Music Forum 8/4 April 2002

Jeannie Marsh

It is 1996. I am on a two-month "creative retreat" at Mirramu Creative Arts Centre outside Canberra. I am burnt-out after 15 years of running a frenetic freelance career as singer (Carmen, Cage, Koehne, cabaret – you name it), community arts worker (with Canto Coro and Dandenong Ranges Music Council), teacher (running ensembles and activities in new music-theatre for tertiary students), and arts project manager (wearing every hat in the arts admin. hat shop). I am really burnt out, seeking a quiet time in the bush, looking out over Lake George, keeping the pot-belly stove fired up to keep out the icy winter chill, going for long walks, and exploring all sorts of possibilities for new directions in my musical life.

One of my projects at Mirramu is a search for an Australian story; a story about an Australian whose life was passionate, moving, dynamic, full of incident, a story that deserves to be more widely known. But most of all, a story which would suit the medium of music-theatre. Having been involved in the development and performance of a quite a number of new music-theatre works, I find at Mirramu that I now have a strong urge to initiate my own project, put together a team of inspiring music-theatre artists to realise it, and then be part of this team as one of the collaborators and performers. I have brought along all sorts of books of Australian oral history, and I have also started looking around the bookshops and libraries of Canberra for inspiration.

One day I am at the Canberra City Library idly browsing through Australian biographies and histories of Australians. I start reading an article called "The Botanist – Ferdinand von Mueller" in Vance Palmer's book National Portraits – 25 Australian Lives. As I read the first paragraph, describing one of Mueller's "enormous speeches, crammed with botanical fervour", I am suddenly wide awake. As I read on, I discover the bare bones of Mueller's life – came to Australia from Germany as a young man in 1840's, became first Victorian Government Botanist in 1852, founded the National Herbarium, First Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, and so on.

But it was the details of his story that leapt off the page: shortly after settling into his government post, he took off on an expedition to explore the flora of the remote, wild mountain regions of Victoria, and was the first white man to climb Mt Buffalo; this was only the first of numerous extraordinary botanical travels, including being the botanist on Gregory's first trip across Northern Australia; he wrote an almost unbelievable number of letters – at least 6,000 per year for around 50 years – to fellow scientists around the world, governments, an army of plant specimen collectors he assembled around Australia, newspapers, journals; he published more scientific papers in his life than any scientist before or since; he was obsessed with the health benefits and use of Australian plants, especially Blue Gum, and most of the plantations of Eucalypts we encounter outside Australia were the result of his evangelical distribution of Australian seeds around the world; he was a controversial and colourful character in Melbourne for decades; he suffered two terrible set-backs in his life: first, his dream of publishing the definitive book on Australia's flora fell through when the task was given to an English botanist at Kew Gardens, and then he was removed from his position as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, in a scandal from which he never fully recovered. For the remaining 20 years of his life, he lived across the road from his beloved Gardens, but never again set foot in them. He was a great lover of music, his life was a whirlwind of activity, passionate causes, endless work, and endless enthusiasm for spreading the word about the plants of his extraordinary new home – Australia.

That day I drove back to Mirramu with my mind and heart in hyper-drive – I felt that I had found my story. Here was a person whose rich and extraordinary life, with musical connections, passionate work and activities and conflicts, Biblical metaphors of expulsion from Gardens/Eden, was full of possibilities for music-theatre. The next day I felt the weight of more hands pushing me down Mueller's front path, when I discovered that a major international arts/science conference about Mueller was about to begin in Melbourne. I bought a ticket back home to Melbourne, sat in growing awe and excitement through the conference (where the final confirmation of my fate came when I found that Mueller had been engaged to an opera-singer!), and finished my "creative retreat" in a fever of excitement as I read everything I could about Mueller's amazing life. My travels with the Baron had begun.

Now, in 2002, Mueller's story is much closer to finally being told in music-theatre. After meeting a key Mueller researcher (Sarah Maroske), researching Mueller's letters and other materials at the Herbarium, thinking long and hard about how this project could be realised, I then started approaching my "dream team" of experienced artists to see if they would join me on this music-theatre expedition to the wild zone, the un-mapped jungle where music and botany meet! A performance about Mueller had to be worthy of him – no little recital of relevant songs from the era, interspersed with readings from his letters, would do for him. No, this had to be the best people for each task coming together, and working collaboratively to solve the challenges of how to represent and interpret Mueller's life in an accessible music-theatre piece. A music-theatre piece which could tour to every town in Australia which has a Botanic Garden with trees grown from Mueller seeds. This is many towns. A great many towns. This tour could be a job for life.

The musical language would be crucial. I had recently performed a number of works by Matthew Hindson, with my musical partner of many years, the magnificent guitarist Ken Murray. Something about the way Matthew's music takes you on a wild roller-coaster ride of rhythmic/melodic/harmonic momentum seemed to suit the frenetic pace of Mueller's life, as well as the depth of feeling, pathos, and drama within his story. On the edge of a precipice of commitment to a huge project, I approached Matthew. He agreed, and I had jumped off the precipice, and was now committed to completing the team, which now also included Ken Murray. Who better to play Mueller than one of Australia's most talented and dynamic singer-actors, Grant Smith? Having recently played Utzon in the opera about the Sydney Opera House, he was certainly in the right frame of mind to play a man with a great vision, battling small-minded bureaucracies. As it happened, he was also a passionate fan of Matthew's music. He was in. The writer was a crucial element, and when I saw Brian Lipson's extraordinary one-man show about another 19th-century scientist, Francis Galton, I suddenly saw another perfect artist for the wild world of Mueller. Brian's show A Large Attendance in the Antechamber was in Melbourne last year, and was is in this year's Adelaide Festival. I held my breath until I had spoken to Brian, and until I found that I had managed to capture his interest in Mueller. The dream team was complete when we were joined by two of Melbourne's most experienced artists – director John Bolton and designer Richard Roberts, and by excellent musicians Sue Hamerton (violin) and Amanda Rowarth (cello).

And now all that was needed was sponsors. The hard part. Luckily, when I approached the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, and had a meeting with him and the current Victorian Government Botanist, they didn't laugh me out of the Herbarium. They were excited by the idea of this unique project which could provide a synergy between arts and science, and which could finally spread the word about a person who has been recognised as a hero in their world for over 100 years.

The Gardens have now commissioned Blue Gum Baron with the assistance of a Commissions grant from the Music Board of the Australia Council. Arts Victoria has come on board to enable us to have two weeks of intensely productive Creative Development (which took place in September last year). Bosistos Eucalyptus Products have come on board as sponsors (Mueller encouraged Bosisto to begin his business). Music is being written, text is being written, and the team has a strong united vision of the style, content and themes of the work. They also seem to have become as obsessed with Mueller as I am.

My travels with the Baron began in a library in Canberra, they have taken me to places of much work and thought, much risk taking, the hills and valleys encountered on the rocky roads of Funding Land, and some of the most stimulating and satisfying music-making and theatre-making of my life. I don't know where the travels will end, but watch out for Baron von Mueller riding into your town over the next few years. And hold onto your seat – it's a wild ride!

If you would like to come along for the ride as a Friend of Blue Gum Baron, I would love to hear from you. There may be a role for you playing a botanist in the show (volunteer extras are part of the vision), and there will certainly be a role for your enthusiasm, assistance, or donations.

You can contact Jeannie Marsh at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it