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In Living Memory is a collector’s item.

The launch of this three volume history was a long-awaited milestone in the ongoing history of Gundaroo, a small town just north of Canberra, Australia’s capital city. Using painstakingly collected oral histories and around 500 historic photographs, Marion Meischke has created an absorbing document of daily life in both village and valley throughout the middle years of the last century.

Volume 1: The Valley – focuses on the farming community and the social settings of the time.
Volume 2: Cork Street – presents a picture of the main street with the shops, services and characters that inhabited them.
Volume 3: The Village – explores the side streets of residences, churches, the school and beyond. Presented in a handsome slip case, this remarkable publication weaves 470 pages of memories into a fascinating, collectable memento of a time gone by in Gundaroo.

As the designer I was submerged in this production for months.. up to my eyeballs in extraordinary images and ovewhelmed by the rigour of the research process and the taking of oral histories. I was deeply moved by the way the books capture the the essence of the land, the life and times of Australians in the bush almost a century ago. Its pages stay with me as I watch our country groan under climate change, the advent of industrial-scale farming and the loss of community as a result. The emotions I feel flow through in songs such as Wild Places, Waiting on the Weather and Circle of Wonder.

Marion Meischke has kindly allowed me to add this collection to the shop; I do hope that you might consider collecting a copy for yourselves.