‘We nature lovers,’ she told The Age in 1950, ‘may open our windows on all aspects of nature, even though we may sometimes abut on the preserves of the specialist.’
Winter visitors to a Blairgowrie cottage
By Edith Coleman
Even illness has its compensations, one of them being that one may sit idly in the sunshine to watch the birds without feeling culpable. And that is what I am doing while convalescing at Blairgowrie, three miles on the ocean side of Sorrento. This cottage was built 85 years ago, and here all down the years, birds have come, sure of water – a precious thing in non-reticulated parts.
Here among tea-tree covered dunes the strength and variety of the bird population is surprising. Birds that only rarely visit our Blackburn garden (blue wrens, white-shafted fantail, etc.) are here in force, while the white-plumed honeyeater which dominated the home garden we have not seen here.
Watching birds flock to the baths and food trays, one cannot fail to note how some of them differ in size, colour and song from their species at Blackburn. Victoria’s first naturalist, George Bass, thought the birds of Wilson’s Promontory and Western Port had a sweeter note than those of Port Jackson. While I would not say that the Sorrento songs are sweeter, they certainly differ so much that we say ‘Oh, listen to that blackbird or that grey thrush.’ Both of these birds are larger and more beautiful than those at Blackburn. Indeed, we often think they are superb specimens in finer feather, the blackbird with glossier black plumage and a deeper orange bill, which glows vividly against the black tea tree. The grey thrush, surprisingly large with a deep nut-brown mantle and light breast, is, one would say, in the pink of condition.
While some birds bathe singly or in pairs, thornbills and many others take the plunge together and, small as they are, what a splash they make! It is pretty to see two scarlet robins in the bath with only their bills and white caps showing above the brim, then the splash as they become active.
Two goldfinches bathing together are a pretty sight, but a whole ‘charm’ taking the plunge at once is something to watch for – and to listen to, for they sing as they dip.
One moment the bath may be full of a mob of splashing thornbills. Next moment two white-backed magpies or a butcher bird have possession and the small birds are discreetly absent. They are not far away, however, for a closely cropped tea-tree nearby offers a ready refuge into which they slip until the coast is clear. In this, 100 small birds are lost at once. A rosemary and a coastal rice-flower, trimmed in the same way, are used as escapes.
The cottage stands on a high, flat-topped dune over which a hawk has been seen. Hosts of blue wrens are with us, many with blue tails, but so far none with blue body plumage. Recently part of the ground at the back was fenced in with wire-netting. This seems to have given a sense of security to the wrens. The enclosure made by wire fence, box-room and garage is probably too restricted for a hawk to ‘brake down’ before making its swoop.
One thing is most impressive about these small winter visitors – their arrival, not in twos or threes, but in flocks. Yellowtailed tits come in a cloud, like butterflies. Instantly both baths will be full of splashing tits with hosts waiting in the branches of a black tea-tree overhead, or along the picket fence.
* * *
EPILOGUE
‘Like most nature-lovers I have witnessed many memorable incidents among birds and other creatures; but I think the night singing of budgerigars will always be my loveliest memory . . . One has no words to convey adequately the wonder and beauty of that night chorus. We could not have spoken, had we wished, as we stood there in the dark, listening to Australia’s cheeriest birds singing their song of the rain.’
MY PRINTER CHUGS and grumbles in the corner of my office before grudgingly releasing some illustrations my eldest daughter is completing for a university art assignment. Outside, my younger daughter is inching along the verandah, trying to get close enough to take a photo of an eastern spinebill swinging on the long stems of the kangaroo paws in the garden. On the weekend she’ll head into the local conservation reserve to help with mist-netting and bird-banding efforts. I close up my piles of books on orchids, on nature writing, on Melbourne’s history, and collect my notes into folders for storage. I need some fresh air and a walk through the bush at the other end of our block.
A flock of New Holland honeyeaters (Phylidonyris novae-hollandiae) are swimming in a creeper that covers the garden bed outside my study window. There are five of them, more a mob than a flock, ducking and weaving amongst the foliage, frolicking like children in a pool. They are beady-eyed, black and white birds with a bright flash of yellow on their wing. I am reminded of Edith watching eastern spinebills (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris) and regent honeyeaters (Xanthomyza phrygia) in her garden.
‘As I sit at breakfast a pair of spine-billed honeyeaters and their young ones are busy among the fuchsias not a foot from my windows. These beautiful little birds, with their rich chestnut and black coloring have grown very trustful and their sweet, piercing call is pleasant to hear. The fuchias have been especially fine this year, and the busy little bills are, I am sure, finding an abundance of nectar. Food for the gods, surely. The handsome black and yellow regent honey eaters are much more rare; but they have made their homes with us for the past three seasons.’
