“This is the cherry on top of the cake,” enthused Queensland forester Dr Gary Bacon, AM, who has been invited to visit the famous Kew Herbarium in London ahead of the International Day of Forests celebrated worldwide on March 21.
As a working forester, Dr Bacon has spent his time in research, operations, marketing, and management. Delving into the taxonomy and botanical history of the forest components had to wait.
Dr Bacon and wife Carol will be hosted at Kew by an assigned curator to touch and photograph plant samples collected by British botanist Allan Cunningham, including the hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) species that the explorer collected at Moreton Bay Settlement on the Redcliff Peninsula near Brisbane in 1824.
Dr Bacon said the opportunity was especially significant as it added to his year-long study of Cunningham’s plant collections recorded in his original journal, which is now housed at the NSW State Archives and soon to be published as a book chapter by the Royal Historical Society Queensland titled ‘The Floristics of the Moreton Bay and Brisbane River Environs at Settlement’.
This will be the first complete listing of more than 220 new plant specimens encountered by the ‘King’s Botanist’, giving both original and current taxonomy.
Dr Bacon said a notable outcome of that research from first records was the relocation of the site and actual date (September 21) on the banks of the Brisbane River (Pine Mountain) that Cunningham sampled and determined the new araucaria tree species, later named from vegetative material shipped to Kew Gardens.
Cunningham, accompanied by the Surveyor-General of the NSW Colony John Oxley, had left their stranded boat on the drought-affected river and took off on foot, heading for a mountain vista clothed with stately trees. They had to cross the river three times to reach their destination. Both men of reserved character could barely contain their enthusiasm for the splendid sylvan view at hand.
The species would become the core resource of the Queensland colony’s timber industry and later the foundation species for plantation programs initiated by the Queensland Forest Service. A paper, ‘Relocating the first sampling of Araucaria cunninghamii on the Brisbane River’, has also been accepted for publication in the next issue of Australia’s taxonomic journal, Austrobaileya.
Dr Bacon also gave a special presentation on the project at a recent gathering of foresters, sawmillers, and timber wholesalers at the Tattersall’s Club in Brisbane. The group included committee members and delegates who attended the 1982 Australian Timber Industry Stabilisation Conference (Sunshine AusTIS) at Nambour on the Sunshine Coast. Together, they represented more than half a century of dedication and service to forestry and the timber industry at large.
The AusTIS conference was initially formed in 1943 as the Eastern States Timber Industry Stabilisation Conference (ESTIS). It changed its name to AusTIS in 1959 when the membership was expanded to include the timber industry, state and commonwealth government forest services, and organisations representing the industry within Papua New Guinea.
Following the International Year of Forests in 2011, the International Day of Forests was established by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on November 28, 2012.
The catalyst for Forest Day was a casual conversation in Oxford, England, in February 2007 between two scientists who felt the world was underestimating the importance of forests in mitigating carbon emissions and saw a glaring need for the latest forestry research and thinking to inform global policymakers and UNFCCC negotiators. They did not foresee the conference becoming one of the most influential international events on forests and climate change today.
The inaugural Forest Day was one of the major events at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) 13 in Bali, Indonesia, on December 8, 2007. More than 800 people gathered for the event, including scientists, members of national delegations, and representatives from intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations.
Editor’s notes: The Kew Herbarium is one of the world’s largest and most historically significant herbaria and is housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens In London. Established in the 1850s, it has grown to maintain about seven million preserved plant specimens. The herbarium’s collections, which include specimens dating back to 1700, represent about 95% of known vascular plant genera and 60% of described fungi, with specimens collected over 260 years of botanical exploration.
The herbarium processes around 5000 specimen loans annually and hosts about 3000 visitor days each year, supporting a wide range of botanical research.
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Dr Gary Bacon, AM, BSc (For) Hon, PhD, FIFA, is a respected professional forester, Adjunct Professor at Griffith University and former CEO of Queensland Forestry. He has held senior research and management positions in NSW and Queensland government forestry trading enterprises and in the land management division within Primary Industries. He served as elected national secretary and national president of the Institute of Foresters of Australia (1983-87) and was awarded the 2000 N W Jolly Medal. He chaired the Australian organising team for the 2005 International Union of Forest Research Organisations World Congress in Brisbane.
For the past decade-plus, he has been a JAS-ANZ auditor, industry consultant, and adjunct professor at the Environmental Futures Institute at Griffith University, mentoring overseas post-graduate students. Dr Bacon was elected Grand Master of Queensland Freemasons and a director of Masonic Charity (2013), appointed a Member in the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours (2016) and joined the Presidents 100, Queensland State Library Foundation (2017).
