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Joseph Banks







I am always excited when I see a different native flower, or put a name to one.

I think I know a little of what it must have been like for Joseph Banks, the botanist on Captain Cook's ship that landed here in 1770.
[I have come back to try and name these -- I think we have Sprengelia monticola, Epacris reclinata and Bauera rubioides




Words to walk with:
From the Five Visions of Captain Cook by Kenneth Slessor -- writing of them sailing along the Great Barrier Reef.
"Flowers turned to stone! Not all the botany
Of Joseph Banks, hung pensive in a porthole,
Could find the Latin for this loveliness,
Could put the Barrier Reef in a glass box
Tagged by the horrid Gorgon squint
Of horticulture."

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