Elizabeth Kerry
Chair:
Michael Evans
Secretary:
Ivan Saltmarsh
Minute Secretary:
Mandy Stroebel
Treasurer:
Rex Bean
Newsletter Editor:
Warwick Oakman
Committee:
Elizabeth Kerry
Warwick Oakman
Ken Wright
Please note that we use the Website to give advance notice of our events. Information on individual events will be sent out approximately one month in advance, giving details of cost, booking arrangements, timing, the venue and the contact person.
Celebrate the New Year in the Botanical Gardens
We’ll meet for lunch, and afterwards there will be an opportunity to view a number of gifts made to the Gardens by the Tasmanian Branch of AGHS.
Return to Redlands
After a week of rain and lost horizons, the sun and blue sky made the visit to Redlands a perfect autumn day. The 100 feet poplars were vibrant columns of brilliant yellow against the azure arc of the sky and the mature deciduous trees punctuated the garden with russet, burgundy and copper tones. The boughs of the old apple and pear trees were laden with ripening fruit, their orbs and globes glowing among backlit foliage. Redlands was made for autumn.
Our hosts, Elizabeth and Peter Hope led two groups on informative tours of the gardens, grounds and buildings. Peter began with a brief but colourful history of its first owner, George Frederick Read, son of the future King George IV. Read, a spirited entrepreneur who began his career as a merchant and ship-owner in India, later settled in Van Diemen’s Land and, in 1819, secured the original land grant for Redlands. His legacy should be legendary, yet few have heard of him. Read was a founding director of the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land, the first managing director of the Tasmanian Fire and Life Insurance Company and the owner of some 403 properties throughout the colony. He was also among the first settlers involved in the introduction of trout and salmon to the new colony. Three acres of Redlands were excised from the property for the Salmon Ponds Hatchery, where the first trout and salmon were successfully hatched in the southern hemisphere in 1864 before being released into the lakes and rivers of the colony.
Under the Hopes’ stewardship, Redlands is experiencing something of a renaissance as they work closely with heritage officers, archaeologists and historians in restoring parts of the property. They have overseen restoration of the carriageway between Redlands and the Salmon Ponds, which has re-established the physical link between the two properties. The day we visited, the Lion’s Club was running a ‘train’ along the new route, AGHS members being the guinea pigs for its first outing. A few of us preferred the grassy, leaf-strewn walk to the train and leapt overboard at the first opportunity! It was a beautiful stroll back to Redlands beneath the towering poplars which framed the view of the red-brick hop kilns in the distance.
Most recently, the Hopes have begun reinstating the network of waterways that once irrigated the 300 acres at Redlands. The irrigation channels were constructed by convicts in the 1840s and were among the earliest of their kind in the colony. A canal fed by the Plenty River now runs through the paddock behind the stables complex. Its grassy banks and shimmering water made it a magnet to the children who had accompanied their parents and grandparents on the excursion. The Hopes have also cleared vast thickets of blackberries to create a series of ponds through the gardens. These too are fed by the river and stocked with trout. They have also provided a new habitat for a young family of playful platypuses.
Although hops are no longer grown at Redlands, the Hopes grow lucerne and, last year, harvested their second crop of opium poppies. The magnificent poplars, once windbreaks for the hops, are still the signature trees at Redlands. Intermingled with oaks, they form avenues along the driveway to the property; their stately columns create an enclosed cathedral near the dilapidated apple sheds; and their towering beauty heralds the entrance to the reinstated carriageway to the Salmon Ponds. One day last year, however, after suffering the effects of prolonged drought, five poplars succumbed and fell after heavy rains. Their bone-coloured trunks are stacked like a huge gravestone in front of a row of healthy poplars, a reminder that these vestiges of colonial heritage cannot be taken for granted.
Mandy Stroebel
Gould’s Book of Plants
After our AGM at Runnymede on Sunday 31 July, we were addressed (or rather entertained) by two guest speakers, Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and PhD student Eleanor Cave, who gave an excellent visual presentation on ‘Gould’s Book of Plants’. Gould is known to many of us through Richard Flanagan’s novel Gould’s Book of Fish. He also illustrated birds and shells. Few of us, however, know about his sketchbooks of plant illustrations. Hamish and Eleanor have so far managed to track down 169 of these water-colour paintings: 143 are held by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston), 13 in the Allport collection (Hobart), and the remaining 13 are in two private collections.
