2013: third Festival of Glass at Drysdale

The third Festival of Glass happened on Sunday February 17 2013. It was opened officially by Geelong's first directly-elected mayor, Keith Faggg, who 'Tweeted' about the event.

L to R: Lisa Neville MP, Cr. Rod Macdonald, Keith Fagg, Doug Carson

The Festival featured a wide range of glass work, including beads, beaded jewellery, mosaics, sculptures, glazing, ceramics, leadlighting and stained glass.

The Festival happened in the Bellarine Secondary College Sports Centre in Peninsula Drive, off Anderson's Road in Drysdale.

This was the first year of the Annual Drysdale Glass Art Awards, which had three age-based divisions and two categories: Wearable Glass Art and Non-wearable Glass Art.

The Festival of Glass is an initiative of the Drysdale & Clifton Springs Community Association Inc. Major sponsors are the City of Greater Geelong and the Bendigo Bank.

2012: second Festival of Glass at Drysdale

The second annual Festival of Glass on Sunday February 19 2012 attracted over 6,000 visitors - an increase on the 2011 Festival attendance.

The Festival of Glass is the only event of its kind in Australia and the 2012 Festival attracted almost twice as many exhibitors (46) and from further afield, than the 2011 event. Most exhibitors reported a very successful day.

'A strong new player'
The previous year's inaugural Festival of Glass proved to be far more popular than organisers had hoped. Doug Carson, who chairs the Festival committee, said, "The Festival committee had no idea just how popular a Festival of Glass would be and so we were delighted and amazed with the attendance at the inaugural Festival in 2011. We wondered how many people came just out of curiosity and whether the novelty would wear off. Well, this year's attendance shows that the Festival isn't just a novelty but is, instead, a strong new player in the world of glass."

New venue, but higher temperatures!
Attendance at the first Festival of Glass in 2011 was so good that the event outgrew its venue on its first outing! So the 2012 Festival was held in a much bigger venue - the Bellarine Secondary College Sports Centre in Peninsula Drive, off Anderson's Road in Drysdale

The Sports Centre was much less cramped and far more airy, but with no air conditioning and temperatures around an unseasonal 35-40 degrees, it was uncomfortably warm. Nonetheless, despite the heat, visitors took their time examining the exhibits and talking to the glass artists and craftspeople who'd made them and who, in some cases, demonstrated their glass-working skills.

2011: inaugural Festival of Glass at Drysdale

Around 5,000 people came to the inaugural Festival of Glass on Sunday 20 February 2011 at the Potato Shed in Drysdale, Victoria.

Main Hall, Potato Shed

Thirty stalls presented glass in all its forms, including sculpture, jewellery, mosaic, stained glass, leadlight, moulded glass, slumped glass and etched glass.

There were demonstrations of glass-working techniques, including bead-making, glass fusing, kiln forming, beadweaving, copper foiling and leadlighting. Short videos introduced people to the economics and local history of glass.

People brought glass items to the popular Old Glass Roadshow; voted for the best glass-related story, poem, song, painting or photograph and for the best glass jewellery; and the raffle prizes (glass, of course) were so attractive that the raffle tickets nearly ran out!

... and there's more!
Visitors overwhelmed by the scale and diversity of glass on show could watch four local musical acts throughout the day: The Gems, Judy McGovern, Paper (the band formerly known as Steer) and a local barbershop quartet.

The Lions sizzled almost as much as their sausages, but Rotary were as cool as their drinks; and the baked potato man out of potatoes - in front of a Potato Shed! 'This has never happened before', he said and promptly booked-up for next year!

Finally, the Festival's commitment to sustainability meant that a public drinking fountain (and tips on being water-wise) replaced plastic bottles; extra rubbish and recycling bins (and tips on recycling) kept the whole site clean; and each stallholder was asked to think about the energy consumed in their products and their packaging.

We'd like to thank ...

The Festival organisers would like to thank our sponsors - especially the City of Greater Geelong (Arts & Culture) and the Bendigo Bank - for their support. This culmination of a fifteen-month dream really wouldn't have been possible without you.

1880: glass items start Button Hill in Fyansford

In 1878, the water-powered Barwon Paper Mill opened on the north bank of the Barwon River at Buckley's Falls in Fyansford; and an adjacent site saw the beginning of what became known as Button Hill.

The Paper Mill's raw materials were straw (oat, wheat and barley) and rags. Before the rags were treated to break down their composition, hard objects such as fasteners, buttons and the ribs from ladies' stays were removed and thrown onto a pile nearby. This led to the land rising to the Mill's east becoming known as Button Hill.

Up to 100 women and girls sorted the rags in a designated rag house. The work was hard and the conditions unpleasant:
"The work is performed by girls and women, and the occupation certainly does not give one a lofty idea of the rag picker, the work being anything but clean, and in no way agreeable."
"The Fyansford paper Mill." The Geelong Advertiser. 25 August 1880. No page number.

