In 1911 tradesmen arrived in Kent Street near Sydney's Town Hall. They had instructions from the church leaders to dismantle St Andrew's Scots Presbyterian Church which included the removal of several memorial plaques, stained glass windows, a stone font, the timber rafters and cedar pews. One of the memorial plaques commemorated the life of Allan Cunningham a botanist and explorer. The plaque had been on the walls of the Kent Street church since Allan's life ended in 1839, at the early age of 48, when his body succumbed to the privations he had endured over many years of exploring Australia's wilderness.

Everything was transported to Rose Bay and installed in the new Scots church a few kilometres from Sydney Harbour's southern headland. This is where The Allan Cunningham Research Team found Allan's plaque in 2008.

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Years ago Phillip Parker King stood on a hill near his property Dunheved. I imagine he felt very pleased with himself, his success and the building project that was about to take place. A small church was about to be built on the hill, a church that would fulfil the wish of his mother, Anna Josepha King. The land had been set aside some time ago and now, at long last, building had commenced. The resulting church was named, Church of St Mary Magdalene, consecrated in April 1840. It still stands today in a suburb of Sydney, St Marys, on South Creek near Parramatta.

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Allan Cunningham's story would make a really good book using a creative non-fiction writing technique. It's a method I would love to use and a story I would love to write, however since starting out on my journey to tell his story I have discovered that writing is a learned craft, a skilled craft. No, naively, I didn't know, but isn't that what life is about . . . learning. To some, writing creatively comes naturally and to others, such as myself, it requires a long, gradual learning curve without end. Plus, when the story is a true one, the writer needs a strong sense of responsibility to be accurate and to cite sources. This is all very overwhelming for a person who has written one essay and a few short pieces of creative prose. However, it's silly to regret the skills you don't have and the time you have lost. I'll celebrate what I do have and that is skill to record detailed data. The result of this ability is the evolving Allan Cunningham Time Line, a chronological list of his achievements and geographical arrivals and departures, which is part of the Allan Cunningham Project.

The Time Line has been developing over the last few months and as each piece is written, I want to expand the story line and wax lyrical. My haphazard research over the last few years has given me a knowledge of this man's story, the detail of which surprises me sometimes. As I write I realise I want to tell the reader what the weather was like, what Allan saw, who was with him at the time, why was he there, what was he achieving, who cared and why he cared. There are no boundaries once the creative juices start flowing. However, this is history and must be accurate. Combining accuracy with creativity is challenging.

In Mark Tredinnick's wonderful book "The Little Red Writing BooK" he explains how to meet this challenge. His book provides much needed creative energy and inspiration.

He advises: "You'd want your reader to hear the bird cries - sweet crescent honeyeater, harsh yellow wattlebird, distant yellowtail. You'd want them to smell the eucalypts and the leatherwoods; to catch a vivid crimson glimpse of the waratah; to feel this waft of cold air; to sense, without seeing or hearing it, the cold, deep glacial water of the lake, hidden beyond the tea-trees; to guess at the whole long natural history that makes and goes on making the place they walk through."

Such wonderful writing makes one anxious of not measuring-up, but no, I won't go there. I'll celebrate what I can do and keep on keeping on.

Mark states "when you write you talk on paper. When it's good, you sing".

Allan Cunningham's Time Line is going to "sing". I promise, but . . . no quite yet.

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As part of the Allan Cunningham Project we are following in the footsteps of our tenacious Botanist. Our first adventure outside of the Sydney metropolitan area took place some time ago. We visited the Glenroy Camping Ground, just a little way from Hartley, west of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.

Glenroy was the site of a military station set up to guard the original western road later known as the Old Bathurst Road. I assume the soldiers, guarding the road, were protecting the colonial invaders from the local Gundungurra tribe who's territory extended from the Blue Mountains at Hartley and Lithgow through the Burragorang.

Many of the early colonial explorers and scientists passed through this area. Allan Cunningham set up camp at Glenroy several times. The first time was in 1817 when he was part of John Oxley's exploration party headed west to trace the course of the Lachlan River, a journey full of privation through bogs and scrub that ruined the health and shortened the life of all involved.

After we parked our car, we tried to walk down to the Coxs River but the whole area was fenced off with barbed wire fences, locked gates and signs saying private property. One sign said "Danger". We couldn't get close enough to read it, however the black bull lazing in the sun nearby gave us a hint.

