By 1897, Edith was finding the ‘long walk to my school extremely trying during this hot weather’. She applied for a job in the city and, this time, was successful. She was relieved of her post as head teacher at Cochranes Creek on Monday, 8 March 1897, left on Tuesday, and reported for duty at Burnley State School on Wednesday. Finding it closed for a picnic, she waited until Thursday to commence in the rather grand, newly constructed, three-storey Gothic Revival building, so different from the little wooden halls she had been teaching in. If Edith found this large and crowded urban school, built on a swamp, lacking in the open space she had previously enjoyed, she did not say so. According to Inspector Gamble, she had become ‘a capable young teacher’ with a promising career ahead of her.
But all that changed when Edith returned to the city. She met, and soon became engaged to, the handsome and charming James G. Coleman. Within a year they were married and Edith’s promising teaching career came to an abrupt end.
Edith and James, taken around the time of their marriage in 1848
Forest orchids: Flowers of winter and spring
By Edith Coleman
Many of our most beautiful orchids challenge the keen winds and frosty nights of winter. Indeed, some of them are at their best only during the cold weeks, slipping away with the first warm days. But the heart of the enthusiast leaps at the mere thought of spring. It conjures up visions of the brighter orchids, which for some months have been conspicuously absent. With the coming of spring these will meet us with a rush. This, by the way, may be said to be characteristic of our terrestrial orchids. On today’s ramble our pulses may be stirred by the sight of leaves and buds only; yet almost tomorrow it seems the same places yield a rich harvest of blooms. They come in with a rush. All of them are interesting, many of them are of extraordinary beauty, while the quaintness of others makes their appeal to our interest. There is a special graciousness that sets them quite apart from other field flowers, and makes them easy of recognition without any special botanical knowledge . . .
Everybody who has an orchid eye knows the nodding green-hood (P. nutans), if not by this, by one of its many vernacular names, and these are legion. It is common in most districts, coastal or inland. The shy, down-bent head and the reddish tinge of color on the tip of the hood are characteristic, and the tongue protrudes between the two lower sepals in a decidedly rakish manner.
‘Beery Noses’, one little fellow told me, he and his playmates call them. Not a pretty name, certainly, and I told him of others I like more.
‘But they all have red noses, and they can’t stand up straight’, he argued – a tribute surely to the keenness of his observation, for it embraced two of their characteristic features. ‘Elephants’ trunks’ is another of its popular names, and a glance at the downward curve of the hood is sufficient to justify it. ‘Pigs’ runs it close in popularity, and when next you come upon a patch of these numerous nodding greenhoods they will perhaps suggest to your fancy also, hordes of little green pigs grazing.
Not all the greenhoods are green, however, though they are all hooded. Some of them are rust colored or reddish, while one handsome plant blooming at the present time is more often of a deep chocolate-brown, banded or striped with cream or green. This beautiful orchid (P. vittata) – the banded greenhood – favours coastal districts. Cheltenham, Black Rock or Mornington. Very fine deep red specimens carrying 8 or 10 flowers on each stem have been received from Point Lonsdale this season. In the fresh flowers the labellum is very sensitive, springing up at the lightest breath, and needs to be held down with paste, or must be chloroformed into a stationary position for the artist or photographer.
Its very near relation (P. longifolia) – the tall greenhood – has commenced its season, and is common in most localities. It loves the shelter of light scrub or the base of trees where soft mounds of collected humus make ideal beds for the germination of windblown seeds. It, too, carries a number of flowers on each stem which, with the exception of a touch of rust on the tongue and the tips of the united lower sepals, are all green. The labellum is extremely sensitive. At the present time I am watching a plant which carries 13 flowers on its stem, and it is very interesting to see the canny little tongues fly up at a touch, disappearing like magic – dropping again later ‘when the coast is clear’.
Roughly, all the greenhoods might be divided into two classes – these which have stem leaves at the time of flowering and those with a loose rosette of leaves lying at the base of the plant. The tall and the banded greenhoods have stem leaves while the nodding greenhood has basal leaves only. Some of the quaintest and most interesting of our winter and early spring flowers are the little helmet orchids.
As they are the smallest of terrestrial orchids it is rather surprising how easily children discern distinctions between the four known Victorian species.
‘Granny’s bonnets’ is the delightfully apt name they have given to one of them – from the quaint fringed labellum that frames the little granny-face of their imagination.
To fully appreciate the name ‘Squatters’ bestowed upon them by the children of an orchid enthusiast in a sister State, one must see the small greyish red flower squatting closely on its one green leaf. One needs the ‘orchid eye’ to locate these little ‘helmets’ for they love the cover of dead leaves or the shelter of fallen logs in
