Edith’s acknowledgements are blunt and unambiguous. She signs her article ‘By Edith Coleman, Illustrated by Dorothy and Gladys Coleman’.
There is a strange collection of orchid images in the State Library of Victoria. They are stereographic postcards, duplicate images reproduced side by side in sharp crisp monochrome. They are virtual 3D, used with stereographic glasses to provide the image with the illusion of depth. The orchids look alien, often taken in close-up, devoid of background, like creatures from the moon. The collection is ascribed to Edith Coleman, taken by the photographer Ethel Eaves, although it’s not entirely clear where they came from or how they arrived at the library, packed up in a Capstan Navy Cut cigarette box.
I suspect the orchids are mostly from Edith. Some have been gathered in Healesville. Others are labelled with names and locations: one from Miss Coleman, several from Miss Sutherland, Reverend Cox, Mr and Mrs Nicholls. Most of these are people Edith knew – members of the Field Naturalists Club. William Nicholls is acknowledged in several of Edith’s papers. Edith has used one of these images in her own paper, thanking Ethel for a copy. It is a wasp, Lissopimpla semipunctata (now known as L. excelsa), a female of the species which pollinates the small tongue orchid – the association that will make Edith famous. The specimen was lent to Ethel for photography in 1928.
I can find very little about Mrs Ethel Eaves. The Reverend Herman Montague Rucker Rupp, an orchidologist from New South Wales, was impressed by her photographic skills.
‘A Mrs Eaves of Melbourne sent me some splendid stereo pictures of it [a new Microtis species] . . . Mrs Eaves learnt her work from Mr T. Green, whose collection of stereos has been secured by the Royal Kew Gardens. I think the pupil bids fair to excel her master.’
It was Ethel Eaves who convinced the director of Kew Gardens to acquire Green’s photos, while her own work has been forgotten.
The first photographs to appear in Edith’s articles were taken by Green, who was a member of the Field Naturalists Club. One of them appears in 1927, as she muses over a strange attraction between wasps and orchids. But she was taking photos herself too. Even in 1926 she mentions the difficulties of successfully photographing banded greenhood orchids.
‘In the fresh flowers the labellum is very sensitive, springing up at the lightest breath,’ she says, ‘and needs to be held down with paste, or must be chloroformed into a stationary position for the artist or photographer.’
Banded greenhood (Pterostylis vittata) by Edith Coleman
I am struck by the image of a chloroformed orchid, pinned down to prevent resistance, as if it might leap up and run away, as if the orchids have some agency.
Unascribed photos accompany her article on winter orchids for The Argus. By the spring of 1928, Edith was using her own camera to capture evidence of her wasps in the act.
‘I had only three flowers left, and needed a photograph of the wasp actually “in” the orchid,’ she explains. Photography was to become a major feature of Edith’s work in her later years, although she did not think it so. The Argus, in particular, liked to have her articles illustrated with photographs. The quality of reproduction is so poor, though, that the images are all but worthless now. Her articles in women’s magazines were also often illustrated with photos and drawings and, on better quality paper, have reproduced much more crisply.
‘Photography isn’t my long suit, it is really rather a toil to me,’ she told a correspondent in 1932. Her camera was not ideal, being a No. 1 Box Brownie that she bought for 5 shillings fifteen years before.
In time, though, her photography would become a more serious endeavour. By the 1940s she owned a Thornton Pickard 1/4 plate camera on a massive wooden tripod. The former maid’s room, already fitted with a sink, was converted to a darkroom, the small window blocked up and the floor-to-ceiling linen cupboards along one wall supplemented with more kerosene case shelves.
I suspect her photos of huntsman spiders were taken with this camera. The photo of a spider mother with her brood is strangely enchanting. It is not so much the spider itself that I find attractive. I think the attraction that has been captured is that of the photographer for her subject.
