If one were to account all the things that many of our grandparents found shocking; like short skirts, bright lipstick, working mothers, bohemians...it would be safe to say that visionaries were not usually successful constituents of mainstream society. It is not surprising then, that a mudbrick village, populated by artists and other 'creative types', that rose slowly out of the ground a mere twenty kilometres from moral Melbourne, would have been more than a touch offensive to its delicate sensibilities.

Justus Jorgensen's symphony in "mud and stone" has weathered the prevailing ideals of five decades to stand today as a testament to what was in essence a most successful exercise in communal living by people who were bound by a common goal - the exploration of their artistic and creative selves in an environment harmonious with and not paradoxical to this objective.

Justus, like his Montsalvat, was many varied things to many people: ranging from idealist, visionary, philosopher and artist, to ratbag, autocrat and unspeakably amoral. Establishment art critics of the Twenties and Thirties were far from enamoured with his work and there are many today who would prefer to remain close-mouthed about Justus and his contribution to Australian art in a silence that negates more than it does laud. However, what is certain about Justus is that he was a man who sacrificed all for his ideals including commercial success as an architect, a profession which he gave away in order to study painting, first at the National Gallery School and later with Max Meldrum, with whom he forged a long if somewhat turbulent alliance.

In 1924, Justus, along with a coterie of some painter friends including Archie Colquhoun, Colin Calahan and John Farmer, travelled Europe drawing inspiration from the collections of the Old Masters, after which Justus settled in London to paint whilst his wife Lily returned to medical school to complete her degree. Justus was considerably successful in London, exhibiting and receiving praise for his works, a reaction in direct contrast to his treatment by the Melbourne critics in general.

Sigmund Jorgensen, one of Justus' two sons by painter Helen Skipper, and now curator and spokesman for Montsalvat, is adamant that the phenomenon of the expatriate Australian artist is largely due to the reactionary stance of the establishment art world.

"A lot of artists who travelled overseas, especially the Post-War artist, became expatriates, most notably due to the lack of recognition. In my father's time, the established art world knew the Heidelberg School and that was what they concentrated on. He was a specific example of this in that he was lauded by the overseas establishment, he was mentioned in British and European Art Histories, but at home in Australia he was slated by the Melbourne critics. My Father and Meldrum did snub the establishment, but the lack of official recognition today is an indication of where the Australian art world is at".

Justus returned to Australia in 1929, and after the first of many tiffs with Meldrum, established his own studio in Queen Street in Melbourne. It was here that Justus began concentrating on teaching and the formulation of his own conceptions of art and lifestyle. The studio became a salon for artists and intellectuals, many of whom would later gather at the Eltham site and indeed be principal in the construction of the buildings of Montsalvat.

In the early 30s came the first of many scandals which would attach themselves to the bohemian element of Melbourne, and the one that would prompt Justus to turn his back on his successful city life and literally head for the hills. It concerned the murder of one Molly Dean, an artist's model and by consequence of her employment, a "loose woman" in the eyes of many. The popular belief was that the bohemian artists were responsible, resulting in Justus' friend Colin being blamed. Colin was exonerated at the hearing but due to the climate of the time, a lingering dark cloud was cast over the artists.

Artists at all levels of the hierarchy rallied around in order to reinstate a sense of respectability and Sigmund recounts an invitation forwarded by Arthur Streeton to Colin to take tea at the illustrious Hotel Australia in full view of the "establishment". Despite such efforts to reverse the discredit, the damage was done; so much so, that one art critic ventures to say that part of the reason why Justus and Meldrum were excluded from the popular art world was that they were seen to be tied up with the Dean case.

Justus was offered land in Eltham and so in 1934 with the munificence of Lily, who then paid the royal sum of fifteen pounds an acre, Justus set about constructing his "Mount of Salvation", derived from German mythology as the legendary home of the Holy Grail. As Sigmund recounts, it was initially intended to be a weekender; a refuge for Justus.

"After the drubbing by the critics in the 20s, Justus began to perceive his art as being his Holy Grail and Montsalvat the castle in which to keep his art. He really decided to turn his back on the commercial art scene in Australia in 1938, and from this period on, he taught but did not exhibit again until 1972. He rarely showed his work to anyone apart from occasionally entering a portrait in the Archibald Prize, and although he never won (largely because he always entered self-portraits ), he was highly commended..."

As there was very little cash, (Justus was very rarely liquid in this respect and generally relied on the donations of cash and otherwise from philanthropists and from Lily, of whom he said unashamedly, "My Wife has plenty of money:), Justus chose to utilize what materials were available naturally and decided on Pisé or mudbrick, which he had seen used in Europe and which was in ready supply in Eltham.

Researching the methods of the famed Roman historian Pliny, he invoked the European peasant style of architecture and along with donations of whole fixtures such as a cast iron circular staircase, he utilized the labour of family, friends and students who trotted up to Eltham from the city and camped on the grounds to help in the construction. One wonders whether the same altruism would apply if a similar situation were foisted upon students today, no matter how bountiful the loyalty to the teacher. Sigmund feels that there were two mitigating factors in the case of Montsalvat. The time, of course, was most important.

