Hackney Tram Depot Goes Green - Botanic Garden Takeover

All aboard at the old Hackney Tram Depot for a journey of discovery into the green world. One great tram barn building is all brick and concrete, and where once three more gabled barns stood in the magnificent International Rose Garden. The main entrance is now glassed in to house the new Biodiversity Centre.

Next door, the three-storey wedding cake of a Federation-style building that was once the grand headquarters to the Municipal Tramways Trust has instead become the new administrative and educational headquarters of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

It is often mistaken for the yet-to-be constructed National Wine Centre. That will sit close to the corner of North Terrace and Hackney Road. A garden will separate it from the MTT building, named after Sir William Goodwin. He was brought from New Zealand to mastermind the electrification of Adelaide's old horsedrawn system.

On Postcards, I called in first on the Plant Biodiversity Centre. In a sense, it's a scientific trip to the Australian Bush. The front counter, made of wood from the old Herbarium (as this institution was called until its recent shift here), is the public face of an international scientific institution designed?? to the understanding of plant species. In the do-it-yourself reference library next door, staffer Helen, helped me identify a sample collected (with permission, of course) from the nearby gardens. It was a lemon-scented grass, native to the Flinders Ranges. Keen botanists, friends of the parks, senior students and so on use the airy reference library that looks onto Hackney Road.

Upstairs, there is a library devoted to books on plants, and it's available to the botany-keen public by appointment. Some of its collection is rare and precious, including a Latin text on herbs that's nearly five hundred years old, and a handbook of Australian species published by Matthew Flinders naturalist Robert Brown.

Further into the old tram barn, where once were dozens of trams parked overnight, there is now a huge and priceless collection in what the staff call "the vaults". Eight hundred and fifty thousand dried plant specimens are catalogued and stored in row upon row of compactus shelving.

They go back as far as a coastal daisy collected on Captain Cook's voyage up the east coast of Australia in 1770 and a lake found at Port Lincoln on Flinder's epic charting expedition in South Australian waters in 1802.

On Postcards, we saw taxonomists, scientists devoted to understanding the find distinctions between plant species and the implications thereof, poring over specimens, often with the aid of a microscope. New species are being discovered all the time. Some come from collectors in the bush, but, surprisingly, many more come from a detailed study of the catalogue in the vaults of the Plant Biodiversity Centre. Hundreds of new Australian wattles have been identified, for instance, simply by better examination and understanding of their subtle differences.

Why do we need to know? These findings help our knowledge of the ecology of regions, and so National Parks and Wildlife Service (with whom the centre is now associated) are key "customers", along with Landcare, ecotourism and other enthusiasts who use this as a scientific advisory centre.

While the Plant Biodiversity Centre looks to the bush, the new Goodwin Building Botanic Gardens headquarters focusses on the living museums - the Adelaide Botanic Garden immediately behind it, and Mt Lofty and Willunga. The old MTT presence is still very evident in the grand foyer. The initials-insignia is carved above the elaborate leadlight and timbered entrance. And the imported Italian black and white tiles in the foyer are well worn with tread of thousands of motormen and conductors who came to collect their pay - the "cashier" sign etched on an internal window remains.

In what used to be the Chief Engineer's Office, I watched junior primary students from the Rosary School make their own cardboard tropical conservatories. Twenty-five thousand young learners join the Botanic Gardens education programs each year, and now the facilities are much improved. The big ground-floor general office space is now a seminar room for hire to the public, as is the old MTT Boardroom upstairs.

The interior and external features of the Goodman Building exude the confidence of and style of a new nation in the 1900's. Its restoration, along with the transformation of the tram barn next door, have given the old Hackney Depot buildings a valuable new role. Between them, is a new gateway (complete with parking) to the beautiful Adelaide Botanic Garden.

Details:

Adelaide Botanic Garden
Open everyday

Adelaide Botanic Gardens Office
Hackney Road, Hackney Open Mon-Fri 9.00am to 5.00pm

Plant Biodiversity Centre Hackney Road, Hackney
Open Mon-Fri 9.00am to 5.00pm

For more information you can email info@postcards-sa.com.au