Preservation Society and has been active since then in championing the conservation of the substantial amount of remaining indigenous vegetation in Beaumaris and its other significant environmental qualities. It is campaigning against a proposal for a large private marina proposed for the Beaumaris Bay Fossil Site. Ricketts Point is also home to the Beaumaris Life Saving Club, which holds yearly Life Saving Carnivals in the summer. People Artists Heidelberg school From the late 19th century Beaumaris and its coastal scenery attracted artists. Near Ricketts Point, there is a monument commemorating the first encounter of Arthur Streeton and Heidelberg school artists Tom Roberts and Fred McCubbin who rented a house over the summer of 1886/7. McCubbin later painted A ti-tree glade there in 1890. Their associate, Charles Conder also painted idyllic scenes on the beach at Rickett's Point before he left for Europe in 1890. These paintings of Beaumaris are featured on plaques at the sites which they depict in the City of Bayside Coastal Art Trail. Barbizon Michael O'Connell (1898–1976), a soldier returned from the Western Front, in 1923 built Barbizon (named after the French art school), on a bush block in Tramway Parade near Beach Road. The house was constructed from hand made concrete blocks on a simple cruciform plan and regarded by some as an early Modernist design. It became a meeting place for Melbourne's alternative artists and designers including members of the Arts and Crafts Society. During the 1920s O'Connell focussed on School of Paris inspired textile design with his wife Ella Moody (1900–1981). Michael and Ella returned to England for a visit in 1937 but with the outbreak of war remained there and never returned to Australia. Barbizon was destroyed by the bushfire of 1944. Clarice Beckett Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) now highly regarded as an original Australian modernist, moved with her elderly parents from Bendigo to St. Enoch's, 14 Dalgetty Rd., Beaumaris in 1919 to care for them in their failing health, a duty that severely limited her artistic endeavours so that she could only go out during the dawn and dusk to paint her landscapes. Nevertheless, her output was prodigious; she exhibited solo shows every year from 1923 to 1933 and with groups, mainly at Melbourne's Athenaeum Gallery, from 1918 to 1934. Many of her works depict still recognisable places along the coast as well as everyday 1920s suburban street scenes. While painting the wild