SPECIAL PURPOSE FUNDS

The Margarete Bello Acquisitions Fund

The Flora Bunning Publications Fund

The Margarete Bello Acquisitions

Margarete Bello: A Callaway Centre Benefactor

Margarete Bello, who died in February 1997 in her ninety seventh year, will be remembered by The University of Western Australia as an enthusiastic benefactor of the Departments of Music, Italian and Ophthalmology, and for her impressive achievement of graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in Italian at the age of 86. Her early education in Vienna included training as a pianist. Following the German invasion of Austria in 1938 she escaped to Holland and England and then migrated to Western Australia. The other members of her family became victims of the Jewish holocaust.

Before her death Mrs Bello entrusted her personal papers and photographs to the care of her friend Sir Frank Callaway, who donated them to the Callaway Centre. The collection includes letters, documents and newspaper clippings and reveals a woman of spirited tenacity and great personal morality and altruism. Her tireless community work included her battle to improve mental health care in Western Australia. The Margarete Bello papers are of considerable archival interest.

Margarete Bello's generous donation to the Callaway Centre continues to fund significant acquisitions for the Centre's library.

The Flora Bunning Publications

Flora Bunning: A Callaway Centre Benefactor

In a life that spanned almost all of the twentieth century, Flora Bunning saw such vast changes to Perth that her early years were lived in a world that has indeed 'gone with the wind'. Yet she was one of those who cultivated and helped transform the city's cultural landscape into what it is today.

From her Scottish mother she seems to have acquired great force of character and also her musical gifts, for Helen Bunning was an excellent pianist and a natural musician. Flora was granted a scholarship to study at the Melbourne University Conservatorium of Music at the age of 16. Although Flora was modest about her accomplishments as a pianist, it is worth mentioning that among the works she studied in Melbourne was Brahms' Concerto No. I - a monumental test of any pianist's ability.

On her return to Perth in the early 1920s the contrast between the more sophisticated musical life of Melbourne and that of Perth must have been stark. Band concerts, choirs and largely amateur orchestras made up Perth's musical life, augmented in the 1930s by the advent of the Australian Broadcasting Commission and West Australian Symphony Orchestra. However, musical developments in Perth, as elsewhere, were halted by the outbreak of war.

Flora Bunning played a significant role in the post-war development of music in Perth and there were few musical organisations that she was not associated with, either as president, committee member or helper.

Flora Bunning's generous benefactions include the gift of a magnificent piano to the Conservatorium of Music, funds for instruments and musical scores at The University of Western Australia, funding for the design of a ceramics garden in the entrance to the Eileen Joyce Studio in the School of Music at The University of Western Australia, and provision for on-going funding of publications by the Callaway Centre.