PART 2
I remember being eight years old, tracing the outline of Australia and, with coloured pencils, marking the meandering paths of explorers across the great blank centre. John Edward Eyre’s path led from Adelaide to the Murray River, up to kati thanda (Lake Eyre) and then across the Nullarbor to Albany. Edward Eyre’s Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia was published in 1845.
Along the way, Eyre sketched a large freshwater crayfish (Euastacus armatus) he found in the muddy shallows of the Murray. He sent these drawings to John Edward Gray, the British Museum’s Keeper of Zoology.
Eyre’s drawings prompted Gray to re-examine the Australian freshwater crayfish specimens in his collection and publish a “Description of some New Australian Animals”, including three crayfish, as an appendix to Eyre’s Journal.
One of the specimens Gray re-examined was the “Van Diemen’s Land Cray-fish” or “tayatitja”, found around Hobart. Gray named it “Astacus Franklinii” (19th century species names derived from proper nouns were capitalised). The name honours the polar explorer and lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1837-43, Sir John Franklin. But Gray gave no explanation for the choice, nor did he note who collected the specimen.
Who was Mr Gray’s mysterious collector? In my previous column (and Forty South Tasmania, Issue 104, p48), I examined whether it was Gray’s nephew, Alexander Smith. Here, I explore another possibility.
There is a giant in Launceston’s City Park. In the southern corner, there is a larger-than-life bronze statue of a man with winged hair and a fantastic beard. For the most part he’s a dark, lustrous brown. But his hands – which visitors cannot resist caressing – shine brightly. Those big hands cradle a branch of Tasmania’s iconic deciduous beech (Nothofagus gunnii). Oxidation gives the tiny leaves an appropriate mottled green appearance. The statue is of a true giant, a giant of Tasmanian botany: Ronald Campbell Gunn (1808-1881).
In the introduction to his Flora Tasmaniae, British botanist Joseph Hooker dedicated it to Gunn.
“Between 1832 and 1850, Mr. Gunn collected indefatigably over a great portion of Tasmania … There are few Tasmanian plants that Mr. Gunn has not seen alive, noted their habits in a living state and collected large suites of specimens with singular tact and judgement. These have all been transmitted to England in perfect preservation, and are accompanied with notes that display remarkable powers of observation, and a facility for seizing important characters in the physiognomy of plants, such as few experienced botanists possess.”
High praise indeed, coming from the director of London’s famous Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
Gunn arrived in Hobart in 1830. His brother William, a lieutenant on half-pay since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, had been in Van Diemen’s Land since 1822, and William had encouraged his younger brother to emigrate. It must have been an interesting pitch. When leading soldiers in the pursuit of Matthew Brady’s gang of bushrangers, William was badly wounded and had his right arm amputated. Perhaps he implored his younger brother to come and be his right-hand man.
Ronald Gunn was born in 1808 in Cape Town, the fourth son of lieutenant William Gunn of the 72nd Regiment and his wife Margaret, née Wilson. After Gunn’s mother died in 1812, Gunn and his brothers were sent to Scotland for their education.
In Aberdeen, Gunn was tasked with re-cataloguing the library of General Sir John Hope, his father’s commanding officer. It’s easy to imagine the teenager sitting reading for hours, enraptured by the writings of great naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks, surrounded by beautiful botanical lithographs on the walls. It’s likely that at this time, Gunn became acquainted with the work of Professor William Hooker of the University of Glasgow. Gunn’s scientific collaborations, first with William Hooker and then his son Joseph, would be pivotal in his later life.
His education complete, Gunn travelled to the West Indies where his father was posted. Here, Gunn worked as a clerk for the Royal Engineers and married Eliza Ireland, daughter of an officer in his father’s regiment. After his father’s death, Gunn resigned his position and set off with his wife and toddler son to join his older brother in Van Diemen’s Land.
Although not yet 22, Gunn arrived with excellent letters of recommendation and was immediately appointed overseer of the Hobart penitentiary under his brother, who was superintendent. In less than a year, Gunn was promoted to superintendent of convicts in Launceston. Here, he met Robert William Lawrence, who collected botanical specimens for William Hooker in Glasgow. A spark was ignited, and Gunn continued collecting for Hooker after Lawrence died in 1833.
Professionally, Gunn rapidly climbed the para-judicial hierarchy, becoming a justice of the peace in 1833 and police magistrate for Circular Head in 1836, where he had the unenviable task of curbing the power of Edward Curr, the local managing agent of the Van Diemen’s Land Company.
