Parks Victoria has reopened part of the William Ricketts Sanctuary near Olinda, five years after the June 2021 storms damaged 92 kiln-fired clay sculptures hidden among the trees.
The gates reopened on August 3, although the gallery and original residence remain off limits.
But the story of this secluded garden begins long before the storms – with the tale of controversial sculptor William Ricketts.
Simple beginnings: Born in Richmond on December 1 1898, Ricketts began his creative life as a young violinist, often playing along with films across Melbourne’s first picture theatres.
At the age of 35, Ricketts taught himself to sculpt.
Moving out: In 1934, Ricketts purchased a log cabin and a four-and-a-half-acre block of land near the town of Olinda – later known as Potter’s Sanctuary.
Two years after the move, his mother Susan decided to accompany him. Speaking to the Australian Women’s Weekly in January 1951, shortly before her death in November of that year, she said “somebody had to see that he was fed and looked after”.
Image Credit: Gerald Ganglbauer
Art in place: From 1949 to 1960, William Ricketts journeyed into the heart of Central Australian First Nations communities, including with the Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte peoples.
The works at the sanctuary focus on Aboriginal stories and legends, as well as the First Nations peoples of Central Australia.
However, a number of academics, including Indigenous scholars Marcia Langton and Bruno David, have criticised Ricketts’ work at the sanctuary and his approach to Aboriginal culture.
In 2003, the pair published a paper denouncing the garden as a “primitivist theme park” depicting an “imaginary … Dream Time”.
🗣️ “I do think it’s something of a national treasure, even if it’s weird and racist in many ways,” Langton told the Australian in July 2021, shortly after the June storms damaged a number of the Mount Dandenong sculptures. “It encapsulates a particular kind of humanitarian take on Australia’s race politics at that time.”
Works preserved: In 1961, the State Government bought Potters Sanctuary from William Ricketts, later renaming it the William Ricketts Sanctuary and opening it to the public in 1964.
Ricketts lived on site until his death in June 1993 at the age of 94.
Thumbnail Image Credit: Pierre247/Fernando de Sousa