Introduction

Glenn R. Cooke

Queensland’s heritage city of Maryborough was the focus of the Australian Garden History Society’s 32nd Annual Conference, held from 19–21 August 2011. The Society is again delighted to collaborate with Queensland Review to bring the papers from this conference to publication, just as it did with those of the 2003 conference. Maryborough was selected for this event because the city centre is re- markably intact and coherent, and because of the appeal of its numerous charming ‘Queenslander’ houses to Southern delegates. The topics of the conference and the tours organised by the conference committee confirmed Garden History Society chair John Dwyer’s opening description of Maryborough, quoted from the Aus- tralian National Trust’s 1982 Historic Places publication, as ‘one of the four most charming places in Australia’. The keynote address, ‘Maryborough and Its History: Placing the Maryborough Environment in Historical Context’, was provided by Elaine Brown – a long-term resident of the area. Her article in this issue explains how the area came to be settled, and how the settlers coped with its untested environment. Dr Brown explores aspects of the timber and sugar industries in the Maryborough region, and touches briefly on the Bauple (or macadamia) nut, the only native Australian foodstuff to successfully have been exploited commercially. A commissioned paper, ‘Going Nuts in Queensland: The Social History of the Macadamia’, was not ultimately delivered at the conference, but it was thought to be such an important aspect of the history of Maryborough (Bauple, where the tree was first identified, is nearby) that Ian McConachie and colleagues were asked to provide a short article on an early hybrid, ‘Daddow’, which has been included in this issue of Queensland Review. Jean Sim’s article, ‘Queen’s Parks in Queensland’, points out that during the nineteenth century, Maryborough’s Queen’s Park was one of many public gardens established in Queensland towns, including Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, War- wick, Townsville, Cairns and Cooktown. They were created primarily as places of horticultural experimentation, but were soon overlaid with social and recreational functions as well. The Maryborough park, adjoining the Brolga Theatre, was the site of several conference activities, as well as the subject of a 2003 Conservation Management Plan authored by the late Jane Seto, to whose memory this collection is dedicated. During the conference, Malcolm Wegener provided an overview of the devel- opment of the sugar industry as a context for the history of Maryborough and its surroundings. The first successful sugar cane crops in Australia were grown by Captain Louis Hope at Ormiston near Brisbane in 1862 – the first mill was

Queensland Review 1 Volume 19 | Issue 1 | 2012 | pp. 1–5 | c Cambridge University Press 2012 | doi 10.1017/qre.2012.1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:56:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2012.1 Glenn R. Cooke

(Colour online) Gardens at Ilfracombe showing the glasshouses. Courtesy Hyne Family.

established in 1865 – and as cane growing spread further north, mills were built at Maryborough and Mackay in 1866, Bundaberg in 1872 and Cairns in 1882. On the second afternoon, the delegates were driven past the (still-operating) Mary- borough Sugar Mill, saw the trucks lined up to deposit their cargoes of cane, and were shown the sugar fields on the river flats just outside the city. At the cocktail party in the Maryborough Botanic Gardens on Friday evening, we were treated to an increasingly rare (and unplanned) spectacle: the ruddy glow of a burn-off from these same fields. Sugar is still a significant industry for Maryborough, but the main centres of production have now shifted north. The ecological significance of Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island, was recognised in 1992 with a World Heritage Listing. In her article, ‘From K’gari to World Heritage: Reading the Cultural Landscapes of Fraser Island’, Jane Lennon plots the 5000-year history of occupation by the Badtjala people, and the exploita- tion of timber reserves since 1863. The keynote address on the second day, by gardening media personality Jerry Coleby-Williams, brought the sub-theme of sustainability and environment to the focus of the kitchen garden. ‘Acclimatisation’ in Coleby-Williams’ article, ‘Accli- matisation: The Continuing Story’ refers to the global movement of plants between remote corners of the world during the nineteenth century, and especially between the colonies of the British Empire. An Acclimatisation Society was established at Bowen Park in Brisbane in 1862, and 150 years later Coleby-Williams is continuing the Seed Savers’ ethic in his home garden in the Brisbane bayside suburb of Wynnum.