My garden is too hot and sunny for fuchias and salvias and they need more work than I am prepared to provide. But the honeyeaters seem to enjoy the tough, resilient lotus plant (Lotus berthelotii) instead, its feathery blue-grey foliage smothered with bright orange beak-shaped flowers. Red flowers attractive to avian eyes, long curved necks for bird beaks, sturdy long-lived flowers to sustain a large pollinator – all classic signs of a bird-pollinated plant.
Edith’s regent honeyeaters are no longer found in Blackburn. In fact there are fewer than 1200 left in the wild. They are one of Victoria’s most critically endangered birds. My lotus plant too, despite its garden abundance, is extinct in its native habitat on the Canary Islands off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Also gone forever are the iridescent sunbirds that once pollinated it in its homeland. Now their bright long-lasting flowers sustain Australian honeyeaters on the far side of the globe.
The New Holland honeyeaters suddenly startle, flying off to hang in the kangaroo paws, chipping with an unfounded alarm and displacing the eastern spinebills in their dark shiny suits and russet waistcoats. Both species love the kangaroo paws but I rarely see them together. One always tactfully enters stage left as the other species departs stage right, in a carefully managed performance designed to minimise competition and maximise rewards. Now both species disappear in a flurry of chirrups and blurred wings. The furry red and orange fists of the kangaroo paws sway on their long stems as if echoing their departed visitors.
This year that I have spent with Edith has produced more unexpected riches than I might ever have imagined. The depth and breadth of her biological work constantly takes me by surprise. Her writing delights and inspires me. And now the story of her life, and how she came to fulfil her remarkable career, proves that it is never too late to engage with the work you love.
I reach the top of the hill in the middle of the bush that covers half our block. I’ve always thought there should be greenhoods here. It feels like the right environment. I brush the grass and a little forest of maroonhoods (Pterostylis pedunculata) appears as if by magic. How is it that I have not seen them before? I pull out some milkweeds, checking habitually for regrowth of pittosporum, blackberry and watsonia. From here I can see over the cleared half of the block, to the house with its largely non-native garden intended to minimise fire risk. And I am struck, as I always am, by our paradoxical insistence on attempting to weed the bush on one half of the property, while eagerly cultivating introduced ‘weeds’ on the other. After spending so much time with Edith, though, it feels more like an effort to achieve some balance.
She has changed the way I think about our relationship with Australian nature and our place in
it. And she has changed the way I think about my writing too. I realise that Edith’s seeds have been planted in many more gardens than she could ever have imagined.
I can only hope that I have now helped to distribute them a little further, where they might grow anew.
Edith favoured an informal Australian cottage garden style with a mix of natives, old-fashioned flowers and herbs.
The overgrown pittosporum hedge is all that is left of Edith’s garden and house at Walsham in Blackburn.
The cemetery in Guildford where Edith’s older sister Harriett was buried.
Walsham Lock, where Edith’s parents met and the children played. Both Edith and her parents would name their Australian homes ‘Walsham’.
Native orchids featured on the cover of this 1922 real-estate brochure from a subdivision in Blackburn, near Edith’s home.
Edith between Dorothy and Gladys on an early motoring outing with friends (driven by James), circa 1910.
One of Edith’s photos of a willy wagtail, feeding its young in her garden.
‘Goongarrie’, Edith’s cottage in Healesville, still looks out over forested ranges.
Edith attached stereographic photos of orchids to her dried specimen sheets to aid in identification. This photograph of helmet orchids (Corysanthes) was taken by Ethel Eaves circa 1930 and was found in a cigarette box donated to the State Library Victoria.
A rare picture of Edith (in the background) with her father, Henry Harms, feeding kookaburras in Belgrave, from the 1920s.
Edith’s younger daughter Gladys wrote much of the orchid section for Alfred Ewart’s Flora of Victoria (1930), here illustrated by Mavis Arnold.
Edith’s work on pseudocopulation brought her international fame in 1928 when her work was published in Transactions of the Entomological Society, with an illustrated plate by her colleague William H. Nicholls.
As Edith discovered, many Australian orchids are pollinated through pseudocopulation. These spider orchids (Caladenia tentaculata) are being attended by thynnine flower wasps on the author’s property.
Edith’s discoveries were connected to those of Algerian judge Maurice-Alexandre Pouyanne by the English orchidologist Masters Johnson Godfery, whose talented wife, Hilda, had illustrated the work of Pouyanne’s Swiss co-author Henry Correvon. Godfery described Edith’s work in his description of this European fly orchid.
‘I have seen your name so often in Rupp’s papers on orchids that I have no hesitation in asking your help for a fellow enthusiast. ’ Letter from Edith Coleman to George V. Scammel in 1930.
