Ghosts of Yesteryear in the Botanic Garden: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia
If you are in search of the ghosts of yesteryear in the Botanic Garden, the main gates on North Terrace are a good place to start, because they are not the first to adorn the entrance. If you were coming in 130 years ago, you would not enter via these elegant cast iron portals manufactured in London. The original wooden gates were ready for the Garden’s opening to the public in 1857 (two years after its inception). Shortly, they needed two quaint hexagonal sentry boxes to house the attendants who were charged with upholding the regulations… no dogs, no unaccompanied children no drunks and definitely no gentleman wearing a flower in their buttonhole.
Another of the Adelaide Botanic Garden’s best loved landmarks isn’t original either. The superb Palm House Conservatory was not imported from Bremen in Germany until 1875. Immaculately restored a few years ago to house a fascinating plant collection from Madagascar, it is probably the only one of its kind still standing. It is in the shadowy presence of its predecessor, the first Conservatory, grand dome and all, which was imported from England and stood uphill from the Palm House until the expanding Royal Adelaide Hospital swallowed it up.
If you are looking for Adelaide’s oldest public monument outside a cemetery, where are you going to start? Victoria Square? No. North Terrace? Getting warm, because it is in the Botanic Garden neat the main gates. A small obelisk is dedicated to the first Director, George Francis, who fought for years to gain this location in the Parklands, and laid it out in a form not much different from today. His pet monkey, which did the rounds with him, is buried at the base.
His Director’s Residence is long gone, demolished for eastward expansion of the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Down the main path, sphinx and lion statues are departed, too, but the white dogs are still being patted by another young generation 140 years on. Officially, they are Molossian Hounds, copies of originals in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Our invisible guide is the author of the recent book, “Ghosts of the Garden”, Russell Smith, who is often on duty in the ticket box of the futuristic Bi-Centennial Conservatory. He asked senior Botanic Gardens staffer, John Sandham, to help us locate where the spirits were. We came to a classical statue of Amazon. In the garden since the 1860’s, it depicts the goddess on horseback defending herself against a tiger, but her spear is missing.
“It kept getting broken or stolen”, explained John,
“What else is missing round the restaurant area?” I asked.
“There was a lovely wooden rustic bridge leading to an island in the lake. Not any old island, either… it was called Diana’s Island, a wonderful spot for picnics. She’s still here. Her statue is at the end of the main walk down from the North Terrace gates”.
The island is gone, and so is another major statue that once stood on the peak of a hill above the lake. At the end of a pine grove, legendary Greek mother figure Niobe sat tending a child. About 50 years ago, they tried moving her, but her corroded cast zinc was only held together by many layers of paint and she fell apart. Behind the statue were some of Adelaide’s most prominent and forbidding buildings.
“The Lunatic Asylum ran along towards the Goodman tramways building on Hackney Road”, John noted.
“The Garden and the Asylum didn’t get on very well at all. They complained of the smoke from our burning off, and visitors here complained about the inmates’ demonic howls and shrieks. The only thing left is the Deadhouse just down there by First Creek. It is a garden shed for us, and we use the mortuary slab as a potting bench.”
Macabre! Perhaps an even more surprising ghost of yesteryear wanders the big picnic lawn by the Moreton Bay Fig Tree Walk. John reminded us that the Adelaide Zoo began 120 years ago, in part by taking the inhabitants of the several cages in the menagerie that spread through here.
“There were llamas, camels, bulls, snakes, baboons and even a tiger,” John laughed.
There was also an ecological disaster in the making when the Director Dr. Schomburgk brought in two Tasmanian Devils by ship. One escaped at Port Adelaide, as they were unloaded, and the other from the Botanic Garden. The latter turned up six years later in Piccadilly in the Adelaide Hills. If it had found the other one….?s It didn’t happen, much to the relief of all.
It was noted that “the powerful and malodorous perfume of the menagerie” disappeared when the Adelaide Zoo began. No more feeding rounds for the head gardener either. He lived in the North Lodge cottage across the creek on the Botanic Park edge of the Garden. Here, the gates have changed too, despite the Victorian appearance of the Friends’ Gates. They were erected in 1987, but they are genuine nineteenth century cast iron from a Glen Osmond mansion. The bluestone base came from the old bear cage at the Zoo. These days the North lodge is run as a gift and book shop by the Friends of the Botanic Garden and they would be delighted to sell you a copy of Russell Smith’s “Ghosts of the Garden Yesteryear in the Adelaide Botanic Garden”.
The Adelaide Botanic Garden
North Terrace
Adelaide, South Australia, 5000
Phone (08) 8222 9311
Email botanicgardens@saugov.sa.gov.auOpen everyday
Admission charge to Bi-Centennial Conservatory, otherwise free entry.
Guided Walks from kiosk every Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday (Christmas Day and Good Friday excepted) 10.30am.www.environment.sa.gov.au/botanicgardens/adelaide.html
Friends of the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide North Lodge Shop
Phone (08) 8223 5506
Weekdays noon-4pm
Weekends, Public holidays 10am - 4pm
Closed Christmas Day, Good FridayEmail fbga2000@senet.com.au
Ghosts of the Garden
By Russell Smith
Published by Smithbooks, 2002.Available at the Friends of the Botanic Garden Bookshop, and most South Australian major newsagents and bookshops. RRP $10.00