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:56:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2012.1 Introduction

Stripping the scrubs. Courtesy State Library of Queensland, JOL 145763.

During the conference, James Hyne continued the history of the timber industry in Maryborough with the story of the establishment of the National Sawmill on the banks of the Mary River by his forebear Richard Hyne in 1882. The Hyne family home, Ilfracombe, featured in the conference walking tour, during which delegates inspected the impressive timber houses and gardens along nearby Lennox, Churchill, Elizabeth and North Streets. These houses are the focus of architectural historian Donald Watson’s article, ‘A House of Sticks: A History of Queenslander Houses in Maryborough’. This is the first-ever survey of the timber-built Queenslander houses in an important regional city. As Watson points out, the houses came at a great price, as the vegetation of the area has been so completely cleared that it is now difficult to envision the original landscape. A name that kept cropping up in various papers during the conference was that of John Carne Bidwill (1815–53), an early botanist who investigated the horticultural use of Australian plants in European gardens. Bidwill also contributed significantly to the colonial history of Sydney, New Zealand and – of particular interest for this conference – Wide Bay and Maryborough in Queensland. He is best known for his discovery of the Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii), and may have been the first to introduce plant breeding into Australia. Undoubtedly, Bidwill made an enormous contribution in a short life. His life and work are the subject of Stuart Read’s article, ‘Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist Cut Short’. Ken Brooks is the Curator of the Brennan & Geraghty’s Store Museum in Maryborough, a property of the Queensland Branch of the National Trust. It was owned and operated by one family from 1871 to 1972, and was typical of the general stores that once proliferated throughout Queensland and Australia. Brooks’ article focuses on the gardening activities of the store – such as the propagation of plants suitable for the Queensland climate and the distribution of fruit trees.

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Old Queenslander house with Cocos palms. Courtesy Graham Hesse.

Brennan & Geraghtys was an early supplier to the now-famous citrus-growing areas around Gayndah and Mundubbera. Jean Sim provides a broader focus in the article based on her keynote address to the conference, ‘Spreading the Word: Garden Writing in the Sub-tropics’, in which she details her research into Queensland’s ‘garden literature’, from long-term residents to transient tourists. The early administrators of the Brisbane Botanic Gar- dens, Walter Hill and Philip McMahon, and the proprietor of the first commercial nurseries, A.J. Hockings, were all significant gardening writers. Adelene Walker outlines a project undertaken by residents of the nearby town of Gympie in ‘The Secret Park: Restoring the Zig-Zag Garden’. She describes the working relationship established with the Gympie City Council, and the strategies developed (including Q150 funding) to bring the project to a successful conclusion with the official opening of the Zig-Zag Garden on 17 October 2009.

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Michael and Kyleigh Simpson’s ‘Garden History and the Vital Role of Garden Plant Inventories in Conservation’ is based on their experiences in documenting their own garden at their home, The Shambles at Montville. The recent ‘one-in- 100-year drought’ made them acutely aware of the need to record the tough old ‘heritage’ plants that are able to survive in such harsh conditions. They also discuss the value of plant inventories for historical research, and the necessity of establishing inventories of our own gardens as a resource for future garden historians. During the conference, Anne de Lisle based her talk, ‘Restoring Baddow House and Garden’, on her 2007 publication A Grand Passion, which documented that process. Later in the day, she opened her home and gardens to the delegates. I have contributed two further articles based on conference papers. The first, ‘Vida Lahey’s Floral Palette’, focuses on one of Queensland’s most prominent artists. Like many female artists of her generation, floral still-lifes were a major element of her output throughout her career. The flowers that appeared in her paintings were cut from suburban gardens, and the variety of annuals and tropical and temperate flowers appearing in her work is indicative of the plants that were in general use in gardens in South-East Queensland. Continuing the theme of heritage plants, ‘Tough Lovelies: Crotons in Queensland from the 1870s to Now’ documents the use of this colourful tropical shrub throughout Queensland.

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