‘It was pretty to see how carefully she moved over the sac, with body elevated, feet always placed where no spiderling would be trodden upon’
There is no creature too lowly, too grotesque, or too unattractive for Edith. She admires sawfly larvae or spitfires that cluster on her garden plants, while I drop them with gloved fingers into a jar, shuddering with disgust as they disgorge toxic liquid at one another.
‘These ugly squirming caterpillars,’ she assures me, ‘are in reality princesses in disguise.’
I am unconvinced, inured by the stunted growth of one of my grevilleas, stripped bare by successive generations of these voracious hordes. Wasps, water scorpions, sawflies and case moth caterpillars – Edith has a taste for the weird and the wonderful, alongside more respectable gardening and bird watching. Even her love of orchids borders on the macabre. Her passion is not for the flashy, showy hothouse blooms of tropical species, but for the inconspicuous flowers of the temperate orchids.
‘Spiders and pink fairies!’ Edith declares. ‘They really do seem quaint companions, these weird little spiders and delicate pink fairies growing, as they so often are, in close association. How often in nature we find the grotesque and the beautiful side by side. Not that you will think these spiders really grotesque when you know them better. Each is a miracle of design (or adaptability if you will), and every species has a strangely fascinating beauty that excites our wonder and admiration.’
Orchids that look like gnats and mosquitos – or even ducks. ‘Some of them appear to be veritable imps and satyrs, with wicked-looking eyes and devilish horns.’
Edith is entirely unperturbed by the peculiar, the strange or even the downright monstrous. They are simply mysteries to be solved or puzzles to intrigue. Only patient observation will provide the answers, and Edith has that too, in abundance.
I realise that I have been thinking about Edith as a naturalist first and a writer second. Maybe it’s because I came to know her first from her study of orchid pollination, because I thought her publishing career started with the Victorian Naturalist, because her scientific papers are indexed, catalogued and easier to find.
I have now collected more than 350 papers by Edith. Half are from magazines and newspapers, and half from academic journals. Most of the ‘academic’ papers, though, are published in the Victorian Naturalist, and not all of these are strictly scientific. A great many, at least a third, are observations, descriptive or literary. Some are no more than brief notes.
It’s true that her first papers are about orchids, but for several years they are gently descriptive rather than analytical. It’s not until her first pollination paper in 1927 that she begins any work that could really be called scientific. She is always primarily a nature writer, and even her scientific papers are accessible and evocative.
Her papers are never only for the specialist, but hold the door open for anyone who is interested or curious, always inviting the most casual reader. And yet her most casual papers remained of interest to the scientist.
‘Your papers are most welcome,’ wrote the Harvard professor Oakes Ames, ‘and I want them all including newspaper clippings.’ ‘You certainly have the knack of always presenting your matter interestingly, always convincingly,’ agreed Dr Richard S. Rogers. ‘I never miss your paper in the Naturalist’.
Edith’s approach was appreciated by the editorial board of the Victorian Naturalist.
‘The majority of our members prefer their nature knowledge submitted in pleasing natural habiliments such as you present,’ said the acting editor Charles Daley, ‘in which knowledge of the subject, an attractive style and literary quality are combined. A field magazine should not be so strictly bound in its “formal cut” as to leave no room for flights of fancy.’
I wonder who it was who first encouraged Edit
h to write. Perhaps it was the editor of the Victorian Naturalist, Francis G. Barnard. Or maybe other emerging and established nature writers, like Donald Macdonald, Alec Chisholm or Philip Crosbie Morrison. It could have been Irene Frances Taylor, the editor and journalist at the Gum Tree and Woman’s World, or even Nettie Palmer (also a nature writer) with whom Edith was friends. Edith knew how valuable such encouragement was. She gave it freely to others, like Rica Erickson and Jean Galbraith. But her own mentor, if she had one, remains a mystery.
Some autumn orchids
By (Mrs.) E. Coleman
Autumn is here – like Spring returned to us,
Won from her girlishness. – Browning
Surely there is no more fascinating hobby than the study of orchids, and there are two delightful ways of pursuing it: where expense is no object one may tread the primrose path by means of glass houses; but to know the real charm of orchid-collecting one must be a lover of the open and walk the forest ways in search of them.
