The Festival began on a rainy weekend in 1974    

Folk music enthusiast, Ian Huxley, drawn to Maldon due to news of its National Trust classification, 'First Notable Town', became a regular camper at Maldon's Tarrangower reserve in the mid 1960s. During Easter 1966 Huxley was rained out and keen to dry off, he made enquiries for accommodation at a local Real Estate Agent, only to discover how cheap Maldon houses were at the time ($2,500 for a run down property; $6,000 or $8,000 for something better). Ian then put a $20 deposit on a house in Phoenix Street Maldon and bought it!

In addition to the National Trust classification Ian was enamoured with Maldon's old-world feel and felt that the recently bestowed classification guaranteed Maldon would retain its charm. In the early 1970s, impressed by the relaxed atmosphere of the Nariel Creek Folk Festival held near Corryong in north-eastern Victoria, he decided to organise a festival of his own in Maldon.

Ian Huxley instigated the first Maldon Folk Festival in 1974 from his new home in Pheonix Street Maldon. Assisting Huxley was co-organiser Peter McDonald, formerly of 'Mulga Bills Bicycle Bush Band', and a group of people whom Melbourne folk music enthusiasts used to refer to as 'The Chewton Mob.' These were people who, like Huxley, had been involved with folk music in Melbourne before moving out of 'the big smoke', as they put it at the time.

For the festival's first bush dance, Ian opted for a scratchband style event. A scratchband is made up of any musicians which happen to be at hand who then bumble their way through a lively evening of tunes to which the dancers cavort around the dance floor generally oblivious to the context of the band. If a dance caller doesn't volunteer for the job then someone is cajoled into the position. A dance caller is necessary so that the less experienced dancers know what they are supposed to do. This was the style of bush dance that prevailed throughout the formative years of the Maldon Folk Festival.

On this first occasion the dance was called by a combination of James (Jim) Buchanan and Peter McDonald. In the scratch band was Ian Huxley playing Banjo, Peter McDonald on 6 string Guitar with most of the noise coming from Chris Wendt, formerly of the 'Wild Colonial Boys', on the accordion, Helen McGechin, central to 'The 'Chewton Mob', played the 'tin whistle', and Roddy Read played the mandolin (Huxley:1997).

The festival for the first two years was held at the football oval in Maldon and in 1975 moved out to Tarrangower. On the first concert bill was Stan Gotschalk a banjo player who had recently arrived in Australia from America, Jack Collins, a reciter of bush poetry who was a blacksmith in Ballarat, Helen and Margaret Reynolds, known as 'The Reynolds Sisters', Danny Spooner, Richard Leitch, Phillip Day, Graham Dodsworth and a bluegrass band, 'The Last Gasp', which included Ian Huxley, Kevin Zobe, Jack Harvey, Peter Gruenveldt and and Ian Noyce, the latter now being a wellknown guitar manufacturer in Ballarat.

Thirty-four years later, having changed organisational teams many five times, the Maldon Folk Festival is still an annual feature of the town. Many of the festival attendees of the early days continue to attend the festival today and some participators who have enjoyed Maldon's Folk Festival over the years are now residents of Maldon. Some of these now help in voluntary roles, including positions on the Maldon Folk Festival committee.

Australia's First Notable Town 

"Maldon was dead in the 40s. You could buy up a property for a song. Forty pounds is all it took and our family bought up properties everywhere and used to give them away to our relations. There were no regulations as late as the early 60s. We built here in the early 50s and sent our plans in and the council sent them back saying there weren't any regulations. They said we could build what ever we liked. In the 20s and 30s many of the weather-boards in Maldon went to Castlemaine and more of them were going in the 40s and 50s. They used to be carted away on Jinkas, a rig of poles drawn by six to eight draught horses"

(Jim Lacey, 1997).

Maldon did have industry other than gold mining according to Coral O'Hara who is a third generation resident of Maldon, being the daughter and grand-daughter of gold miners. She remembers a boot factory where 40 people were employed and a Mr. Morris shovelling the coal at the gasworks. The town's social life, like many other country towns, centred around the churches. Tea meetings were popular and old time dances were held regularly. There was also much socialising between churches of different denomination. Coral spoke of singing in every church in Maldon, she mentioned a few of these, Church of England, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian and the Congregational Church (O'Hara:1997).

