What historical artefacts do we value in this country? Or is everything just rubble to be bulldozed and forgotten, blown up and shipped overseas as dust?
Two examples from this month.
A few weeks ago, a convict-era pub in Sydney — the Royal Oak Hotel, in the suburb of Parramatta — began to be demolished to make way for a light rail.
It was one of Australia’s most historic hotels.
It was built around 1830 by a man named John Tunks, whose father was a First Fleeter called William Tunks, who had served as a marine in the American War of Independence and then onboard HMS Sirius — the flagship of the First Fleet.
John Tunks’ mother was Sarah Lyons, a convict on the Lady Juliana, the infamous ‘Floating Brothel’ that arrived in Sydney in 1790.
Everywhere you look in early Sydney, the Tunks left their mark.
They have a huge family vault in Parramatta’s St John’s Cemetery — the oldest surviving European cemetery in the country, notable for the graves of more than 50 First Fleeters and early settlers.
One of the oldest cricket grounds in Australia, North Sydney Oval, owes its life to John Tunks’ son, also called William, who dedicated the land for a public park and cricket ground as local mayor in 1867.
But after 180-odd years, and despite the NSW Office of Environment & Heritage acknowledging the Royal Oak Hotel was “relatively rare in its age”, the pub has been razed.