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recounted how her father had pressed the oils, using his wife’s clothes mangle. With each of his experiments
Holtze kept copious lists and cross-references, noting those species that did well each season, those that did well at
certain times and needed further experiments in varying soils and at different times, and those that appeared to fail
even in nursery conditions. The Gardens were also fulfilling their role in providing plants to private plantations.
In 1881, 8 000 banana trees and 13 000 pineapple seedlings were handed out. In addition, one of the original
demands of the Palmerston residents for the Gardens to be developed as a recreation area appears to have been
fulfilled satisfactorily as, on 2 July 1881, the local newspaper pointed out, ‘The amiable Government Gardener is
eaten out of house and home by casual visitors. Why doesn’t someone put up a regular pub at Fannie Bay?’
In 1875, to encourage investment in the north, the South Australian government offered 5 000 Pounds for
the first 500 tones of sugar to be produced in the Northern Territory. Holtze was urged to give experiments with
sugarcane top priority. Tests in September 1880 showed that the results were ‘beyond all expectation’, and that the
Territory could look forward to a booming sugar industry. By April 1881 approximately 40 000 hectares of land
had been taken up by southern investors interested in the production of sugar. The Delissa Pioneer Sugar Company
took a major holding on Cox Peninsula and in August 1881 the first crushing of surplus cane from the Gardens
took place. The anticipated sugar boom never eventuated, with crop failures, insect pests and the weather all
contributing to the abandonment of sugarcane as a large-scale investment in the early 1890s. Ironically, Holtze was
blamed for much of the failure as it was due to his success with cane in the Gardens that investors poured money
into establishing sugarcane plantations in the Territory. However, as early as 1882 he was telling a member of the
visiting Parliamentary Party that Delissa and other planters had planted at the wrong time and that ‘their crops will
not be one-half so good as they might have been’.
Holtze found a strong ally and friend on the appointment of J L Parsons as Government Resident in 1884.
Parsons’s arrival was timely as the South Australian government was going through one of its periodic cost-cutting
exercises and proposed that the area of the Gardens, and its expenses, be cut by half. It was also suggested that,
‘If there is any difficulty ... the role of the Government Gardner is to be abolished ... and the Gardens worked
by prison authorities.’ Parsons not only rejected these suggestions, he also asked that Holtze’s request for a new
experimental garden site be considered as this was needed for the agricultural development of the Territory. When
over a year had passed and he was still waiting for a decision on the garden from the government, Parsons took
matters into his own hands. On 2 January 1880 he announced that 10 acres (four hectares) of paper bark swamp,
the site of the present Darwin Botanical Gardens, was to be cleared for the new gardens. An official Proclamation
for the Botanical Gardens was issued on 1 October 1886.
With the political pressure removed from him by Parsons, Holtze was free to concentrate on the Gardens
and experiments. He kept in contact with botanists throughout the world, in particular with Baron Ferdinand
von Muller, Government Botanist to Victoria, who sent him many valuable plant species. The Gardens flourished.
Yet, in spite of the many successful experiments, investment in the many crop species that had proved their
hardiness in a tropical climate was not forthcoming. Holtze felt that crops such as arrowroot, cotton and rice, which
had been grown and thrived in the Gardens for many years, would be commercially viable. He won many prizes for
these at agricultural and horticultural exhibitions, including two gold, one silver and three bronze medals—as well
as eight certificates of merit—at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in Calcutta in 1886. It seems that southern
investors were wary of further investment in the Territory after the initial disastrous attempts to commercially
grow crops such as sugarcane, tobacco and coffee, all of which had proved highly successful in the Gardens
environment. Holtze himself never lost faith in the potential of the north. In 1882 he offered to take up 10 000 acres
(4 000 hectares) for a cotton plantation for which, if successful, he would pay the government 7 Shillings 6 Pence
per acre. That this offer was not taken up is probably due to the land laws of the time. Holtze constantly criticised
the laws, saying that the most suitable lands for development were ‘practically locked up against the bona-fide
settler’.
Holtze did not limit his interests to the Gardens and commercial land use in the Territory. In 1888, alarmed at
the indiscriminate cutting of trees by Chinese woodcutters, he suggested that a forester should be appointed, as was
the case in Hong Kong. He was duly appointed Forester for the Northern Territory, a position that carried no extra
salary but which he took very seriously. In 1889 he was honoured with a Fellowship of the Linnaean Society in
recognition of his services to botany in Australia.
In 1891 Holtze was appointed Director of the Botanic Gardens in Adelaide. His position in Palmerston was
taken over by his son, Nicholas, on a part-time basis, which he held until his death in the Gardener’s Cottage on
24 May 1913. During his 12 years as Government Gardener Maurice had, despite almost continuous problems
with finance and labour, managed to show that a wide variety of plant species could, with due care and attention,
be grown and flourish in the tropical north. He was honoured after his arrival in Adelaide with a Fellowship of
the Royal Society. On 13 June 1913 Holtze was awarded the Imperial Service Order (ISO) for his services to
botany. When speaking in later years on the capabilities of the Northern Territory for tropical agriculture, Holtze
continued to stress the importance of a careful, scientific approach to land cultivation in the north as its curse had
been that ‘inexpert persons have tried to establish plantations on unsuitable land’. Holtze retired as Director of the
Botanic Gardens in Adelaide in 1917. He is credited with much of the landscaping in Adelaide and its reputation
as a ‘garden city’. In Palmerston, later known as Darwin, the living memorial to Maurice Holtze was seen in
the beautiful Darwin Botanical Gardens. The Holtze family was also remembered in the suburb of Ludmilla,
named after Holtze’s only daughter. Maurice Holtze died at American River on Kangaroo Island, South Australia,
on 12 October 1923. His wife, two sons and his daughter survived him.
J W Bull, Early Experiences of Life in South Australia: and an Extended Colonial History, 1884; W J Sowden, The Northern Territory as
It Is, 1882; Northern Territory Government Residents Reports, 29 September 1884, 1 January 1890; J B Bauer, ‘Some Other Eden: a History