Thursday 6th June, 6 – 7:30pm. Light refreshments provided.
Augustus Oldfield trekked throughout Southern Australia from 1845 to 1862 amassing plant specimens that would be used to describe over 700 species new to science, including twenty-one that would ultimately bear his name. He undertook botanical expeditions throughout Australia including South West WA.
On the lower Murchison River, Western Australia, he encountered and travelled extensively with an indigenous group, the Watchandie and his paper on these Australian Aborigines is the only ethnographic record of them at the onset of European settlement.
Never appropriately recognised in either Australia or his native Britain, this comprehensive biographical work, twenty years in the making, fills that gap and places Oldfield’s career within the context of his immediate family and the scientific, environmental and broader socio-cultural contexts of the time. Starting with his childhood, raised in the gambling dens of London, through his amazing journeys on the far flung shores of Britain’s Australian colonies, to his untimely death, this book finally tells the story of a man who, driven by his love of nature, turned his life over to the pursuit of a greater prize than gold.
Join Bill Bunbury and Helen Henderson as they talk about all things Augustus Oldfied, his travels and discoveries. All welcome. Please RSVP to amrlibrary@amrshire.wa.gov.au or Ph: 9780 5600
