Mike Gilmour, president of the Queensland Wattle Association. Photo: Supplied.
You can put it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand. Thus goes the Monty Python’s Flying Circus doggerel about a blossom known and loved by Australians – and perhaps no one loves it more than Mike Gilmour. Mike, president of the Queensland Wattle Association, is on a crusade to raise awareness of the wattle plant and encourage more local wattles to be planted in time to blossom for the 2032 Olympic Games.
“There are over a thousand species of wattle in Australia; varieties are found in every state and territory and in a really wide range of environments. It’s said that there’s a wattle tree blooming somewhere in Australia every month of the year,” he says.
“The first wattle celebration was held in 1838 in Hobart; the story has it that people who turned up wearing a sprig of wattle were given a free beer and sandwich!”
Mike says that wattle’s rise to floral authority was gradual.
“Wattle was included in our coat of arms in 1913, but it wasn’t until Bob Hawke’s prime ministership that Golden Wattle was declared Australia’s national floral emblem. Green and gold were declared Australia’s national colours, and National Wattle Day was established under Paul Keating’s stewardship.”
Indigenous Australians used wattle for food, tools, weapons, handles and medicine; seeds were roasted and eaten, or ground to make flour for baking, sap could be eaten, made into a drink or be used as a glue. White settlers were quick to appreciate the home-building potential of wattle-and-daub.
Wattles are quick to establish and spread, often unwelcome on farms because they encroach on cropland, but they’re welcomed by native birds, insects, and mammalian insectivores for the food and shelter they provide.
“One thing we don’t have here is a passion for our floral emblem,” Mike says. “We’re hoping that the councils and communities in South East Queensland will plant the local wattle varieties – Golden, Silver, Zigzag and Eprapah – so that they’ll all be in blossom in time for the 2032 Olympics.”
Mike will be giving a talk at Victoria Point Library on the morning of Thursday, September 4; bookings required.
