Emily Jane Longey (née Smith)

Progressive Roots in Post-War Melbourne

Emily Jane Smith was born on 7 November 1955 at the Mercy Hospital for Women in East Melbourne, the youngest of four children born to Dr Harold James Smith and Margaret Ellen Smith (née Patterson). The Smith family resided in a substantial Edwardian home on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, an affluent inner-eastern suburb characterised by tree-lined streets, well-maintained period homes, and proximity to both city amenities and prestigious schools. This was prosperous, educated, professional Melbourne—worlds apart from the working-class suburbs where many of Emily's future friends and collaborators would grow up.

Harold Smith, born in 1921, was a general practitioner who had served as medical officer during the Second World War before establishing his practice in Hawthorn in 1947. He was a thoughtful, politically progressive man whose wartime experiences had left him with deep scepticism about nationalism and militarism, who believed medicine was social service rather than merely profitable profession, who instilled in his children that privilege carried obligations toward broader community. His practice served Hawthorn's middle-class families whilst he also volunteered at community health clinics serving migrant populations in adjacent working-class suburbs.

Margaret Patterson, born in 1925, had trained as a teacher at Melbourne Teachers' College before marriage and motherhood redirected her energies toward household management and community involvement. She was active in local progressive causes—the Save Our Suburbs movement opposing freeway development, campaigns for improved public education funding, early women's liberation groups emerging in the late 1960s. Margaret's political engagement provided Emily with early model of how women could participate in public life beyond traditional domestic roles, how comfortable middle-class existence didn't preclude moral engagement with social issues.

Emily grew up alongside three older siblings who would each pursue distinct paths reflecting the Smith family's emphasis on education and public service. Her eldest brother, David Harold Smith, born in 1947, would become a barrister specialising in industrial law, representing trade unions in disputes with employers. Her sister, Catherine Margaret Smith, born in 1949, would pursue social work, spending thirty years with Victorian child protection services. Her brother, Peter James Smith, born in 1952, would follow their father into medicine, becoming a psychiatrist specialising in treating trauma and addiction.

The Hawthorn household was characterised by books, conversation, and expectation of intellectual engagement. Dinner discussions ranged across politics, literature, scientific developments, ethical questions—Harold and Margaret treating their children as capable of understanding complex ideas, encouraging questioning rather than demanding deference to authority. Weekends involved visits to museums and galleries, attendance at concerts and theatre, family bushwalks in the Dandenongs where Harold would identify native plants and discuss conservation issues. The household assumed that education was valuable for its own sake, that work should serve meaningful purposes beyond income, that comfortable circumstances carried responsibilities toward those less fortunate.

Yet the Smith household wasn't without tensions and contradictions. Harold's medical practice and investments provided substantial income that enabled private school education, overseas holidays, comfortable retirement planning—advantages that sat somewhat uneasily alongside progressive political commitments. Margaret's activism, whilst genuine, was conducted from position of financial security that allowed her to volunteer rather than needing paid employment. The children absorbed both their parents' values and their privilege, sometimes struggling to reconcile commitments to social justice with their own comfortable circumstances.

Education and Artistic Awakening

Emily's formal education began at Strathcona Baptist Girls' Grammar School, a prestigious independent school in Canterbury emphasising both academic excellence and character development. She was a bright but somewhat unfocused student—displaying particular talents in art and literature whilst struggling with mathematics and sciences, excelling in subjects allowing creative expression whilst finding more structured disciplines frustrating. Teachers noted her creativity and passion whilst also observing her tendency toward distraction, her difficulty completing assignments that didn't engage her interests, her occasional challenging of authority in ways both admirable and problematic.

Her artistic abilities emerged early and distinctively. She drew constantly—in margins of notebooks, during classes that bored her, at home when she should have been completing homework. Her subjects ranged from careful observational drawings of plants and animals to fantastical creatures and scenes, from portraits of family members to abstract explorations of line and form. Her Year 9 art teacher, Ms Judith Carmichael, recognised Emily's unusual visual intelligence and encouraged her to pursue art seriously rather than treating it as pleasant hobby.

The late 1960s and early 1970s, Emily's teenage years, were period of significant cultural ferment in Australia and globally. The Vietnam War generated widespread protest, women's liberation challenged traditional gender arrangements, environmental consciousness emerged as political force, counterculture questioned conventional assumptions about work, family, and lifestyle. Emily absorbed these currents enthusiastically, attending anti-war demonstrations despite her parents' concerns about police response, reading feminist literature that helped her articulate frustrations with girls' school gender expectations, exploring alternative culture through underground newspapers and music.

