Person

Hill, Walter (1820 - 1904)

Born
31 December 1820
Scotsdyke, Scotland
Died
4 February 1904
Eight Miles Plains, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
Botanic gardens director, Botanist, Explorer and Horticulturist

Summary

Walter Hill was the Queensland Colonial Botanist, and Curator of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens 1855-1881. Earlier, he collected for William S. Macleay. Hill introduced sugar cane and fruit trees to Queensland. Unable to establish a working herbarium due to time constraints and lack of suitable buildings, he sent most of his botanical specimens to William Hooker and later Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, and to Ferdinand von Mueller at the Botanical Museum of Melbourne. Hill's books became a core asset of the Queensland Herbarium library. In 1854, Hill participated in an ill-fated expedition north in the ketch "Vision", during which four men were killed by aboriginals who later were hanged. Other explorations included: to the Glasshouse Mountains with Ferdinand Mueller in 1856; Cape York and Endeavour Strait in 1862 with Sir George Bowen; and the 1873 North East Coast Expedition under G. E. Dalrymple. The National Herbarium of Victoria holds over 500 of Hill's specimens.

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Details

Chronology

1843 - 1851
Career position - Gardener, Royal Kew Botanical Gardens, England
1855 - 1881
Career position - Curator, Brisbane Botanic Gardens
1859 - 1881
Career position - Colonial Botanist of Queensland
1862
Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus grandis W.Hill
1919
Taxonomy event - Honoured with Eucalyptus hillii Maiden

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

  • Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

National Herbarium, Melbourne

  • Walter Hill - Records, 1870 - 1881, MSS M10; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

Queensland Herbarium

  • Walter Hill - Records, 1859 - 1881; Queensland Herbarium. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

Book Sections

  • McKinnon, Ross, 'Hill, Walter (1819-1904), Horticulturist' in Australian dictionary of biography: supplement 1580 - 1980, with a name index to the Australian dictionary of biography to 1980, Christopher Cunneen, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), pp. 177-178. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/AS10223b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • Dowe, J. L., 'Walter Hill's palm collection at the Brisbane Botanic Garden, 1855-1881', Palms and cycads, 130 (2016), 11-24. Details
  • Dowe, John Leslie, 'Walter Hill: his involvement with palms (Arecaceae), and notes on his herbarium and the expeditions of 1872 and 1873', Austrobaileya, 9 (4) (2016), 489-507. Details
  • Nielsen, D. and Kumarasuriyar, A., 'Walter Hill: the Scotsman who grew Queensland', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 132 (2023), 59-72, https://doi.org/10.53060/prsq.2023.4. Details
  • Rowland, Michael J., '"By savage hands his steps were stayed": life and death on the Percy Isles, 1854', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 124 (2020), 63-79. Details
  • Sanderson, Rachel, 'Many Beautiful Things: Botanists' Accounts of North Queensland Rainforests', Historical Records of Australian Science, 18 (1) (2007), 1-18, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR07004. Details

Resources

See also

  • Fagg, Murray, 'Hill, Walter (1820 - 1904)', Australian Plant Collectors and Illustrators, Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH), 2010, https://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/hill-walter.html. Details
  • George, Alex S., Australian botanist's companion (Kardinya, W.A.: Four Gables Press, 2009), 671 pp. Details
  • Hall, Norman, Botanists of the Eucalypts: short biographies of people who have named eucalypts, whose names have been given to species or who have collected type material (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1978), 101 pp. Details
  • Maiden, J. H., 'Records of Queensland Botanists', Report of the twelfth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 12 (1910), 373-383. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15379603. Details
  • McConachie, Ian, 'Who discovered Macadamias?', Queensland historical journal, 24 (12) (2022), 1087-102. Details
  • Tilbrook, Louis, The Macleay Collectors: a Working Notebook (Sydney: The Macleay Museum, 1992). Details

McCarthy, G.J., Moje, C. & Walsh, N.

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 6 December 2022

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