With me the love of these shy blooms is not an isolated attachment. It is closely associated with the songs of birds, the scent of heath, blue hills, cool gullies, and the whip-bird’s call, and the many other delights which each season brings.
To the true lover of orchids there is no ‘orchid season.’ To him it is ever ‘the time of tender opening things’ and, though his prizes now are small and insignificant in comparison with ones to be found later,
When the fields catch flower,
And the underwood is green, they are not less beautiful in his eyes. He smiles when he hears the ‘off season’ mentioned, for that is the time when his hope is highest. He continues his rambles through autumn and winter, climbing hills and searching gullies in the sure expectation that he will one day find an orchid new to him – perhaps new to science! This is the one thing he would add to Hazlitt’s sum of a perfect day. Who would grudge him his moment of exultation? And is there any finer time for walking than the autumn, when Nature speaks to us of so many rememberable things? We may walk the forest ways for many days without capturing our blue bird: but we shall surely garner a little of Nature’s gold by the wayside.
It is surprising how soon one acquires the ‘orchid eye,’ and one needs it now, for many of our autumn forms are so small as to escape the notice of all but ardent seekers. In colouring, too, they are very subdued, in strong contrast with the ‘flaunting flowers our gardens yield’ at this time of the year; but, seen under the magnifying glass, their beauty would convert the most indifferent observer into an enthusiast. Let us, then, set out on our autumn rambles, hugging a great ‘Perhaps.’
Chapter 8
A PERFECT PARTNERSHIP
‘The haunts of the long-tongued greenhood are among the tangled vegetation that clothes the banks of little creeks, in dank mountain gullies, or on cool, well-clad hill slopes: and the setting is a fitting one, for the plants are so well hidden, often so cunningly camouflaged, that one rarely discovers more than a single flower at a time, rising out of its tangled cover in a queenly isolation that calls for individual admiration.’
January 1927
Edith has almost forgotten how much the view from Goongarrie had changed since the ‘Black Sunday’ fires. The fires burnt for several weeks over last summer, through the south-eastern forests from Healesville, on the outskirts of Melbourne, right to the furthest corner of the state. All the great forests destroyed, the fern gullies charred and eroded, and sixty lives lost. The memory of burnt-out cars and motorcycles on the side of the road still makes Edith ill to think of; the homeless sifting through the wreckage of their lives with only a chimney left standing. Such a tragedy.
Standing on the verandah, Edith can see the tall poles on distant hills where fires stripped the tree canopies bare. But it hasn’t taken long for the vegetation to regrow. Within weeks, it seemed, the blackened earth was covered with patches of vivid English green, and spring promised to be richer than ever before. The tree trunks covered themselves with shaggy coats of new leaves. Nature spends no time in crying over mistakes, Edith thinks, whether ours or hers. She just sets to work with added vigour to repair the damage.
They had been lucky that the fires had missed Goongarrie, sweeping up the valley and across the ranges beyond. She did not like to think what would have happened if the fire had swept up their hill, through the box stringybarks, to the little weatherboard cottage they loved so much. Everyone loved it here in the hills – their friends and relatives and visitors – they all liked to come and stay, enjoying the cooler air of the forests and the spectacular scenery. And her kindred spirits, the orchid lovers, particularly liked to visit, slipping away into untamed timber country, in pursuit of rare treasures. Just ten minutes’ walk from the picture-theatre hoardings and you were in the middle of the silent forest, with no sound but the whisper of gum trees, the occasional rustle of dry leaves and the songs of the birds.
Edith turns back into the house, closing the verandah door behind her. An insect buzzes in protest as it slips through the closing crack. Not a fly, observes Edith, watching the elegant creature hover as if determining its next move. Orange legs and body, with black wings and a spotted abdomen. The insect tacks purposefully back and forth across the room, following a scent, pulled by an irresistible lure, towards the posy of native flowers on the table. It’s a wasp, in search of an orchid.
