UQ purple heart: the man who planted 130 jacarandas and left a lasting legacy on the University

By Ian Townsend

The jacaranda has a special place in UQ’s heart. So much so that UQ Purple, the identifying colour of the University’s brand, reflects its vivid blossoms.

Every October, jacaranda trees explode in clouds of purple across the leafy St Lucia campus, stealing the show from more than 150 other species.

Warmer weather brought the jacaranda calendar forward this year, with the first blossoms appearing in mid-September. But last century, the jacaranda bloomed at the start of October, reminding students they had only a month of study left before the end-of-year exams in November.

Roger Prentice (Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (Honours) '75) was a medical student at St Lucia in the 1970s and remembers his mother, Una, a UQ student in the 1930s, telling him the same story.

“She always associated the flowering of the jacaranda as being the time to start studying for the exams,” Roger said.

Back in the 1930s, the UQ campus was a collection of overcrowded classrooms in the city, based around old Government House at Gardens Point.

Students would walk to classes under the jacarandas that lined the bottom end of George Street, and have lunch under the jacarandas in the Botanic Gardens across the road.

Those were the jacarandas that Roger’s mother remembered from her student days.

Deer and emus were some of the attractions at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens zoo in 1920. *Image: State Library of Queensland*

Deer and emus were some of the attractions at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens zoo in 1920. *Image: State Library of Queensland*

As Una Bick, she was the daughter of the Botanic Gardens curator and spent her childhood in a forest of exotic plants and near a small zoo in the gardens that housed monkeys, civet cats, flamingos, and a baboon.

In those gardens also grew what was believed to be Australia’s oldest jacaranda tree.

The jacaranda in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens planted in 1864, thought to be the first planted in Australia. Image: State Library of Queensland

The jacaranda in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens planted in 1864, thought to be the first planted in Australia. Image: State Library of Queensland

The story of UQ jacarandas is the story of that tree and of Una’s father, Ernest Walter Bick, the man who raised and planted more than 130 jacarandas across the St Lucia campus in the 1940s.

An image of Ernest Bick pictured with Lady MacGregor at the tree-planting ceremony at the inauguration of The University of Queensland on 10 December 1909.

Ernest Bick (light-coloured suit inside fence) is pictured with Lady MacGregor at the tree-planting ceremony at the inauguration of The University of Queensland on 10 December 1909. Image: University of Queensland Archives

Planting the seeds

The jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) is a native of South America. According to Australian Geographic, Brisbane claims the earliest jacaranda tree in Australia, planted in 1864, but the Sydney Botanic Garden jacaranda is dated around 1850, and jacarandas were listed for sale in Sydney in 1861.

Although it’s not known when the first tree was planted in Australia, we do know that the first superintendent of Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens, Walter Hill, Queensland’s colonial botanist, planted a tree grown from imported jacaranda seeds in 1864 – and it lived until 1980, when it was felled by a storm.

Its progeny live on. Hill, and the Botanic Garden’s curators who followed him, propagated thousands of trees from its seeds and sent them around Queensland, including to schoolchildren to plant on Arbor Day.

It’s likely that original old tree is the mother of Brisbane’s oldest jacarandas now putting on spectacular shows across the city, including those planted by Ernest Bick at UQ.

Ernest Walter Bick. Image supplied by Dr Roger Prentice

Putting down roots at UQ

Bick (affectionately called ‘Bickie’ by his wife, Jean) was born in England and arrived in Brisbane in 1884 when he was 14.

He worked for the Queensland Acclimatisation Society before becoming the gardener at Government House at Gardens Point. Bick was given the job of laying out the garden for the new Government House when it moved to Fernberg Road, at Bardon.

In 1917, Bick returned to Gardens Point as curator of the Botanic Gardens, and lived there for the next 23 years with Jean and their 2 children, Ralph and Una, and an Australian terrier called Terry. Their home is still there, by the way. It’s now the Gardens Club cafe.

