John Taylor
Email: jht@hotkey.net.au
Telephone: 07 3862 4284
Branch Committee:
Chair:
John Taylor
Vice-Chair:
Maurice Wilson
Secretary:
Nina Wood
Treasurer:
Keith Jorgensen
NMC Representative:
John Taylor
Newsletter Editor:
Glenn Cooke
Committee:
Jan Harrington
Bob Myers
Nina Wood
Maurice Wilson
Barbara Heath
Lois Closter
Wendy Lees
Margaret Kirkwood
Welcome to the Queensland Branch page. Our Branch has members in Brisbane and throughout the state. We conduct numerous events throughout the year to which visitors are welcome, including garden visits, lectures and weekend tours. A recent Branch newsletter containing members' descriptions and photographs of some of our recent events, can be accessed below on this page
The next Queensland Branch Committee meeting is to be held in the State Library, Room 2D at 11.00 am on Wednesday 8th September 2010. All members are welcome to attend.
Annual General Meeting
Sunday 29th
After the AGM Brisbane landscape architect Catherine Brouwer will speak on how she has used historic photographs and plans in preparing conservation plans and policies for historic landscapes and gardens such as the Old Museum garden, Yungaba immigration depot, Bowen Park and Centenary Place. Catherine will show some of the photographs and convey the excitement of discovering what these altered landscapes once contained.
Afternoon tea will be served.
Meet in the Herbarium seminar room, Brisbane Botanical Gardens, Mt Coot-tha at 2.00 pm.
Cost is $10 for members and $15 for visitors.
Bookings to Keith Jorgensen on 3341 3933 or at jorgenkg@picknowl.com.au.
Sunday 19th
Guided tour of the Gold Coast Regional Botanic Gardens.
Over the last eight years 20 000 plants, native and exotic, have been planted in the Gardens on the banks of the picturesque Nerang River. Themes include a horticultural display garden, rose garden, butterfly garden, sensory garden and mountains to mangroves, illustrating the diversity of habitats in the Gold Coast. There is also a new visitor centre.
The Gardens are at 258 Ashmore Road, Benowa, opposite the Benowa State High School, Refidex Map No 38 N10.
Meet at the visitor centre at 10.30.
Bring your own morning tea (hot water is available) and lunch to share.
Cost is $10 for members and $15 for visitors.
Bookings to Keith Jorgensen on 07 3341 3933 or at jorgenkg@picknowl.com.au.
Queensland Branch Newsletter February 2010
Queensland Branch Newsletter October 2009
Queensland Branch Newsletter July 2009
Queensland Branch Newsletter April 2009
Queensland Branch Newsletter January 2009
SHERWOOD ARBORETUM
27 March 2010
Europeans started bringing plants into Australia in 1788, and have continued ever since. At first unorganised and unregulated, the settlers introduced many useful food and ornamental plants, and many weeds as well. In the mid 19th century the botanic gardens applied some science to the task of trialling and evaluating exotic and native plants - in Brisbane the first sugar cane and jacaranda plants were planted in the old botanic gardens. But botanic gardens were compromised in this work by having to meet society’s expectations that the gardens were to be beautiful pleasure grounds as well as experimental sites. In the early 20th century the state departments of agriculture and forestry began rigorous programs of introduction and evaluation of crop, amenity and timber plants. In the case of the latter many of the trials were in arboreta.
An arboretum is a collection of trees planted for display or research. Many examples of the former can be found in the hills around Melbourne and Sydney – Mt Macedon, Mt Dandenong and Mt Tomah and Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains – big gardens growing cool climate trees especially conifers and broadleaves which colour in autumn.
For the arboreta established for research the aim was to find exotic softwood (coniferous) species which would grow well in Australia. In southern and western Australia there were no native trees which produced softwood with the exception of Callitris spp. and the Tasmanian native conifers which are very slow growing. It was clear that suitable species would have to be imported and grown in plantations. In the north there was hoop pine, but the native stands were quickly cut out and plantations started in 1917. But hoop pine needs rainforest sites and it was clear that there wasn’t a lot of this land available for plantations. So, like the south, exotic softwood species were required in the north to provide raw material for the forest industries.
