Lorraine Phelps in what remains of her father Reg Hunt’s wholesale and retail nursery. Shade houses, potting sheds and garden beds were enclosed in wire netting to keep out possums and rabbits. Photo: John Thistleton.
Reg Hunt once summed up his life succinctly over a cup of coffee with his daughter, Lorraine:
“I can sip cups of tea with little old ladies or I can drink whisky with millionaires and diamond merchants,” he said.
A farmer, carpenter, gardener and self-taught nurseryman, Reg was an indispensable figure on grand properties west of Goulburn. His gardening clients included Dr Stephen Weedon who owned Walwa, where Kerry Packer would call while courting the surgeon’s daughter, Roslyn. Another of his clients was Queen’s Counsel Tom Hughes.
Standing in an oasis of greenery, these magnificent mansions included Merrilla, Kippilaw, Raeburn and Kelburn, all extensively developed during the wool boom with shearing sheds, workers’ quarters, schools, racetracks, orchards and dairies.
A descendant of Parkesbourne’s first settlers Mattinson and Elizabeth Hunt, Reg and his wife Betty raised six children in a two-bedroom house without electricity. In later years the children, Robert, Judy, Margaret, Allan, Lorraine and Ian would find themselves helping with the weeding, spraying, pruning and landscaping around the homestead gardens.
Judy, Margaret, Allan and Lorraine were born on Walwa and attended Gurrundah School. They remember Reg as a walking encyclopaedia for plants and history. He recited to them the botanical names of all the plants being nurtured in sprawling homestead gardens.
The family had a 1000-acre property near the junction of the Gurrundah – Breadalbane Roads and later moved to ‘Glenview’ at Parkesbourne in 1966 where Reg established a wholesale and retail nursery. He and son Allan built the nursery sheds and shade houses which they added to over the years and drew water from a dam for the plants.
“He did so many old, historic gardens around the district and could not find the right plants to put in their gardens,” Lorraine said. “So he began taking cuttings of hydrangeas, escallonia, geraniums and fuchsias from one homestead, pot them up and plant them at the next homestead. He just spread the love, the flowers around.” (Remnants at Glenview today include begonias, cotoneasters, dogwood shrubs, may bushes, jockeys cap bulbs, agapanthus and jasmine and ivy varieties).
“We used to sell to Graeme Williams when he was at Carters Nursery in Goulburn,” Lorraine said. “He said he liked buying our plants because they were acclimatised. He [Reg] spent a lot of time with [nursery owner] Artie Carter; they would sit and chat for hours.”
Reg Hunt when he served for the armed forces in New Guinea during World War II. Photo: Hunt family collection.
While Lorraine cannot remember details of a wedding at Merrilla sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, she does recall Reg going to extra lengths to ensure daffodils were in bloom around the circular driveway for the occasion.
“Just in case they did not flower in time he planted some here (at Glenview) in pots, so he could put the pots in the ground and it would form a perfect circle,” she said. “He found out he had to prune the roses at exactly the right time, so they would be in flower on the wedding day.”
After leaving home, marrying and raising her children, Lorraine continued returning to help Reg, first popping her son Matthew and daughter Kristy into a pram or playpen nearby to keep an eye on them before starting work in the nursery.
“He would have all the cuttings lined up, all the pots ready, all the form mixed up ready,” she said.
Reg kept up his gardening services for rural and town clients, including Miriam Chisholm and Doctor Peter Lyttle. He also tended the garden of Riversdale in town, helped by his children.
Allan recounts Reg’s keen interest in breeding Andalusian chickens, a hardy and rare breed developed in Spain and imported to England in the 1840s.
“When he started, that breed had nearly died out and he bought as many as he could get from South Australia and anywhere else,” Allan said. “Within about three years, he entered a big showing of them at the Sydney Royal Show and scooped the pool with all of them.”
Allan, who left Glenview when he was 26, would feed them, collect their eggs each morning, record from which pen he had taken them and set them under any clucky hens.
Lorraine Phelps outside the home her grandfather built in the early 1900s on the boundary of Merrilla at Parkesbourne, west of Goulburn. Photo: John Thistleton.
Reg died in 1989 and Lorraine took over the nursery until 1998, when ill health caused her to step back. Then a major drought ended the venture.
Living at Glenview, Lorraine still tends to a few potted plants and loves sharing the wonders of flowers with her grandchildren, as she did for many years alongside her father.
Loading ...
