Historic Buildings

Avochie

The 1950s were the key decade of development for Myall Park. Dave Gordon was able to invest more time and money in the garden because of a boom in wool value that saw prices triple between 1947 and 1951.^[28] By this time 26,000 sheep were being shorn annually and Gordon was able to leave much of the responsibility of the property’s day-to-day operations with an overseer. A timber residence for the overseer and family, which Dave Gordon named Avochie, was constructed in the early 1950s, 

Later it was used to house guests who were visiting the Garden and at one time served as an Information Centre.  Today it is used to accommodate guests and retains it 1950’s cottage characteristics with wooden floors, a large wood fireplace and several small bedrooms with toilet off the verandah. 

It was named Avochie because one of Dave’s ancestors came from Avochie Castle in Aberdeenshire in Scotland.

Terpersie

In 1951, Dave Gordon employed English horticulturalist Len Miller, an assisted migrant soldier who worked as a gardener for Bristol City Council, providing accommodation for him and his wife Ivy in a new timber house (given the name Terpersie) at Myall Park. Miller’s first project was to plant out and record 1000 plants that Dave had accumulated. By this time a makeshift nursery was in operation. Miller also assisted Dave in collecting plant specimens and seeds. Initially done locally, over 1952-53 Miller travelled to New South Wales and Victoria, collecting and exchanging plants with nurseries and other enthusiasts. In 1954, Len and Ivy Miller decided to leave Myall Park. Dave offered the Millers a contract to travel to Western Australia to places he had identified for plant collection. Between September 1954 and May 1955, the Millers collected over 700 herbarium specimens, 500 seed species and many cuttings. Collecting both cuttings and seeds meant the garden could grow plants true to their parents and raise seeds that could exhibit diversity. Complementing Dave’s existing specimens and seeds, Len Miller’s collection came to comprise a substantial proportion of the Myall Park herbarium.

Alf Gray replaced Len Miller, working from 1954 to 1957 at Myall Park. Dave met Alf in 1951 while visiting nurseries and native plant enthusiasts in Victoria and New South Wales. Gray, a forester, nursery manager, seed collector and propagator, was highly regarded by the time he arrived at Myall Park. As officer-in-charge at the Wail Forest Commission Nursery in Western Victoria (1946–54), Gray had pioneered arid land revegetation through provenance seed harvesting and native plant supply.

Alf also designed and supervised the building of the Seed Room and Glass House and the hardening bays for the thousands of plants that were now being grown at Myall Park.

Albert Robinson replaced Alf Gray and worked for ten years in the garden, continuing propagation projects and cultivating existing plants. Bob Doney also worked in the Myall Park garden during the 1960s. Dave’s employment of nurserymen for what was, at this time, essentially a private hobby, illustrates his passion and serious investment in the garden.

Eventually, when the Garden became a company, this building was used as accommodation for caretakers and it is still used for that purpose today.

Seed Storage Room

In the late 1940s Dave hired Alf Gray as a nursery man to help in the establishment of the Garden that he had visualised.  Alf designed the Glass House and it was built to his specifications and still stands today.

The next building required was a room in which to store all of the seeds collected by Alf and Dave and other people who ran nurseries at the time and were friends of Dave’s.  By this time Len Miller who had worked for Dave was travelling around Australia to collect seeds and cutting material to send back.  All of this plus the herbarium records Dave had built up over the years (including Len’s collection) needed a place to be stored, thus space in Dorothy’s art studio in the main house was devoted to the herbarium and this Seed Room was designed and built.  One whole wall of this room is a bank of large drawers constructed of solid Grevillea robusta timber (silky oak).  The drawers held (and still hold) packets of seeds collected at that time and on to the present time.  Some of the seeds are still viable and some are not.  More are added to the collection from time to time and carefully recorded as Dave did seventy years ago.  The end wall of the room also has solid timber drawers and these held all of the fittings needed for the irrigation system.  The first irrigation system established in the Garden was all of galvanised pipe and this was very difficult to set up, compared with the poly pipe used in later systems.  The plants were watered initially by hundreds of overhead sprinklers and some of these can still be found throughout the Garden.  It must have been an enormous project to organise all of the pumps, taps, sprinklers and piping to provide water to all areas of the Garden.    In another drawer of the Seed Room are hundreds of wooden labels, perhaps 10 cms by 30 cms, crafted by hand and used to label the pots in which were planted the seeds. Nowadays aluminium tags are used but before these were available Dave had to devise something which could be used again and again.  Other shelves in this room hold notebooks that Dave would have used to keep meticulous records of all that was done in the Garden.  There are many boxes containing these notebooks and all are labelled and dated.  There are other large ledgers with Dave’s careful script within.  These were used to record the plantings done each day.

