Heritage Forum: “Old Gum Tree – a contentious heritage”
Dr Susan Marsden is our guest speaker at the next Heritage Forum.
When: 5pm, Friday 21st November 2025
Where: Drill Hall, Torrens Training Depot, Victoria Drive, Adelaide. Car parking available.
Cost: $5 entry fee. If you pay $10 you also are entitled to a drink. Please bring cash for payment.
RSVP: to David Hanna via Email: david.hanna@sa.gov.au or phone 8429 8469 by Monday 17th November 2025.
About the talk: ‘Old Gum Tree – a contentious heritage’, is based on the final chapter of Dr Susan Marsden’s latest book, ‘Mr Hill’s history painting: unpacking the histories in Charles Hill’s The Proclamation of South Australia 1836’.
Colonial artist Charles Hill took 20 years to produce a massive history painting of this title, that includes, at centre, an arched old red gum that was (and still is) considered to be the only place-marker of the proclamation. By Hill’s time in the 1850s, the mythology of the Proclamation was fixed on the only original tree remaining, the gumtree called variously ‘Temple Bar’, ‘Declaration tree’, and now simply ‘The Old Gum Tree’. The distinctive arched old gum tree, central to Hill’s painting and to British colonial commemoration, was already significant in Kaurna mythology. The tree has been venerated as the centrepiece of SA’s annual proclamation day ceremony held since the 1850s. Not without controversy, even amongst those who were there in 1836 – as the state heritage citation makes clear.
Dr Marsden will tell this story and open up a discussion about such memorials and their heritage protection.
You can read more in Dr Marsden’s book, now at the publisher (Wakefield Press), that will hopefully be available in 2026.
Dr Susan Marsden is a professional historian who has worked on international, national and regional projects. She has been SA State Historian, National Conservation Manager for the Australian Council of National Trusts, and president of the Oral History Association (SA), Professional Historians Association (SA), and the History Council of SA. She is co-founder and director of the Marsden Szwarcbord Foundation, a registered charity which supports historical literature (see posts on facebook). She’s authored or co–authored over 40 histories as well as heritage studies, including Australia’s first heritage thematic framework (for SA), and an international guide to twentieth-century heritage (Getty; both online). Her awards include the SA Minister’s Heritage Heroes Award 2012; and Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) 2022. Contact: smarsden@bigpond.net.au