Clunes was also considered for the 'First Notable Town' honour. A scan of census details in 1966, six months after classification, before it had time to have an effect on Maldon, revealed the following information. Three males and one female in urban Maldon possessed University degrees compared with two males and no females possessing them in Clunes. Allowing for an Australian Bureau of Statistic process which masks certain details to protect individuals, this still clearly reveals that Maldon and Clunes, were relatively even. How Maldon benefitted from the classification can, in part, be seen by the following statistics.

In 1966, 17 males and 27 females had passes at leaving or matriculation level in urban Maldon to Clunes' 18 males and 14 females. Urban Maldon had 30 males and 52 females with no schooling where Clunes had an even ration of 38 males and 38 females without schooling. Urban Maldon had 15 male and 4 female employers, 49 male and 7 female self-employed, 159 male and 84 female employees and 4 male and 4 female unemployed. There were no males claiming to indulge in home duties in urban Maldon but there were 175 females looking after the odd 279 children and the 363 occupied houses and eleven occupied flats.

Clunes equalled Maldon where male employers were concerned but had three more female employers, twenty less self-employed males than urban Maldon and an equal number of self-employed females as Maldon. Clunes possessed 140 male and 69 female employees and no male and only one female unemployed, a fraction of urban Maldon's contingent of unemployed. For Clunes I could find no record anywhere in the census regarding males claiming to be engaged in home duties, a cultural statement concerning the era as much as the region perhaps, while Clunes had 125 females so engaged in a town that claimed 265 children and 463 occupied houses and ten such flats (ABS:1966)

The graphs shown above and below depict a statistical comparison between Maldon and Clunes in these respective years and indicate the degree Maldon has benefited from the classification. Unfortunately in the second graph, figures for Talbot were inextricable from the Clunes A.B.S. statistics. However this only accentuates the point in question. It also seems that 'Home Duties' has transposed into 'Unemployed' over the intervening decades. Other points of note are comparisons between 'No schooling' and 'University Degrees' over the two and one half decades (also note that the scale for the bottom graph is double that of the above).

Jim Lacey, a long term resident of Maldon tells of attending meetings where he had to fight for the acceptance of the classification and intimated that if Maldon hadn't accepted the classification then it would have gone to Clunes, Talbot or Dunolly. (Lacey:1997)

'We had a few fights on our hands over it all. I knew we had to have it. I remember a few meetings where there were arguments about the whole thing, but we stuck with it and we got it through.'

(Lacey:1997)

National Trust Classification is based on 4 levels of significance: national, state, regional and local. A 'place' means a site, area, garden, landscape, building, groups of buildings or other works including surroundings.

Once a place or object is identified by the Trust as being significant, it is included in the National Trust Register, which contains over 4,000 classified places at present and is a public document. (National Trust:1997)

A number of sources state the classification of Maldon as having taken place in February 1966. The Castlemaine Mail however, on January the 11th of 1966, issued the following statement:
'The Town of Maldon and its surrounding area has been classified as being a 'notable town'. This advice has been received by the Shire Secretary, Mr. S. R. Beach.' Mr Beach told councillors on Friday night that the classification had been given by the Victorian division of the National Trust. (Castlemaine Mail:1966a)

The classification was actually made the previous year on the 6th of December 1965 and the plaque above, on Maldon's famous 'Bank Corner' (where the Garage/Laundry now stands), is slightly misleading regarding this detail.

On Tuesday the 8th of February the Castlemaine Mail ran another article. This article covered two aspects of momentum from the classification, both of which were dominated by the surname of Lewis. The first of these made mention of a Professor Brian Lewis of 'Melbourne University' and 'The National Trust of Victoria', who attended the February meeting to explain the reasons for the recent classification given to Maldon by the Trust and the ramifications of such. (Castlemaine Mail:1966b) The second aspect was an application from a Mr. Miles Lewis (son of Brian and eventually a Doctor of architecture at the same university now renamed as the University of Melbourne) to the same meeting for financial assistance for the publication of a book on Maldon which would include illustrations and about 50,000 words (The Essential Maldon, see Bibliography).
To mention yet another 'Lewis' who features even more heavily in this 'tale of two towns' the Victorian Government commissioned the firm of Jacobs Lewis Vines, Architects, to study the town and Mr. Nigel Lewis in particular (cousin of the afore-mentioned Lewis'), an architect of this firm, to set up an architectural advisory service to assist the residents of Maldon with suggestions for restoration work, free of charge. (Blackman:1978:138)

