Well worn , loose pages sticking out , this 1939 Queensland School Reader , bought at a garage sale , instinctively promised to contain interesting contents without being opened , other later editions in this series bought over the years in North Queensland . Taken home, the foxed and bumped acquisition was eagerly examined from cover to cover and , as expected , revealed numerous items of interest, to be covered in a series of posts in this blog .
One of the loose pages, above , was a foxed colourplate of an Australian landscape painting , The Valley of the Tweed, by Elioth Gruner , a pencil drawing of Popeye the Sailorman in the margin , another tiny Popeye sketch found elsewhere , along with two other comic strip characters of that same era in pencil .
The faded above photograph of a bush scene ,used to illustrate a poem , Bell-Birds , by Henry Kendall , carried the name Hilda Geissmann . Geissman?What a story to tell . Born Brisbane 1890, daughter of Swiss -born William Geissmann and Bertha, nee Reinhold, of German parentage, Hilda became nationally and internationally known for her knowledge about and photographs of Queensland flora and fauna , birds in particular , and orchids .
Her father built a boarding house called Capo di Monte on Tamborine Mountain in 1898 . There Hilda became a self taught naturalist and nature photographer , with a half plate camera , developing and printing photographs herself . An expert on the flora and fauna of the area ,she was later presented as one of the outstanding women in the book , Rainforest Women , activist and poet Judith Wright , conservationist and Great Barrier Reef campaigner , one of them .
Her father built a boarding house called Capo di Monte on Tamborine Mountain in 1898 . There Hilda became a self taught naturalist and nature photographer , with a half plate camera , developing and printing photographs herself . An expert on the flora and fauna of the area ,she was later presented as one of the outstanding women in the book , Rainforest Women , activist and poet Judith Wright , conservationist and Great Barrier Reef campaigner , one of them .
Starting in 1913, Hilda studied art at the Brisbane Technical College along with students Lloyd Rees and Daphne Mayo , both of whom became well known in the art world , in the case of Daphne, a close friend, she designed two doors for Sydney's Mitchell Library .
The popular naturalist and author, Alec Chisholm , a young journalist on Brisbane's Daily Mail and editor of the Queensland Naturalist , received much information from Hilda.
From 1922 to 1928, she published more than 30 photographic essays in the popular weekly, the Queenslander, mostly of local natural history but also from as far afield as Rockhampton and North-west Island.
She corresponded with a world authority on cycads, Professor C. J. Chamberlain, of the University of Chicago, providing him with cycads, moss and lichens. The professor sent her a Leitz microscope and chemicals to carry out histological work for him . She wrote Orchids of Mount Tamborine , a rare orchid she photographed and named disappeared with development of the area .
In 1923 she began writing articles for Queensland school papers, one Elsa the Fern Fairy. When she died in 1988 a monument was erected on Mount Tamborine which stated she was a true pioneer of natural history , remembered on the mountain.
NEXT: With World War ll about to explode on the world , the School Reader contains coverage of the Anzacs at Gallipoli and articles explaining the meaning of war and the League of Nations brave ambition to prevent nations fighting each other.
