Mr Guilfoyle’s South Sea Islands Adventure on HMS Challenger

By Diana Hill

Discover the inspiration for the famed redesign of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. It was the young William Guilfoyle’s botanical tour of the South Sea Islands in 1868 that provided his vision for the one of the world’s great public parks.

Share his excitement of discovering and collecting tropical plants, giving the local cannibals a very wide berth and being an eyewitness to an uprising in Fiji. Here is an unprecedented armchair view of the riches of this region by an emerging botanist who would later transform our understanding of garden design.

Mr Guilfoyle’s South Sea Islands Adventure on HMS Challenger is Guilfoyle’s detailed account of the four months he spent exploring Samoa, the Friendly Islands, Fiji, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia. It is the final book of a glorious trilogy—Mr Guilfoyle’s Shakespearian Botany and Mr Guilfoyle’s Honeymoon, The Gardens of Europe & Great Britain—which illuminates the extraordinary genius of William Guilfoyle, botanist, landscape designer, artist and writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780522874037

Book preview