Cabbage Tree Palm Hats

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  Click on an image to enlarge

Links

• https://collection.maas.museum/object/240168
• http://lrrpublic.cli.det.nsw.edu.au/lrrSecure/Sites/Web/13651/13653/applets/11489_clothing/show_tell11489_text.htm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRglgEvwF-s
• http://australianindianhistory.com/the-pugaree-in-australia/

FACEbook Comments

Nice hats, but not how I imagined them.

George Burrows When I first started to research them about 5 to 10 years ago I had expected something more like the Panama hat, but as I learned more especially how they were constructed in a very different way and from a different material, I fell very much in love and awe of them as there appears to have been a small number of different styles, but it was the material and construction method which was the unique Aussie feature of this hat that for 50 years or so was very much a iconic fashion statement some 100 years or so ago and now is almost unknown in modern Australian society

Dennis Wild Even the convicts were permitted to make them. I wonder if it used fallen leaves or whether the palms were felled to get the green leaves.

Ray Norman  To use 'freshly harvested' leaves no trees need to be felled as it appears that there were/are plenty of trees growing close to ground level ... SEE THIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRglgEvwF-sManage … Cabbage Tree Palm ( Livistona Australis )

Ray Norman George Burrows Don't get all romantic on us as this hat seems to be a corruption of the European/English/USA 'BOATER' and the straw hats they evolved from. It'd rate as 'Honours Research' to put all that in context and like anything of the sort, the search would as likely as not take you everywhere, all at once, all the time. Indeed someone may have done some of the work already BUT it doesn't seem GOOGLEable yet. HOWEVER, place Australia's colonisation, EASTcoast, does seem to have shaped this HEADgear. One wonders was this a case of WOMENSwork reassigned through circumstance?? ... Dennis Wild ... BUT why so few hats being imagined as 'wickery' in Launceston?? 

The most important question question is....where are the Cabbage Palm Tree hats ...which were an Aussie icon around 1900

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Ray Norman In Tasmania George Burrows or are you suggesting that they might have found their way here as trophies/souvenirs?? Hats carry a lot of CULTURALcargo to do with the 'wearer' and place.

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Dennis Wild I was wondering that too George. The Palm grows almost down to Eden NSW so its feasible that many thousand were made. Maybe they werent durable. I've never seen one - only in pictures.

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George Burrows Dennis Wild I was recently told that they could have been grown as far south as Tasmania if I remember correctly Beth Rooke. 
I've read so much about them over time and can only assume that like much clothing they were seen as consumables and thus purc...See More

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Dennis Wild As a teen I picked up a lot of seed, and as they all germinated I planted them into suitable habitat. Especially where I found stumps. So, near the spit bridge, a couple of very tall trees, now there are many.

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Beth Rooke · Friends with George Harris and 2 others

George Burrows Livistonia australis, Cabbage tree palm naturally occurs from Queensland, NSW to eastern Victoria. It was the plant from which cabbage palm hats were woven. The hat had a tapered dome crown & a flat brim, to which a hat band of coarse pl...See More

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George Burrows Beth Rooke so you have identified a small research project , I've only heard of it as the Cabbage Tree Hat and supposedly originated in Sydney 
So which was the plant it was built from ?
I'll ask my expert Australian history researcher what he can turn up ...See More

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Beth Rooke · Friends with George Harris and 2 others

George Burrows Livistonia australis, Cabbage tree palm