Gould’s development as a botanical artist – from simple, sometimes inaccurate sketches to sophisticated, detailed paintings accompanied by cross-sections of seeds, flowers and fruits, to unusual stylistic characteristics, such as plants depicted with their attendant soil – can be seen by studying individual illustrations and their place in the five sketchbooks discovered to date. Eleanor explained that the five books have been numbered according to their size and paper-type, the location of plants illustrated and a numbering system, possibly imposed by the Quaker botanist James Backhouse, who annotated the originals, noting errors in depictions of specific species and correcting Latin names.
Hamish outlined the early life of William Buelow Gould (born William Holland in Liverpool in 1803), including his stints of employment at Rudolph Ackermann’s establishment The Repository of the Arts on the Strand in London, and at Spode as a porcelain decorator. In 1826 Gould changed his name from Holland to Buelow Gould. The reasons for this are unknown. Afterwards, his life took a turn for the worse, with a couple of minor offences, such as stealing ‘Saxon green paint’ and later a coat, leading to his transportation to Van Diemen’s Land in 1828. The history of his convict years is peppered with repeat offences of drunkenness, absences without leave and other misdemeanors.
Records of his detention and punishment at Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour and his indenture to various settlers, notably Dr Scott, a colonial surgeon first residing at ‘Boa Vista’ in New Town and then at ‘Scottsdale’ in New Norfolk, offer interesting insights into the places from which his botanical subjects were selected. The sketchbooks coincide with the places in which Gould was incarcerated or indentured. So, the first book illustrates both the native and introduced flora of New Town; the third, the flora of New Norfolk and the upper Derwent; and the fourth, the flora of Macquarie Harbour.
It is remarkable that Gould achieved so much in the periods when he was not confined, on the treadmill or recovering from brutal lashings. After being freed in 1835, Gould attempted to set up his own Repository of the Arts in Hobart, which, according to an advertisement in The Hobart Courier on 7 July 1837, included ‘a collection of flowers, fruits, native plants, shrubs, birds and fishes, etc. by that celebrated and eccentric genius William Buelow Gould’. The Repository was unsuccessful, probably because nobody was prepared to pay for his illustrations which, when he was a convict, were supplied free to the masters to whom Gould was indentured. Gould died in 1853, aged 50. Hamish summed up his life as ‘an artist who missed his opportunities and drank away his chances of success.’
A number of questions arise in relation to Gould’s botanical illustrations. What was the purpose of these illustrations? To what extent did Gould select his subjects? Did he gather them himself in the field? Hamish and Eleanor believe that Gould was more than an illustrator: he determined which subjects he would paint (how else can we account for the illustrations of common introduced flora?) and was able to capture their detail in the field (there are examples of flowers that could only have been illustrated in situ because the flowers would have wilted quickly after being gathered). As for the purpose of the illustrations, Eleanor has found two of them in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. They are attributed to Dr Scott but, judging from the style and presentation, could only have been painted by Gould. RC Gunn later revealed that ‘Dr Scott could not draw’.
There are many illustrations missing from Gould’s five sketchbooks. One theory is that they may have been selected for publication in botanical journals overseas, like Curtis’s. Surely Gould would have illustrated the Huon Pine and other native Tasmanian trees. Surprisingly, there are few trees among the known botanical water-colour paintings. What remains is possibly the ‘plundered remnants’ of a substantial collection. This is just the beginning of a significant project, which Hamish would like to see one day as a fully-illustrated published volume.
Mandy Stroebel
The Evolving Landscape Of Mona: The Gardens And Architecture Of MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art
The day began with showers punctuated by dazzling sunshine. A typically unpredictable Tasmanian spring day. Confident that it would clear by the afternoon, we headed down to Sullivan’s Cove to catch the ferry to MONA. The Excella is a comfortable, high-speed catamaran fitted out below deck as a café. You can sip a glass of Moorilla sparkling or an espresso as the sights of the upper Derwent estuary slip by: the domain and government house, the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, Cornelian Bay, Risdon Cove (the first settlement of Hobart), the Palaeocene cliffs of the eastern shore and the monoliths of the Nyrstar Zinc Works and InCat shipbuilding yards. After just thirty minutes, we arrived at the MONA jetty and ascended the 99 steps between the soaring sandstone cliffs of the peninsula and the corten steel walls of MONA’s exterior. The narrow passageway is a patchwork of dry-stone walls, bedrock and plantings of conifers.
