Mabberley, Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial NSW 
553 
and a second at the junction of the creek. Allegedly he 'ran' the whole settlement, 
being not only Commissioner but also Clerk of Petty Sessions and Harbour Master 
besides performing marriages and reading burial services (Lennon 1924: 19). 
On 2 January that year Bidwill wrote to King from the Mary River (the letter, from 
'J.S. Bidwill' being printed in Hooker’s /. Bot. 1(1849)284-6 under 'Another coniferous 
tree detected in Australia') about his triumph in finding the day before what is now 
called Agathis robusta. In 1842, an Aboriginal at Moreton Bay had told him that there 
was such a tree. No-one else could attest to this, but Bidwill persisted and found it on 
the site of the future Maryborough; to get the one cone on it, the huge tree had to be 
felled. By the end of March''*', he could write to King that he was building his house 
in what had been a wood of Agathis robusta. He seemed to have mellowed over the 
Moore affair for, as King was now bound for England, Bidwill wrote, 'By the by, try to 
find out what was Lindley's reason for appointing Moore, when he could have (one 
would think) so easily have found a better sort of person — for Moore is an ass, and 
a very conceited ignorant one too — and as his appointment was really a good thing 
for me, I may say so now, without fear of thinking I am prejudiced against him. Lindley 
is such a crooked minded man that it is impossible to guess what his motives may have 
been but perhaps Sir W. Hooker may know'. Living material of the 'Damimra sp. Wide 
Bay' was sent from the Sydney Gardens to Henderson's in London on 1 April 1852 
(Hyland 1978) and six plants of 'Dammara new species from North Australia' were sent 
to England from Camden on Christmas Eve 1854"“, while 'Dammara sp. Le 'Kaurie 
Tree' de Wide-Bay' was no. 75 of the woods sent from Moreton Bay and Wide Bay to 
the Paris Exposition of 1855 by Moore (Macarthur & Moore 1855). A young plant from 
the Gardens was illustrated in a Sydney periodical in 1857 with the name D. robusta 
attributed to Moore but that name was not validly published until 1860 when it was 
based on material made available to Ferdinand von Mueller (by T.W. Shepherd's Nursery 
in Sydney!). In horticulture it may have been the plant known as D. bidwillii. 
Maryborough became a township and had its first policeman in 1850 (Hewitt et al., 
1964). But without civilized company, Bidwill was lonely and periodically depressed; 
in his letter to King there is more than a broad hint that he was missing King's 
daughter, of whom he would have liked to get a daguerreotype made in London if 
he had been bold enough to ask for it directly. He was in Sydney in April 1850, 
travelling with Macarthur to Clovelly, Watson's Bay, to see 'poor Anderson' who 
was ill’" but it was from Tinana that he wroteproposing to send his father a log 
of an apparently undescribed Acacia sp. ('briggalo', i.e. A. harpopliylla), mooted as a 
furniture timber, for the Great Exhibition of 1851. His father agreed and a log from 
'J.G. Bidweir of 'Zinana' was duly exhibited "“. 
In April 1851, Bidwill set out to mark a road from Maryborough to Brisbane, being 
120 miles as the crow flies, the road then existing being twice that long. The Governor 
had ordered this 'mark-tree line' to shorten the distance travelled by prisoners (Loyau 
1897). With him were four men including BidwilTs young 'ward', (Seorge Dart who 
had arrived in 1850 (Lennon 1924: 10). Two horses and a team of bullocks were lost 
to Aborigines who speared them (Anon. 1856). As rations were low, Bidwill and one 
Slade started out for the station at Durundur near present-day Woodford (Hewitt et 
al. 1964) but without Bid will's compass they wandered for eight days lost in the 
bush, apparently somewhere near the present-day Kilcoy"'* without food except for 
some honey given to them by Aborigines, and one large grub. They were guided 
and indeed carried to Durundur by the friendly aborigines (McKinnon 1940) but the 
rest of the party lost everything, including Bidwill's diary, to attacking aborigines. 
As a result of these experiences, BidwilTs health declined, apparently largely due to 
kidney problems "^. Despite the attentions of two local doctors and a third consulted 
later in Sydney (Loyau 1897, McKinnon 1940), he was never to recover. 
