Master Plan
An unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and a decision to return to study, would set Joan Masterman on an unexpected path as an ecotourism innovator and pioneer.
When Joan left the family farm for Sydney in the mid-1950s, she continued the progressive education that had begun at Frensham Boarding School in Mittagong by enrolling at the Women’s College at Sydney University.
Joan found university life both inspiring and enlightening. Established in 1892, the Women’s College was created to offer female students the opportunity to attain the same level of qualifications as their fellow male graduates – something denied to women in other countries at the time.
Image from the Women’s College Archives
Joan’s sister Rosemary also studied at the Women’s College and would later forge a career as a successful politician – winning a Liberal seat in the NSW State Parliament in the late 1970s and serving as the state’s Deputy Opposition leader from 1983 until 1986.
Joan credits that rich educational environment with piquing her interest in architecture and town planning. After earning her degree, marrying George Masterman, and having her two children, she returned to Sydney University in 1973 to study a Master of Town Planning. It was there that she met fellow student, architect Ken Latona, with whom she formed a friendship and professional association that would shape the careers and lives of both.
After completing her Masters in 1976, Joan took up a position at Sydney City Council. This was a progressive time for urban planning in the city, and the Council was focused on setting new planning parameters, including preserving Sydney’s significant built heritage. Joan played a role in establishing the first planning regimes for Sydney, and in saving the city’s historic, but neglected, wharves at Woolloomooloo and Barangaroo.
After two years at Sydney City Council, Joan moved to the Australian National Trust, where Ken Latona was also working.
Ken and Joan were both strong-minded, talented people who understood the benefits of combining their individual strengths and skills. Ken remembers; ‘It was complementary. Joan had a different personality to me, and we were totally different types, and yet we got along.’
Recognising the advantages of joining forces, Ken and Joan formed their own consultancy – Latona Masterman and Associates.
Joan and Ken worked together on several major regional planning projects in New South Wales, including Silverton, Broken Hill, and Hill End. But it was a commissioned management plan for the former convict settlement at Port Arthur in Tasmania that would set life-changing events in motion.
In the early 1980s, Tasmania’s tourism brand was primarily about apples and convicts. At this time, the reserve at Port Arthur was managed by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, which recognised a need to preserve the site’s significant heritage infrastructure and to take the first steps towards interpreting Port Arthur’s complex history.
For Joan and Ken, working on the substantial Port Arthur management plan provided a crucial insight into Tasmania and opened the door to lifelong professional and personal connections with the state. For Joan, who had previously thought of Tasmania as ‘boring’, it was the beginning of a love affair with the island. ‘I thought it was devastatingly beautiful and moody. A totally different landscape to the mainland.’
Within a few years, Latona Masterman and Associates would submit a successful tender to design and build four huts to support a multi-day walk on Tasmania’s Overland Track. That project would trigger a seismic shift in the Australian tourism industry and ultimately lead to the creation of Friendly Beaches Lodge and the Freycinet Experience Walk.
