Perth Voice Interactive

THE chance encounter of a blossoming wattle in the south of France years ago provided the seed which has bloomed into the WA Maritime Museum’s latest exhibition Empress Joséphine’s Garden.

AGB Creative director Anthony Bastic, who’d been senior events manager at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, was having a career break and renting a holiday home in Toulon (intriguingly named Les Eucaplypt) when he came across a small forest of the iconic Australian flower while on a drive with a friend.

“I said to my friend, ‘I wonder why this wattle is here, and all these Eucalyptus trees’, and she said to me, ‘you see Australia everywhere, big Aussie’,” Mr Bastic told the Voice.

“Then I was intrigued to find out more, and so that’s when I was first introduced to the story.”

The story turned out to be the fascination for Australian flora and fauna held by Josephine Bonaparte, wife of emperor Napoleon.

She had French expeditions send thousands of specimens of Australian wildflowers and wildlife to the couple’s palatial home Malmaison, just 12 kilometres west of Paris, and encouraged them to be planted across the country.

Included in her menagerie were two black swans Mr Bastic says were collected from the Swan River during French explorer Nicolas Baudin’s 1801-1803 expedition and brought home on a diet of wine-soaked bread. 

Mme Bonaparte amazed visitors with the swans; previously the expression “black swan” was the literal equivalent of “pigs might fly”.

“A couple of years ago I was creating a digital exhibition called Beauty Rich and Rare, which examined Cook’s voyage through the eyes of Joseph Banks,” Mr Bastic said.

“When I was doing my research, I came across correspondence between Josephine and Sir Joseph Banks, and he said to her, ‘you know these plants, you need them to be in a warmer climate’.

“So she builds this big hothouse, the biggest in Europe, and then other plans she sends down to the south of France, to give them to the people.”

“So I wanted to write a series of these stories that had a baseline of the plants and animals that Australia has, and why they are the fascination of the world.”

The result is an immersive digital experience where thousands of images taken from the explorers’ journals and books, letters and Mme Bonaparte’s own memorabilia to tell her story around the walls of the museum.

Empress Josephine’s Garden will be at the WA Maritime Museum until February 9 next year.

by STEVE GRANT