According to the Victorian Heritage Database, Button Hill consists of hundreds of thousands of glass, ceramic, bone and metal buttons, beads and other clips and fasteners. The site is owned privately and awaits proper archeological investivation

Source:
“The Barwon Paper Mill.” Geelong Advertiser. 19 March 1878. No page numbers. http://barwonblogger.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/

75,000 BC: Humans start using glass

Probably as early as 75,000 BC, humans used naturally-occurring glass to make articles such as knives and arrow-heads.

Obsidian

Our use of naturally-occurring glass pre-dates any written records of the practice (e.g. the ancient Egyptians' use of glass) and it certainly pre-dates our ability to make glass.

Obsidian spear-head

The most common form of naturally-occurring glass is obsidian, formed when the heat of volcanoes melts rocks such as granite, which then become glassy upon cooling.

Other forms of naturally-occurring glass are:

• pumice, a glassy foam produced from lava
• fulgurites, glass tubes formed by lightning striking sand or sandy soil
• tektites, lumps or beads of glass probably formed during meteoric impacts.

Source: http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Ge-Hy/Glass.html

Ancient glass on the Bellarine Peninsula?
We have yet to find any mention of naturally-occurring glass on the Bellarine. However, there is a chance that somewhere in Australia there is natural glass formed by an asteroid impact.

Australia has 26 confirmed craters created by asteroids between five thousand and two billion years ago; and it has another 6 unconfirmed craters. (The confirmed craters are listed in the Earth Impact Datbase, maintained by the University of New Brunswick’s Planetary and Space Science Centre.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_in_Australia)

Natural glass in the Sahara

Asteroids have been cited as the origin of naturally-occurring yellow-green glass in the Sahara Desert in Egypt and black glass across South-East Asia. Scientists believe that the glass in the Sahara Desert was formed thirty million years ago, when an asteroid exploded just above the earth into a fireball 10,000 times more powerful than the first atomic bomb. The explosion created surface temperatures of 1,800 degrees Celsius, melting the sand into thousands of chunks of yellow-green glass.

The same scientists believe that 800,000 years ago, another asteroid exploded just above the earth into a series of fireballs that melted the ground into black glass in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and southern China.

Source: “Tutankhamun’s Fireball”. Horizon series. BBC. 2006. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO61IKwRpis

What next for the Bellarine's glass-related history?

Natural glass from the Sahara

Australia has certainly been hit by asteroids; and it's likely that asteroids were implicated in forming natural glass. However, the scientists investigating the natural glass in Egypt and in S-E Asia note that in neither case is there a crater to serve as evidence of the asteroid's impact. Instead, they believe, the asteroids exploded above ground, leaving no crater, but nonetheless melting the ground under them into glass. So while it's possible that humans in what is now Australia used asteroid-formed glass in the past,  proof awaits the first finding of natural glass.

1890: Future destination of Bellarine shell grit opens in Melbourne

In 1890, the glass-making company Australian Glass Manufacturers (AGM) opened a factory at Spotswood, moving from the South Melbourne site that it had occupied since 1873.

Westgate Bridge & AGM, Spotswood

 

AGM's move is (just!) part of the glass-related history of the Bellarine Peninsula because in 1959, AGM started to take delivery of up to 1,000 tons of shell grit a week from the Laker's processing plant near Point Lonsdale.

The Melbourne Glass Bottle Works
AGM's new Spotswood factory was known as the Melbourne Glass Bottle Works. In its first decade, the Bottle Works grew rapidly, until it employed five hundred staff and occupied five acres.

AGM worker & milk bottles, 1958.

The site was serviced by a railway line that led from the Spotswood railway station to the Spotswood Pumping Station. From there it curved to the east, running directly into the AGM site via a purpose-built railway siding. It was at this siding that, between 1959 and 1973, trains carrying shell grit from the Bellarine would terminate their journey. (See "1959: Shell grit for Melbourne glass works re-opens Bellarine rail line". 27 November 2014 on this blog.)

In 1973,  the Spotswood siding ceased to receive shipments of shell grit from the Bellarine, as AGM changed its suppliers for a company in New South wales. In 1998, the Spotswood siding fell into disuse altogether, as railway shipments of sand from Nyora, South Gippsland (via the Koala siding) ceased.

The Spotswood siding was decommissioned in August 2001, but parts of it remain in place, buried under concrete driveways and hardstand on what is now private land.

AGM in Sydney

By the late 19th century, glass production had become one of South Sydney’s main industries. Glassworks were established at Redfern and Alexandria and the Australian Glass Manufacturers opened a glass works on South Dowling Street, Waterloo.

