Forest industries or dairy pastures? ferdinand von mueller and the 1885-1893 Royal Commission on Vegetable Products

Historical Records of Australian Science

Volumn 11, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 431-437

  Frost, Warwick ^a   Harvey, Sarah ^b  

^a Australian Centre for Tourism and Hospitality   (Australia)

^b RMIT UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548411911     PISSN: 07273061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1071/HR9971130431     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Royal Commission on Vegetable Products, Fourth Progress Report (Melbourne, 1887), Q. 6139. Two important points to note. First, the Royal Commission's reports were published in book form and not in the Victorian Parliamentary Papers. Second, the reports do not identify which commissioner asked which question.
2. Royal Commission on Vegetable Products, First Progress Report (Melbourne, 1886), Q. 678.
3. ibid., p. 3.
4. His appearances were not mentioned in his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, nor in Edward Kynaston, A Man on Edge: A Life of Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller (Melbourne, 1981). His 1887 appearances were briefly mentioned in Linden Gillbank, 'Nineteenth Century Perceptions of Victorian Forests: Ideas and Concerns of Ferdinand Mueller', in John Dargavel and Sue Feary (eds), Australia's Ever Changing Forests II: Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Australian Forest History (Canberra, 1993), p. 13; but not his 1886 appearance.
5. The reports were neither published in nor mentioned in the Victorian Parliamentary Papers of the period. D.H. Borchardt, Checklist of Royal Commissions, Select Committees of Parliament and Boards of Inquiry: Part III, Victoria, 1856-1960 (Sydney, 1970), p. 108, listed the Royal Commission and noted that the reports were published separately, but did not list when, or under what titles. Copies in the State Library of Victoria are not catalogued under Royal Commission on Vegetable Products. We were only able to find the reports through a ledger-style catalogue from the turn of the century. We are grateful to Lionel Frost of La Trobe University and the staff of the State Library of Victoria for their assistance in hunting down the reports.
6. For an overview of the impact of the Royal Commission on the development of dairying, see A.E. Dingle, The Victorians: Settling (Sydney, 1984), pp. 116-7.
7. W.K. Hancock, Australia (Brisbane, 1966; 1st pub. 1930), p. 41.
8. South Gippsland Pioneers' Association, The Land of the Lyre Bird: A Story of Early Settlement in the Great Forest of South Gippsland (Melbourne, 1972;
9. 1st pub. 1920), especially pp. 178-181;
10. Ida McIntosh, Forest, Lake and Plain: The History of Colac 1888-1988 (Melbourne, 1988), p. 15;
11. Julia Mary Ryan, The Problems of Land Utilization in the Otway Region (MA thesis, School of Geography, University of Melbourne, 1962), pp. 1-5. For an overview of the clearance and settlement of the high-rainfall forests in Eastern Australia,
12. see Warwick Frost, 'Farmers, Government and the Environment: The Settlement of Australia's "Wet Frontier", 1870-1920', Australian Economic History Review, 37 (1997), 19-38.
13. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York, 1995), pp. 135-174;
14. E.p. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), Ch. 3;
15. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, 1995).
16. Warwick Frost, op. cit., pp. 28-33;
17. Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers: A History of Australians Shaping Their Environment (Sydney, 1992), pp. 37-48.
18. The temptation is to view von Mueller as representing the German approach to forest conservation. However, by this time he had lived in Australia for forty years and was probably well aware of the two sides of the British debate.
19. Royal Commission on Foreign Industries and Forests, 'Second Progress Report', Victorian Parliamentary Papers 1872 (3), p. 5.
20. For examples of the inability of officials to effectively police forests, see the Royal Commission on State Forests and Timber Reserves, 'Fifth Progress Report. The Otway Forest: Its Resources, Management, and Control', Victorian Parliamentary Papers 1899-1900 (4), pp. 6-7.
21. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 4 (Melbourne, 1972), pp. 93-5.
22. First Progress Report, op. cit. (n. 2), Q. 658.
23. ibid., Q. 659-660.
24. ibid., Q. 656-662.
25. ibid., Q. 545, 588-9.
26. ibid., Q. 669. This was a particularly hard question for any witness. In the late nineteenth century few farmers in Australia, Europe or America calculated the costs of individual products. Performance was generally judged just by the overall bank balance. Significantly, Cureton was not asked such a question and it was doubtful if he could have answered it.
27. ibid., Q. 670-671. We are grateful to Stephen Jeffries for his observation that von Mueller's behaviour was typical of German good manners. Upon realising that the Royal Commission was confused, he politely started his argument again. Unfortunately, this may have been interpreted as obstinacy.
28. ibid., Q. 679-683.
29. ibid., Q. 677-8.
30. ibid., Q. 690.
31. ibid., Q. 693.
32. Fourth Progress Report, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 4.
33. ibid., Q. 6138-9.
34. ibid., Q. 6187.
35. ibid., Q. 6208-6239.
36. Royal Commission on Vegetable Products, Fifth Progress Report (Melbourne, 1888), p. v.
37. See Dingle, op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 116-7. Dingle described Wilson as 'the colony's most prominent dairyman'.
38. Royal Commission on Vegetable Products, Second Progress Report (Melbourne, 1886), Q. 1815.
39. ibid., Q. 1815.
40. ibid., Q. 1815-1821.
41. Royal Commission on Vegetable Products, Sixth Progress Report (Melbourne, 1888), Q. 9669-10041.
42. T.K. Dow, A Tour in America (Melbourne, 1884), pp. 149-156.
43. Op. cit. (n. 14), p. 93;
44. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 12 (Melbourne, 1990), p. 519.
45. Royal Commission on Water Supply, Victorian Parliamentary Papers 1885 (2), Q. 4764.
46. Raymond Wright, A People's Counsel: A History of the Parliament of Victoria 1856-1990 (Melbourne, 1992), p. 100.
47. The Australasian, 23 January 1886, p. 154.