The text itself covers the main features of Maldon’s evolution and has the attraction of allowing past and present residents to speak on the town’s behalf: thus Jonathon Moon describes the town of the 1860s; the early 1880s come alive through the words of Henry Handel Richardson, whose early life was spent in four areas that have become highpoints of Victoria’s historic environment - South Fitzroy, Chiltern, Koroit, and Maldon; and the memories of several of Maldon’s old residents evoke the more recent past, especially the depression years of the 1930s. The final brief chapter deals with the National Trust’s initiative in declaring Maldon ‘a notable town’ – the first and perhaps last town to receive such a nomination Australia. The book suggests overwhelming acceptance of conservation in Maldon and no mention is made of just how close the conservation plans came to failing in the early 1970s largely due to the insensitivity of the planners and the penny pinching of their government employers. While outsiders loved the town as a relic from Victoria’s past, the rigid conservation measures being implemented were of little tangible benefit to many of the traditional residents who would have preferred new shop fronts, modern motels and cement curbing along its streets, the conventional signs of a town’s progress.

Fortunately (for the conversationalists, a least) the Maldon Shire Council stopped short of throwing the whole scheme out in 1973 and the project survived to become enacted planning scheme in 1978. Fortunately, too, financial assistance to property owners is now flowing although it had to wait until 1977-78 and is still inadequate to fully compensate the large· proportion of aged residents in the town for the externally imposed development and maintenance restrictions.

Unfortunately the story of Maldon’s early clumsy management has spread over the surrounding countryside with negative effects. For example, the landowners in one nearby locality reacted with extreme hostility and actual vandalism as a result of the interest shown by the Australian Heritage Commission last year in their area’s nineteenth-century rural buildings and farm environment. Although the AHC is a relatively toothless tiger, quite unable to impose conservation restrictions, these residents’ only experience with conservation had been in Maldon and they resisted what they saw as outside interference their property rights.

Blackman and Larkins’ book is not the place to write an account of the conservation scheme’s shaky start. Their aim is to create awareness of the positive benefits to society of conserving the town – and this they do well. But it is to be hoped that another author will rise to the occasion and elaborate on this most recent past for the message to be learnt from the Maldon experience by planners, architects and government officials, and may mean the difference between success and failure for many other conservation projects about the country.