There was a bridge across the river but we couldn't risk walking on to it as it had no shoulder. The fence of the bridge butted right up on the two lane tarmac road. To make matters more difficult and more dangerous, very large semi-trailers were speeding across the bridge, going backward and forward. In the short time we were at the camping ground we would have seen at least 10 trucks barrelling along. We assumed there must have been some serious roadworks going on, further up the road.

John was inspired to write a little ditty after our lack luster attempt to walk in the steps of our protagonist.

GLENROY
by John Challenor

Glenroy, what a failure
There were semi trailer after semi trailer

We went down to see the river
But because of the trucks we couldn't deliver

There was another hurdle that confronted us too
A barbed wire fence we couldn't get through

And even if we did, there was a bull in our face
and being tired and hot we definitely would have lost that race.

We took photos of the Memorial which celebrated the first church service west of the Blue Mountains, on April 20, 1815, attended by no less than Governor Macquarie himself. The land, the memorial stands on, was donated to the public and is the only piece of land that is easily accessible. Nearby, within the accessible area,were the stumps of two recently felled trees. As the searing Australian sunshine beat down on our heads, it seemed a shame that the trees would no longer give the traveller shade as they read the memorial plaque and contemplated the past. We sensibly retreated to our air conditioned car.

A sign, on the locked gate, supplied a telephone number (02 6355 2186) for enquiries. It was the phone number for the Glenroy Cottages described as "a magnificent historical rural property overlooking the Coxs River in Hartley, where you can enjoy warm and friendly hospitality in country style cottages with luxurious interiors in a bush setting overlooking tranquil river pools".

We hope to return to Glenroy another time when we will be able to call the owners of the property and request permission to take some photos and walk down to the river. We may even have a "wild" swim in the spirit of Roger Deakin, the writer and environmentalist, who wrote the wonderful book "Waterlog", about a journey across Britain taking a swim in every rock pool, river, mountain tarn and open-air swimming pool encountered on the way.

I've read, up the hill from the road, there are some ruins of the military station that once guarded the road and there is a grave stone, marking a colonial burial ground. We will be better prepared next time.

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A scholar recently visited my Allan Cunningham Project at www.Artuccino.com. How do I know he is a scholar . . . well . . . anyone who is seeking information about the history of a plant collected in New Zealand in 1838 and can lay down a sentence like the request that follows must be a scholar . . .

"When you go to the Sydney Herbarium (NSW), I will be most grateful if you will look for the sheet of the Allan Cunningham specimen of this species [Polypodium dictyopteris] for me, which might be filed under the genus Anarthropteris (Polypodiaceae) or might be filed as Loxogramme, and then perhaps as Loxogramme lanceolata or Loxogramme dictyopteris."

If you can make a request like that you would have to be a scholar, wouldn't you agree!

You never know where your journey will take you and you never know who you will meet along the way. A scholar to me is like Justin Timberlake is to a pop star fan. Well not quite but nearly. Silly I know but it's fun. Before we go any further, I must tell you that I’m not really a person who is interested in botany in a serious way. It’s more the idea of it that gets me. I’m interested in the “how” of it and the “why” of it. The idea of someone quietly focusing on a plant captures my imagination. Life is so hectic with little time to rest, some people live their lives studying plants, how interesting. Plants are so quiet and so very beautiful, as nature is.

One of the joys of writing non-fiction is the research, the serendipity of discovery. It would have been nice to report that I found a specimen of Polypodium dictyopteris collected by Allan Cunningham in 1838 only months before his death and it would have been nice to say he discovered the plant on such and such a day in such and such a place. Unfortunately my opportunity for 15 seconds of fame has flitted in and flitted out of my life, like a butterfly. Never daunted, it will remain on my list of challenges and one day I will be able to reply to the request in the affirmative because I am on a quest. A quest to tell Allan Cunningham's story.

The challenges set for my quest don't include finding a sword embedded in a rock so I can slay the dragon. Thank goodness for that! I've been given a challenge with a minor obstacle . . . time.

As time goes by and the various challenges are met and obstacles overcome, somewhere somehow, while I'm looking for something else, Polypodium dictyopteris will suddenly appear and that will make me smile.

"Jump and the universe will catch you!"


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It has been said that the Age we live in, here in 2007, is the Age of Anxiety. It's tempting to agree. I'm not sure who decides the names of the "Ages". Similarly, I'm unsure who decides it's Save The Whale Week or Save the Wilderness Year or Be Kind To Your Neighbour Day. However, categorising periods of time and giving them a name can be helpful. It gives me boundaries within which I can contemplate events that happened and their impact on the world today.

