St Paul's Anglican Church, Proserpine

About

St Paul's Anglican Church is a heritage-listed church at 8 Main Street, Proserpine, Whitsunday Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Eddie Oribin and built from 1958 to 1959 by Les Tinsley & Co. It is also known as St Paul's Anglican Memorial Church and Proserpine Church of England. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 11 October 2013.

St Paul's Anglican Church in Proserpine, completed in 1959, is one of a series of innovative churches designed by Cairns -based architect Edwin Henry (Eddie) Oribin. It was constructed by local builder Les Tinsley and Co. with engineering details provided by R McLean. The church is made from a variety of materials including brick, timber and concrete, and features a striking parabolic roof of laminated timber arches, an early use of this structural system in Queensland.

The Proserpine area was first settled from the 1860s and agriculture became the main industry. An initial attempt at sugar cane production in the early 1880s at Glen Isla plantation failed and the estate was subsequently sold and subdivided into small farms. Much of the present-day Proserpine town area occupies land formerly part of the plantation site. A stable sugar-growing industry was eventually established in Proserpine in 1897 with the opening of the Proserpine Central Mill. By 1900, there were 200 settlers and 70 suppliers to the mill.

Anglican services in Proserpine, which was then part of Bowen Parish, had been established by 1896 when church services were conducted by a visiting clergyman from Bowen. In 1904 a building committee was formed to oversee the establishment of a Church of England in Proserpine, so that regular services could be held and a Sunday School set up. Fundraising was undertaken, and by early 1905 the committee had secured a site in Main Street, opposite the mill. The first St Paul's Church of England, a small timber building, was completed in 1906.

Proserpine continued to grow throughout the early 20th century, with the population nearly doubling in the 1920s and a rail link to Mackay, completing the North Coast railway line from Brisbane to Townsville, opening in 1923. However, until the 1950s Proserpine remained a country sugar town, a stopover place rather than a destination in itself, with little appeal to visitors. Proserpine Airport opened in late 1951, boosting tourism to the local area and Whitsunday Islands.

The 1950s were a significant period of change and reform within Anglican and other Christian denominations throughout Australia, as they sought to become more relevant to contemporary society. Developments in religious theology and liturgy, coupled with an expansionary building program, led to a radical departure from established architectural traditions. Reflecting international trends, church designs moved away from historical revival styles and became increasingly influenced by Modernism. However, it was expected that a church would still be recognisable as such, resulting in a wide range of variations combining traditional church elements, symbols and functions with new construction techniques, materials and forms.

A particular advocate of constructing churches in a modern idiom was Bishop Ian Shevill, the sixth Anglican Bishop of North Queensland (enthroned in 1953), who began a crusade to provide a permanent church in every parish. Having travelled to the United States of America to learn new methods of fundraising, Shevill implemented the Anglican Building Crusade, which raised £145,000 for buildings. Of the amount raised by each parish, half was retained and half went to the diocese.

In order to encourage construction of modern rather than pseudo-Gothic style churches, the Bishop compiled a set of canonical principles of church architecture, which were a set of rules ensuring certain aspects of Anglican church designs remained constant while allowing architects to exercise their creativity. These principles prescribed such things as setting aside a third of the church for the sanctuary and two thirds for the nave, the proportions of steps leading up to the altar, and that furnishings be designed by the architect. All new Anglican churches were to be individual and contemporary in design, for, as Shevill himself put it: "God is no museum piece and He should be worshipped by modern people in modern buildings which are aesthetically pleasing and cool". By 1958, six new permanent Anglican churches and a chapel had been completed according to these principles.

Steps towards constructing a new church at Proserpine began in 1956 when architects Barnes and Oribin of Cairns were engaged. Designed by Oribin, the proposed church was highly unusual, with a parabolic roofed nave, glazed end wall with a central concrete cross, flat side roofs and separate brick tower.

Edwin Henry (Eddie) Oribin was born in Cairns in 1927. As a teenager during World War II, he spent time in Brisbane where he obtained work with the Allison Aircraft Division of General Motors rebuilding aircraft engines. Returning to Cairns in 1944, Oribin commenced architectural training with Sidney George Barnes, Chief Architect of the Allied Works Council for North Queensland, whose training gave Oribin a solid grounding in structural design and construction. In 1950 Oribin moved to Brisbane to work and study, and on 10 February 1953 he obtained his registration as an architect in Queensland, returning to Cairns the following month to begin a partnership with Barnes. This partnership lasted until Barnes' death in 1959, after which Oribin continued practicing on his own.

Oribin undertook a wide range of work in North Queensland between 1953 and 1973. Throughout his career, he was devoted to experimenting with different structural and aesthetic ideas, drawing inspiration from a wide variety of Australian and international publications. Characteristics of Oribin's work included meticulous detailing, structural creativity and concern for the modulation of light. He was also known for his model-making skills and superb craftsmanship, often creating objects himself.

