Ted and John, of Exeter, had an important role to play at the launch of this year’s Heritage Festival.
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The Shire and Clydesdale geldings pulled the carriage that brought Governor Kate Warner, who is patron of the National Trust in Tasmania, to Clarendon House for the event on Wednesday morning.
“We had a wonderful smoking ceremony - very much in the spirit of reconciliation and we also heard that now we’re bringing Aboriginal cultural ideas into heritage festivals, which I think is really a wonderful development,” Her Excellency said.
“The National Trust, too, is embracing Aboriginal culture, as well as the colonial.”
The Heritage Festival will run for the month of May, with the theme, My Culture, My Story.
National Trust of Australia Tasmania managing director Matthew Smithies said this year’s festival would showcase the “remarkable stories of our diverse cultural heritage” in Tasmania.
“The 2018 theme offers the opportunity to visit many familiar and not so familiar heritage spaces in our state, to discover new history and the remarkable stories behind the events and people,” he said.
Mr Smithies said Tasmania was a multicultural society and “we must never lose sight of that”.
“We see what’s happening in the world today - what a crazy place, and we’ve got refugees everywhere and we need to open our arms because that’s what being human and having humanity is all about.
“The Heritage Festival - My Culture, My Story, clearly shows that in Australia and in Tasmania, we have always had open arms.
“There’s this historical side but there’s a contemporary overlay, which we at the Trust find really exciting because heritage can be viewed as unapproachable and irrelevant.”
However, Mr Smithies said, there were always contemporary overlays.
“This year’s theme - the concept was put on the table and it was just, without any doubt, everyone just said, ‘yes, we’re ready for this as an organisation’.
“I think with what’s happening in the world, people want to hear about culture or they want to hear about identity, they want to hear about immigration and they want to be reminded about how important that is to us.”
For more information, visit nationaltrust.org.au.