Her artistic interests during this period shifted from technical skill development toward conceptual exploration. She became interested in assemblage and installation art—creating works from found objects and discarded materials, exploring how familiar objects could generate new meanings through unexpected combinations and contexts. Her final-year art exhibition at Strathcona featured an installation titled "Consumption," using shopping trolleys filled with deliberately damaged consumer goods to critique throwaway culture—work that generated both praise for its artistic sophistication and discomfort among some parents and administrators who found its anti-consumerist message inappropriate.

Emily completed her Higher School Certificate in 1973 with strong marks in art, literature, and history, adequate performance in other subjects. She had been accepted into several university programmes but felt uncertain about academic study, questioning whether formal education would merely domesticate her artistic impulses. After extended discussions with her parents—Harold and Margaret wanting her to pursue university but respecting her autonomy—Emily decided to enrol in Fine Arts at RMIT University, a programme combining practical studio work with art history and theory.

University Years and Political-Artistic Formation

Emily's years at RMIT (1974-1977) represented intensive personal and artistic development. The fine arts programme attracted students from diverse backgrounds—working-class kids on scholarships, middle-class artistic rebels, international students, mature-age career changers—creating environment far more diverse and politically engaged than her sheltered Strathcona experience. She encountered ideas, people, and perspectives that challenged assumptions she hadn't realised she held, learning as much from fellow students and Melbourne's emerging alternative culture as from formal coursework.

Her artistic practice during these years became increasingly political and environmentally focused. She was particularly influenced by her sculpture tutor, Trevor Morrison, whose own work addressed industrial pollution and environmental degradation. Under his mentorship, Emily developed approach combining aesthetic sophistication with political engagement—creating works that were visually compelling whilst also communicating clear messages about consumer culture, environmental destruction, and social inequality.

Her final-year project, "Monuments to Waste," was an ambitious installation featuring sculptures constructed entirely from materials salvaged from Melbourne's tips and industrial zones—crushed car bodies, discarded appliances, construction debris, broken furniture. The work transformed literal waste into aesthetic objects that were simultaneously beautiful and disturbing, demanding viewers recognise the environmental consequences of throwaway culture. The installation was exhibited at RMIT's student gallery and received significant attention, reviewed positively in several Melbourne newspapers and art journals.

During her university years, Emily also became deeply involved in environmental activism. She joined campaigns opposing sand mining on Victoria's coastline, participated in protests against proposed dam projects threatening wilderness areas, volunteered with community groups planting native vegetation in degraded urban spaces. This activism wasn't separate from her artistic practice but integral to it—the art providing means of communicating environmental concerns, the activism ensuring her art remained grounded in material struggles rather than becoming purely aesthetic exercise.

She graduated in November 1977 with strong marks and emerging reputation in Melbourne's alternative art scene. Yet she also understood that fine arts degree didn't guarantee artistic career—that she would need to support herself through other employment whilst building artistic practice and reputation, that success required not just talent but persistence, networking, willingness to navigate arts funding bureaucracies and commercial gallery systems.

Building Artistic Practice and Meeting Robert

Following graduation, Emily worked various part-time jobs whilst establishing her artistic practice—waitressing at Carlton cafes, working at art supply stores, doing administrative work for community organisations. The employment was necessary for survival but also kept her connected to Melbourne's artistic and activist communities, providing networks and opportunities that purely studio-focused approach wouldn't have offered.

Her artistic work during the late 1970s continued exploring environmental themes through assemblage and installation. She exhibited in group shows at artist-run spaces in Fitzroy and Collingwood, participated in outdoor installations for community environmental festivals, created temporary works for protest events. Her practice was characterised by use of salvaged and recycled materials—refusing to purchase new art supplies when discarded materials were available, ensuring her artistic process aligned with environmental values, demonstrating that waste could become beauty through creative transformation.

In September 1978, Emily attended an environmental campaign meeting in Carlton opposing a proposed development that would destroy significant native vegetation. At this meeting, she encountered Robert Longey, a young architect whose professional practice focused on sustainable design. Their conversation after the meeting revealed remarkable alignment of values—both committed environmentalists, both believing their creative work should serve larger purposes beyond personal expression or commercial success, both viewing art and architecture as means of making environmental consciousness tangible and accessible.

Their relationship developed quickly, characterised by intense conversations about environmental philosophy, shared participation in campaigns and protests, mutual introduction to their respective professional communities. Robert brought Emily into Melbourne's architectural culture, introducing her to buildings and design principles she hadn't previously considered. Emily brought Robert into art world and activist networks, exposing him to artistic approaches and political strategies that challenged his sometimes overly technical environmental thinking.

