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Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 
While marking the road, the party had come across the wool of some 2000 sheep which 
had been taken from a station and eaten by Aborigines (McKinnon 1940). Their line 
went through what later became the middle of present-day Gympie. While a temporary 
bridge was being constructed there, Bidwill found gold nuggets, which Dart alleges 
Bidwill kept in a bottle, though their origin he kept secret. The goldfield was 'discovered' 
in 1867 and the resulting goldrush boosted the economy of Maryborough thereafter. 
Dart also alleged that Bidwill found gold at Glastonbury (Loyau 1897, Lennon 1924: 
81). Later in 1851 Bidwill was camping some 30 miles from the Maryborough 
settlement but the kidney inflammation was so bad he had to return. He was under 
constant medical supervision and had a bout of hiccoughs which lasted from 29 August 
until 9 October. He had an abscess in the perineum and this extended to the rectum for 
which he was treated with morphine. By October he was reduced to a skeleton and 
died a painful lingering death at Tinana 16 March 1853, aged 38. 
Almost till the end, Bidwill had continued to exchange cases of plants with Kew, a 
consignment of his desiderata coming out in August 1850 and the case returning 
with Araucaria and Agathis plants 'many dead' in September 1852 "L He was strong 
enough to voice criticisms of Moore's (apparently unpublished) treatment of Agathis 
as well as to propose a visit to New Caledonia. Early in 1853 there was an attempt 
to add the Moreton Bay District to his responsibilities, so arranged as to give the 
ailing Bidwill no time to protest, when no-one had yet even succeeded in crossing 
the dividing range between the Rivers Mary and Brisbane without immense difficulty, 
as he himself knew only too well. The drought of that summer almost destroyed his 
garden and in his last weeks he had no vegetables save sweet potatoes to live on. 
Expecting to die soon, he wrote a touching and devoutly Christian letter to his 
parents(Anon. 1856) on 5 March, explaining that he had hoped to return to England 
but was now dying, his stomach rejecting even liquids. Whilst at a friend's house, he 
suffered severe chest pains and thereafter was confined to bed for the last ten days 
of his life during which his friends, no doubt including Dart who lived at Tinana 
with him, took it in turns to read to him from the Bible 
His last known letter, in wavering handwriting, was written to William Macarthur the 
next day (March 6) and the first call on his estate was to be his debt to his patron 
After this and other debts arising from 'Dr Anderson's' (?of Clovelly) will, the residue 
of his estate was to go to his brother in New ZealandC. Robert Bidwill, who came 
across to Sydney on 19 July’^'' and apparently took back some of Bidwill's effects 
including his letter-book rediscovered in 1925 (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927: 116); the 
rest of his effects except for his extensive wardrobe were sold locally, the land he 
owned at Port Halswell and Murphy Street Wellington as well as in Sydney being sold 
cheaply (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927, Ch. 14). He was buried in his garden with four 
bunya-bunya trees around the grave: it was still in good condition in the 1950s on the 
property ('Bidwill', not to be confused with the Maryborough suburb of that name 
[Bidwill 1952: 81) of a Mrs Gran, though Hewitt et al. (1964) report that the spot was 
marked merely by a plain headstone. His post as Commissioner was not refilled. 
Many of the plants commemorating him (see Appendix) were novelties collected in 
the Wide Bay years. Of his horticultural introductions to Europe from Queensland 
besides the bunya-bunya pine, Akania bidwillii among others bears his name; it was 
long grown without flowering at Kew as ‘Lomatia bidioillii’ (Mabberley 1990: 271) and 
is conceivably the '19 New Lomatia or a new Myrtacea of some kind' sent with 
Araucaria plants from Moreton Bay in 1848'^, though it was first formally described in 
nurserymen's catalogues. Besides Agathis robusla, another striking novelty was 'Victoria 
fitzroyam', i.e. Nympimea gigantea Hook. (Lindley 1853), available to Kew as seeds from 
Carter the seedsman in Holborn in the early 1850s though described from herbarium 
specimens (his '39') and a dead tuber sent by Bidwill to Hooker in 1851. On Bidwill's 