From the 1920s on, to find species which would grow well in Australian environments, seeds of dozens of exotic conifers were imported and seedlings planted out in arboreta (in some places more prosaically called test plots). Pines, spruces, larches, firs, Douglas fir, cedars, sequoia, hemlock and other species from all corners of the world, but mainly Europe and north America, were planted. Queensland also trialled the 13 species of Araucaria from New Caledonia (none was a good as hoop pine). After many years of work, with the usual setbacks of bushfires and bureaucratic upheavals, the answers emerged – for the south the best species by far was Pinus radiata from southern California. In Queensland, slash pine, P elliotti from the south-eastern United States stood out. Later P. elliotti was supplanted by P. caribaea from Central America when the problem of dealing with Spanish speaking countries was overcome. There are now hundreds of thousands of hectares of these species planted in Australia.
Sherwood Arboretum in Brisbane’s western suburbs set out to trial timber species, but instead of exotic trees it planted mainly native Queensland species. The Arboretum was opened in 1925 and an avenue of 72 kauri (Agathis robusta) was planted. Notable people in the life of the day (the Lord Mayor, archbishops, returned servicemen, head of the forestry department) planted kauris, and plaques on the trees enable these to be identified today.
Most of the site is on the floodplain of the Brisbane River and is quite wet. The kauri avenue is the dominant feature of the site, but the trees have grown very unevenly with the smallest trees on the wettest parts of the site. Over a thousand trees of various species were planted but many have not survived. However there are some groups of trees from the 1920s and 30s which have grown well and which form attractive groves, mainly on rising ground.
In addition many of the surviving trees are not significant timber species – figs, wilga (Geigera parviflora), Burdekin plum (Pleiogynium timorense), Davidsons plum (Davidsonia pruriens), bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestre), Leichhardt tree (Nauclea orientalis) and the SE Asia species Pterospermum acerifolium (bayur or dinner plate tree). So clearly the original plantings trialled species of amenity interest, and in the case of the plums, of edible or bush tucker interest.
The Arboretum is on the Queensland Heritage Register and most of the information readily available comes from the Entry. But there are unanswered questions about the rationale of the whole enterprise, the original planting list, the planting design, and how well the trees were maintained and measured. To our modern eyes the rationale of trialling native species on one site on the outskirts of Brisbane is not clear.
Further searching in the archives should produce answers but it is worth noting that in 1925, the year the Arboretum opened, the City of Brisbane in its current form was established by amalgamating two cities, six towns, twelve shires and four divisional boards, including the Shire of Sherwood which had originally acquired the site. It may be that in the years following the opening of the Arboretum the attention of the city was consumed by implementing the amalgamation with little attention paid to the Arboretum.
As would be expected many trees and shrubs have been planted in the Arboretum over the last 50 years. Some of these are in keeping with the original plantings and some are not. But the site has not been developed for playing fields, and the carpark, picnic and other facilities do not intrude into the surviving old trees.
The group of Society members who walked around the Arboretum found the collection of surviving original trees interesting, their grouping attractive and the layout of the informal avenue of figs in the south-west corner mystifying. We appreciated the name tags on many of the old trees, and noted a few trees that were nearly dead but had not been removed, because, we assumed, they were originals and were irreplaceable. We wondered about the Council’s policy, if there is one, on replacing dead trees – put another of the same species in the place? Or use another species that was in the original planting list, and plant it in a good spot (the dead tree may have been overshadowed and a new tree would not be successful) so that the look and feel of the Arboretum is conserved?
And there is a good project waiting for a keen researcher to work in the archives to uncover the original plans and planting list and the rationale for the enterprise. The Council should be doing this to guide the management and redevelopment of this heritage place, to ensure that as much as possible of what remains from the original plantings of the 1920s and 30s is conserved and that new elements are designed and built in sympathy with the original design.
John Taylor
MOORA PARK
20 February 2010
From Shorncliffe railway station to Moora Park is a short walk, gently uphill, and Maurice Wilson proceeded from the station with a steady countryman’s walk, knowing that there was plenty of time as it would be a good hour before he had to guide the group of 27 garden history society members through the history of the park, and Shorncliffe, and through the park itself.
