Linaker landscape

John Hawker

The Buchan Caves Reserve is more than just limestone caves. The Reserve is greatly admired and valued for the impressive collection of exotic trees planted along Spring Creek Valley in amongst the indigenous Yellow Box, Manna Gum, and Blackwood and on the hillsides, the rare Buchan Blue Wattle. In 1929 Hugh Linaker prepared a landscape plan for the Reserve, providing a planting list, sketch of the avenue trees, and a rustic shade house. His plan showed predominantly exotic trees although natives were not excluded and included eucalypts, she-oaks and wattles. While the colourful deciduous trees have become a major tourist feature in autumn, the planting also includes many fine conifers; pines, cypress and redwoods. Linaker, born in Ballarat on 4 June 1872, was one of nine children. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed as a gardener to the Ballarat Gardens. After 14 years at Ballarat, he was awarded the post of curator of the Ararat Gardens out of 96 applicants. He held this position from 1901 to 1912, when he became Landscape Gardener at Mont Park Hospital for the Insane. Around 1933 he was appointed State Superintendent of Parks and Gardens. During his career Linaker was responsible from 1912 for the design and maintenance of the grounds of all mental hospitals in the State. He was also involved in the design of the grounds to the Shrine of Remembrance in 1933, the Yarra Boulevard beautification scheme Yarra Bend National Park and Mount Buffalo National Park. Linaker's advice was sought by many country municipalities for the planning of public parks and gardens including Ararat Botanic Gardens (Alexandra Gardens), Alexandra Park, Stawell, Herbert Gardens, Box Hill, Princes Park, Maryborough, and the Pioneer Women's Memorial in the Domain. He planned the plantations for the model township of Yallourn and the Road Plantations on Geelong Road. He advised also on the gardens at Stonnington, Malvern, Carn Brea, Hawthorn and at Burnham Beeches, Kallista. In 1938 Linaker prepared a plan for the draining of Lake Augusta (now the sunken oval) at Castlemaine. Linaker was a frequent lecturer and an inaugural member of the Victorian Tree Planters Association formed in 1926. Hugh Linaker died on 10 October 1938 at the age of 66. Linaker is regarded by many as the leading landscape gardener of his generation in Victoria, and in one sense was a successor to William Guilfoyle.