Wednesday, February 28, 2018

The Stuff of Wickery in Launceston's City Park

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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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