Annie Forsyth Wyatt

Annie Forsyth Wyatt (3 January 1885 – 27 May 1961) was an Australian community worker, conservationist and Red Cross worker. She is celebrated as the driving force behind the establishment of the National Trust movement in Australia, establishing the organisation in 1945 to protect Sydney's historic natural and built sites.

As a conservationist, lover of colonial history, and humanitarian, Wyatt observed women working effectively in the community during World War I, and came to believe that women could make a difference in community issues. Over her lifetime she worked for many causes apart from the National Trust of Australia (NSW), including the Red Cross and the NSW Prisoners' Aid Association (for 20 years). She donated the proceeds of her book Doors that slam: a romance of early Sydney, to the Prisoners' Aid Association.

Early life

Wyatt was born in Redfern, New South Wales in 1885, lived for much of her life in a cottage in Gordon, and died in St Ives. Annie resided with her family at 90 Cleveland Street, Redfern. She was the eldest of eight children of Isabella Anne Evans (née Forsyth) and George Trotter Evans. The growing family moved from their Redfern home in 1891 to a house named Fairholme in the semi-rural Rooty Hill area, with Annie boarding at Burwood Methodist Ladies College from the age of 10.

Annie's maternal grandfather Archibald Forsyth (1826–1908) had arrived in Australia in 1848 from Scotland. His outspoken public role as a Protectionist, and a member of Parliament, and his actions as a philanthropist in setting up the Animals Protection League, and supporting the sick and hungry must have influenced his young granddaughter, who found herself speaking out about public issues in the 1920s. She was an early supporter of the United Associations of Women in 1929. Annie Wyatt helped to preserve a small area of Sydney's remaining bluegum and blackbutt forests as a member of the Dalrymple Hay Forest Preservation Committee in the 1930s.

The National Trust Provisional Committee began to fulfil Annie's dream of saving Sydney's historic sites. A program of education and public campaigns against demolition and unsuitable development in historic areas followed. Annie Wyatt, in early Trust minutes, warned the group "that the last lovely Macquarie era buildings were in dire peril and that we should take our stand for their preservation".

Works Wyatt, A. Forsyth, (1941) Doors that slam: a romance of early Sydney, Sydney: G.M. Dash. (A copy is held in the State Library of New South Wales.)