AustLit

'Some way into her meticulously researched biography of Jean Galbraith, Meredith Fletcher mentions an interaction in the professional life of this influential naturalist, botanist and garden writer. Galbraith, having been asked by her friend Eva West to help prepare Victorian Girl Guides and their rangers for their naturalist badges, suggested some changes to the internationally prepared test to bring it into line with Australian bush conditions. Working from her knowledge of Australian eucalypts, she queried the merits of identifying a tree from a distance, commenting to her friend and mentor, John Inglis Lothian, that ‘no experienced botanist would undertake to recognise a tree at fifty yards—and it cannot always be done with certainty even if one lived among the trees’ (p. 51). As minor as this event was, it seems to me to encapsulate the Jean Galbraith that emerges in these pages: her attention to detail, her ability to ‘read’ and to learn from her experiences and observations of local environments, her firm but understated belief in her own hardwon knowledge, and her pedagogical commitment.' (Introduction)