ABSTRACT
The common theme in Australian historiography is that they disliked the rainforests and other dense forests and preferred the open landscapes of the drier inland plains. Victorian Britain was characterised by a number of botanical passions and these influenced how settlers in the Australian colonies viewed the rainforests. Chief of these was a mania for ferns, which was at its height between 1850 and 1890, but also continued right through to the beginning of World War One. The market for rainforest plants led to the development of complex trading networks and relationships. The Backhouse family, for example, ran a nursery in York and specialised in importing exotics. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the development of elaborate gardens became fashionable amongst the wealthy in Britain. The construction of an artificial rainforest in Melbourne’s botanic gardens was primarily the work of William Guilfoyle.
