Vendetta almost robbed Sydney of its first botanic garden treasure

IN the mid-1850s a vindictive vendetta by the man who later became first premier of NSW proposed cutting up land occupied by Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens for sale as allotments.

The juvenile gymnasium and original children’s playground in the Domain.

IN the mid-1850s a vindictive vendetta by the man who later became first premier of NSW proposed cutting up land occupied by Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens for sale as allotments.

Alexander Stuart Donaldson, a London-born merchant elected to the Legislative Council as member for Durham in 1848, had bitterly opposed the London appointment of Dublin-trained Charles Moore as director of the Sydney garden.

Donaldson attempted to “starve out” Moore by cutting annual funding from about £900 to £150 in 1848. When this failed, he reportedly proposed subdividing and selling off the harbour-front site that evolved from a government farm into Australia’s first botanic garden from 1816.

Charles Fraser, appointed colonial botanist by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1817 and aided by King’s Botanist Allan Cunningham, had established the garden’s scientific credentials with collections of plants from central-western NSW, the Blue Mountains, Tasmania and Western Australia.

A group of women and children enjoy a view over Farm Cove from the Bontanic Gardens in 1901.

The first modern botanical gardens were established by the Senate of the Venetian Republic at Padua, Italy, in 1545. A circular walled enclosure was divided into four parts by two paths oriented according to cardinal points, symbolising the world. Used for teaching by the University of Padua from 1546, the “Orto Botanico” was devoted to the cultivation medicinal plants, or “simple plants” that produced natural remedies.

In 1900 England’s Kew Royal Botanic Gardens assistant director Arthur Hill noted, “The value of spices has led to the foundation of more than one botanic garden in the tropics, while to the necessity for drugs must be attributed the formation of the earliest botanic gardens in Europe”.

Stuart Alexander Donaldson, the first Premier of NSW.

Exotic Australian plants were highly sought after in Europe after Joseph Banks revealed his discoveries made during explorations along Australia’s east coast with James Cook in 1770. But when Macquarie enclosed part of the Sydney Domain and government farm as a botanic garden in 1816, science was not a priority.

In the 1820s Fraser was still devoting considerable time to obtaining and distributing crop seeds by bartering rare dried specimens or seeds of Australian species for common crop seeds from Britain and Europe. Despite pleading requests from landholders for barley, oats and grape seeds, letters indicated benefits went mainly to major landholders, so the garden offered “no benefit to most of the populace”.

Allan Cunningham, a contemporary of Joseph Banks.

Conflict beset garden management from 1817, when Kew botanist and Banks’ contemporary Allan Cunningham arrived to join Fraser and explorer John Oxley on an inland expedition to the Lachlan and Macquarie Rivers, where he collected 450 plant specimens.

Given the prestige and value of Australian seeds and plants in Europe, the expedition was under strict instructions to prevent any other seed collection or distribution, on threat of official investigation and punishment.

Rivalry between Macquarie’s collector, Fraser, and Banks’s collector, Cunningham, also created conflict between Cunningham and Macquarie, who wrote to Banks calling Cunningham, this “Unbred, Illiterate man”. But Cunningham remained exploring in Australia until wanting to return to England, he declined an offer to take over as garden director after Fraser’s death in 1831, instead nominating his brother Richard, who spent 18 years at Kew Gardens cataloguing Allan’s plant specimens.

Richard arrived in January 1833, embarking on an expedition to New Zealand until May 1834. He then joined explorer Thomas Mitchell’s 1835 expedition to determine the course of the Darling River.

Mitchell recorded Richrd Cunningham missing on April 17, 1835, adding that he “had repeatedly cautioned this gentleman about the danger of losing sight of the party in such country; yet his carelessness in this respect was quite surprising”.

A search organised by Mitchell found remnants of Cunningham’s belongings and his dead horse. Another search party found a group of natives who told how a white man had camped with them on the Bogan some months before, and how they had murdered him.

Allan returned to replace his brother in 1837, but resigned on New Year’s Day, 1838, beginning a succession of appointments that culminated in Donaldson’s attacks when London replaced NSW governor Charles FitzRoy’s appointment of colonial botanist and garden director.

Fitzroy gave the role to English-born botanist John Carne Bidwill in September 1847, but in a misunderstanding the British Colonial Office appointed Charles Moore, who arrived in January 1848. FitzRoy apologised to Bidwill, who showed no resentment.

Donaldson’s indignation at Moore’s appointment led to a parliamentary inquiry into the management and conduct of the Botanic Garden in 1855. Moore survived the inquiry to remain as garden director until May 1896.

Originally published as Vendetta almost robbed Sydney of its first botanic garden treasure