Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Conversions
- Part One Feathers, Fleece and Dust of Gold
- Part Two Whirlwind and Calm
- 9 When the Bubble Burst
- 10 The Horse and Its Conquerors
- 11 Hope, Depression, Fire and War
- 12 The Rise and Fall of Albert the Great
- 13 The Jolting Merry-Go-Round
- 14 A Long Race: Melbourne and Sydney
- 15 Whirlwind in Spring Street
- 16 The New Victorians: Life, Work and Play
- 17 Koala, Growling Frog, Drought and Fire
- 18 A Bulging City
- Short Chronology of Victorian History
- Sources
- Index
17 - Koala, Growling Frog, Drought and Fire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Conversions
- Part One Feathers, Fleece and Dust of Gold
- Part Two Whirlwind and Calm
- 9 When the Bubble Burst
- 10 The Horse and Its Conquerors
- 11 Hope, Depression, Fire and War
- 12 The Rise and Fall of Albert the Great
- 13 The Jolting Merry-Go-Round
- 14 A Long Race: Melbourne and Sydney
- 15 Whirlwind in Spring Street
- 16 The New Victorians: Life, Work and Play
- 17 Koala, Growling Frog, Drought and Fire
- 18 A Bulging City
- Short Chronology of Victorian History
- Sources
- Index
Summary
Most Aboriginal people were expert observers of nature, especially those vegetables, nuts and fruits, and animals, birds and reptiles that gave them food. The Europeans followed in their shadows and at first they mainly collected, described and named.
From Victoria, bags and boxes of stuffed and fossilised specimens were sent to museums in the British Isles, and living creatures made the voyage too. Melbourne built its own museum of natural history, at first in the grounds of its new university, for natural science had been one of its four inaugural chairs in 1854. Melbourne became an enthusiastic hub of natural science with its own large botanical gardens, while smaller gardens were being fenced and planted in Geelong and a dozen other towns, where imported shade trees were blended with natives. The Zoological gardens were created in Royal Park in Carlton; their aim was to bring to Victoria animals and birds which might become acclimatised as well as to keep native and foreign creatures for the public to see. Geology was high in the government's priority, for more gold had to be discovered to stem the outflow of diggers for New Zealand and Queensland in the 1860s. Rarely in the birth of a new colony had natural history received such priority.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Victoria , pp. 274 - 286Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013