Welcome to Roon soup, a podcast about magic, culture and the paranormal.

My name is Gordon and I shall be your host.

Enjoy.

Today on Roon soup,

today on Roon soup we welcome Dr Ian Evans, architectural historian author and conservationist. Dr Evans 2010 thesis touching magic was the first ever academic examination of the historic use of

witches marks bottles and other apotropaic magic in Australia. Dr Evans thank you for

your time. A pleasure, a great pleasure.

So, Ian, we've been emailing backwards and forwards because you've been doing some research

that is near and dear to my Australian heart. And I guess my first question is have old houses and

old architecture always been an interest of yours?

Going a long way back, yes, yes indeed.

Not quite sure where it came from.

Might it be in the old house I lived in in parks in the central west of New South Wales.

I went back there many years ago after I've written a few books about old houses

and this go to my considerable surprise that this old house was filled

with rim locks and decorative plaster and nice joinery and so on and so forth all the things I did writing about.

So I think what I was doing in writing those early books about Australian houses is

was trying to repair my dysfunctional family of origin.

I see so this is a childhood home that has all those kind of pieces and and components fascinating. My mother was a

teacher in parks. There you go. Oh okay. Yeah. We probably passed in the street.

Depending on when she was there.

I left in, I think, 1959.

...