Emily Pelloe’s Orchids of Western Australia, published in 1930, described Edith’s contribution to WA orchids and featured some of the orchids she described and named.
A painting of a greenhood orchid by Gladys Thomson, from the collections of Museum Victoria.
A painting of spider orchids by Dorothy Coleman, Edith’s older daughter.
‘Once again war has brought home to the Australian soldier his deep affection for the wattles of his land. Once again sprigs of blossom enclosed in his letters are whispering: “Come back. It’s wattle time.
Edith’s only book, published in 1935, was one of the first guides to Australian wattles.
In 1949 Edith was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion for her work. She was the first woman to receive the award.
Mrs Edith Coleman of Blackburn, taken by Dorothy circa 1949, with angelica from her garden.
Edith’s entry on orchid pollination for the second edition of the Australian Encyclopedia was published posthumously in 1958. The accompanying plate was by Rosa Fiveash, who illustrated many of R.S. Roger’s orchids.
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been completed without the assistance of a great many people and I am grateful for their support and interest in reviving Edith’s story.
First of all, I must thank Edith’s grandsons, John and Peter Thomson, and their cousin Peter Harms, for their generosity, support and assistance in allowing me to share their family history.
I am grateful to the following people for their help with historical research: Peter Gill for researching Edith’s teaching records at the Public Records Office of Victoria; Janet South, Nepean Historical Society; Robyn Doble, Box Hill Historical Society; and staff at Camberwell Primary School; Traralgon Primary School; Timor Primary School and Glen Forrest Primary School. I’d also like to thank Loris Peggie for her encouragement and early research into Edith’s work as well as Gary Presland and the late Sheila Houghton from the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria.
Thank you to my students and colleagues at Flinders University: particularly Susan Double; Wendy Otero; Monika Stasiak and staff at Flinders University Library. Anne O’Brien and Shari Argent transcribed many of Edith’s papers for me.
I am very grateful to the following organisations for funding some of the research in this book: the Moran Award (particularly Lisa Conti Phillips at the Basser Library); Australian Orchid Foundation (particularly Helen Richards); and Arts SA.
Much of this work could not have been completed without the support of many other academics in the field. In particular, I’d like to thank Jim Endersby, University of Sussex, for his work on Edith Coleman and Anne Gaskett, University of Auckland, for continuing and extending Edith’s work. The staff from many herbaria around the country very patiently responded to my many queries, but I’m particularly grateful to Juergen Kellermann from the State Herbarium of South Australia and Kristina McColl from National Herbarium of New South Wales for their time and assistance. Carolyn Rasmussen was a ready source of advice on all matters biographical and historical.
Finally I must thank Geordie Williamson, Mathilda Imlah, Georgia Douglas and the team at Picador who saw the potential for this project more clearly than I did and whose encouragement and confidence allowed me to do far more than I might ever have had the courage to attempt on my own.
Endnotes
Archival Sources
Kate Baker, 1942, Series 2. Biographical sketches ‘Silhouettes’, File 3 Edith Coleman (Box 3–4) Papers of Kate Baker, 1893–1946, MS 2022, National Library of Australia (NLA)
Rica Erickson Papers MN 1740, ACC5448A, 8588A/4.2, State Library of Western Australia (SLWA)
Teaching Records, Education Department Records, Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV)
Student Records, University of Melbourne Archives (UMA)
State Library of Victoria (SLV)
Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV)
National Herbarium of New South Wales (NHNSW)
Personal collections of John Thomson, Peter Thomson and Peter Harms
Chapter 1: Edith Coleman of Walsham
P1 ‘If you love . . .’ from Edith Coleman [Maman Cochet] 1927, ‘Spring Blossoms: A rose wilderness’, The Age, 5 November, p29. pp3–4 This reconstruction is based on details in Kate Baker, 1942, Series 2. Biographical sketches ‘Silhouettes’, File 3 Edith Coleman (Box 3–4) Papers of Kate Baker, 1893–1946, MS 2022, NLA, as well as Lois Meyer, 1998, ‘Memories of Dorothy Coleman’, Tintern News, p7 and the recollections of John and Peter Thomson. Animals from Edith’s own papers. Descriptions of Blackburn from A. W. Steel, quoted in Robin Da Costa, 1977, Picturesque Blackburn (Pioneer Design Studio; Lilydale) p100. p5 ‘needed no introduction’ from the byline to Edith’s first article in Your Garden, 1 December 1947, p28. ‘name ought to . . .’ H. Montague R. Rupp, Letter to Edith Coleman, 15 March 1933, quoted in Kate Baker, 1942, p13. ‘Edith Coleman of . . .’ from Kate Baker, 1942, p1. Details on White from James Fisher, 1946, ‘Introduction’, in Gilbert White (first published 1788) The Natural History of Selborne (Cresset Press: London). p7 ‘It is hard . . .’ Jean Galbraith, 1951, ‘Edith Coleman: A personal appreciation’, Victorian Naturalist, 68, p46. p11 Danielle Clode, 2006, A Continent of Curiosities (Cambridge University Press: Melbourne). p12 Danielle Clode, 2005, ‘Professional and popular communicators: Norman Wakefield and Edith Coleman’, Victorian Naturalist, 121, pp274–2
81. pp15–16 Extract from Edith Coleman, 1929, ‘A garden wilderness: Old fashioned favourites and familiar friends’, The Argus, 3 August, p3.
