Pipe Organs in WA
 
 
 
 
 

Augustine Congregational Church, Bunbury
The pipe organs of Western Australia




Bunbury
Anne Haylock, Memories of Bunbury

Bunbury


Bunbury
1968 view across the Railyards towards Augustine Church.

Bunbury
The Clifton organ in Johnstone memorial Church, Fremantle

Property
Name of institution   Augustine Congregational Church (later known as St Augustine’s Congregational Church)
Type of institution0   Church
Street Address   Prinsep Street
City   Bunbury
State   Western Australia
Postcode   6230
Country   Australia
Name of building   Augustine Congregational Church
Name of room   Church Sanctuary
Dates of the building   1898
Demolished c1970
Register of Heritage Places  
Heritage Place number  
Architect   Henry Trigg
Builder   J H Gibbs & Co

Special architectural features and fittings  

Other location information   The church as described "fantastic pipe organ, great architecture, and it had a separate bell tower that was rung every Sunday." Some of the stained glass windows were salvaged by church members before the building was destroyed.

Name of contact  
Mailing Address  
Telephone  
Email  
Other contact information  

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Previous organ(s)
Date of previous organ   None
Detail of previous organ  
Dates when key work has been undertaken  
Dates of any moves that have taken place  
Variations from original design of organ  
Information on previous organ  
Information about comparable instruments to previous organ  
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Present organ
Type of installation  

Case description  

Placement in room  

Builder's name   Robert Cecil Clifton

Opus number   2

Date of completion/installation   1880

Construction materials  

Number of manuals   Two (2)

Key compasses  

Number of keys  

Key material  

Pedal compass  

Number of pedals  

Pedalboard type  

Pedalboard material  

Type of chests  

Type of key action   Mechanical

Type of stop action   Mechanical

Couplers   Swell - Great
Swell - Pedal
Great - Pedal

Tremulants  

Accessories   

Console type  

Stop label material  

Placement  

General design  

Playing aids  

Divisions   Great, Swell, Pedal

Wind pressures  

Stop list  
GREAT
Open Diapason 8'
Stopped Diapason 8'
Dulciana 8'
Principal 4'
Harmonic Flute 4'
Twelfth 2 2/3
Fifteenth 2'
Great to Pedal
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SWELL
Violin Diapason 8'
Lieblich Gedackt 8'
Gemshorn 4'
Stopped Flute 4'
Oboe 8'
Swell to Great
Swell to Pedal
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PEDAL
Bourdon 16'
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Total number of stops   13

Total number of ranks   12

Total number of pipes  

Dates when key work has been undertaken on current organ   Rebuilt c1963 by Arthur Miles and Mr Davidson as a 2 manual, 7 rank extension organ with electro-magnetic action. All the original action and soundboards were scrapped.

Dates of any moves that have taken place to current organ   Built in 1880 for Johnston Memorial Church, Fremantle.
Relocated to Bunbury in 1929 by Russell Fowler.
Removed c1970 and broken up.
Some parts used at St. Augustine's Uniting Church, Bunbury.

Information on current organ  

Dear Sir

A friend in WA has alerted me to the fact that you might be interested in the rebuilding of the Clifton organ from the Johnstone Memorial Church in Fremantle, to the Congregational Church in Bunbury. That is a story from my family.

In the early 20s, my father, Russell Fowler, arrived in Bunbury as the science teacher at the newly built Bunbury High School.

He joined the Congregational Church there and found there was a young woman (BHS student then piano teacher) who was a talented musician and was playing an old harmonium at the church. Dad loved music, although he had never had any lessons, nor could he read music, but with the help of this young woman, together they set up an orchestra at BHS and a choir at the church. Dad conducted these.

However, he decided the organist needed a better instrument, and when he discovered that the church in Fremantle was about to chuck out their Clifton organ, he decided to buy it. Then he bought a very large book on organ building (which became a doorstop in my memory) and preceded to transport the organ bit by bit, pipe by pipe, weekend by weekend, in his 1920s Oldsmobile (cloth roof, runner boards etc.). How he got the larger pipes from Fremantle to Bunbury I don't know but there are stories of breakdowns, precarious tying's on to roof, near accidents etc.

You may take it that he was a person with enthusiasm and undaunted by difficulties. He also had an incentive. All this was, no doubt, a strategy to woo the young woman concerned. It worked! They were married and had three daughters, me being the youngest.

I didn't encounter the organ until I was nine, since we left Bunbury shortly after I was born. We arrived back there in 1949 when Dad was appointed the headmaster of BHS. The organ was in a terrible state, not having had any care in our absence. I remember Dad shaking his head sadly over the state of the bellows. It needed to be repaired with kid skin - hard to obtain from overseas at a time the world was recovering from WW2. Still, he put it back in order and my sister and I undertook the tuning of the organ from then on.

She was the one who crawled up among the pipes and got covered in dust and cobwebs, while I sat at the keyboard and shouted "up a bit" or "down a bit". Fortunately I had perfect pitch and had always taken an interest in the sounds the piano tuner made at our house. I remembered the sound of the not-quite-perfect-fifths and so on. My sister was more interested than I was and taught herself to play. I liked experimenting, but was careful to stay out of it enough to be able to semi-truthfully claim that "I can't play the organ".

In a small country town anyone who could play an instrument was often in demand. There was no way I wanted to be asked to accompany the various church choirs in Bunbury. Most of them were terrible, and I wasn't fond of the repertoire either: dreary Victorian anthems and my particular hate - Stainer's Crucifixion. I was indulged in this by my sympathetic mother. When she grew up in Bunbury, her mother had stipulated that if she had piano lessons she must always "give back" by cheerfully playing the piano whenever requested. (Being able to sight-read difficult accompaniments and even transpose them was not something her parents knew was unusual in a seven-year-old).

So that is the story of how the Clifton organ arrived in Bunbury.

I last visited Bunbury in about 1990 and found the Congregational Church (or at least the building) didn't exist any more. What did still exist, to my astonishment, was the old wooden gym at the High School.

For a couple of years I taught music there in the early 60s and kept trying to alert people to its unsound structure. I sprained my ankle when my foot went through the floor one day and the walls would "give" gently when I leaned on them. And the caretaker doused everything in kerosene when I complained about the plague of fleas.... That's all another story.

Jennifer Paterson (Fowler)



Comparable instruments to current organ  

Assessment of organ and cuurrent status   No longer in this location

Other organs by this builder   Robert Cecil Clifton built five pipe organs. Please refer to Western Australian Organs Builders Index.
  • Opus 1 is now located at St Aidan's Uniting Church, Claremont
  • Opus 2 (remaining parts of) is now located at St. Augustine's Uniting Church, Bunbury.
  • Opus 3 (remaining parts of) is now located at St John's Anglican Church, Fremantle
  • Opus 4 is now located at St John's Anglican Church, Kalgoorlie
  • Opus 5 is now located at St Anne's Roman Catholic Church, Belmont


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    Document control Original entries J R Elms, OAM, Gazetteer of Western Australian Pipe Organs, 1971, 1999, 2003 and 2004.
    This entry D B Duncan 03 January 2009.

    Historical detail of the organ provided by Jennifer Fowler 23 June 2017.
    Photographs and detail of the orgininal building from Memories of Bunbury a Facebook page for all photographs, stories, and history of the City of Bunbury.