Queen's Parks in Queensland
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2012.3Keywords:
Queen's Park, public gardens, horticultural experimentation, Brisbane Botanic Garden, history of urban planningAbstract
Queen's Park in Maryborough is one of many public gardens established in the nineteenth century in Queensland: in Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Warwick, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns and Cooktown. They were created primarily as places of horticultural experimentation, as well as for recreational purposes. They formed a local area network, with the Brisbane Botanic Garden and the Government Botanist, Walter Hill, at the centre – at least in the 1870s. From here, the links extended to other botanic gardens in Australia, and beyond Australia to the British colonial network managed through the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew. It was an informal network, supplying a knowledge of basic economic botany that founded many tropical agricultural industries and also provided much-needed recreational, educational and inspirational opportunities for colonial newcomers and residents. The story of these parks, from the time when they were first set aside as public reserves by the government surveyors to the present day, is central to the history of urban planning in regional centres. This article provides a statewide overview together with a more in-depth examination of Maryborough's own historic Queen's Park.
References
http://www.abc.net.au/queensland/federation/stories/s223425.htm. Accessed 6 August 2011.
http://www.qld.gov.au/about-queensland/history. Accessed 6 August 2011. See also Evans, Raymond, A History of Queensland (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Conway, Hazel, Public Parks (Princes Risborough: Shire Publications, 1996), 10–11.
Meredith Walker, ‘Historic Towns in Queensland: An Introductory Study’, unpublished report for the National Trust of Queensland, Brisbane, 1981, Section 1.2.6, ‘Town Layout and Road Pattern’, 1–9 to 1–13 and Appendixes 7, 8 and 9, which are extracts from official rules and regulations issued by the Lands Department from 1878, 1890 and 1898 to guide surveyors.
Brockway, Lucile H., Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the Royal Botanic Gardens (New York: Academic Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Refer especially to the concluding chapter, 185–96.
Grove, Richard H., Green Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. Refer to concluding chapter, 474–86.
J.C.R. Sim, ‘Conservation of Historic Botanic Gardens’, Unpublished Master's degree dissertation, Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York (UK), 1990.
McCraken, Donal P., Gardens of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (London: Leicester University Press, 1997).
Desmond, Ray, Kew: The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens (London: Harvill Press and RBG, Kew, 1995).
Grove, Green Imperialism, 474–5.
Evaluations of the contributions and exploits made by early botanists in Queensland can be found in Everist, Selwyn L., ‘History of the Queensland Herbarium and Botanical Library, 1855 to 1976’, Austrobaileya 1 (5) (1982): 429–45.
Walter Hill, reprint of ‘Annual Report to The Honourable Secretary for Public Lands, Queensland and presented to Parliament’, Queenslander, 7 May 1870: 6.
Tod Charles O'Dwyer (1986), ‘“The Lungs of a City”: A Conservation Plan for Queen's Park Toowoomba’, unpublished Elective Design Study for the Graduate Diploma of Landscape Architecture, Queensland Institute of Technology, 31–2.
‘Warwick War Memorial and Gates’, Department of Environment, entry in the Queensland Heritage Register 600946, 2–3.
Hill, reprint of ‘Annual Report’: 6.
‘Agricultural and Pastoral’, Queenslander, 10 May 1884: 751.
‘Gallop Botanic Reserve, incorporating Cooktown Botanic Gardens’, Department of Environment, entry in the Queensland Heritage Register 601696, 2–4.
See their respective entries in Aitken, R. and Looker, M. (eds), Oxford Companion to Gardens (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002).
‘Agricultural Reporter’: ‘Rockhampton Botanic Gardens’, Queenslander, 18 August 1883: 295.
‘The Toowoomba Experimental and Botanic Gardens’, ‘Agriculture’, Queenslander, 5 March 1881: 314.
Conway, Public Parks.
See Georgina Whitehead, ‘Public Parks and Gardens’, in Aitken and Looker, Oxford Companion to Gardens, 490–3.
Refer citation for Queen's Park, Maryborough (ID# 600708), Queensland Heritage Register, http://www.epa.qld.gov.au. Accessed 20 August 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryborough,_Queensland. Accessed 13 August 2011.
He prepared the second annual report in 1876.
Maryborough Chronicle, 6 March 1890: 3.
From the citation for Queen's Park, Maryborough (ID# 600708) in the Queensland Heritage Register.
The Mary Ann is a replica of the first steam engine built in Queensland in 1873 at John Walker and Co.'s Union Foundry. It steams through the park along the rail tracks that were laid to service the wharves and Walker's Foundry. The Mary Ann operates on Thursdays in conjunction with the Maryborough Heritage City Markets and on the last Sunday of the month with the Sunday in the Park festivities. See http://www.visitfrasercoast.com/destinations/maryborough/attractions/mary-ann-steam-engine. Also see http://qldrailheritage.com/scb/ws.htm. Accessed 20 August 2011.
