A much loved and frequently patched-up violin with direct links to the earliest days of Canberra's settlement will sing again at Mugga Mugga Homestead on Sunday as part of the heritage festival.
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Crafted in Italy by unknown makers more than 150 years ago, the fragile instrument was the second violin owned by Patrick Curley. Mr Curley had moved to the property, originally an outstation of Duntroon Estate, with his wife Anne Elizabeth and their three daughters, Ada, Evelyn and Sylvia in 1913. Sylvia gave the house and its contents to the people of Canberra in 1994.
The Curleys' connections with the Limestone Plains ran old and deep. Patrick's parents, Patrick and Mary Curley, had moved to the Campbell's Duntroon Estate from Cotta-Walla in 1858 when he was about five years old.
Anne, known as "Lizzie", was the daughter of Thomas and Mary Tong (nee Harkin) of Cuppacumbalong, who were also early pioneers of the Canberra region.
Patrick, who began his working life as a shepherd on Duntroon when he was 13, loved music and taught himself to play the violin, concertina and piano.
Dr Jennifer Gall, a visiting fellow at the ANU School of Music, will be playing Patrick's violin and the Curley family's late-19th-century L.F Renardi piano as part of Listening to the Past: Music In Canberra's Historic Places at Mugga Mugga on Sunday. She said the station worker had been given his first violin when he was 13.
Dr Gall and piano tuner Chris Leslie visited the property on Friday to fettle the Renardi ahead of Sunday's performance.
"Sylvia Curley said the [second] violin was an excellent Italian instrument that had been given to her father [when he was about 17]," Dr Gall said.
But experts who examined the violin minutely in the process of conserving it, have rejected this assessment as too kind. They said while it was most likely Italian, it had come off a village production line and would have been intended for amateur, not virtuoso, performances.
Marked by the signs of frequent use and numerous home-made repairs, Patrick Curley's best violin is a relic of an age when cost and isolation made mending rather than replacement the usual response to a breakage or wear and tear.
"Instruments such as this have a life of their own in the sense they encapsulate memories," Dr Gall said. "An unplayed violin has a rawer sound (than one that is used regularly). These can be terribly evocative things."
As a musician and a historian, Dr Gall's Listening to the Past project allows her to combine both passions.
"I grew up in Lismore at a time when the ability to play an instrument was still quite special and you were encouraged to join the school or community band or music group," she said.
So she has an empathy for Patrick Curley's time, when people created their own music and a piano – even an entry-level model such as the Mugga Mugga Renardi – was state-of-the-art home entertainment.
The Mugga Mugga performance starts at 12.30pm on Sunday, April 12. There is also an open day featuring entertainment from the Sing Australia Choir, bush poets, and period dance troupe the Jumptown Jammers.
First held in 1981, the Canberra and Region Heritage Festival runs for 15 days this year. The theme, which ties in with the Anzac Centenary, is Conflict and Compassion.
Also on this weekend is the Jane Austen Festival Australia, with a theatrical prequel to Pride and Prejudice – Mr Bennet's Bride – on at Theatre 3 on Saturday and Sunday (canberrarep.org.au).