It is easy to picture Dave in this room every evening, making sure that everything was properly recorded, how many plants were planted, where they were planted, likewise with the seeds and cutting material.  Only after all of the records were completed could he return to the family and relax.

The Centre of the Garden in 1950s, the Glasshouse

As wool prices increased in the 1950s, Dave Gordon was able to leave some of the running of the sheep property to others while he hired botanists to help him follow his dream of creating a garden to showcase some of the rare native plants found in this country.

Len Miller was the first horticulturalist that Dave hired and he and his wife, Ivy, moved into Terpersie, the cottage now occupied by the caretakers, in 1953. Dave had over 1000 plants ready to plant out! That was just the start. By the time Len and Ivy left In September 1954, the Garden had expanded to the red High Tank. Len and Ivy left to tour Western Australia, to gather seeds and cutting material to send back to Dave. They travelled and slept in an old Vanguard ute and lived in it until their return in April, 1955. They loved the wild profusion of flowers they saw during their travels.

Alf Gray, a nurseryman from the Government Nursery in Victoria, where he had established an unchallenged reputation for seed raising, was then hired by Dave. He arrived in 1954 and continued after Len and Ivy left to help further develop the Garden and to process all the collected and recorded seeds and carefully pressed material sent back by Len. It was Alf’s responsibility to establish the area built for the sprouting seedlings.

He and Dave were both driven by the same goals, to grow rare Australian native plants that may otherwise become extinct and to display them for all to admire.  Alf designed a glasshouse, sometimes called a misting house, in which to grow all these new plants and it was built to his specifications. 

It must have been a giant undertaking as the closest hardware shops were miles away and probably did not stock many of the items needed.  Dave and Alf were ingenious and the structure is remarkable in design, giving maximum flexibility to allow air and sun in or closed off as the plants needed.  Originally the roof was a wooden  louvred design over the glass plates to add even more flexibility.  The building is built from cypress pine to withstand termite attack and the lower walls are of something solid and they have stood the test of time very well. The louvres disintegrated many years ago and were removed to prevent damage to the glass plates. 

Originally the glasshouse was filled with small pots of seeds or cutting material and extra pots were placed on the ground between the glasshouse and the potting shed.  Extra benches were built to store the larger plants to harden them prior to planting.  There were pots and plants on every available space but Dave urged ever more planting as he was often heard to say “ Never mind the losses, just keep planting”.

Original Glass House and hardening bays

Dorothy Gordon admiring the new seedlings

Dave and Dorothy’s two oldest children helping just outside the Glasshouse

The Single Mens’ Quarters

Dave Gordon took over the management of his family’s farm when his father died and his older brother, Jim, enlisted for military service during World War One.  Dave developed the farm for wool production while also completing his schooling by correspondence.  In 1926 Dave acquired Myall Park and added other properties to it to increase wool production.  Around 1940 a Single Men’s Shearing Quarters was built and the family was housed here temporarily until their house was completed.  The building was a standard for workers accommodation with a row of single rooms off a long verandah with bathroom and toilet at the ends of the verandah.  The lounge room with brick fireplace links the single rooms to the kitchen which is large enough for all to sit around the dining table.  Beyond the kitchen is the Cook’s domain with large bedroom, separate bathroom and a small screened verandah.  This was out of bounds to the workers. 

The verandah leading from the single rooms faces the east and receives early morning sun but in the afternoons it is shaded.  This was a favourite place for the men to gather, out of the way of Cook and free to pursue their favourite pastimes.  Often the men would play darts and it is easy to imagine the cheering when a clever shot was played or jeering when the dart fell short.  This building is still used as guest accommodation or more often volunteer accommodation and the verandah wall still shows the scores recorded for the dart games.