Botanist, naturalist, conservationist and garden-lover. Born Tyers, March 28 1906. Died Melbourne, January 2, aged 92.
Jean Galbraith, the eminent botanist, had limited formal education. She grew up in an isolated part of Victoria, and was often so ill she could not go to school. As a teenager she began corresponding with the noted amateur botanist, H B Williamson. They met in 1922 at a wildflower show, after Williamson queried the identity of the girl who was still asking questions even as the show closed down, and volunteered to help her find answers.
For eight years they exchanged letters, Jean sending plant specimens for identification - 234 specimens in the first 16 months! Her only reference was Ferdinand Mueller's Key to the Victorian Plants Part 1, published in 1856-57 and written in Latin, her source material the virgin (at that time) bushland around the isolated Gippsland hamlet of Tyers, where she lived. This began a process of lifelong learning.
Jean Galbraith was a prolific author - 12 books (including three for children), countless articles and poems, radio broadcasts - but Wildflowers of Victoria (1950) and the Collins Field Guide to the Wildflowers of South Eastern Australia (1977), stand out. These were the first publications to make the fascinating diversity of the Australian flora accessible to the average plant-lover. Jean brought the plants alive at the same time as presenting all necessary botanical detail. Her enthusiasm for her subject shone through. She once said: "I look at any flower with a sense of wonder, and the tinier the flower the more wonderful it seems".
Diminutive in stature, Jean built a giant reputation in spheres other than botany.
Her involvement with the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria spanned more than six decades; she received the prestigious Australian Natural History Medallion in 1970. Her concern for conservation was part of her very being; from the 1930s onwards her submissions to Government bodies and inquiries were models of commitment and scholarship, while her letters to decision-makers were reasoned and reasonable. She wrote gardening articles over 65 years - from 1926-76 in the periodical, The Australian Garden Lover under the penname of 'Correa', from 1985-92 in 'The Age'. Her beloved garden, 'Dunedin', immortalised in Garden in a Valley (1939), was a place of pilgrimage for many.
Jean was the oldest of four children. Her parents lived simply, their love of nature pervading family life. Her father rode into the bush and brought back branches of wildflowers for the house. Her mother taught her to water emerging seedlings by dampening a hairbrush and shaking it over the tray. Careful consideration of plant catalogues always followed the nightly Bible reading - the Galbraiths were devout Christadelphians who saw God's hand in every facet of nature.
In 1914 the family moved into 'Dunedin', a cottage on a sloping house block surrounded by native bush and some cleared farmland. Jean left school at 14. As her brothers were educated in Melbourne, she and her parents became virtually self-sufficient, a tight unit, and together they built a wonderful, productive garden. Dear as 'Dunedin' was to Jean, her father's death in 1945 marked the start of almost 20 years when she was confined there, caring for a succession of invalid relatives. During this time, however, she managed to research and write Wildflowers of Victoria in only six months. Time was so precious that while working at the National Herbarium of Victoria she was allowed to stay overnight, sleeping under her workbench. (The favour was repeated while she did research for the Field Guide, but this time she spread her blankets on Ferdinand Mueller's leather couch).
Botanists at the Herbarium remember Jean's regular visits with pleasure…the quick step, the tiny figure clutching in one hand a home-made cake for the staff and in the other specimens for identification, talking non-stop about where she had found the plants, then turning excitedly to her work.
Fellow naturalists remember Jean on bushwalks, in skirt, thick stockings and sensible shoes, always alive to the new and the interesting. She spotted the two plants named for her, Dampiera galbraithiana (1988) and Boronia galbraithiae (1992), because they exhibited minute differences to the established populations of known species among which they grew.
Garden-lovers remember Jean lingering on the overgrown pathways at 'Dunedin', picking fruit in the orchard, sweeping aside fallen camellia or rose petals to reveal some small treasure, stopping by the garden seat that her friend Edna Walling loved, tending the potplants in "intensive care" on the verandah. Jean was always at home to people who asked to see her garden, even if she didn't know they were coming.
Friends remember her in her book-lined living room full of fresh flowers, the bird-tables outside the window shimmering with life and movement, the worktable cluttered with papers, the kettle boiling on the open fire. A track was worn on the carpet to her bedroom, which housed her herbarium.
Jean didn't drive, travelling with friends or by public transport - when she would catch up on correspondence or her diaries, which were equally voluminous. The Field Guide, listing almost 4000 plants, required trips to remote places in all parts between Noosa, Port Augusta and southern Tasmania. Jean's friends did it all. Her delight in camping added to the experience.
Her reputation grew as she aged. Garden in a Valley was republished in 1985 to universal acclaim. A Gardener's Year, in diary format, appeared in 1987. But failing eyesight and bad health meant a move in 1993 to a retirement village - friends and family helped her visit 'Dunedin' - then to a nursing home. She died peacefully, responding to a daily Bible reading.
Jean Galbraith's life spanned the century, and her death closes an era when much local flora and landscape was identified, celebrated and (essentially) preserved with inspiration and help from dedicated practitioners like Jean herself and her close colleagues John Turner (who died in 1991) and Jim Willis (1995). For the record, her achievement was as a botanist and naturalist. But memories of her remarkable personality - sincere, devout, inquiring, cheerful, resourceful - will not fade.
Anne Latreille
This obituary first appeared in The Australian 14th January 1999.
Anne Latreille is a Melbourne-based journalist and editor and works part-time for the Williamson Community Leadership Program. She has also just completed a book about the lives and botanical correspondence of Jean Galbraith and the botanical artist, Joan Law-Smith. This is due for publication in September 1999.