I'm currently contemplating the period between 1700 and 1900. It's a period of fascination for me. This period has three names, that is the Age of Reason, followed and overlapped by the Age of Enlightenment, then followed and overlapped by the Age of Exploration.

It is within the boundaries of the Age of Exploration that Allan Cunningham's Time Line resides. He was born in 1791 and breathed his last breath in a cottage in Sydney's Botanic Gardens in 1839. It was a time when individuals allowed themselves and were allowed by others to separate their reasoning from the dogma of religion. They used reason, imagination and experimentation to find the truth about the world they lived in, resulting in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. I don't think Charles Darwin and Allan Cunningham ever met, however, they were literally "ships that passed in the night". They would have known of each other.

Matching historical events, to Allan Cunningham's journey through time, gives me little moments of delight. Knowing lends texture and colour to his story and makes it easier to understand and absorb. It places the man in the context of his culture, my culture, "western" culture.

I've recently realised that a comprehensive Time Line is a chronological story told in snippets. When you put all the snippets together you could have a story.

Aha!

This realisation has been a small Aha! moment, it just arrived as I wrote this blog. Let me explain. For quite a while I've been overwhelmed by the idea of writing my book "The King's Botanical Collector" (http://www.artuccino.com/Allan_Cunningham/Kings_Botanical_Collector/000_Preface.html). In a space at the back of my mind I doubt my ability to, in the words of that tenacious heroic historian Ida Lee, "do Allan Cunningham's story the justice it deserves". It's a great story. Visually wonderful. I can see it as the anchor upon which a good documentary filmmaker could display the wonders of the Australian landscape and its flora and fauna. Possibly somewhere down the track, after years of research and development my work will be discovered and the story will be told visually and well. There I go dreaming again.

Coming back to earth and planting my practical methodical feet firmly on the ground my thoughts return to the Allan Cunningham Time Line. One little step, leading to another little step, adding up to a lot of little steps equals something meaningful. Hopefully.

Shoot for the moon, even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.

View a sneak preview of Allan Cunningham's Time Line in its very early development stages at http://www.artuccino.com/Allan_Cunningham/Time_Line.php

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A photo taken . . . holding a moment in time, suspended . . . contemplating a tree. The two of us just sat in the mid-morning sunshine, on a bench in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, a coffee comfortably nestled in our hands, contemplating a tree. Simple things can be so good. It wasn't just any tree. We knew its botanical name. Did someone once say that until something has a name it doesn't exist. It was an Araucaria cunninghamii better known as a Hoop Pine.

Let me explain. As part of the multi facetted project we have embarked on, we have decided to photograph some of the 900 Australian native plants mentioned by Allan Cunningham in Robert Heward’s “Biographical Sketch of Allan Cunningham FLS MRGS” published in 1842.

Why? . . . because it sounds like an interesting thing to do.

Allan Cunningham collected plants in Australia between 1816 and 1839 and he collected them from areas not touched by the “colonial” hand, pristine wilderness. Plants are part of history just like buildings, roads, bridges art and literature. This man sacrificed his life in the pursuit of rare specimens . . . in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I see him as a bit of a botanical warrior.

In Australia we don’t have a lot of architectural history, not before the 1800s anyway. No wars are recorded, no famous philosophers' thoughts to muse on, no Roman roads or ruins. It’s an ancient land once inhabited only by people who lived in harmony with it, as part of nature. Sure they had their tribal fights, wherever man is there is conflict, but there were no written records, no bricks and mortar, no paper written on, no written language. Back beyond 1800 our history is the land and what grew on it and what it looked like, how it breathed and how it was. We may not have material things that depict our country’s early history, however we do have the natural history of the plants, the animals, the rocks and the earth plus the living memory of the aboriginal people.

My British, bookish, botanical warrior collected thousands of plants and sent them back to Kew Gardens, to his friend and colleague Robert Brown, for classification. Some of those plants can be found today in the herbariums of the world.


More of that later . . .

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The book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, introduced me to Bill Bryson. I love the way he communicates with his reader. It's direct, like a friend sharing their experience, it has all the wonderful ebb and flow of a really good conversation, mainly of the listening kind.

So, while having a luxurious slow browse through my local bookshop recently I came across "A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail". I was interested but I didn't think the American Appalachian Trail was a subject that would get me. On the front cover it said "a seriously funny read". They weren't wrong. I laughed out loud so many times, in coffee shops, on the bus, in company, every time I read a few paragraphs, real belly laughs. This book was in the travel genre, if it had been in the comedy genre I would have missed it (I'm a bit of a serious person) I rarely if ever would read a book written purely for laughs.