Chapter 2: The blackbird’s song is in her blood
p17 ‘As I ramble . . .’ from Edith Coleman [E.C.] 1938, ‘A garden of simples’, The Age, 9 April, p2. pp19–21 This reconstruction is largely derived from W. H. Bateman, 1936, Rambling recollections of old Guildford (Billing and Sons: Guildford) p3 and George’s handwritten notes therein. Edith’s recollections are from Edith Coleman [E.C.] 1945, ‘The Herb Garden: Licorice famous for twenty centuries’, The Age, 7 April, p7, and Kate Baker, 1942, pp15–16. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) leased ‘The Chestnuts’ next to Guildford Castle in 1861 for his six unmarried sisters, whom he stayed with regularly until his death. He provided a letter of introduction for Harry Harms when he went to Australia. p22 Frances Charlotte Bouverie, 1854, Memorials (John Masters: London) and the recollections of George Harms, 1963, quoted in Peter Harms’ family history. p24 The recollections of Ivo Harms in Peter Harms’ family history. ‘There had always . . .’ Edith Coleman, 1943, ‘The story of my honey-bees: Part I’, Victorian Naturalist, 60, p3, also mentioned in Kate Baker, 1942, p15. p26 Details of Lottie’s family from M. Edmunds, 2016, ‘Charlotte Sarah (Edmunds) Harms’ https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Edmunds-522 and ‘Maria Kaye’ https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kaye-399 [accessed 28.01.2017]. p28 Details of the Harms family’s early life from Peter Harms’ family history. ‘Like Hood . . .’ (a reference to Thomas Hood’s poem ‘I remember, I remember’) and ‘My earliest memories . . .’ from Edith Coleman, 1941, ‘Wall Gardening in Australia’, The Age, 15 March, p11. p29 The photo of Hale Lodge could have been reproduced by Edith’s brother Harry, or her father Henry, who was also known as Harry. For clarity I have retained the use of Henry to refer to Edith’s father throughout. p30 Amy M. King, 2013, ‘Publication of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne, 1789’, BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=amy-m-king-publication-of-gilbert-whites-the-natural-history-of-selborne-1789 [accessed 20.12.2016]. ‘late in the . . .’ and ‘long words and . . .’ from Richard Jefferies, ‘Preface’, in Gilbert White, 1887, The Natural History of Selborne (Walter Scott, London) pxxii, pvii. ‘the close and loving . . .’ and ‘Father was . . .’ are quoted in Kate Baker, 1942, p 15. pp31–34 Details of the early life of Harry and George Harms from the recollections of Ivo Harms and George Harms (respectively) quoted in Peter Harms’ family history. p34 ‘the fairy-like beauty . . .’ from Edith Coleman [E.C.] 1942, ‘Coffee from the herb garden: Dandelion returns to favor’, The Age, 24 October, p6. ‘old-fashioned musk . . .’ from Edith Coleman [E.C] 1942, ‘America’s gift to garden lovers: Plant-like links – floral affinities’, The Age, 4 April, p7. In general I have retained the taxonomic names Edith used in her own writing, but provide the current accepted name in the notes where possible. This species is now known as Mimulus moschatus. pp34–35 ‘One of the happiest . . .’ from Edith Coleman [E.C.] 1937, ‘Fragrance in the garden’, The Age, 13 March, p6. ‘I did not know . . .’ Edith Coleman [E.C.] 1938, ‘A garden of simples’, The Age, 9 April, p2. p35 ‘Some thickets made . . .’ from Francis Bacon, ‘Of Gardens’ (Essay 46) The Essays or Counsels (Penguin Classics: London). p36 ‘a charming picture . . .’ is quoted in Kate Baker, 1942, p15. pp37–39 Extract from Edith Coleman, 1930, ‘Wind in the willows: Nature’s Æolian harps’, The Argus, 14 June, p3.
The Wasp and the Orchid Page 31