Guest Article from Liz Kerr:
In early August we had a garden conference in Geelong. The topic was "Women and gardening in rural Victoria 1830-1999". The programme of speakers covered Saturday (all day) and Sunday morning. After lunch, the Friends of the Geelong Botanic Gardens led guided tours through the Botanic Gardens for the delegates.
The conference was run by the Victorian Branch of the Australian Garden History Society. I must commend them for putting this on in Geelong, their fine organisation and the quality of the speakers. The AGHS was formed in 1980 and its primary concern is to promote interest in and research into historical gardens. But it is also concerned, through the study of garden history, with the promotion of proper standards of design and maintenance, and with the conservation of plants which are in danger of being lost to cultivation.
Many of the early Australian women gardeners lived in what we would now describe as the "bush". In the middle of the eighteenth century the only major town in Victoria was Melbourne and everyone else lived in the country.
Geelong is now a city of 200,000, but in 1850 it could have been described as a small village and 50 miles from Melbourne was a long journey at that time.
About 20 miles past Geelong, on the Bellarine Peninsula, is the township called Drysdale, named after an early pioneer of the Geelong district, Anne Drysdale, who migrated from Scotland for health reasons in 1840 when she was 47 years old. She was a single woman of independent means and was given the use of a property "Boronggoop", where she established a garden using exotic plants from her home as well as selected plants from the surrounding bush. She developed the practice of sending Australian plant material back to Scotland and asking for plants in return.
Caroline Elizabeth Newcomb (a suburb of Geelong is named Newcomb) was born in London and on medical advice also came to Australia in 1833, when she was 21 years old. She first settled in Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania) and came to Victoria in 1836 becoming one of Melbourne's first settlers.
Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb met in Geelong and in 1841 formed a partnership and ran "Borongoop" together.
Anne Drysdale bought a new property of 905 acres "Coriyule" and the two women moved into the newly built stone house in February 1849.