What I loved about the book was the way he wove interesting bits of information and personal insights into his human experience. And that's how it is when you walk, thoughts and insights drift in and out all the time, it's one of the joys of walking. There was a bit in the book about a place called Centralia in Pennsylvania. It's a town slowly disintegrating because there is an underground coal fire that has burned since 1961 underneath it. Apparently it could burn for 1000 years. I went onto www.youtube.com (have you discovered it) and was able to find a video showing exactly the place Bill was describing. How wonderful is the internet when combined with "active" reading. And when you are reading something geographical you can't do without combining your reading with Google Earth. The main thing is to remember to continue reading your book and not get tooooo distracted.

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This was when he lived! He would have dressed like that! This was me, finding a link to Allan Cunningham in everything I see, read and think. Yes I agree a little obsessive, possibly very obsessive, but I love it. A bit boring for others unfortunately so I try to keep my excitement short and sweet. They humour me and sometimes find it interesting. My close friends and family have been listening to me discuss this subject for over two years, so it is understandable that it sometimes is more humorous than interesting.

We were watching "Becoming Jane", a wonderful movie set in the late 1700's. I was taking note of the atmosphere and the way they all dressed and trying to place my botanist in the middle of it all. In particular, there is a scene in the law court where all the solicitors are writing madly with pen and ink, wigs in place, as some poor person was being sentence to transportation for life. AC trained as a solicitor early on, at Lincoln's Inn. He never married, possibly because his future was unsure. He was well educated possibly because his family had a patron. His father was the Head Gardener at Wimbledon House, so possibly the lord of the manor financed the education of the Head Gardener's two sons, Allan and Richard.

Allan Cunningham lived in London between 1791 and 1814, he would have understood society's rules, he would have witnessed Nelson's funeral on the Thames and walked the streets of London and rode in the transportation similar to that shown in the movie. Oh how I wish I could show the life of my character as well as the movie makers showed the life of Jane Austen.

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"It is by honouring the memory of great men that
one inspires greatness in others."
Hyacinthe de Bougainville 8th September 1825

This blog is a recording of my journey as I get to know a botanist, Allan Cunningham, who dedicated his life to science in the early 1800s.

After coming across his grave site in the middle of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, I was inspired to get to know him. The moss covered plaque, on his memorial, simply saying that Allan Cunningham, Botanist Explorer 1791-1839 was buried at the spot, drew me in. I'd never heard of him and my curiosity twinkled like a bright light.

My interest was further fueled by the words Ida Lee, an Historian, wrote back in 1925, when she realised that she was too ill to complete her work recording the story of Allan Cunningham. She regretfully acknowledged : "owing to illness continually hampering my efforts I have been unable to carry out my original intentions. I therefore trust that in due course an abler writer will deal with what I have omitted and do Cunningham's memory the justice it so richly deserves" (Ida Lee, "Early Explorers in Australia" 1925). It was like an invitation. No so much that I am an abler writer, more so that she thought the man "richly deserves" to be remembered.

Since discovering the grave I have done some extensive research. The more I know about this kindly brave and dedicated man, the more I am driven by excitement and enthusiasm to record his story. His is a story of tenacity, courage, commitment, curiosity and passion, it's an adventure story. If I tell this story well, the reader will be able to follow in the footsteps of this man's life journey and will be rewarded with the knowledge that so much can be achieved with just a little passion, perseverance and tenacity.

During the early 1800's he participated in some of the major British expeditions in Australia, on land and on sea. Allan Cunningham's drive was not fueled by a desire for fame and fortune. He did it because he was curious and he was given the opportunity. He had a tenacious spirit that allowed him to over-ride his frail and often sickly physique and pursue his need to know.

His ancestors were Scottish. The influence of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Scottish psych on our hero cannot be ignored.

The method for recording this story has not yet been "nailed down". At this stage I think it is a six part television documentary series accompanied by a book, similar to the method Michael Palin used in his documentary series, Hemingway's Adventure.

The story incorporates at least six major adventures, travels across the oceans of the world when longitude measurement was in in its infancy, scientific study and the naming of plants identified for the first time by Europeans in the global landscape. The story is a visual one and could be illustrated with many wonderful images from our treasure trove of historical art left behind by our ancestors plus high quality photography will be used to give a window into the geography of the story.

The story is populated by some wonderful characters. AC knew so many of the history makers during the Macquarie era and several years after. He was a member of important scientific societies of his time. For example the Linnaeus Society. He was well educated and well read. He corresponded with many eminent scientists in the field of Botany.

How did he become the man he was?

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