What made their relationship work was complementary rather than identical temperaments and skills. Robert was methodical, cautious, systematic—qualities that sometimes limited his imagination but ensured his projects were technically sound and practically achievable. Emily was spontaneous, risk-taking, intuitive—qualities that sometimes led to impractical proposals but generated creative possibilities Robert wouldn't have conceived. Together, they balanced each other—Robert grounding Emily's sometimes unrealistic ambitions, Emily pushing Robert beyond his conservative comfort zones.

Marriage and Creative Partnership

They married in March 1980 in ceremony reflecting their values—simple, inexpensive, focused on community rather than display. The wedding was held at Carlton Gardens, surrounded by native plants and eucalyptus trees, with reception at community hall featuring vegetarian food Emily and friends had prepared, folk music from musician friends, decorations Emily had created from recycled materials. Both families attended—Robert's working-class Fitzroy relatives somewhat uncomfortable with bohemian atmosphere, Emily's middle-class Hawthorn family attempting enthusiasm whilst privately questioning whether Emily might have chosen more stable partner.

Their first home together was the small Carlton North terrace they purchased in 1981, a modest weatherboard requiring substantial renovation. Emily immediately saw the house and garden as artistic projects—painting walls in bold colours, creating murals in unexpected places, establishing native garden that became both environmental statement and living artwork. The house expressed their shared values—recycled materials, energy efficiency, beauty achieved through creativity rather than expenditure, domestic space as extension of political commitments.

Emily's artistic practice during the early 1980s evolved in response to marriage and domestic life. She continued creating installations and assemblages but began exploring how domestic spaces and everyday objects could become sites of artistic intervention. She created works examining domesticity and consumption—installations featuring cleaning products and kitchen implements arranged to critique domestic labour expectations, assemblages using children's toys to explore gender socialisation, pieces incorporating household waste to visualise environmental impacts of ordinary life.

Her work during this period was exhibited in feminist art spaces and alternative galleries, received modest critical attention, occasionally sold for small amounts. Yet commercial success was never primary measure of artistic achievement for Emily—she valued work's political impact and aesthetic integrity over sales or mainstream recognition, understanding her art as contribution to environmental and feminist movements rather than merely commodity for gallery circuits.

Motherhood and Shifting Priorities

The birth of their daughter Isabelle on 19 August 1983 profoundly affected Emily's artistic practice and priorities. Motherhood was simultaneously joyful and challenging—the deep satisfaction of nurturing new life combined with loss of time and energy for artistic work, the expansion of love and purpose accompanied by contraction of independence and creative focus. Emily struggled with tensions between artistic identity and maternal role, between political commitments requiring public engagement and parenting responsibilities demanding constant presence.

The Carlton North household became site of creative parenting experiment—raising child according to values Emily and Robert shared whilst navigating practical realities of limited income, demanding careers, and genuine uncertainty about how progressive ideals translated into daily parenting practices. Emily was determined Isabelle would grow up understanding environmental responsibility not as abstract principle but as lived practice—learning to compost, to conserve water and energy, to value secondhand over new, to question consumption rather than accept it passively.

She also ensured Isabelle was exposed to art from earliest age—visiting galleries regularly, providing abundant art materials, treating creative expression as normal human activity rather than special talent some possessed and others lacked. The household was always filled with Emily's artworks-in-progress, Robert's architectural drawings, books about art and nature, conversations about aesthetics and environmental ethics. Isabelle absorbed this creative atmosphere unconsciously, learning that adults could be deeply engaged with ideas, that work could express values beyond income, that beauty and political commitment could reinforce rather than contradict each other.

Emily's artistic practice during Isabelle's childhood years (roughly 1983-1995) became necessarily more intermittent and modest in scope. Large installations requiring weeks of concentrated work became impractical when parenting demanded constant availability. She adapted by creating smaller works that could be interrupted and resumed, developing practices compatible with parenting rhythms rather than requiring separation from domestic life. She also began creating collaborative public artworks for community spaces—murals for kindergartens and community centres, environmental sculptures for neighbourhood parks, installations for local environmental festivals—work that allowed her to maintain artistic practice whilst also contributing to communities she inhabited.

Environmental Activism and Community Leadership

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Emily became increasingly prominent in Melbourne's environmental activist community. She organised campaigns opposing inappropriate developments, coordinated tree-planting initiatives transforming degraded urban spaces, led workshops teaching communities how to create environmental art from recycled materials. Her activism combined practical environmental work with artistic and educational dimensions—understanding that environmental consciousness required not just policy changes but cultural shifts in how people understood their relationships with natural world.

