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George Seddon
Professor George Seddon (1927-2007) was an Australian academic regarded as an expert in environmental planning, geology, literature and language. Seddon is most well known in Western Australia for his 1972 book A Sense of Place, and for Swan River Landscapes which brought public attention to the fragile Swan River Plain. In 1958, he played an integral role in saving the then rundown Fremantle Arts Centre from demolition. In 1993, he wrote A House, A Cottage and A Shop which focused on his award-winning restored High Street home, Lenaville. He also served on the City of Fremantle Library Advisory Committee in the early 1990s. Professor Seddon received numerous awards and taught at universities around the world. He was named Fremantle Citizen of the Year in 2001.
Fremantle Library image no. 5149, 1958, with this caption: George Seddon photographed at the old Lunatic Asylum, now Fremantle Arts Centre, during his campaign to save the historic building in the 1950s and 1960s. The buildings were being used by the Education Department but had been condemned by the Public Works Department and were scheduled for demolition. Professor George Seddon, Marshall Clifton, Ray Oldham, Town Clerk Noel McComb, and the Mayor, Sir Frederick Samson began a battle to save the building; which was aided in 1963 by strong support from the Chairman of the National Trust of Great Britain who pronounced the asylum "the best example of Colonial Gothic architecture in Australia today".
References and Links
Seddon, George 1970, Swan River Landscapes, UWAP.
Seddon, George 1972, A Sense of Place, UWAP; with botanical drawings by David Hutchison.
Seddon, George 1995, Swan Song: Reflections on Perth and Western Australia 1956-1995, Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, UWA; includes excerpts from A Sense of Place, and also the complete article below; with botanical drawings by David Hutchison.
Seddon, George 1994, 'Fremantle's two squares', Historic Environment, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1994: 24-26.
Seddon, George, 2000, Looking at an Old Suburb: A Walking Guide to Four Blocks of Fremantle, UWAP.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 21 May, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/seddon.html (it was last updated on 15 March, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.