Our heritage is about our future as well as our past. It is an on-going story that tells us how we have shaped our landscapes, our cities and towns - a story that tells the world who we are.
Some of our most precious heritage is in private hands and it needs our support to ensure a viable future.
The Historic Houses Association of Australia Ltd. (HHA) is a registered charity and volunteer organisation that supports owners and promotes public interest in historic houses and properties throughout Australia.
HHA Members enjoy special access to an ever-increasing number of HHA network properties. They also have the opportunity to attend events and tours, engage with historians and heritage architects, and to meet private owners where they can discover the rich history of these properties and their collections.
Join us and help preserve our unique built heritage for future generations to enjoy.
We seek to shape the future of the built heritage of Australia by acting as a ‘collective voice’ for owners, to ensure their concerns are heard and that their properties are valued for the contributions they make to our society’s ‘sense of place’.
In April 2018 we held our inaugural conference 'Home Heaven Hell' which was sold out with 250 people attending from around Australia.
Seeking Out Walter Liberty Vernon: Monuments of Art and a Distinctly Australian Architecture
Thursday 3 December 2020, 12.30pm - 2.00pm
Free For Members
Join an expert panel in conversation on the architectural philosophy, design approaches and progressive ideas of Walter Liberty Vernon (NSW Government Architect, 1890-1911). His built legacy includes the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Mitchell Library (part of the State Library), Central railway station and Newcastle Court House along with private commissions and monuments in nearly every town across NSW.
The panel includes Dr James Broadbent, well known historian, conservationist and author; Dr Noni Boyd architectural historian and heritage specialist whose PhD thesis traces how Vernon created a more informal public architecture, 'an architecture for the people'. Discussion is open to the audience and led by Matt Devine, a registered architect with a passion for architecture, design, community, and history. We’re joined by Charles Pickett, lead curator on the exhibition Imagine A City: 200 Years of Public Architecture in NSW.
Storyteller: Paradise Lost, Paradise Found - Times Before Sydney Olympic Park
Sunday 6 December 2020, 10.00am - 1.00pm
Read Sydney Olympic Park and think Olympics? That’s only the beginning! There is so much more to be revealed in this much-transformed site and this tour is your chance to wander across areas by foot and eras by imagination.
Storyteller Jo Henwood will share tales of the Blaxlands and the Wentworths, and the colonising farmers before them who, from 1788, claimed the tidal wetlands of the Wangal. We will be looking at a site that was often a place for things people didn’t want to see - the industrial workplaces of brickpit and abattoir, storage for explosives in the Armory and the infirm in the Hospital - as well as the Olympics structures that were built to be seen on a grand scale.
Stay Tour : The Forgotten Valley of the Hawkesbury
Explore Wisemans Ferry and St Albans – the river communities of inns and pioneer homes. There are many fascinating sites on the itinerary providing bespoke experiences especially for the HHA. Hear from private owners and local historians as they take us on exclusive tours of historic properties and landscapes and tell the story of this remarkable hidden valley.
Highlights include Price Morris Cottage (1835 wattle and daub timber cottage), the Industrious Settler (former inn with 1820s slab cottage, outbuildings & Walters family settler graves); the delightful Settler’s Arms Inn (1840s two storey stone Georgian Inn) and St Joseph’s Church (restored 1839 sandstone Gothic Catholic church & cemetery and winner of the NSW National Trust 2013 Best Heritage Restoration Award). We will also have time on this two-day tour to visit Cobham Hall, the original home of Solomon Wiseman and other significant historic bridges, churches, houses and graveyards along the way.
