Methodist Church, Katamatite, Victoria (1961)

The tiny Victorian town of Katamatite sits in the vast flat landscape of the Murray Valley agricultural district, 205 kilometres from Melbourne, forty-three kilometres north of Shepparton and within fifteen kilometres of the New South Wales border. On the edge of town is an extraordinary modern church constructed in 1961 to a design by architectural practice Muir and Shepherd. Arthur R. Shepherd and John Muir met in the 1930s while working in the office of influential modernist architects Stephenson and Turner. In 1947, Muir and Shepherd opened offices in Melbourne and in Ballarat, where Muir was born. The firm worked mainly on residential commissions, but in 1953 also designed Victoria’s first purpose-built postwar funeral parlour, now demolished, in Carlisle Street, St Kilda. In 1955, the