Summary

Framed collection of photographs celebrating and recording the 'Record Liberation of Rainbow Trout Yearlings from the Ballarat Fish Hatcheries to Camperdown, September 1923'.

The Camperdown Chronicle (6 Sept 1923, page 2) printed that on the 7 September 1923 4100 yearling rainbow trout were to be dispatched from Ballarat to Camperdown in 164 cans on a special railway van. This was the largest order that had ever left Ballarat Hatchery, and was consigned to Leonard Buckland. The article mentions that photographs were organised to document each stage of the process for the purpose of keeping a record in the hatchery building.

The frame has seven photographs including: two images of the hatchery cans in Ballarat being loaded on and off trucks, arrival at Camperdown and the unloading the cans from the railway van onto horse-drawn wagons, the transportation of the cans by wagon to Lake Bullen-Merri, resting the cans in the waters of the lake and the final release of the trout into the lake. The photograph with the caption 'Ready for liberation' features Leonard Buckland (wearing white trousers, jacket and hat) and the boy on the right (wearing a light coloured jumper) is John Leonard Buckland (the donor's father). The photograph with the caption 'Away they go' features Leonard Buckland and John Leonard Buckland on the left.

Leonard Vine Buckland imported King Alfred Daffodils to Australia. He was a passionate and expert daffodil grower and is also responsible for raising many unique seedlings. He was distinguished by hundreds of awards (including the Melba Perpetual Daffodil Trophy in 1916) and is regarded as 'Australia's most successful daffodil grower' (Portland Guardian, 24 March 1930). He acquired a substantial collection from the sale of bulbs by Mr Titheridge in 1898.

Leonard Buckland was a lawyer in Camperdown for the firm of Buckland and Nevitt, and tragically died in 1930 as a result of a gun incident. The 'Portland Guardian' (24 March 1930) described that Leonard Buckland 'ended his days with hardly a friend, was, in his better days, a considerable figure in society, a member of one of the State's best families'. He was noted as the person responsible for several important legacies to the Camperdown district: the double avenue of elms planted in the 1860s were kept alive by the water scheme which Buckland developed, and the stocking of Lake Bullen Merri with rainbow trout, and the presence of daffodils that continue to grow at Leonard Buckland's former homestead, 'Keyham', and along the southern edge of Camperdown. He was a leading figure in the management of the Camperdown public gardens, a foundation member of the Camperdown Club.

In 2014 about 30 different varieties of daffodils planted at Keyham Homestead were dug up and relocated to the Camperdown Botanic Gardens to create a perpetual garden in honour of Leonard Buckland.

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