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From a portrait by Ivor Hele, CBE, 1968.
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Architect, landscape architect, town planner, academic. Giles Walkey remembers the many achievements of his father, Gavin Walkey CBE LFRAIA.
It is said that one can construct a biography
by inspecting a person’s bookshelf. In the
case of Gavin Walkley who has died, aged
94, one can analyze not only a sizeable
library, but also a mass of photograph
albums, a map of the world crisscrossed by
hand-drawn land, sea and air routes, a vast
assortment of institutional and club ties, a
collection of pewter mugs, most of them
commemorative, scrapbooksful of dinner
menus – all personally sampled – and a
sheaf of certificates and testimonials:
enough to paper a small room. One can,
furthermore, read much into the letters
which followed Walkley’s name. He
accumulated dozens, among them those
denoting four degrees, the first of which
was a BE of 1934 and the last an honourary
doctorate conferred by the University of SA
in 1994. This honour, together with a
Distinguished Alumni Award presented by
Adelaide University in 1992, revived
recognition of outstanding achievement in
Walkley’s educational and professional
fields originally acknowledged when a CBE
was bestowed in 1968.
Born into a North Adelaide family,
Walkley was to excel socially, athletically
(albeit in a coxswain’s slump) and
academically at St Mark’s College while
studying engineering and while articled to
Louis Laybourne-Smith. Salad days spent at
Cambridge in between working holidays
and tours of Europe saw him secure two
supplementary degrees as well as disport
with success at the tiller and on alpine ski
runs. War service took him to the Middle
East, the Torres Strait Islands and
Melbourne’s First Army HQ. Returning,
newly married, to Adelaide, he began
residential planning work under (Sir) John
Overall at the SA Housing Trust, which they
both left to set up a private practice, if only
briefly. Appointed head of Laybourne-
Smith’s school of architecture at the SA
School of Mines, later the SA Institute of
Technology (SAIT), in 1951, Walkley was to
remain at the helm there until 1976.
Having shown his intention to expand the
options available to tertiary students
entering the professions by opening, in
1949, the first postgraduate planning course
in the nation, Walkley proceeded to offer an
equally pioneering course in Building
Technology in 1958. Trail blazing diplomas
in landscape and interior design were
added to the mix in 1964. In order to
establish due authority, Walkley himself
submitted to examinations in town
planning and landscape architecture set by
the respective British institutes.
Behind the North Terrace scenes, Walkley
sought to invigorate the professional and
regulatory bodies – not least the Architects’
(Registration) Board of SA to which he gave
forty years, fifteen as chairman – which
represented and controlled practitioners in
these disciplines. He involved himself
similarly in the governing councils of St
Mark’s and St Peter’s Colleges, managing
development of the former for a parallel
forty years and the latter for twenty.
By 1960 Walkley had been elected
president of the SA Chapter of the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA)
and elevated to the National Council on the
strength of an ability to convene meetings,
prepare publications, conduct appeals, and
so on – the hard graft familiar to dedicated
committeemen. Concurrent secretaryships
and vice-presidencies at state level of the
Royal Australian Planning Institute (RAPI,
now PIA) and the nascent Australian
Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) led
him likewise into their higher offices.
During the period 1964–66, Walkley
undertook national presidencies of both the
RAIA and the RAPI at the same time. Later,
in 1971–73, he also became national
president of the AILA, creating a threefold
regency unmatched in this country and,
perhaps, in any other.
Already a seasoned member of the
National Capital Planning Committee,
Walkley recognized the problems inherent
in our other cities, consequently taking a
major role to shape and endow the
Australian Institute of Urban Studies. Had
he been able to prolong his initial
directorship (1968–70) of this research and
advisory foundation, he would have
resigned from the SAIT. Even after
obligatory retirement from his School, an
undiminished appetite for leadership and
fellowship realized a growing association
with the Council on Overseas Professional
Qualifications and the National Trust of SA.
Long-term chairmanship of one and,
ultimately, presidency of the other found
him, at 80, the complete administrator of
the agencies of the man-made environment.
Such a position did not come easily; it
required working, unpaid, a second life
after hours, surviving a coronary in the
process. His wife having died after just ten
years of marriage, Walkley took his own
counsel amidst a multiplicity of
responsibilities. Loyal, generous and
clubbable – again on his own terms – he
was thought honourable and ambitious less
for himself than for his many causes. Close
friends knew of a fondness for fast cars, his
pride in a singular house designed for him
by Robin Boyd, his love of foreign travel
and the satisfaction he drew from the
consummation of coordinated pre-laid
plans – his organizing skill recognized to be
second to none. Even a momentary glance at
his study shelves – Sellar and Yeatman,
1066 and All That, 1930; CAA Conference
delegates, Ta Cene Hotel, Malta, 1965;
Khabarovsk–Novosibirsk, USSR, 1978;
gold-striped black silk (Clare College), 1939;
“Wizard of the West Wing”, 1952; Boodles
Club, St James, London, 1960; President,
AACA 1974–75, 1977–78 – would reveal a
little man of great stature.
GILES WALKLEY IS GAVIN WALKLEY’S SON.
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