In 1936, Brisbane Courier (now The Courier-Mail) journalist Clem Lack (Diploma of Journalism '28, Bachelor of Arts '34), a UQ graduate and occasional lecturer, visited Bick at the cottage and they went for a walk. The topic of jacarandas came up, and Bick described an elderly visitor admiring the purple flowers on the path, telling him:

“Them's nice trees, ain't they! Blue-bells, I calls 'em. I hears some people callin' 'em jackeroos, but blue-bells is good enough for me!”

It was the same year Una Bick (Bachelor of Arts '36, Bachelor of Laws (Honours) '38, Doctor of Laws honoris causa '85), who had just graduated from UQ with a Bachelor of Arts, enrolled with the first law students in the new TC Beirne School of Law. Two years later, in 1938, she became UQ’s first law graduate.

“Her name commenced with B, and only 3 graduated in that year,” her son, Roger, said.

“So, she was the first of the 3 to receive her degree.”

She was handed her degree by UQ’s Chancellor Sir James Blair, who had spent most of the 1930s Depression years trying to raise money to fund UQ’s move to St Lucia, on the land acquired by a gift from the Mayne family in the 1920s.

The year Una received her law degree was the year construction finally started on the Forgan Smith Building.

Ernest Walter Bick's daughter, Una Prentice, receives an honorary doctorate from UQ in 1985. Image: University of Queensland Archives

UQ botanist Dr Des Herbert helped draw up a plan to landscape the site, and Bick set up the nursery to propagate the trees.

In March 1939, a young UQ agricultural science graduate, Feilding Chippendale, was paid 5 pounds a week to start planting. He was given 2 men, with spades, hoes, and a wheelbarrow, to help him.

Chippendale planted the first trees at UQ's St Lucia campus, including the pines surrounding the lake and Pine Knoll near the Women’s College. But in June 1940, he resigned after being offered a job at the Cotton Research Station in Biloela.

Coincidentally, Brisbane City Council forced Bick, who’d turned 70, to retire the same month. He had to leave his cottage in the gardens. It’s not clear whether Sir James offered him the job at UQ or whether Bick asked for it, but with a war on there was no-one else qualified. Bick was the obvious choice.

UQ had been a big part of Bick’s life in the Botanic Gardens, and it may have seemed like fate that his retirement coincided with the University’s move to St Lucia and the need for someone to plant the trees.

Bick bought a house in what is now Hawken Drive, not far from the campus, and began the immense task of planting thousands of trees and shrubs.

Some existing eucalypts were on the site, as well as the young trees Chippendale had planted, but most of the land was treeless.

Weeds needed clearing, the ground broken, and the young trees watered by bucket. The fertile river flats were turned over to vegetables for the war, so the planting was done mostly on the higher ground where the soil was poor.

It was hard work. Chippendale had been in his 20s. Bick was in his 70s. By the time the war ended, the planting was way behind schedule.

Nevertheless, by 1947 Bick had planted more than 1,700 trees.

There’s a report in the UQ Archives that lists 150 species. After royal palms, the most common tree Bick planted was the jacaranda.

But he also favoured several species of pine, as well as silky oaks, poincianas, bauhinias, African tulip trees and flame trees.

Bick had used the contacts he’d made over the years to source seeds and material from other botanic gardens around the country. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew even sent him Amazon waterlilies for the lake.

Click on the photos below to reveal the full image.

An image Ernest Walter Bick wearing a suit and bow tie.

Ernest Walter Bick. Image supplied by Dr Roger Prentice

Ernest Walter Bick's daughter, Una Prentice, receives an honorary doctorate from UQ in 1985. Image: University of Queensland Archives

The Steele building under construction in 1940, the year Ernest Bick began planting jacarandas at UQ's St Lucia campus. Image: Fryer Library University of Queensland Photograph Collection UQFL466 AC/P/62

An aerial photo of UQ's St Lucia campus in 1947. There were very few large trees on the campus at this time.

