Advertisement
MEETBetween carpark and homestead.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Lanyon’s homestead is a restored 1850s homestead with sketchable thick-walled convict-era outbuildings. It’s known for the rambling gardens that surround the homestead buildings and giant trees that bear bunya bunya nuts.
Behind the homestead you’ll find views to the blue hills beyond the adjacent
Murrumbidgee River.
OUR HOSTS
Our hosts are ACT Historic Places. To help their planning, please complete a free registration:
Sketchmeet Humanitix registration:
https://events.humanitix.com/sketchmeet-urban-sketchers-at-lanyon-homestead
IMPORTANT TO KNOW
One of our hosts’ team members will be there to welcome everyone.
To prevent overcrowding, some spaces will have limits for sketchers, along with a few housekeeping notes from the venues team:
Sketchmeet artists are welcome to wander and make themselves comfortable in the gardens, café area, marquee, machinery shed lawn, paddocks, and outbuildings. Participants can bring their own chairs, and the hosts can provide some garden chairs if needed too.
INSIDE THE HOMESTEAD
The hosts will have hourly public house tours running.
The 11am–12pm slot is specifically for our USK Sketchmeet participants. Between 10–15 sketchers using dry media are welcome to sketch inside during this time, and the hosts’ venue service team will help us with spaces we’d like to sketch.
There are no chairs available inside – sketchers inside the homestead could use cushions on the floor (that the hosts can provide) or just stand.
The hosts say it will be lovely to have some artists sketch inside the house if this set up works for us.
Artists may also set up on the homestead verandah.
Chairs, easels, and tripods cannot be set up on the verandah to safeguard the old flooring, but the hosts can provide mats for anyone who’d like to sit and sketch there.
Watercolour and oil painting cannot be used in the enclosed area but dry media is welcome inside the homestead, in outdoor buildings, and under the verandah.
THE BUILDINGS
Lanyon’s outbuildings were once a showpiece in the region.
Find coffee and food at Lanyon Café, or picnic in the stunning gardens.
ALSO: at Lanyon, we hope to see international urban sketcher Denis, who is visiting us from Paris.
HISTORY
Lanyon is on a landscape sculpted over thousands of years by Indigenous fire-
stick farming.
Squatters grazed the area before James Wright and John Lanyon bought it from the NSW Government in 1834.
At that time the journey from Sydney took several weeks by bullock wagon over rough tracks.
The estate was isolated and needed to be self-sufficient.
James Wright’s brother and neighbour William was killed in a shooting accident
soon after settling the land, and John Lanyon returned to England leaving James to manage the property alone.
Wright honoured his friend by naming the property Lanyon.
The men had chosen an excellent location which lay on the limits of the settled areas.
This meant they could use the land across the Murrumbidgee River, as well as their own land, to graze their stock while water was supplied by the river.
Convicts were assigned to work on the property in return for rations, clothing and simple wooden huts.
Maintaining discipline could be difficult.
Convicts were confined to their huts or sent to the magistrate at Queanbeyan to
be flogged for misdemeanours such as bogging oxen drays or losing sheep.
With the help of the convict workforce, James established a home farm to provide food, built a small house and huts for the convicts, and a kitchen and barn, both of which still stand today.
James managed a self-supporting community of up to 60 people at Lanyon, although he suffered ongoing financial problems.
Following droughts, economic downturns and floods, in 1848 Wright’s creditors foreclosed and he moved to a property across the river.
OPEN HOURS
Lanyon will be open from 10 am to 4pm.
Coffee: Homestead Café at Lanyon – open 10am-3.15pm (does not take
bookings)
KIT
Bring normal sketching kit – and a folding stool. If sketching inside the homestead, please just use pencils and a pad.
After sketching, we’ll meet at 12 noon outside the Homestead for our sketch
throw-down.
After that, you can join members of the public – and events
connected with Canberra’s Upstageing Festival.
PARKING
Follow the signs to a carpark at the end of the drive – outside the homestead gardens.
PHOTO CREDIT
Sheba_Also 43,000 photos, CC BY-SA 2.0
<https:>, via Wikimedia Commons
SPECIAL THANK YOU TO
Our hosts, ACT Historic Places (and Canberra Museum and Gallery).
HISTORY
https://www.historicplaces.com.au/lanyon-homestead</https:>
Advertisement
Event Venue
Lanyon Historic Homestead, Tharwa Dr,Canberra,ACT,Australia
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