"People were looking for new trains of thought. It was a time of great disillusionment in this post-depression period. Also, it was leading into World War II and people were flirting with new ideas such as communism; ideas of new orders. My father and the people around him were open to new philosophies of European origin. There was a little cell of intellectuals who talked of the real issues..."

Sigmund recalls dinner time at Montsalvat as a ritual of eating and drinking and discussion of politics, art, philosophy and popular ideologies. This tradition would grow as Montsalvat grew and Sigmund recalls having 20-40 people at dinner; an extended family from a child's perspective. Weekends would attract quite ostensibly incongruous people from the city including a dentist, an industrial engineer and others from many social and professional stratas, who would come looking for a forum for new thoughts and theories in an environment exclusively devoted to germinating the same.

As a consequence, other houses were constructed to accommodate those who became permanent residents, among them Arthur Monday, John Busst, Myra Gould and the Skipper family, many of whom remain in 1988. It is at this point that the second factor, intrinsic to the success of Montsalvat, becomes evident: the character of Justus Jorgensen. Justus was an iconoclast, often cantankerous and autocratic but always charismatic.

"He had an enormous charm", recalls Sigmund. "People gave him money. It was a niece of Dame Nellie Melba who got the money to construct the swimming-pool and the Whelans, of "Whelan the Wrecker" fame would call Justus to salvage particular pieces from the wonderful buildings of Melbourne's boom period that were being torn down at this time. When construction began on the Great hall in 1938, Whelan called my father to tell him of some windows that he could salvage from an old church that was being wrecked in Collins St. My father liked the windows so much that he built the Great Hall around them instead of vice-versa".

Work on the Great Hall, the extraordinarily imposing centrepiece of Montsalvat built from slate, stone and mud (which horrified many who wondered at its capacity to buffer the elements), was continued by local tradesmen and the students, who were now housed in Monks' Cubicles around the swimming-pool. Montsalvat as an artists' colony had become a reality.

Like some great architectural fairy tale, every artist, builder and tradesman left his or their indelible mark on the constructions, all with their worn interpretation of the ideal, but ultimately retaining the quintessential lines of the story. All the elements and materials, essentially incongruous by their natures, combine to retain a uniformity of line culminating in a Gothic village built in the same way as its precursors, Justus was often criticised for having such a heavy leaning in the past, but he answered that criticism with characteristic honesty:

"The struggle to be unique defeats its own purpose. New ideas are not the ones that interest me...I dislike some modern art for its monotony of line and its unawareness of nature's accent. Thus it is the same in architecture. I am not interested in trying to be original. I like to contemplate and discover the marvellous workshops of another age and of other artists".

Justus was seemingly unimpressed by trailblazers of the time and in fact was quite outspoken in his contempt for most examples of Modern art, claiming it was monotonous in execution and so conscious of trying to be unique that it negated the possible influences of past Masters. He had a particular dislike for Pablo Picasso despite the former's acclaim the world over. Justus blithely stated that it would be advantageous to buy Picasso's work if only to paint over it, for the canvases that Picasso used were of such high quality.

Justus was often quoted as saying that there were no bad paintings, only bad painters. Besides which, he felt that paint always looked so nice. It is easy to see them, that he was a great admirer of the impressionists; in particular Cezanne and Matisse for their vibrancy of colour and the seemingly explosive effect of the colour in usage.

With the outbreak of World War Two, work on the Great hall ceased and the residents of Montsalvat turned their attentions to the war effort. The forties saw Montsalvat convert to a farm with the goal of becoming self-sufficient and a whole new series of buildings were constructed to accommodate the agrarian activity. The Skipper family started a dairy and Helen Skipper took to breeding ponies as a means of increasing revenue for the colony and to later finance the education of children. After the war, these buildings were converted into additional studios and workshops.

In this post-war period, the Australian collective psyche became open to expansion and a new influx of people were attracted to Montsalvat, many via the Queen St. studios. It continued to exist as a meeting place and many of the ex-Diggers were drawn there and they mixed freely with the intelligentsia. Those who came to Montsalvat included artists Matcham Skipper, Clifton Pugh and the late Alistair Knox, a renowned builder who Sigmund asserts, came into his own at Montsalvat.

"My father and the environment of Montsalvat gave Knox the courage to reject the old world and achieve his artistic ambitions - to begin experimenting with his ideas. My father used to say, 'Stop trying to be in two worlds...one can't be a bank clerk and an artist with equal devotion. Be a labourer, or something that does not require concentration..."

A cynic may scoff that this was Justus' justification for eliciting labour gratis from his followers, however it cannot be denied that the environment created was one so conducive to the artist's psyche, that in the final analysis creative productivity flourished, no matter how much energy was expended in manual labour. Therein lies the success of Montsalvat - artists could create without fear of external criticism or mandatory adherence to set schools. One's own idea became one's only creed for its execution.

