CABINET COLLECTORS AND MUSEUMS: DARWINISM RESISTED

The final surveying of the Reef by the Herald and the subsequent development of a port and a more secure navigation structure by Heath and the Marine Board marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new phase. The work of the naturalists, however, had made no comparable advances. Apart from the few scientists who were carried aboard the British naval survey vessels, whose findings were taken back to England to be integrated into the maturing disciplines of biology and geology, little progress occurred in the colony. Natural history in Australia, in contrast, in its formative years had been the preserve of a minority of conservative and wealthy gentlemen amateurs and cabinet collectors. Although membership in the naturalist societies was limited to men, a few talented women also made contributions. Their efforts, however, were almost entirely limited to botany, and then chiefly as illustrators, and some of their work has enduring distinction, including that of the sisters Harriet and Helena Scott; and Ellis Rowan, whose paintings of Queensland flora are excellent examples of botanical illustration. The one woman to achieve distinction in both botany and zoology was the German collector Konkordie Amalie Dietrich (1821–91) who travelled throughout Queensland on behalf of the Godeffroy Museum of Hamburg. Unfortunately, all of her specimens left the country (Moyal 1986).