An interview with the author of A Forger's Progress, the celebrated new biography of Australia's first government architect, Francis Greenway.

 (Sydney Barracks, National Library of Australia)

What drew you to Francis Greenway as a subject?

I’m fascinated by the process of change in the evolving city. Working on a previous book (A Nation in the Making: Australia at the Dawn of the Modern Era) I was drawn to a series of photographs of what predated the Sydney Opera House on Bennelong Point. The first major structure on that most famous of building sites was built 140 years before Utzorn’s masterpiece and just happened to be by Greenway. I was hooked – I had to investigate further.

What is your favourite Greenway building?

Undoubtedly it’s St James’ Church in King Street. That this elegant and fine example of a Georgian town church was built at a time when Sydney was little more than a benighted gaol in the wilderness says much about the civilizing power of architecture, not to mention the skills of Greenway and his convict workforce.

(St James Church, State Library of NSW)

What does his story tell us about early colonial Sydney?

Greenway’s story is self-destructive and tragic. He lacked the pragmatism and guile necessary to prosper amid the face off between the military and so-called exclusives on one side, and the emancipists and their principal supporter, Governor Lachlan Macquarie, on the other. Greenway was doomed in such a stratified and influence riven society.

How do Greenway’s experiences resonate with architects, governments and developers today?

Through much of his career in government service Greenway waged what he saw as a righteous battle against the ill conceived and the cheap, the expedient and the short term. While Greenway and Macquarie schemed and dreamed of an embryonic city the rival of any, others saw only cost, utility, or self-interest. Therein lies the universal tension between higher human aspirations and a mediocre reality depressingly common to any age. 

(Francis Greenway & South Head Light House, State Library of NSW)

This Q&A first appeared in the Glebe Gleaner. A Forger's Progress is out now from NewSouth.