“Here was a four-square little cottage, well away from the main road and railway, 20 hilly acres, some in forest and some in grass, a landscape almost idyllic as that of Brittany or southern England. With its intimate fern-gullies, grassed hillsides and patches of forest, it was country to love and explore, developing a local patriotism, bringing up children to know its history and become attached to its soil.”

– Nettie Palmer, on Rose Charman’s Cottage

Rose Charman’s Cottage in Emerald, built in 1908, became a melting pot for prominent writers, thinkers and political activists from the early twentieth century. The cottage’s tranquil setting allowed these great minds to extend themselves creatively and intellectually, inspiring deep contemplation against the tense social and political backdrop of the First World War. It was here that writer and political activist Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883–1969) developed ideas that would inform her most influential works.  

The cottage hosted many other great minds, such as Louis Esson, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Frank Wilmot and Henry Tate. This was a formative time and place, not only for these visionaries as individuals, but in the development of radical ideas that made their way into Australian politics and society.

Though it was located at the base of the ranges south-east of here, the cottage and its residents contributed to the establishment of the Dandenong Ranges as a hub for activism, arts and culture, as it remains today. 

IMAGE:

Katharine Susannah Prichard, 1928

silver gelatin photographic print

14.9 x 9.3 cm

Photograph by May Moore

(Source: State Library of NSW)