Hard to imagine a greater difference in floral exhibits than the early seed-propagated collections of one Daniel Bunce and the kaleidoscopic Eclipse: In Bloom light show recently hosted in his Eastern Park botanical legacy.

But then, it‘s perhaps apt given the man celebrated as founder of the Geelong Botanic Gardens was a fair contradiction himself.

“The notorious Daniel Bunce” isn’t exactly the description you’d expect for the bloke who transformed the grassy slopes of Eastern Park into what papers in the 1860s proclaimed a Garden of Eden, albeit “on a small scale”.

Bunce’s backstory’s a curious one, even given the era’s proliferation of adventurers, soldiers of fortunes, convicts and ne-er-do-wells.

Bunce was the gardens’ first curator, appointed 1857, six years after the site was selected, fenced off, carriageways laid out and tree-planting started. A road to Point Henry and a housing subdivision had also been fought off.

He designed gardens, planted some of the feature plants including giant bunya pines, the ginkgo biloba and soaring Chilean wine palm – all on the National Trust’s register of significant trees.

He filled a nursery with native and exotic plants, started up overseas exchange programs, championed tree planting across Geelong, the waterfront and public spaces.

All a rather neat redemption, in truth.

Before Geelong, Bunce ran a Hobart nursery into the ground. He appeared in court on assault and embezzlement charges. Had himself turfed from explorer Ludwig Leichhardt’s crew because of STD issues and poor treatment of its goats.

A brawl with his ex-wife Sarah and others, enhanced by booze and an errant pistol, landed Bunce in court. He somehow dodged any penalty, as he did again when accused of stealing from a bloke named McCord.

Mind you, he had his share of tragedy with four of his kids dying within three days in a diptheria epidemic. Married three times, Bunce died in 1872, and was buried in the Catholic section of the Geelong Cemetery with his second wife, Pelonamena, daughter of John Batman.

For all of that, Bunce trained at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London’s Kew, penned a Manual of Practical Gardening, along with Travels with Dr Leichhardt in Australia, Plant Cultivation in the Geelong Botanic Gardens and Language of the Aborigines of the Colony of Victoria. He wasn’t your average garden-variety gardener.

One of the more curious stories about him, to this scribbler any rate, appealed to my childhood hunter instincts.

Among Bunce’s varied donations to the gardens reportedly were 11 snake eggs. Two of the little wrigglers hatched after he accidentally cracked them, revealing six-inch serpents.

Rather than discard them, he preserved the hatchlings in spirits “for the inspection of the curious”. He claimed that even after a lifetime rambling around and exploring the country he’d never seen snake eggs.

After a childhood trying to seek them out, I’m happy to say neither did I.

This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 10 August 2026.