St Paul's Anglican Church at Proserpine was one of three churches designed by Oribin between 1956 and 1960, the others being Mareeba Uniting Church (formerly Methodist Church, completed 1960) and St Andrew's Presbyterian Memorial Church, Innisfail (completed 1960). Each of these churches is distinctive in design, having directly responded to the needs of the clients, while still allowing experimentation with construction and design ideas.

By mid-1958 Proserpine parish's participation in the Anglican Building Crusade had raised over £3000 and their own fundraising campaign was supported and encouraged by Bishop Shevill, who stated "...I should like to congratulate the wardens and council upon their adoption of a design which is so revolutionary and so progressive, for it will provide the parish with a contemporary building of great beauty and one which will make religion relevant to the 20th Century people who believe in progress...". The original timber church was relocated to the rear of the property and Cairns contractors Les Tinsley and Co. began construction of the new St Paul's in June 1958. The Governor of Queensland, Col. Sir Henry Abel Smith, laid the foundation stone in a ceremony on 9 July, during which he inspected a model of the proposed new church and discussed the building with the architect.

Constructed on site, the main parabolic frames of St Paul's Church were of laminated timber, with the exception of the front frame which was made of pre-cast concrete. The first two laminated arches constructed were used as the basis for the formwork of the front concrete arch. The unusual form of the nave with its exposed internal structure led to it being compared to World War II igloos. With their large curved trusses made from small pieces of timber, igloos were a familiar building type to Oribin who had worked in the Allison Overhaul Assembly Plant igloos at Albion during World War II.

The parabolic arch has been associated with church architecture since at least the 1880s. German architect Dominikus Bohm (1880–1955) exploited the possibilities of the parabolic arch in several 1920s church designs, demonstrating that the kind of atmosphere commonly associated with Gothic architecture could be obtained with a minimum of historical allusion. Though it remained an uncommon architectural form in the early 20th century, it featured in several Modernist churches, most notably the Church of St Francis of Assisi (completed 1943) in Pampulha, Brazil, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012). Constructed from cast in-situ concrete, the nave of the church was a free-standing parabolic vault. Highly controversial at the time, Niemeyer's bold design was extremely influential among architects around the world (including Australia), with photographs and plans of the church published in architectural journals.

The parabolic form of St Paul's was made possible by the use of glued laminated timber for the internal arches. Laminated timber arches, constructed by overlapping and bolting together small pieces of timber to make a single, large member, have been in use in Australia since the mid-19th century. Cost-effective and able to span large distances without intermediate posts, laminated timber arches also became an alternative system for roof structures of large buildings such as markets, factories and, from the early 20th century, large auditoria and picture theatres. The process of glue lamination, using casein glue to bond the layers of timber rather than bolts, originated in Germany before being introduced to the United States in the 1920s. Several publications in the 1930s and early 1940s provided the necessary data for constructing glued laminated timber arches, and became a source of inspiration for Australian designers. The earliest experiments in Australia took place in the early 1940s and the arrival of powerful synthetic resin adhesives in the post- World War II period increased the reliability and range of applications of glue lamination. The former Burge Bros Factory in Melbourne (1945–46) is considered to be the oldest known surviving example of this technology in Australia, with semi-circular arches spanning 30 metres (98 ft), manufactured by Sydney-based company Ralph Symonds Ltd.

Despite the technology being available, it wasn't until the 1950s, when curved shapes such as conoids and hyperbolic parabolas became fashionable, that glue laminated arches were more commonly used in Australia, particularly for church structures. Recognising the structural and aesthetic potential of this new technology, Oribin specified glue laminated timber arches for two of his earliest buildings, the Mareeba Shire Hall and Proserpine's St Paul's Church; both were designed in 1956 and completed within 5 years, making them an early use of the technology in Queensland. St Paul's was completed first, with engineering details for both buildings provided by Cairns engineer R McLean.

Oribin designed all aspects of the church, including internal fixtures and furnishings, and his attention to detail led him to personally craft some items. Timber furniture included the baptismal font, lectern, pulpit, candle holders, stools and pews. A pair of aumbry cupboard doors, depicting stylised interpretations of Saints Peter and Paul, were designed and routed by Oribin himself. Oribin also personally produced seven acid-etched copper panels, each depicting one of the sacraments, to ornament the baptismal font lid. Other copper work for the sanctuary lights, candle holders and spun copper font were designed by Oribin and produced in Sydney. His work was so valued by the Proserpine congregation that, years after the church was completed, Oribin was contacted by them to design and detail a simple noticeboard.

The total cost of the finished church came to £22,000. It was dedicated by Bishop Shevill on 4 July 1959, coinciding with American Independence Day. During the ceremony a memorial plaque was unveiled by ET Bourne, the second secretary of the US Embassy in Canberra. The design of the church attracted a great deal of attention from locals and visitors, as well as the wider Anglican community. In the September 1960 edition of " The Northern Churchman," the church is praised both for its beauty and iconic status:

"The Proserpine building is judged by competent critics to be one of the most imaginative and beautiful conceptions amongst our Parish Churches in which every detail of colour and form has been true to the Canons of Liturgy and Art. It is without doubt the finest building in this town and a tribute to the parish."