A Tribute to JEAN GALBRAITH
(By Ian Hyndman)

The 2nd. January, 1999, brought with it the death of one of Gippsland's and, indeed, Australia's most noted botanists and authors.

Jean Galbraith was known, loved and respected through her work and personality by people throughout Australia.

Jean was a Gippslander all of her long life of almost 93 years. She loved and knew Gippsland intimately, from the Strzelecki ranges, as they rolled southwards towards the ocean, to the rugged ranges and high plains of the north and east of Gippsland. Her "special place" was her beloved LaTrobe Valley in which she was born and lived. She explored the Tyers and Latrobe Rivers, roamed the bush between Tyers and Walhalla and clambered over and around the rocky outcrops standing above the Tyers River in search of wildflowers and native flora. Most of all, she loved her garden which looked out over the valley to the blue Strzeleckis on the opposite side of the valley. Apart from the last six years of her life, she lived at Tyers for 87 years.

Her death brings to an end an era which began in 1877, when her grandparents, Andrew and Sarah Galbraith, and great-grandfather, John Ross, selected 539 acres of land at Tyers. They moved from Beechworth to Tyers in September 1877, with their seven children. One of those children, Matthew, was to become Jean's father. Her mother, Amy, was also born at Beechworth, forging a link between Beechworth and Tyers which exists to this day.

Jean was the first child and only daughter of Matthew and Amy Galbraith (nee Ladson). She was born at Tyers on 28th March, 1906, on her grandfather's property, "Mt. Hope", where her parents lived in a house called "Home", next door to her grandfather's house. In 1914, when she was eight years old her parents, Jean and her two younger brothers, Lawrie and Lance, moved just down the hill to "Dunedin". The house had been built for her uncle, John Galbraith, and his wife, Clementina (daughter of Traralgon pioneers, Peter and Johanna McColl) in 1902. A third brother, Angus, was born in 1917.

The move to "Dunedin", although she would not have realised it at the time, marked the beginning of Jean's life work. That work involved the development of "Dunedin's" garden and her work as a botanist and author. The excitement and happiness which accompanied the making of the garden is delightfully reflected and told in her most well-known book, "Garden in a Valley", first published in 1939 and again in 1985. Through this book, and through hundreds of articles about the garden written over fifty years, and by visits to the garden by hundreds of visitors, Jean and her garden have become known by garden lovers all over Australia.

Both of her parents were enthusiastic gardeners, and the threesome worked together as a team until the 1940s, when her parents died - her father in 1945, and her mother in 1948. Her brothers, too, were keen gardeners, and although their chosen careers took them to other parts of Victoria, they helped in the garden when they came home for visits. Jean never had the benefit of secondary or tertiary education, but with her intelligent mind and sponge-like qualities of absorbing knowledge, she read widely.

Her reading included the classics, poetry, philosophy, travel, exploration and, of course, books on gardening and botany. She was well acquainted with authors as diverse as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Wordsworth, C.S.Lewis, C.J.Dennis, Henry Kendall, Buchan and a host of others. She loved children's stories and was a devoted fan of A.A.Milne's Winnie the Pooh and the delightful Rat and Mole and other animal friends of Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows".

When she was sixteen, she met Mr. H.B. Williamson at a wildflower show in Melbourne. He was the Principal of Dandenong High School and a noted botanist of his time. Over a period of ten years, he taught her botany, introduced her to Von Mueller's writings and taught her a little German. (She had already picked up some Latin). It was through her friendship and studies with H.B.Williamson that Jean became a botanist.

She joined the Field Naturalists club in 1923 and was made a Life Member in 1959. Her long association and membership of the Latrobe Valley Field Naturalists Club was one of her most treasured experiences. For fifty years, she contributed papers and articles to the "Victorian Naturalist" and the "Garden Lover" magazine. Countless thousands of readers of her chatty Garden Lover articles, "From Day to Day in the Garden", under her pen-name of "Correa", came to know Jean and her garden.

She was a Life Member of the Native Plants Preservation Society of Australia, and a Foundation Member of the society for Growing Australian Plants. She discovered two plants which were named after her : Dampiera galbraithiana (1988) and Boronia galbraithiae (1992). Her two botanical textbooks, "Wildflowers of Victoria" (1950 and 1967), and "Field Guide to Wildflowers of South Eastern Australia (1977), are known and referred to by botanists throughout Australia.

Other gardening books by Jean Galbraith include "A Gardener's Year" (1985 and 1987), "Doongalla Restored - the Story of a Garden" (1991) and "A Garden Lover's Journal, 1943-1946" (1989). 

In addition to her botanical and gardening books, she was also a prolific writer of children's stories and a poet of distinction. She wrote regularly for the Victorian Schoolpaper and the NSW School Magazine. Her book, "A Poet's Spring" (1990) is well known and it is hoped to publish a further collection of her poems in the near future.

Jean never married. In addition to her brothers (all of whom predeceased her) and their families, her wide circle of friends were her "family". Many of these remember her wise and uplifting words in time of loss and sorrow, when she lifted them from the depths of their individual valleys of despair and helped then climb once more the mountain slopes of hope and vision. She wrote letters constantly, and put into practice the Biblical injunction to "rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep."

In 1993, at age 87 she found it necessary to move from her beloved "Dunedin" to a unit at Yallambee, in Traralgon. She found much happiness there and was able to make frequent visits to "Dunedin". In 1996, because of increasing frailty and decreasing vision, she moved to the Olivet Home for Aged Persons, conducted by the Christadelphians. Like her parents before her, she was a Christadelphian all her life and had a deep spiritual faith. Her love of God and His creation shines out in her writing and attitude to life. Daily Bible reading was a part of life in her family from when she was a child, and continued to her death.

She died at Olivet on 2nd January, 1999, aged 92. With her passing, we have lost a person of exceptionally fine character, a Gippslander, a botanist, a gardener and a friend. She leaves behind a rich heritage which will continue to be valued and absorbed by all who knew her, and those who will yet come to know her through her writing and her work.

This tribute to Jean Galbraith will be enriched by some of her own words in her poem, "Sunset", written when she was only 13 years old, in 1919. In these words, we will remember her in the sunset of her passing:

"In this one space, in this red night,
  All deepest glory is portrayed.
  And in these rays of God's own light,
  Though they slowly sank away,
  Remembrance stayed."