Work was completed on the Great Hall in 1958 and although originally envisioned as a venue for exhibitions, its purpose became multi-functional through the years, in particular as the aforementioned dining-room for Sigmund and his siblings' extended family in what must have been almost enlightened childhood.

"I was educated in and around Eltham and a teacher from one of my schools was a student of my father's and a frequent dinner guest. He was also a communist, although the school didn't know that. In fact there were many communists in Eltham, although my father was essentially apolitical, and when Prime Minister Menzies outlawed the Communist Party and seized all the presses, many of them ended up in Eltham, hidden on someone's farm.

"I was considered slightly suspicious by my peers and their parents asked me all sorts of veiled questions. I tried harder to be accepted than did other children at school and in a sense it is similar to the situation of black people all over the world - to be more acceptable, one either lives outside society or one plays the society game better than anyone else".

Amidst rumours of nudist colonies and "Temples of Love", Sigmund defends his father's code of ethics which have fired the imaginations and most probably the passions of Montsalvat observers through the years.

"He had a vision. People with visions are always a little dangerous ...His New Order concerned a vision about morality and about society. It was anachronistic in the face of greater Melbourne. He had a philosophy that attracted furore. There was talk of "Free Love". He hated the concept of marriage in the conventional sense: he believed that two people living together have a natural commitment to each other and he could not conceive of divorcing one woman in order to become involved with another".

And indeed Justus did not bother to divorce Lily when he became involved with and later fathered children to Helen Skipper, the mother of Sigmund and Sebastian. In this sense, Justus had more in common with Picasso than he may have thought. Lily, like Picasso's long-term paramour Francoise Gilot, was a professional in her own right and not a diminutive personality by any means.

A follower of Marie Stopes and a doctor, she was also an advocate of, and specialist in, birth control, which was certainly far from dinner conversation in Melbourne in the 30s and 40s. When questioned as to the effects of this environment of moral lassitude on the children, Lily replied candidly that she thought that they would have a much better chance growing up in Montsalvat than they would anywhere else.

Perhaps in his own fashion, Justus believed that he was furthering egalitarian perceptions of women.

"My father hated the popular concept of women in the 20s and 30s", says Sigmund. "that of the wife as a chattel along with the car, house and fridge. He believed in treating women with more respect. Both males and females assisted in the building of Montsalvat in an equal fashion and the ideas and talents of the women were equally respected. With the explosion of the radical ideas from Europe, it was discovered that women had minds!".

Certainly an upbringing at Montsalvat had no serious repercussions on the boys. Justus and Lily's son Max is a presumably non-anarchic farmer, Sebastian is a journalist and an acclaimed guitarist, and Sigmund is a university graduate, a successful restaurateur and a director of Montsalvat, although the property has been a government trust since the death of Justus in 1975. By his own admission, Sigmund has taken his father's dream, kept it and tried to bring it into the latter half of the twentieth century.

Although there is a paucity of students here now, there is also a more varied and diversified group of people. Sigmund has brought in people from other fields: a man who makes violins and cellos, silversmiths, sculptors, painters, writers, musicians and assorted specialists who constitute a living reference library for skills that one would presume were passed in for more technical concerns in keeping with the apparent needs of the contemporary world. In this way, it is gratifying to learn of a professional harpsichord tuner in residence. Given that Montsalvat is a huge enterprise to maintain, some concessions have been made to Justus' Utopia.

"The Montsalvat of today works on a number of different levels", Sigmund explains. "The first level of course, is that it provides a home and studio/workshop space for artists and artisans producing various arts and crafts. This is its primary function. Some of these people pay rent, some own their own houses and the traditional owners have been here from the start. The artists basically support themselves now.

"On a second level, we run a series of concerts and public presentations, from chamber music to Rock and Roll, guitar festivals; a whole range of things, the most recent of which was a four day, Bicentennial Jazz festival. I try to use people who are on the fifth rung of the ladder - those who will make it but who are starting out...."

The years at Montsalvat have trained Sigmund to harbour a sense of the cynic in regards to the government as benefactor of the Arts and certainly there was no such thing as funding in Justus' day.

"Even today, there are very few nurturing grants from councils such as the Australia Council and in this sense one of the greatest ironies becomes apparent to me. When people make it after doing concerts for people such as myself., when they become rich and famous, that's when the Arts Council and the Ministry pick them up and give them funding".

The grounds of Montsalvat have seen many different kinds of people drawn to the "alternative lifestyle" when the standard of conventions of their relevant decade proved too limiting as a form of expression. In the sixties, along with the freedom and public flaunting of the sorts of improvised moralities and "isms", came a new influx of people: bored academics, disillusioned youth and university students - people imbued with the exploration of the age and those just content to take time out from their professions and walk the grounds on the weekends to soak up the atmosphere.

The Great Hall is now hired out for functions and one would be more likely to see a wedding in progress than a bunch of inquiring intellectuals on the weekends. Justus no longer booms from the refectory table, but his spirit is intact and when the right concert is playing at Montsalvat, there are an awful lot of grandparents tapping their feet to the music in and around the house that Justus built.