Patrice O’Shea
It is easy to say that a person’s contribution to an organisation is immeasurable. In many ways, Ray Robinson’s was. But in other ways, it could be measured pretty accurately.
Ray joined the Friends in the big year of 2011. Stuart Rattle had shaken the whole organisation up and we were heading to the first big Musk Farm opening. But when I joined in late 2009, we had less than $200 in the bank and very much needed a fighting fund.
The 2011 Committee decided to hold a cocktail party at committee member Jo Ruchel’s Raglan Hotel, and she convinced Ray, her next door neighbour, to organise and mix the cocktails. Which he did. We had just enough money from the Shire to pay for advertising and some ingredients – the rest was donated by members and supporters. Others donated prizes for a very lively (cocktail assisted) auction. To describe the night as a success and a total blast, is still to under estimate the transformative impact it was to have on the hitherto rather sedate Friends of Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens.
The night enabled us to bank $5000, the result of a lot of hard work, but largely attributable to Ray’s Whisky Sours, Manhattans, Black Russians, and quite a few others that I can’t remember. That money paid for toilets, marquees, advertising, signage etc that were needed for the Musk Farm event, which in turn, enabled us to bank $60,000. Ray had such a good time he also joined the Committee, which he described as the coolest group in Daylesford. Meeting times were set for 8.30 Saturday mornings, which they still are. Ray didn’t waste evenings on meetings. How right he was.
With some of that money, we immediately embarked on the restoration of the Rustic Cascade. How much of that was Ray’s work?
It was some time before Ray set himself to organise what had been an intermittent, informal and variable production of Friends’ plants, for sale at fundraising events. It took time, but with the encouragement of Annie Pyers, work at the Shed began. Annie stipulated black pots only. Ray gradually developed a nursery-like infrastructure and built up a network of customers. His advice was understandably sought after, and he encouraged ranges of plants that he could also sell in large numbers to the small group of professional garden design jobs he was still doing. And he could sell like no one else.
A husband waiting at the gate of the Fennell’s Bolwarrah open garden, bemoaned the fact that “that bloke” had hypnotised his wife and that there was no way he could fit a third trolley of plants that were coming his way on the back of the golf cart, into his roomy 4WD.
Ray’s plant hypnotism benefited all of us. During COVID, we were taking about $50,000 annually from his plant sales. Open gardens were a thing of the past. Ray was effectively bankrolling us. Ray’s smile was broad; his patience with the rest of us was remarkable. He gave precise and absolutely sound direction of how to propagate, where to put plants and how to maintain them. And you didn’t get away with deviating from any of his instructions – “40 years of experience, dear.”
Ray took on the presidency of the Friends between Andrew Lowth and Frank Page. He concentrated on gardening and Gardens, rather than on the complexities of incorporated associations. But his contacts in the world of horticulture were of considerable benefit to the Gardens. Where you see the flaming red Nyssas in Autumn, the fabulous oak leafed hydrangeas beside the stone steps, the many varieties of Viburnums and Philadelphus and the lusciously perfumed Stachyurus Praecox by the main path, you are seeing plants sourced and placed by Ray. The impressive bank of Arthropodiums came from Ray. And his farewell gesture to the Friends was planting the Camellia “Volunteer” beside the rotunda lawn.
Ray worked a solid 5 day week for the Friends during COVID, and how he maintained the pace was remarkable. Ill health finally drove him to step away so that he could deal with it. Sadly, a much more sinister diagnosis ultimately made life in Daylesford itself no longer possible and he headed to the coast and a life where he could access a kinder climate and ongoing support. But he gardened pretty much to the end.
All of us have memories of Ray. He was so generous; he was so naughty. He was his own man. His life experiences were exotic to say the least. I am looking forward very much to an event where we can come together, “with a few bevs”, to celebrate Ray’s friendship, and Friendship, swap stories and acknowledge all that we have enjoyed and discovered in his warm and often, inspirational company.
Patrice O’Shea is a former President and long-term Secretary of the Friends of Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens. This article was originally published in the Friends of Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens Winter Newsletter 2025. Re-published with permission.
