For a man who never actually lived in Echuca, Andrew Ward had a significant influence on the evolving nature of the riverside community – in particular its buildings.
Mr Ward, who was the man chiefly responsible for the former Echuca Shire’s conservation heritage plan, passed away on August 24, aged 77.
Former mayor Peter Williams said Mr Ward’s contribution to the heritage buildings of Echuca was immeasurable.
“He was the key factor in us getting heritage controllers into Echuca and having people understand that it was worth it,” Mr Williams said.
Mr Ward worked closely with the Echuca Historical Society to produce the final product, which remains on its premises and is often referred to as a reference point for heritage building information.
The Echuca Shire of the day, in the early 1990s, commissioned Mr Ward and his Melbourne-based heritage architecture company to assess hundreds of the buildings in the town for their heritage value.
Mr Williams said the dedicated architect almost single-handedly changed the attitude of people on the value of retaining their buildings’ heritage.
“I remember one of the things he said to us, about High St,” Mr Williams said.
“He said it was probably the most intact heritage streetscape in the state. He told us what we had was something special.”
Echuca was one of the first towns of its size to undertake an architectural heritage study.
Mr Ward’s passion for the area remained after his years of work with the shire.
He would return to visit the town and was often used as a resource in regard to information about heritage buildings by those involved directly in retaining the town's history.
“When he was doing the plan he would be up here regularly,” Mr Williams said.
“He was so committed that at one point he bought a railway controller’s shed which had been on the railway line in Bendigo, just to save it.
“Not only did he write the original heritage plan, but he then became the heritage advisor. So, in all, it was probably five years he was involved with the town’s heritage planning.”
Mr Ward’s understanding, and delivery, of the heritage plan was a major reason in Echuca being able to maintain much of its architectural history.
“He would go out and talk to people about heritage,” Mr Williams said.
“Andrew would pick out individual bits and pieces of their building and describe it to them.
“He would draw a picture in front of them about what they could do to help preserve the building.
“He gave them the story behind the building and he showed them how to restore it.
“We privately engaged him to restore the building in which we were operating our business at the time. He gave us detail to the point of using the original timber that was holding the picket fence up.
“(It was) those subtle little things that made the building special.”
Most of Echuca’s heritage buildings would have, at some stage, been touched by Andrew Ward’s work.
Echuca Historical Society’s Heather Rendle said his final research was a collation of hundreds of pages of research, kept by the society.
“An awful lot of his work has been rather significant for Echuca. Echuca was one of the first towns to do it for themselves,” Mrs Rendle said.
She said the guidelines that Mr Ward put in place some 30 years ago were still used as a reference point today.
“He would often be the person who decided on a building’s significance. He did an awful lot of research with the historical society,” Mrs Rendle said.
“He’d spend hours going through rate books, finding who owned it and when it was built. He would study land records and spend days at a time up here.”
She said there would have been hundreds of buildings in Echuca involved in his studies.
“You could name any heritage building and he would have had something to do with it,” she said.
“He was my go-to man for any information on buildings. I used to just ring him up and say where do I go from here?”
Mr Ward had many battles to save buildings. And while any railway building remained his favorite, Mrs Rendle said saving the Wesley Church was typical of his work.
The church remains standing today, but the school - which was demolished - is the current site of Aldi supermarket.
In semi-retirement Mr Ward worked for a period in Canada, but lived on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria for much of the past decade.
His work in Echuca and Bendigo, along with the City of Melbourne – in particular the General Post Office – is renowned throughout the architectural community.
Mrs Rendle said there had been other heritage architects come through Echuca, but Mr Ward stood clearly as the most influential.
In his funeral notice, wife Enid and his extended family recognised his passion for Echuca and Bendigo.
Mr Ward was also an accomplished artist, a musician who played the clarinet and author of several books. His interests extended to photography and he had travelled the world.