A dated line, from one quarry to one building
Each date below comes with the place, the stone and the body that gives it.
- 1883-89The western third of Parliament House: Heritage South Australia’s stone note records it built of Kapunda marble, on a West Island granite plinth, with the rest of the building completed in the 1930s of the same materials.
- 1927Melbourne High School: erected in 1927, the Victorian Heritage Database records, with Buchan marble lining the dados of its main entrance hall and stairs.
- 1927-34The Shrine of Remembrance: built between 1927 and 1934, the Victorian Heritage Database records, with sixteen dark Buchan marble Ionic columns in its sanctuary.
- 1941Wombeyan: the reserve’s plan of management says marble quarrying commenced on the Reserve in 1941, when the first mining lease was granted by the Department of Mines.
The marbles of the strip, one by one
Each marble below is named for the place its stone came from, and a building is given only where a source names one.
| The marble | What its sources say | A building, and the date |
|---|---|---|
| Wombeyan | Silurian limestone, 430 to 400 million years old, metamorphosed into marble, the reserve’s plan says, with quarrying on the reserve from 1941 until 1997. | The sources name the quarry, its leases and its dates, and no building it went into. |
| Borenore Red | Borenore marble, known as Borenore Red, used in many public buildings in Sydney, including Transport House in Macquarie Street, and countless marble fireplaces; a sample of the red marble is on display at Jenolan Caves House. | Transport House, Macquarie Street, Sydney; the reserve’s plan says demand had waned by the 1930s, with small operations until 1994. |
| Angaston | The most widely used South Australian marble, a true marble like Carrara’s, coarsely crystalline and dominantly light grey to white. | In Angaston itself, the note says, many villa-style cottages are built entirely of white marble; it gives no date for them. |
| Kapunda | Kapunda marble, the stone of the western third of Adelaide’s Parliament House, which sits on a West Island granite plinth; the rest of the building was finished in the 1930s, in the same materials. | Parliament House, Adelaide, 1883-89. |
| Buchan | Dark Buchan marble, in sixteen Ionic columns in the sanctuary of the Shrine of Remembrance and in the dados of Melbourne High School’s entrance hall. | The Shrine of Remembrance, 1927-34, and Melbourne High School, 1927. |
What the record does not cover
Where a quarry is on record but no building it went into, the entry says so.
Wombeyan is named by its own plan and by the state’s karst guide through its geology and its quarrying leases, and no building of its marble appears in either.
Chillagoe, in Queensland, is covered by its parks service for its limestone and its caves.
The service says the landscape began to form about 400 million years ago, when limestone was laid down on a shallow sea bed. The record names no building of that stone.
Where this question goes next
Two guides sit beside this one: What makes a stone marble?, and How do heritage guides say to clean marble?