AGM's Waterloo plant manufactured bottles for the pharmacy, brewing, distilling and winemaking industries; and jars for domestic preserving and pickling fruit and vegetables. By the 1920s, AGM had a monopoly on glassmaking in Sydney.

AGM display vehicle, Sydney, 1930s

In 1926, AGM launched a subsidiary company - Crown Crystal Glass Pty. Ltd. - to produce crystal, cut, pressed and blown glassware (including pyrex) for industrial and domestic use. By the late 1930s, the company was producing 9,634 different types of glass bottles and containers.

In 1968 Crown Crystal Glass became partners with American company Corning Ltd., becoming Crown Corning Ltd. The partnership ended in 1988.

Sources

http://www.railgeelong.com/location/agm-glassworks

http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/australian-glass-manufacturers/

 

1959: Shellgrit for Melbourne glass works re-opens Bellarine rail line

On November 16 1959, the Geelong – Queenscliff line re-opened, heralding a new chapter in the glass-related history of the Bellarine Peninsula.
 
The re-opened line (which branched off at South Geelong) connected the Laker family's shell grit plant near Queenscliff with the Australian Glass Manufacturers (AGM) plant at Spotswood.

At what was known as Laker's siding, just west of point Lonsdale, a concrete platform and elevated loading bins were provided. From there, up to 1,000 tons of shellgrit was despatched each week to AGM's plant at Spotswood, for use in glassmaking. A train ran weekly to Laker's Siding until 1973, when AGM changed suppliers. In 1976, Lakers siding closed.

How did AGM use Bellarine shellgrit?
Shellgrit consists mostly of seashells, which are made of Calcium Carbonate (also known as ‘lime’, ‘quicklime’, ‘limestone’, ‘calcite). When mixed with an acid, Calcium Carbonate becomes Calcium Oxide, giving off Carbon Dioxide; and Calcium Oxide is used in making glass, steel and paper.
 

The basic ingredient of glass is Silica (sand) and glass-makers generally add Calcium Carbonate and Sodium Carbonate to Silica to lower its melting point and to make it more malleable and easy to work with. (Pure Silica can produce excellent glass, but it takes very high temperatures to melt [1,723 degrees Centigrade, or 3,133 degrees  Fahrenheit] and, when molten, is so viscous that it is difficult to handle.)
 

Prior history of the Geelong - Queenscliff line
The Geelong – Queenscliff line (branching off at South Geelong) had opened in 1879 carrying passengers and freight. Passenger services ceased in 1931, mainly due to bus competition. However, freight trains operated twice weekly on the line between 1931 and 1934, reduced to weekly in 1934.

Laker's siding (1960?)

Laker's siding 2011

After the war, the weekly goods run was reduced to fortnightly; and after further declines in traffic, the line closed on May 13 1959 - only to re-open six months later.

Laker's siding revived!

The 'new' Laker's station

In 1979, the Bellarine Railway re-opened the siding and in 2003 the company built a passenger station, using an original VR Portable building and the Marshalltown post office hut. In 2007, the Bellarine Railway started the “Lakers Project”, which will upgrade the platform, enable steam trains to take on water and create a 150 metre long rolling stock shed. Later on, workshops will be built, creating Lakers as the Bellarine Railway’s maintenance base.

Sources:
http://www.railgeelong.com/lineguide/queenscliff
http://bellarinerailway.com.au/lakers-siding/attachment/8
http://highriser.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/easter-2.html

How exciting is the 2015 Festival of Glass going to be? We have not approached the workshops scenario in the past as we have this year, and we are very pleased to have Mark Eliott from Sydney in attendance at the Festival, and also to conduct 2 different workshops in the days following. Already we have 4 people confirmed as attending his 3 day session, so we are very pleased about this as well.

A brief Glass History timeline

The Glass Trail

About

The Glass Trail links twelve glass artists, craftspeople and businesses in the Geelong area of Australia via a brochure for locals and visitors to follow.

People who follow The Glass Trail will see a wide variety of glass goods, including jewellery, sculpture and household items, most of them hand-made locally. They can learn something about how these items are made and may see demonstrations of glass workers’ various intricate techniques.

The Glass Trail is an initiative of the Festival of Glass. Promoting the twelve participants in The Glass Trail - and encouraging them to promote each other - furthers the Festival's aim of promoting the Geelong area as a centre of glass activity.

Button Hill, Geelong

 Button Hill has high regional significance as an example of buttons and fastenings deposited between 1877 and 1923 at the Paper Mills. Many glass buttons form part of the site.

Address:
 Upper Paper Mills Rd Highton, Greater Geelong City, Victoria, Australia  

Accessability: 
Not open to the public.

Links:
https://www.onmydoorstep.com.au/heritage-listing/13153/button-hill