HER Story

Hilda Eileen Ramsay

I am currently exploring the social history and uniquely Victorian story of the pioneering Mallee botanist, Eileen Ramsay (1887 – 1961). 
Although Eileen became a botanist relatively late in life, her legacy is significant. But botany is only part of her story; the effects of her forceful personality and her extraordinary life remain to this day vivid, resonant and relevant. 
Eileen, the only daughter of a French-Mauritian immigrant and pharmacist, Joson Couve, grew up In Dandenong, Victoria with her parents and two brothers, Alan and Tom. 
Tragically, in 1915, both young men were killed at Gallipoli in the first few days of the campaign. This cast a lifelong shadow of grief over the Couve family. After the war, they  moved to the Mallee, where Joson Couve opened a pharmacy in Red Cliffs, near Mildura. Eileen became an active member of her new community and a founding member of the Sunraysia Fields Naturalists Club in 1949. 
My enduring interest in Eileen was ignited some years ago when I viewed her botanical collection, then at the Mildura Arts Centre. 
I was inspired and fascinated how Eileen’s story connects the disparate communities of the Mallee, Dandenong and inner-Melbourne. My quest now, is to fashion the fragments of Eileen’s life into something accessible and meaningful to a  contemporary audience.
What drives me is a broader aim. This concerns the links forged between botany, art, and science; how, by creating art, we can further explore those deeply human questions about environment, history, and our own sense of belonging. It is only though such endeavours that we can truly contemplate beauty in nature and engage in the healing and transfiguring act of cultural creativity.
Bringing Eileen’s life and times alive involves gathering a welter of historical and factual material. Although I have already assembled a lot of relevant information, there are still many pieces missing from the Eileen jigsaw – pieces that, when restored, will I hope convey the life and soul of this remarkable woman to a contemporary audience.

Christine Johnson September, September 2021

Inland is a series of Cyanotypes based on the collection of Mallee botanist, Eileen Ramsay (née Couve)

"When I first saw the Eileen Ramsay collection at the Mildura Arts Centre, I was inspired to create new works to celebrate Ramsay’s important contribution to Australian botany.
I was struck by the fragile beauty of Eileen’s specimen folio, held together with pink ribbon, and the care she had taken in assembling such a large collection. 
With the help of local plant enthusiasts, Marion and Peter Lang, I went in search of the plants that I hoped might still be growing in the Murray River region.
Working from Eileen’s plant list, Marion and Peter helped me identify many of these plants still growing in their natural environment.
I felt as if we were following in Eileen Ramsay’s footsteps as we drove around the river flats, finding matches with her specimens and field notes. 
It seemed appropriate to use the cyanotype process to document our findings. This process, originally used by Anna Atkins in the 1840s for botanical illustration, seemed the perfect way to combine the new with the old.
The ghost images of the plants against the blue background seemed to express something of a forgotten past brought into the focus of the present under the big blue dome of the sky."
 Christine Johnson

Eileen Ramsay was once described as “without doubt, the finest botanist in the north west [who] established quite a number of new records for the Mallee and Victoria”. 
Indeed, Ramsay’s astonishing collection of botanical specimens – preciously encased in a series of annotated hand-labelled folders as if placed there yesterday instead of more than half a century ago – remains as much a tribute to her knowledge as her diligence. Soon, this collection will move from the Mildura Art Centre to the Melbourne Herbarium: a tribute to a true and doughty botanical pioneer.
Eileen Ramsay’s assiduous skills represented only part of her extraordinary story. 
Of French-Mauritian and Australian background, Eileen Ramsay was also a significant writer of prose and poetry. She was local correspondent for the Riverlander, a good conversationalist, voracious reader and ardent dog-lover who never went anywhere (even to dine at The Grand Hotel, in Mildura) without her two hounds. She also loved hats – having a trunk jammed with more than 50 choice examples, including ones decorated with cherries, others with flowers. Her favourite was a long-feathered hat, called “Pinocchio”.
For all her bohemian ways, Eileen Ramsay’s life was tinged with sadness. After her two brothers, Tom and Dutchy, were killed at Gallipoli within a week of each other, Ramsay’s character would be marked by a melancholy streak. On Anzac Day, for example, she would retreat to the bush, well away from any ceremony.
Ramsay was born Eileen Couvé. Her father, a chemist in Dandenong, moved to Red Cliffs with his family in the mid-1920s to open a pharmacy and start a vineyard. Young Eileen immersed herself in civic affairs, including a term as president of the local women’s club. After the death of her parents, she married a Mr Ramsay, a water ganger, who took over the running of the vineyard.
Following her husband’s death, Ramsay, in 1949, became a founding member of the Field Naturalists Club, where she met John Plant, the “butterfly man”. They struck up an unlikely but lasting friendship. 
Every weekend, the “short and very plump” Ramsay and the much-younger stick-like Plant would go bush in her old Chevrolet, one of the dogs draped across the back window ledge. She went off in search of new plants; he went in search of butterflies and beetles. They would meet for lunch (prepared by Plant’s mother: cooking was not one of Ramsay’s natural skills), and return to their respective jobs, until early evening. Often, Plant, a talented artist, made watercolours of the specimens collected by Ramsay.
Often, Ramsay was so intent on her work that she would lose her bearings. On one occasion, as night fell, she flagged down a car on the highway, only to find she had been walking in the wrong direction.
In time, Ramsay became frailer. After her entire grape crop and her garage were destroyed during a freak hail storm, she suffered rapid memory-loss. Against her will, she was transferred to a Melbourne hospital, where she died in November 1961.
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