The Lanyon Estate is one of the colonial jewels of Canberra. Dating back to 1836, it lies at the foothills of the Brindabella Ranges, on the upper banks of the Murrumbidgee River and barely a 30 minute drive south of Civic. In early autumn, it has to be a painter’s dream, reflected in the naming of a nearby suburb, in 1991, after the Australian Impressionist, Arthur Conder.

Jennifer Gall, Erin Helyard and Robyn Holmes. Photo © Vincent Plush

It is at Lanyon that Dr Jennifer Gall, scholar and curator, has assembled a three-part music series, Sounds Like Home, under the umbrella of the Cultural Facilities Corporation, an enterprise of the ACT government.

This particular program, the second in the current series, was drawn from the hand-written music manuscript brought to Australia from Scotland by the artist and diarist Georgiana McCrae (1804–1890). The natural daughter of the fifth Duke of Gordon, McCrae arrived in Port Phillip in March 1841 and remained there until her death in Hawthorn in 1890. McCrae also had a house on the Mornington Peninsula. There she entertained her friends with musicales; sometimes, people from the Bunerong population would sit on her...