Her leadership style was collaborative and creative rather than hierarchical and bureaucratic. She preferred building consensus through conversation and persuasion rather than imposing decisions, trusted others' capabilities and encouraged distributed leadership rather than centralising authority. Yet she could also be frustratingly disorganised—meetings sometimes lacked clear agendas, communications were occasionally inadequate, documentation was sparse because Emily prioritised action over record-keeping. These tendencies created tensions with more administratively minded activists who valued systematic organisation, though most appreciated that Emily's creative energy and passionate commitment outweighed organisational limitations.

One particularly significant campaign was her leadership of opposition to proposed residential development in Merri Creek corridor during the early 1990s. The development would have destroyed significant native vegetation and threatened important wildlife corridor. Emily organised community opposition combining traditional protest tactics—public meetings, petition drives, lobbying council—with creative interventions including temporary art installations highlighting corridor's environmental value, performances and street theatre making ecological concepts accessible, children's workshops generating community connection to threatened space. The campaign ultimately succeeded in preventing development and securing corridor's protection, representing significant environmental victory largely attributable to Emily's creative organising approach.

Later Years and Evolving Practice

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Emily's artistic practice had evolved considerably from her early career focus on gallery installations. She increasingly worked in community and public contexts—creating murals for schools and community centres, coordinating collaborative environmental art projects, running workshops teaching artistic approaches to environmental education. This shift reflected both practical realities—public and community art provided more reliable income than gallery exhibitions—and evolving understanding of artistic purpose. She had become less interested in creating objects for art world consumption and more focused on how artistic practices could facilitate community environmental engagement.

Isabelle's departure for university in 2001 created mixed feelings. Emily was proud of her daughter's academic abilities and architectural ambitions, grateful that Isabelle had chosen environmentally focused career path, pleased that values and approaches she and Robert had modelled seemed to have taken root. Yet she also felt loss of daily proximity, the particular pleasures of shared household and immediate participation in her daughter's development. The Carlton North terrace felt emptier despite Emily and Robert both continuing their professional work, the rhythms and purposes that had organised their lives for nearly two decades suddenly disrupted.

Emily's relationship with Robert during this period remained solid though not without strains. They had grown together over decades, developed deep mutual understanding and respect, built life genuinely aligned with shared values. Yet there were also distances and disappointments neither fully articulated—Emily sometimes feeling Robert's emotional reserve left her lonely despite companionship, Robert occasionally frustrated by Emily's disorganisation affecting household management, both wondering privately whether they might have been happier with partners whose temperaments more closely matched their own. Yet these tensions never became crises, both valuing stability and shared history over romantic ideals of perfect compatibility.

When Isabelle relocated to Hobart in 2012 to join Pafistis Construction Co., Emily experienced profound pride mixed with geographic loss. Her daughter had established independent professional life, found work genuinely aligned with environmental values both parents had instilled, achieved recognition Emily's own artistic career had never received. Yet Hobart was distant enough to prevent regular visits, requiring Emily and Robert to develop new relationship patterns with adult daughter living elsewhere.

Adrian Pafistis's mysterious disappearance in 2018 and Isabelle's assumption of company co-leadership created new concerns. Emily worried about pressures her daughter faced, the emotional toll of building without visionary founder, whether Isabelle's marriage to Marcus provided adequate support through professionally and personally challenging period. Yet Emily also recognised she couldn't manage her daughter's life, that Isabelle was capable adult making her own choices, that parenting required trust rather than intervention.

Present and Reflections

Emily Jane Longey continues creating art, though at slower pace than previous decades. Arthritis has limited her capacity for physically demanding work—she can no longer spend hours constructing large installations, can't manipulate heavy materials as easily, tires more quickly than she once did. Yet she adapts rather than ceases creating—working smaller scale, using lighter materials, collaborating with younger artists who provide physical labour whilst Emily contributes conceptual guidance and experience.

She remains involved in environmental activism, though again at reduced intensity. She serves on advisory boards for several environmental organisations, mentors younger activists, participates in campaigns when her skills and experience are particularly valuable. Yet she's also increasingly conscious of mortality and limitation, understanding that her generation's environmental work achieved much less than hoped, that problems her activism addressed in the 1970s have intensified rather than resolved, that her daughter's generation faces environmental challenges more severe than those she confronted.

Her relationship with Robert continues stable and companionable, characterised more by mutual care than passion. They maintain the Carlton North terrace together, continue modest professional work, spend time with friends and family, occasionally visit Isabelle in Hobart. Their conversations remain engaged—discussing politics, environmental issues, Isabelle's career, books and art they encounter—yet there's also comfortable silence, the ease of people who've shared decades together and needn't constantly explain themselves.