Topophilia: a Cistercian monastry in Australia's land of fire

On a portion of sacred Aboriginal land, formerly the resting place of Coranderrk Station, lies Tarrawarra Abbey, Australia’s solitary Cistercian monastery. Established in 1954, Tarrawarra Abbey represented an opportunity for a community to emerge that encouraged the interaction and collaboration between European and Aboriginal peoples. Instead, the historical discourse and relationship between Tarrawarra’s monks and Victoria’s Aboriginal people reflects a broader narrative of Australia’s past. Aboriginal histories, their perceptions of the natural world, strategies for managing and caring for the land as well as dispossession are treated as marginal and often invisible elements within a European history, architecture and life. Additionally, with the eradication of Aboriginal people from their position as protectors and guardians of their environment, combined with a changing climate, areas of Victoria’s landscape are now under serious threat as fire-storms continue to plague its most valuable forests.  On February 7, 2009, the most destructive fire-storm in Australia’s history ripped through Victoria. With no Aboriginal influence on the landscape to control fuel, ‘Black Saturday’ as it became known, executed centuries old mountain ash trees, forcing them into a compromised state, a landscape trap. Consequently, the surviving stands of mountain ash and vulnerable stands of recent re-growth need protecting.  This thesis addresses how site and sensory-based Aboriginal perspectives on the relationship between people, architecture and landscape can drive the manifestation of a ‘new’ and reinterpreted Cistercian monastery. Through this process the monastery will become an architectural scar. As a scar, the reinterpreted monastery and its community of monks and Aborignals will not only contribute to the protection of Kinglake National Park’s injured mountain ash forest and heritage stone water structures, but also assist in the mending of a torn relationship between two cultures.