At the top of the steps is a plaza at the entrance to the Museum of Old and New Art. The concave and convex mirror façade reflects the distorted shapes of the tennis court, which forms part of the plaza, and the crowds queuing up to see David Walsh’s eclectic private collection. Beyond the angled steel walls are the living Sedum and Dianella carpets of the rooftop gardens and beyond them the sparkling depths of the Derwent. It is this constant dialogue between water and land, between built and living forms that makes MONA’s landscape so beguiling.
Although William Fleming, the site’s transitions consultant, describes the landscape as a work in progress, the evolution of MONA’s landscape is a controlled process. Its development is based on a master plan by Oculus Landscape and Urban Design. The plan retains and enhances elements of the existing landscape and plantings, and complements the Roy Grounds houses of the mid-twentieth century and the Fender Katsalidis architecture of the twenty-first century. Throughout the development, the heritage values of the site have been respected, from the Aboriginal middens along the foreshore to the remnants of early European settlement, including foundations, walls and steps. Likewise, the natural footprint of the peninsula, which slopes from the north upwards to the steep embankments of the south, has been accommodated, its dramatic form acknowledged and enhanced.
Over seventy members gathered on the Ether Lawn, an open space between the built complex of restaurants, the microbrewery and the winery, and the sheoak-clad embankments of the peninsula’s foreshore. William calls this space ‘the village green’, a place for meeting, for festivities and celebrations. From here, we split into three groups led by Steve Devereaux, the site’s project manager, horticulturalist Dan Henderson, and William. Little remains of the terraces, gardens, orchard, vineyard and windbreaks of the Alcorso period (1950s-1980s). A stand of pines at the head of the driveway is all that remains of the windbreak around the first cellar on the site, now known as the Alcorso Building. The Roy Grounds Round House and Courtyard House have been remodeled to form the new library at MONA and the entrance to the Museum respectively. The beautiful sandstone retaining walls adjacent to the Round House are in their extant or restored form.
The Ether Lawn
When David Walsh and his business partners bought Moorilla in the late 1980s (sparing it the fate of a housing development), the Alcorso landscape elements had deteriorated considerably: the gardens established around the houses were neglected, the windbreaks and avenues unkempt, the orchard abandoned, the terraces in disrepair and the native foreshore infested with weeds. David was particular about retaining the associated landscape of the peninsula as the site developed. The poplar avenue (Populus deltoides or eastern cottonwood) flanking the long driveway has been reinstated, the vineyards expanded and the foreshore revegetated. As a destination in itself for art, food and wine lovers, MONA provides luxury accommodation in eight pavilions on the eastern shore of the peninsula. The first four pavilions were designed by Crawford/Shurman Architects and the most recent four by Fender Katsalidis Architects. These, together with the gymnasium and the Infinity Pool, have been sensitively integrated into the landscape and surrounded by native plantings. Their panoramic views across the eastern waters of the Derwent, however, have not been compromised. By night, the pathways between the pavilions are dimly lit while the rest of the site is plunged into darkness providing a quiet, respectful environment.
According to William, good landscaping is about creating an illusion using perspective and the natural topography. The peninsula itself is surrounded by the urban sprawl of Berriedale and Glenorchy and below the vineyards to the north, a sewerage treatment plant and a caravan park. However, there is plenty of scope for MONA’s landscape to engage with the enchanting littoral landscape of the peninsula, with the high and low tides of the foreshore. For this reason, William always recommends arriving by water. ‘It’s the best way to appreciate the extraordinary setting, which is part of the magic of the place.’ Unfortunately, a proposed boardwalk from the main road to MONA giving public foreshore access to the jetty and ferry services failed to attract State government funding and has been shelved.
At the end of the gardens and grounds tour, we gathered in the private offices of MONA to admire the Patrick Blanc hanging garden. As the wide elevator doors to the offices open, a wall of greenery greets the new arrival. The wow factor is irrepressible. A sheer, floor-to-ceiling, three-dimensional living canvas of tropical plants, the textures and colours of their leaves and flowers gleaming like freshly applied oil paint in the artificial light of the lift well. It is Blanc’s only work in Tasmania, his third in Australia. The garden comprises layers of plastic and felt stretched across a steel framework. The plants are propagated in pockets cut into the felt. An irrigation system containing nutrients keeps the living wall watered and fed. So far, the Hoya bella, the anthuriums and philodendrons have been the most successful.
MONA’s landscape both within and without is full of surprises. I look forward to watching this gigantic canvas of built and living elements evolving into a complete work of art.
Mandy Stroebel
