Dandenong Ranges

Distinguished and Famous people from Dandenong Ranges

🎨 William Ricketts

Sculptor William Ricketts created an unusual artistic landscape at Mount Dandenong, placing figures among ferns, trees and rocks. His sanctuary reflects his personal spiritual ideas and admiration for Aboriginal cultures, expressed through his own artistic interpretation. Paths through the forest reveal sculptures integrated with the surrounding vegetation. The place preserves a sustained creative project rather than a conventional gallery display. Its distinctiveness comes from that close relationship between the setting and the work, with the mountain landscape becoming part of the composition.

Ricketts bought his forest land at Olinda near Mount Dandenong in 1935. In 1961 he agreed to transfer it to the Victorian Forests Commission but remained there, with a new house, studio and kiln provided for his work. The sanctuary opened in 1964. That arrangement helped sustain the unusual combination of home, workshop and outdoor exhibition, where paths through the trees became part of experiencing the sculptures. It also gives the local story a practical chapter of land ownership and continuing work, alongside the personal environmental and spiritual concerns already visible in the art.