GOONGARRIE STILL STANDS on the hill outside Healesville. Painted white now, and extended with dormer windows and a lush, romantic garden, it is only just recognisable as the brown cedar cottage in dense bush of Edith’s time. Next door, closer to the road, is the ‘garage’ the family converted in later years for their own use so that they could rent out the main cottage to visitors. I walked along the Maroondah Highway several times, wondering if I would even be able to work out which house it was. The road has realigned over decades. Peter Thomson had marked the probable location on a map but translating from paper to the street proved tricky. I was just about to head back to the car when I noticed a sign on an open gate, in the dark shade of a deciduous tree. They’ve kept the name: ‘Goongarrie’.
A photo of Edith standing at the gate suggests thick native bush, but photos of the house itself show signs of a garden under sheoaks and stringybarks – ivy covering the back wall, deciduous trees and indeterminate shrubs. Perhaps this is the garden Edith described as her ‘second wilderness which none may invade’.
Edith at the gate of Goongarrie, 1932
‘Here my rambling roses grow in sweet profusion,’ she said, ‘smothering my trees and taking possession of every available space.’ She lists Dorothy Perkins, Ellen Poulsen, Illawatha, Orleans, Papa Gontier, Lady Medallist and Madame Abel Chatenay.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these roses still flower in the garden. Goongarrie still looks out over the forested ranges, up towards Kinglake and Toolangi, where fern gullies and tall forests remain, surviving the cyclic destructions of fires and the ever-encroaching urban sprawl of outer Melbourne. And in the forests and the grasslands, in pockets of undisturbed bush, there are the orchids that Edith loved: tiny, strange, colourful and with curious habits that resist easy comprehension.
The house at Goongarrie looking out across the ranges
For ten years I lived on a bush block in the ranges that Edith could see from her verandah. When we moved in, the previous tenants, both artists, dropped by with a bottle of port and a painting of a donkey orchid as a welcoming gift. Felix Borsari was locally renowned for his orchid walks. Each year before the orchids opened, he would suspend picture frames around them, so that visitors would see them as emerging works of nature’s art. Felix promised to come back and show us the orchids on our new block, keen to make sure we would look after them. Tragically, he died before he had a chance. So we had to find out about the orchids by ourselves.
‘A strange hobby, perhaps, this collecting of orchids,’ Edith mused, ‘but a very fascinating one and once you are caught in its toils the love never wanes. We have most
of us lived through various phases of the collecting fever. In your youth it may have taken the form of match-box brands or cigarette cards. Later came stamps, coins or even fossils. But the most fascinating part about collecting orchids lies in the fact that the years never bring satiety. They are not to be pinned to boards like butterflies or beetles, not to be shut in boxes or cabinets. Each season brings them to us in their fresh living beauty, and we greet them as old friends.’
The collecting of orchids might conjure images of vast heated greenhouses filled with heavy nodding spikes of fragrant tropical beauty. Or the cultivation of rare and exotic breeds. Or perhaps the art of breeding – hybridising, mixing, mutating forms – to produce the most spectacular blooms. The strange aesthetics of the orchid lend themselves to modification and ‘improvement’. But these are not the orchids that attracted Edith, nor the type of work that she enjoyed. Edith did not favour the ‘primrose path by means of the glasshouse’. She was a ‘lover of the open’ where the thrill of the hunt was combined with the joys of the outdoors.
Edith’s collaborator and friend Rupp explained their charms a little differently.
‘Most people are attracted secretly, if not avowedly, by anything which is unconventional, out of the ordinary. Orchids are the most unconventional family of flowering plants in the world. You never know what they are going to do next.’
‘Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman?’ Rupp asked Alec Chisholm. ‘If not you must – I am sure you will like her – she’s just A1 and a splendid naturalist.’
The Wasp and the Orchid Page 13