The Gardener, the Palace and the Bushranger

What do you think links Sir Joseph Paxton, the Crystal Palace and Captain Moonlite together? The answer is an intriguing one - the giant leaves of the Victoria Amazonica waterlily!

In the 1800s, when English explorers sent home samples and drawings of the Victoria Amazonica from British Guyana¹(Fig.1), the race was on to propagate it back home. Little did they know that this plant from the Amazon, successfully grown by gardener Joseph Paxton in Chatsworth², England and presented to Queen Victoria, (named Victoria regia in her honour³) would go on to influence architecture, not only in Britain but also in its far-flung outpost of empire - Australia, with the design MHNSW’s own Mint building.

In 1836, Joseph Paxton, an already famous gardener, built experimental greenhouses like the ‘Great Stove’ in Chatsworth (Fig. 2), the largest glass building at the time⁴, using the leaf structure of the lily pad as inspiration (Fig. 3). The leaves that can grow up to 3 metres in diameter, were able to take the weight of Paxton’s young daughter and articles were published about this astounding plant⁵ (Fig. 4). In a feat of architectural biomimicry, Paxton went on to design the iron and glass modular components of the 800,000 square feet Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851⁶ (Fig. 5). No wonder architect Norman Foster recently claimed it was

But how does infamous Australian bushranger ‘Captain Moonlite’ fit into the picture? In 1851, NSW had just discovered gold. With a large quantity of unrefined gold circulating through the colony, a branch of the Royal Mint was established in Sydney. Captain Edward Ward, appointed Deputy Master of the Mint in Sydney, modelled the coining factory on Paxton’s Crystal Palace⁸. It was fully assembled, disassembled and flat packed in Woolwich dockyard before being shipped to Australia and re-assembled at the rear of the Rum Hospital⁹, a ‘proto-Ikea’ building (Fig. 6)! By replicating the architectural language of iron columns, trusses and colour scheme of the Crystal Palace, the Mint, in 1855 spoke to the colony of cutting-edge modernity (Fig. 7). In 1856 the self-styled ‘Captain Moonlite’ converted gold stolen from the Victorian goldfields into legal tender at the Mint. He was eventually caught and hanged for his many misdemeanours¹⁰. Read more of the Mint’s fascinating stories.

We can still see elements of this high-tech Victorian factory building at the Mint complex today (Fig. 8). Looking closely at the details of this sympathetic conversion, we may yet observe that the Mint, through its architectural dialog with the Crystal Palace, remains a wonderful reminder of the power of nature to inspire. What an amazing journey from South America, to England, to Australia the inspiring Victoria Amazonica has had.

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