Out of sight and out of mind in the remote north-west, Curr had ruled unfettered for a decade, earning the nickname Potentate of the North. While violence against Aborigines was rife across all Tasmania, Curr’s genocidal policies stood out. To avoid scrutiny, Curr had long resisted the appointment of a police magistrate, and then refused – against the wishes of his employers – to contribute to the magistrate’s salary. While Curr made Gunn feel unwelcome, Gunn befriended other company officers, including the surgeon Joseph Milligan, a fellow Scot and amateur botanist, and the superintendent of flocks Adolphus Schayer, an avid collector of insects (and freshwater crayfish, see Forty South Tasmania #103, p60).
With invitations to Highfield House hard to come by, Gunn found other ways to fill his spare time at Circular Head. In 1836, he sent William Hooker and John Edward Gray an extensive array of birds and animals including thylacines, possums, bandicoots, echidnas and fish.
Gunn’s specimens were prepared by his manservant James Lee. Lee was sentenced to 14 years transportation for stealing a box of tools. On arrival in Hobart in 1835, he caught William Gunn’s eye when he listed his trade as a “Gentleman’s servant who understands Stuffing Beasts and Birds”. William Gunn arranged for Lee to be assigned to his brother.
In 1837, Gunn met the new vice-regal couple Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. Gunn was immediately taken with Lady Jane, writing, “She is a most amiable & estimable Lady – and has certainly secured my best feelings.”
The regard was mutual, and Gunn was drawn into her inner circle. He was promoted to police magistrate for Hobart and accompanied Lady Jane on expeditions to Flinders Island and Recherche Bay. By 1840, Gunn was Sir John’s private secretary, secretary for the Horticultural Society, secretary of the Tasmanian Society (forerunner to the Royal Society of Tasmania) and overseer of Lady Jane’s botanic garden. During this time, Captain James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition sojourned in Hobart and Gunn met and became firm friends with the expedition’s botanist, William Hooker’s son, Joseph.
But Lady Jane’s favouritism came at a price. Gunn complained this “incessant official drudgery” left him no time for botany. After a few years, an exhausted Gunn resigned and moved back to Launceston.
Gunn and his family first lived at Penquite House, south of Launceston, and established a private botanic garden nearby at Glen Dhu. In 1855, Gunn built Newstead House, which still stands in the heart of the suburb bearing its name.
Soon after Gunn decamped to Launceston, storm clouds began brewing for the Franklins. When Sir John first arrived to replace Sir George Arthur, he failed to neuter the pro-Arthur faction, retaining Arthur’s colonial secretary John Montagu. When Montagu inevitably tussled with the Franklins for power, things got ugly. Montagu claimed Sir John was losing his mind and Lady Jane interfered too much in the affairs of state. An outraged Franklin dismissed Montagu, who promptly sailed home to appeal his dismissal. Franklin badly underestimated Montagu, who was better-connected and a more wily politician. Montagu’s appeal was successful. Franklin was censured and recalled in disgrace in 1843.
Lady Jane was desperate for her husband to shake off the shame of his recall. She encouraged him to do something spectacular to cement his place in the pantheon of British naval heroes. He would lead one last expedition to find the fabled northwest passage through the Arctic. In May 1845, Franklin departed England and was never seen again.
How does all this factor into Gray naming the Van Diemen’s Land cray-fish “Astacus Franklinii”?
The naming coincided with the growing public excitement about Franklin’s Arctic expedition. My detective work revealed Alexander Smith and Ronald Gunn as the two prime suspects for collector. But my money is on Gunn. He was listed by Gray as a collector of Vandemonian crustacea and his time in Hobart aligns nicely with Gray receiving the specimen. Gray was likely aware of Gunn’s connection to the Franklins, either through correspondence with Gunn himself, from the Hookers or via nephew Smith, who met Gunn in Hobart.
But it’s odd a botanist would have a freshwater crayfish named after his patrons. Why not name an important Tasmanian plant after the Franklins? Well, Gunn did that too. In 1845, Hooker and Gunn named one of Tasmania’s most iconic trees, the Huon pine, “Dacrydium Franklinii” (since 1982, Lagarostrobos franklinii).
And what of Gunn himself; how is he remembered? There is the statue in City Park, and Gunns Plains, inland from Penguin, is named after him. Most significantly, visitors to Hobart’s Botanic Gardens find it hard to ignore the number of times they see “gunnii” on the markers. More than 50 Tasmanian plants have, at one time or another, contained Gunn’s name.
Terry Mulhern is a writer and academic. He has lived in Victoria for more than 20 years but, like a swift parrot, he migrates every summer across Bass Strait to north-west Tasmania.