Professor Kingsley Dixon, the acclaimed Western Australian botanist, has vowed to rebuild his cherished Cyress Farm and Gardens after it was destroyed by fire last week.
The celebrated garden owned by the renowned bush fire scientist went up in flames after a bushfire that began in the nearby Nanga Brook campground tore through his property on Saturday.
The property was featured 12 acres of managed lawns, lakes, walkways and Australia’s biggest maple collection, and sits among 110 acres of forest reserve. Professor Dixon had hoped to stay and fight the fires, but he followed the advice of fire fighters who told him it was time to leave.
“I thought we were going to stay and defend because we had it set up, but when I saw the look on their face, I thought I’d defer to them now.
“We just looked around us and everything was lit up with the forward embers, our barn caught alight and our Japanese tea house on the lake was burning when we drove through it all.” Professor Dixon told The Sunday Times.
Professor Dixon is world renown for his 1992 discovery that it is smoke from bushfires, not heat, that causes many native plants to germinate. He spent 32 years as the foundation director of science at the Kings Park Botanical Gardens. Professor Dixon now teaches at Curtin University.
Last year Professor Dixon shared that he and his partner often faced homophobic abuse from neighbours in the Waroona region.
OIP Staff, Declaration: OUTinPerth co-editor Leigh Andrew Hill is also an employee at Curtin University.