The fall-out from the classification took several shapes. Local residents wary of restrictions and potentially nosy tourists, rejected it; commercial interests from outside Maldon moved in and erected bogus historic signage and decorations; tourists flocked to Maldon on weekends to unwittingly buy antiques that had actually been brought up from Melbourne on the Friday; and tourists began destroying the environment with litter. (Lewis:1983:138)
Tourists tend to pose a threat to the fabric of the town itself and then there is the commercialisation aspect as well as the litter. The tourists come to see the mines or historic buildings and if they don't buy anything else they will buy an ice-cream and when they have gone the ice-cream wrapper is still lying on the ground. (Moore:1997)

According to Bill Moore, the Shire Engineer of Maldon from 1973 until 1989, The National Trust regretted their decision (to classify the whole town) soon after because they now had the problem of somehow preserving all these buildings without actually having the funds to do it themselves or the legislation to support them (Moore:1997). In 1967, over a year after the classification, there was still no town planning powers in existence in Victoria to control conservation areas and they weren't included in the Town Planning Act until 1972, the final inclusion largely due to the situation in Maldon. (Lewis:1983:139)

'The older residents of Maldon, and some of them were quite elderly, just said they had lived here all their lives and if they wanted to put an aluminium verandah or whatever on their house they would, and nobody was going to stop them. We found it better to let them do some things and stand firm on others.' (Moore:1997)

The only avenue The National Trust could find to protect their classified town was through town planning regulations and so an interim development order was drawn up to prevent buildings from being altered or destroyed until the Town and Country Planning Board could produce a draught planning scheme. It wasn't until 1977 when the Maldon Conservation study was finalised by 'Jacobs Lewis Vines, Architects' in conjunction with Dr. Miles Lewis that the picture became clear enough to ease tensions between residents and official bodies. (Moore:1997)
The council were cranky at first but they came around. I told them if people were good enough to spend their money in Maldon then they were good enough to be left alone. (Lacey:1997)

In 1977 - 78 the State Ministry for Planning finally provided the first allotment of funds for restoration in Maldon and this was in the form of repayable loans. (Blackman:1978:138)
Perhaps Miles Lewis summed up the cause of the problems best when he stated that the crux was the initial absence of guidelines for applicants considering alterations or additions to their buildings. (Lewis:1983:139)
'Building plans were a bit tricky soon after the classification but eventually they were easy to get passed. There has never been any trouble with painting. We have always been able to use what ever colours we wanted' (Lacey:1997). ( I took this to mean that he had not personally experienced any conflicts regarding the use of certain colours.)

'We had all this garbage about what colours you could use. Well I can tell you the houses here in the old days weren't all these 'heritage greens' and 'maroons' or whatever, people just used what ever paints they could get. The houses were all sorts of colours' (Burchill:1997).

'. . . . because the average owner was quite unused to the idea that his choice should be restricted, and even if he accepted the need for control, he was usually grossly misinformed as to what were normal Victorian colours' (Lewis:1983:139).

Lewis goes on to explain that when a table of colours and samples were finally made available in the shire offices, tensions relaxed due to the fact that there was quite obviously still a wide range of choices to be made (Lewis:1983:139).
Included in the Maldon conservation study was the following excerpt which also made reference to a technical guide for colours in the appendices.
4.1.1
Research has indicated that very few buildings within the Historic Interest Zone have maintained their original paint work or have been repainted their original colours. . . . Painted brickwork should either be stripped chemically, if possible, or repainted to match the original brick work colour but not sand blasted. (Jacobs:1977:1-6)

To all appearances the publicity surrounding the controversial issue of restrictions, far from putting people off, only served to draw more attention to the town and bring more tourists, tourist operators and real estate investors. It also brought Ian Huxley who founded the Maldon Folk Festival.

[written and researched by Graham H Dodsworth]