The railway came to Sandgate in 1882, Maurice said, and made it possible for people, including some rich people, to live near the park and the beach and travel to work in the city, and it also brought holiday makers and day trippers, as in those days the transport available made it difficult to travel to more distant attractions.
Guest houses were built and businesses such as refreshments, early versions of picture shows, hotels, rooms for dancing, and later the pier with separate bathing enclosures for men and women, bathing boxes and kiosks were established and Shorncliffe became a busy location especially on Sundays, said Maurice, as everyone at that time worked a six day week.
Moora Park was popular and in 1897 the railway was extended to Shorncliffe leaving a short and pleasant walk from the station to the park and beach, a walk which is little changed to this day, as the wave of infill houses and extensions and new houses experienced elsewhere seemed to have passed Shorncliffe by, and the size of the street trees, now a dominant feature of the walk, would be the main difference discerned by a walker from 100 years ago.
In Moora Park, Maurice went on, an early kiosk with a bandstand on top was built in the 1890s to a very similar design to a kiosk on Flinders Parade in Sandgate, and it provided food, refreshments and hot water and the Sandgate Town Band provided musical entertainment which was very popular as the wireless was not yet widely available.
In 1928 a large kiosk in the Spanish Mission style sited on top of the cliff overlooking the beach replaced the old kiosk, and it was surrounded by plantings of hibiscus, acalypha and bougainvillea, and Maurice pointed out three or four hibiscus plants surviving on the slope, amongst the dry stone retaining walls, where the vegetation now is natural regeneration of the native gums and ironbarks and gravity has moved some of the stones on the retaining walls down the slope, damage that could be easily repaired, Maurice said, if the local managers had an eye for detail.
The bandstand on the top of the old kiosk was kept as a free standing building in Moora Park now with a brick base replacing the timber base which it had in its initial reincarnation, but the band has long been disbanded and now there is no music in the park.
In the 1950s social and economic changes, mainly the growth in ownership of cars, the opening of the Hornibrook Causeway to Redcliffe, and the building of better roads to the surf beaches and other attractions of Southport and Caloundra changed Sandgate and Shorncliffe, Maurice went on, and the tourists and day trippers stopped coming, the businesses depending on them closed, the new kiosk fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished, and the district became a sleepy seaside town until revival in the 1990s as new residents discovered the attractions of the old streets and the parks and the breezes on the shores of Moreton Bay.
Moora Park, the upper part at least, is little changed, said Maurice, with grass and trees, though some of the original figs have gone, and magnificent gums which are probably survivors from before white settlement, a birdbath whose provenance is unknown, paths, gutters, and monier benches in addition to the bandstand, but the large carpark intrudes and is affecting the health of some mature trees.
Maurice lead the group down to the lower park to see the remnants of the old walkways and gardens and the stone jetty which was part of the netted swimming enclosure, which was built, Maurice said, because the wastes from the whaling station at Tangalooma had attracted many sharks into the Bay and swimmers, men and women swimming together by now, had to be protected from them, but there was no protection from the sea lice.
By the shore and the brown sandy beach the group admired the old cottonwoods (Hibiscus tiliaceus) and discussed the new development of tables and benches, barbecues and planters, toilets and picnic shelters, paths and bikeways, and playgrounds and plantings, and Maurice said that the provision of access for disabled people was inadequate and it seemed to him that the path down the cliff which had the flattest grade had been closed and built over, which was a great pity, but he also said that he didn’t want to be an old man complaining about the new generation of landscape architects.
We walked on the refurbished pier, the breezes blew strongly, and Maurice pointed out the vistas of the Glasshouse Mountains, Moreton Island and Mt Glorious, and we enjoyed that feeling of space and three dimensions and the big sky and strong sun that one gets on the water, and the usual entertainments of pier walking, boys catching bream, the slightly strange, unfamiliar views of the land, and observing the promenading of others.
Back in Moora Park the group walked this way and that, sometimes with Maurice and sometimes not, seeking shade and moving on to the next point of interest, then moving to the upper park and then to the Café on the Park for lunch which was provided with great style at comfortable tables with linen tablecloths, and we ate good food accompanied by discussion on what we had seen and gardens past and current, and finally thanks to Maurice for his effort in telling and illustrating the story of Moora Park.
In homage to W G Sebald.
