Interview Recording
Interview Transcript
Tim Entwisle interviewed on 28 March 2024 by Kate Cregan
Synopsis
Tim was born in 1960 Nhill in the Mallee of Victoria, to schoolteacher parents, Betty and John (d.1966), and has two younger brothers, along with three stepbrothers and a stepsister from Betty’s remarriage to Ron Renn. The blended family lived Alphington and then moved to Castlemaine when Tim was a teenager.
Tim’s stepfather was a keen grower of local plants, and his maternal grandfather often took the children walking in the bush around Castlemaine. However, it wasn’t until studying at the University of Melbourne that Tim broadened his existing strengths in sciences, and became fascinated with botany, specialising in phycology (algae). Around the same time, Tim also began exercising his passion for writing, campaigning in the anti-uranium and NO DAMS movements of the time.
Between honours and taking up a PhD at La Trobe, on freshwater algae, Tim worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria as a horticultural assistant. After completing a post-doctoral position working on the ecology of algae, he found work there again, first as a botanist and eventually as Head of Research. From there he successfully applied for a position as Head of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust in Sydney. After some years in that position, having been Acting Director on several occasions, he successfully applied to be Director of that Gardens.
When a position as Director of Conservation, Living Collections and Estates at the world-famous Kew Gardens became available, Tim and his wife Lynda made the move to London, only to return to Melbourne two years later when he was appointed Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Each of his senior management positions has necessarily included consultation with government departments, interest groups, philanthropic organisations, universities, etc., who have often had competing agendas.
It was through writing book reviews that Tim made his first connection with the AGHS, early in his first job at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. In his positions of CEO, with responsibility for maintaining heritage landscapes, that connection has expanded, included giving talks, attending meetings, taking part in guided tours of heritage gardens and eventually being asked to act as Patron of the Society.
Throughout each of his positions, and particularly when CEO, Tim continued to write and be published, both as a specialist and as a science communicator through television, newspapers and on radio. He has taken every opportunity to speak publicly about the importance of the educational, scientific and cultural work of each of these Gardens and the place of botanic gardens in the wider societies in which they are situated.
I do think it’s an ideal arrangement where I can write for magazines and op-eds and do radio and things but my day job as a Botanic Gardens Director that in a way, as you said, would I do it differently?, I think that’s turned out to be a great mix.
Some mention is made of him being the Patron of AGHS.