Arthur Streeton’s The Lime Kiln, 1935

Arthur Streeton’s The Lime Kiln, 1935 Yarra Ranges Regional Museum

Kinship In 1878, builder and entrepreneur David Mitchell established Cave Hill Limestone Quarry in Lilydale. His family maintained a connection with the site for the following 124 years. The quarry was a significant employer in the region. It played a formative role in the growing community of Lilydale, with many local families working there across generations. Cave Cave Hill was named after the natural limestone caves present on the site. It featured a particularly deep cavern, known to the local Wurundjeri people as ‘Bukkertillible’ or ‘cave with no end’, formed by Bunjil the creator spirit when angered. Typical of much colonial extractive enterprise, the quarry destroyed this culturally significant site. Impressionism Arthur Streeton was a major player in the Australian Impressionist movement of the late nineteenth century. He strove to portray the distinctive Australian landscape in his work. Artworks such as The Lime Kiln were painted ‘en plein air’ (outside) to better capture the light and colour of the scene, which was key to the Impressionist style. Limestone Until its closure in 2015, Cave Hill Quarry was a primary source of limestone in Victoria, extracting and processing the raw material which supplied much of Victoria’s building industry. The quarry’s success contributed to the expansion of the railway to Lilydale, in turn helping to open the Yarra Valley to tourism.