A meeting of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria in the Royal Society Hall, 1920
Edith regularly exhibited at the monthly club meetings too – or provided Mr Tadgell with fresh blooms of the fringed red helmet orchid (Corysanthes fimbriata) and the twin-leaf bird orchid (Chiloglottis diphylla) from Healesville to exhibit at the meeting. The previous spring she had even hosted an excursion to Healesville for club members, providing afternoon tea and a tour of her garden, where she was cultivating a number of native orchids.
It’s quite possible that she had attended many other talks, meetings, excursions and events over the years with Dorothy, who had been a junior member for the last eight years. She might have taken Dorothy to the meetings in the city or on excursions to the country. But Dorothy was now in her second year of university, and Gladys in her first – both girls busy pursuing their own interests. Perhaps Edith realised that she could no longer participate merely in her supporting mother role, but would need to take her own place on the stage?
Edith’s paper was well received.
‘The author, in a chatty paper, dealt with the various species of terrestrial orchids found during the autumn months,’ the meeting report notes. ‘Altogether the paper proved most interesting, and considerably enlarged members’ ideas as to the variety of orchids to be found during April and May. Some little discussion ensued, in which Mrs. Coleman was congratulated on her paper.’
The ‘little discussion’ led to a lateness in the hour, which required the next speaker to considerably curtail his own presentation. Edith’s paper was subsequently published in the December issue of the Victorian Naturalist. She opens, as her articles often do, with a quote, this time from Browning, and ends with an authoritative account of the unobtrusive pleasures of autumn orchids.
Edith started her publishing career as she continued: as articulate, knowledgeable, confident and well read. Her tone and voice are well developed. I can see little in the way of maturation in her writing from her first paper to her last. She emerges fully formed, mysteriously metamorphosed from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly: from child to mother to nature writer.
As I revise my own work I am suddenly anxious, afraid that I’ve missed something – an earlier mention of her in the Victorian Naturalist, before her first paper. I review the back issues again. And I find something I missed last time. On 21 February 1921 there is a little note, filling in the space at the end of an article on the geological history of Australian plants.
‘The Gum Tree for December contains a chatty article by Miss Edith Coleman, of Blackburn, entitled “Forest Orchids”, in which a number of our orchids are briefly described.’
The chrysalis is not, after all, as opaque as I had thought. Perhaps there is a glimpse of metamorphosis here, a chance to see the writer in development. If I can find the paper, if someone has kept copies of a little newsletter of the Australian Forest League, published almost a century ago.
The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria was established in 1880, at a small meeting of about 30 people, at the Athenaeum in Collins Street in Melbourne. The club was well supported by the educated gentlemen of the colony – men like Frederick McCoy, founding professor of biology at the university and director of the National Museum of Victoria, and Ferdinand von Mueller, government botanist and director of the botanical gardens. The functions of the club were both educative and healthy.
‘It would at once provide scientific amateurs with opportunities for interesting and instructive social excursion,’ commented the Australasian, ‘and tend to make science popular amongst the community in general.’
The study of natural history covered both theory and practice: lectures and excursions into the field. The monthly meetings also comprised ‘conversaziones’ – a more elegant term for ‘show-and-tell’, where members could bring objects of rarity or curiosity for inspection and discussion. And all of these events were recorded in the annals of the Victorian Naturalist, without which Edith’s career would have taken a very different path indeed.
This ethos of public education and engagement in science and the outdoors prompted an inclusive approach to membership. Men and women of all classes, and juniors too, were encouraged to join, irrespective of their level of learning or expertise, whether or not they were interested in active research. This intermingling of all skill levels in an equitable and friendly social environment proved amenable to women. By 1905, half the participants on a camping excursion to Mount Buffalo were female.
The club not only promoted the study of nature, but also advocated for its protection, and was instrumental in the emerging national parks movement in Australia. Wilsons Promontory was one of their first campaigns, which club members thought they had succeeded in protecting in 1898. That reservation turned out to be less secure than they had thought, resulting in a very large delegation to the minister, including the Field Naturalists, along with seven other societies. The minister quickly made the protection permanent.
Conservation protection was clearly close to Edith’s heart.
‘We have sanctuaries for animals and birds,’ she wrote, ‘why not botanical sanctuaries? It would surely be of great national value if small areas in specially favored localities could be reserved for the preservation of native flora.’
Edith sets a high bar for the standard of nature writing. I am constantly aware of the breadth of her knowledge, the detailed level of accuracy neatly packaged into her airy
