Webb, Jim   (1926 - 2012)

"As a child my father and I used to go out into the bush whenever we could at weekends. Not necessarily doing anything in particular, but just enjoying the Sydney sandstone flora, particularly in spring when the boronias were out and things like that.

I came to Canberra post-war. I came here as a student and, I think, it was 1947 when I came back from overseas with the army. I came to Canberra on a Commonwealth training scheme, a trainee.

I was a trainee for the Department of the Interior, Parks and Gardens. The idea was for a number of us, there was only about eight, who were to be supervisors in gardens and so forth, to do our training basically in Canberra. It was a special course; basically we had lecturers from the CSIRO and places like that. We were encompassed by the Canberra Technical College at the time. They looked after us and for the rest of the time, apart from the initial six months full-time, we spent three years on the job with one day a week on academic theory type things. We did the curriculum of both Sydney and our own particular exams from Canberra, so we ended up with qualifications from the Ryde School of Horticulture and the Technical College in Canberra."

Jim Webb's early involvement with the development of the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra in the 1940s and 1950s is presented in the transcript of an oral history session:

Webb oral history

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/about/history/oral-history/webb-1995.html
https://www.npaact.org.au/res/File/Oral%20History/OH3%20Jim%20Webb.pdf
Portrait Photo: 1988, M.Fagg.