them at Walden Hut. These included The Argus journalist Donald Macdonald, their nature writer mentor and probably Bernard O’Dowd, a popular poet who visited to get background for a poem.
Ernest Scott also visited. A few years later he wrote two books on the early history of Australia and was invited to become the Chair of History at Melbourne University. Richard Trebilcock, a field naturalist from Geelong, visited soon after he returned from a 1903 expedition to Siberia tracking the eggs of birds that migrated to Australia. Arthur Mattingley, a bird photographer who worked with Charles Barrett, was another likely visitor. In 1906, after photographing starving egret chicks, he became a crusader for conservation with international impact on the bird feather trade.
The Woodlanders, in particular Barrett, who went on to write about 100 books, and Nicholls, who wrote two children’s books, made nature films and gave many talks and lectures, were important in the history of nature writing in Australia. The Mt Evelyn History Group is working with the Shire of Yarra Ranges in order to get some recognition by sign or replica hut of Walden Hut and its residents.
Janice Newton is a former resident of Mt Evelyn, co-author of Tracks to Trails: a History of Mt Evelyn and regular contributor to Things Past, the newsletter of the Mt Evelyn History Group.