An aerial photo of UQ's St Lucia campus in 1947. Image: University of Queensland Archives

An aerial photo of UQ's St Lucia campus in 1957, still with very few large trees.

An aerial photo of UQ's St Lucia campus in 1957. Image: University of Queensland Archives

A modern image of students relaxing on the lawn of the Great Court under a blooming jacaranda tree.

Current students can relax under the shade of blooming jacarandas in UQ's Great Court, thanks to the work of Ernest Bick.

An image of people walking along a path where large bloom above them.

Jacarandas burst to life in clouds of purple at UQ's St Lucia campus each spring.

An image of a performer at a recent BLOOM Festival at UQ.

UQ has celebrated jacaranda season in recent years with the BLOOM Festival, which fills the St Lucia, Gatton and Herston campuses with vibrant, innovative activities and celebrations for everyone to enjoy.

A legacy in full bloom

One day in April 1949, Bick was planting a tree at the site of what was to be the Women’s College near College Road, when he suddenly collapsed and died.

“He was exerting himself and had a heart attack on the front lawn,” Roger said.

Bick had spent most of his 70s – all of his retirement years – supervising the planting and nurturing of around 2,000 trees on the UQ campus.

He’d never had the opportunity to study at university, but during his long career he’d been a founding member of the Queensland Horticultural Society, the Royal Society of Queensland, and the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Even though he didn't have a degree, he mixed with many professional people, being right in the centre of things in what is now known as Gardens Point,” Roger said.

“In many ways he was self-taught.”

Bick would have been grateful, though, that he’d been able to give both his children a university education. His son Ralph became a research chemist, studying alkaloids in trees at Cambridge University. He was later Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tasmania.

His daughter Una became UQ’s first law graduate, although no legal firm would hire women lawyers at the time.

“Despite being encouraged by a number of members of the law profession to study law, my mother was unable to obtain a position as a qualified lawyer until many of the males had enlisted in the Defence Forces.”

UQ’s Chancellor, Sir James Blair, who had just retired as Queensland Chief Justice, employed Una to catalogue his collection of books, which became the genesis of the University’s Law Library.

She eventually worked as a wartime crown prosecutor, and later as a solicitor.

Una Prentice (second from left) at the First Alumni Reunion and Commemoration Garden Party at Queensland Government House in 1967. *Image: Fryer Library University of Queensland Photograph Collection UQFL466 AK/P/53*

Una Prentice (second from left) at the First Alumni Reunion and Commemoration Garden Party at Queensland Government House in 1967. *Image: Fryer Library University of Queensland Photograph Collection UQFL466 AK/P/53*

In 1946 she married another UQ law graduate, Tony Prentice (Bachelor of Laws '40), who was a partner for many years at Brisbane law firm, Stephens and Tozer. Una later became president of the Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women.

In 1985, Una was awarded an honorary doctorate from UQ, recognising her contribution to women, the legal profession, and to the University through the Alumni Association.

After studying medicine at UQ and graduating in 1975, Una's son Roger became the Director of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital until retiring last year.

Ernest Bick, despite having no university education, left an indelible purple stamp on the University his children and grandchildren attended.

“I don’t think the people around then would have appreciated that in 80 years’ time the jacaranda would be the overwhelming emblem of the University,” Roger said.

A Canadian man, Wesley Henderson, once wrote a book about his father, Nelson, who had settled in Canada around the same time Bick settled in Australia. The 2 men lived similar lives.

Bick was a gardener. Nelson Henderson was a farmer. Both worked hard to give their children the education they never had.

On the day Wesley graduated from university, Nelson told his son:

“The true meaning of life, Wesley, is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Jacarandas, well-tended, can live for 200 years. Bick’s jacarandas will cast their shade for many years to come.

Purple patch: where to find UQ's best locations for jacaranda photos

Read the article