No of Pages: 440
RRP: 36.95
ISBN Print: 978-1-876040-87-1
The Crag
The Crag is a valuable record of the founding years of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’s Castlecrag in Sydney, a plan to create a community in harmony with itself and the environment. Wanda Spathopoulos grew up nourished by the Griffins’ imaginative humanism and recollects the community life, the excitement and the challenges that characterised the early days of the experiment.
“This is a rare, first-hand account of life in Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’s visionary suburb, Castlecrag, in the 1920s and 30s. Spathopoulos’ memory is acute and detailed, supplemented by careful research of the period. She brings to life the world of an extraordinary and unique community with its parties, theatrical events and anthroposophical festivals. There are vivid portraits of the various residents and their idiosyncrasies in a community presided over by the larger-than-life Marion and her quiet, gentle husband Walter, who lived according to Walter Burley Griffin’s vision of ‘Building for Nature’.” Sylvia Martin
About the Author
Wanda Spathopoulos was born Wanda Maxime Herbert in 1922, in Melbourne. Six months later, the Herbert family moved to Sydney, where, in 1924, they settled on the Griffins’ Castlecrag. During the forties Wanda graduated in Arts at the University of Sydney. In the early fifties she departed overseas, first to London then to Europe, where she spent a number of years in Paris and Italy. At last in Greece, she came in touch with the world of the Ancient Greek tragedies evoked by Marion Griffin and Lute Drummond’s open-air theatre productions on Castlecrag. Since 1960, her life with her Greek husband has been spent mainly in Sydney, with interludes in Greece.
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