Charles Crawford obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/23/charles-crawford-obituary

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My father, Charles Crawford, who has died aged 97, trained as an architect in Hobart, Tasmania, in the 1930s, an era when building specifications were a slim document.

His work in Tasmania was largely corporate – for the Mercury Newspaper, the financial services company AMP and the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) banking group, among others – but also included some fine houses.

One could walk through Hobart with my father and he would have a tale or observation about almost every major building. He retained the presentation and working drawings, the specifications and contractual details of every building his firm had undertaken since the mid-19th century. They have been donated to the state as a reference tool for more than a century's infrastructure development in Tasmania.

He was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, the younger of two boys. His mother, Amelia, was a nurse and his father, John, worked with Australian customs which meant that, in three-year cycles, the family moved. Between regular stints at the family house in Queensland, there were three years on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, where pearlers were taken by sharks and yet the indigenous people taught the boys to swim; three years in London, which saw them at school in Hove, East Sussex; and three years in Hobart, which placed Charles and his brother Philip at tertiary education age.

Hobart had no structured architecture course, so my father, studying at Hobart Technical College, was instrumental in first gaining accreditation for Tasmanians through the Sydney Technical College. During the second world war, he served in the army and, among other things, he was responsible for the planned detonation of all bridges north of the Brisbane line, anticipating Japanese invasion. Charles married Muriel Rogers in 1941 and they went on to raise four children.

In 1946 he joined Archie Johnston in the Hobart firm founded in 1855 by the architect Henry Hunter, which became known as Johnston and Crawford (and is now, with my brother Richard as senior partner, Architects Designhaus).

In later life, he worked to preserve the fine colonial buildings in Tasmania. He was a long-serving Legatee – a member of the Australian organisation Legacy which cares for the families of former servicemen. He was a member of many institutions, including the Athenaeum Club in Hobart, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Royal Hobart Yacht Club, and was a respected member of his community. Once asked why he persisted with a hat, he replied it was in order to pay respects to people he met in the street.

My mother died in 2007. He is survived by his children, Rosemary, Helen, Richard and myself, seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

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