Club Meeting 20 July ’26. Speaker & Topic: Dr Gary Bacon AM, retired forester and previously Director of Queensland Forest-Relocating a Monarch in the Queen’s Land after 2 Centuries’

Dr Gary Bacon has an interest in the early explorers and the vegetation/ecosystems they encountered. This presentation will follow Gary’s analysis of the King’s Botanist Allan Cunningham’s 1824 journal, and his investigation of “stately and magnificent pines, which towered far above the other timber of the hill”.  Gary writes “It is rare to have a definitive historical date and place for discovering a natural renewable resource that founded an Industry that prospers to the present day. That noteworthy date is Tuesday, September 21, 1824, and we have a precise record of that discovery on the banks of the Brisbane River.” Subsequently, foliage and cone samples were collected in situ and eventually reached Kew Gardens in London, where the taxonomists named the Moreton Bay Pine, now known as Hoop Pine, Araucaria cunninghamii, after the botanist who determined this was a new tree to science.