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Launceston City Park is Australia’s third oldest colonial garden. It was
the
‘Launceston colony’s’ first food garden and trial space for the testing of
European plants – and plants from
elsewhere – in regard to their usefulness in Tasmania’s, rather Van Diemen's Land's, colonial
enterprise. Very little attention was paid to the ‘usefulness’ of local
plant life. Given that it was so very different to the plant life of home, coupled
with the Terra Nullius idea, Van Diemen’s
Land was pretty much a ‘blank canvass’ upon which a cultural
landscape could be constructed.
Curiously, looking back from the 21st Century Launceston was
arguably one of Van Diemen’s Land’s most fecund cultural landscapes well
watered as it was at the confluence of two river that drained in excess of 20%
of the island. Nonetheless, ‘the place’ was considered somehow ‘barren’
in a colonial context in so much as it lacked the fecundity
of home – uncivilised and empty as Van Diemen’s
Land was imagined, lacking in deciduous trees, lacking hooved animals, lacking the
fruits of home, etc.
The ‘First Tasmanians’ , the palawa
people, had spent millennia placescaping the place they understood a ponnrabel [LINK] and they clearly understood it
fecundity very well. Just like elsewhere in Australia, palawa people were not really asked about their relationships to
and with this place where it was imagined they occupied it alongside, and along
with, ‘the flora and the fauna’. The legendary
arrogance of explorers such as Burke and Wills, Leichardt et al, whose
disinclination consult with ‘the uncivilised natives’ led to their
ultimate demise. Yet, Van Diemen’s Land turned out to be somewhat kinder place albeit
that its palawa cultural landscaping
largely went unnoticed.
Willows were planted on this site along with a whole range useful
plants. Curiously the ‘weeping willow’ came with a Napoleonic narrative in that they cuttings they grew from were apparently significant
because they came from a tree that it was thought to have overhung Napoleon’s
grave on St. Helens. This is not a willow that is useful for basket making.
However, the
story goes that the willows that are fit for this purpose arrived in Launceston
with a convict and apparently, they were planted and managed as an ‘osier’ along
the banks of Distillery Creek near Hobblers Bridge on Launceston's outskirts.
It turns out that near these weeping willows with their Napoleonic
narratives a range of ‘wicker plants’ have been planted. They are not there for
their ‘usefulness’, not even remotely, but they do offer a calming and pleasing
aesthetic. Yet to see these plants together in this situation and to ponder upon
the narratives deliberately and coincidentally embedded within the placescaping
is somehow reassuring.
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