Leura Awning Posts

Because there are so relatively few genuinely old buildings and/or precincts of old buildings in Australia, we find ourselves having to SIMULATE a sense of age. These awning posts at Leura Mall are an example of what goes on in many semi rural locations. Many of the shopfront premises actually DO date from the early 1900s and even the late 1890s but they got "modernised" and "streamlined" in the 1950s and 1960s (sigh). Boy that period has a lot to answer for. It was before anybody really noticed or cared that our genuine architectural heritage was disappearing fast and that some supervision and control was in order.

Now the buildings are gradually having things tacked back on, in such a way as to delude tourists into supposing that they'd always been there. 

Trouble is so much of what was built in colonial/pre federation times was temporary and thrown up to meet the needs of transient prospectors on their way to goldfields and drifting agricultural workers on their way to seasonal employment. They were never intended to last ... and they haven't, except where some inspired individuals (all too often suffering the derision of their mindless contemporaries) took the trouble to preserve them.