George Flay was an early settler to the Gympie region arriving in 1868 and took up land in the Two Mile (near Chatsworth) area around 1871. Ailsa Dawson, a descendant, tells the story that Flay was a gardener on the Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire before he came to Australia in 1856, hence the naming of our local Chatsworth.
Apart from the Chinese people here on the Gympie Goldfields, George Flay was probably the first man to begin growing introduced fruit and crops near Gympie (Bowman, 2017, p. 11).
His property named “Green Park” (situated opposite and between Two Mile School and the Woodworks Museum) has Gympie Creek running through the front of it. Flay made enough money from a couple of years working a mining claim to buy land. He ran a herd of dairy cows (shorthorns) for a while, but around 1878/1879, Flay sold off his herd by auction (The Gympie Times, advertisements).
His real dream was to achieve his own horticultural garden and he devoted all his resources to that. With this dream realised, Green Park became a significant property where he was able to practice his horticultural and viticultural skills. Flay, with his wife Emma, experimented for many years finding the best varieties of fruit, flowers and vegetables suited to the soil and climate, importing seeds, bulbs, trees and vines from overseas (England, China, Japan, Germany and America).
Flay grew strawberries as well as flowers, roses and bulbous flowering plants, and his property was opened to people who wished to have a picnic and enjoy the gardens (Two Mile Centenary, p. 65). Gympie Times reporter, W. Woolgar reported seeing 360 varieties of roses in bloom in the ornamental gardens!
Flay sold his strawberries with cream to picnickers as well as having other produce and delicious sounding products for sale (see more advertisements below). His strawberries were also served with cream in town at local establishments such as Anderson’s and Menadue’s (Gympie Times, 1903).
Flay also grew grapes and made wine. His son Charles took on his passion and had a seed shop in Mary Street. He too was noted for his horticultural skills. One of his daughters married into the Allen family, also of Chatsworth.
Flay became renowned for his strawberries and strawberry garden. Particularly due to Flay’s (both Senior and Junior) expertise in developing strawberry cultivars. One of these, actually propagated by son Charles, was called the “Phenomenal” Strawberry (‘Federator’ x ‘Pink’s Prolific) developed around 1906/1907. This strawberry cultivar has been studied in modern times for its resistance to disease and assessed to be the ancestry of later cultivars such as Redlands Crimson, Earlisweet, Kabarla, Aussiegem, Red Rhapsody and Parisienne Kiss (Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2018). There are only around 50 unaltered plants of the Phenomenal Strawberry cultivar left in Australia having been kept and propagated by the Department of Agriculture by horticulturists at the Maroochy Research Centre, and in 2019 a few plants were donated to the Gympie State High School’s agriculture program (ABC Sunshine Coast, 2019).
A few months later the strawberries are ready and the advertisement was repeated with an adjusted update at the bottom:
Scroll through a few advertisements from the early 1900’s:
With George Flay’s age and ailing health in 1908, his son Charles took the reins. George, being unable to complete active work in the garden for some years.
Eventually with time, Charles also found the upkeep of the ornamental gardens became too much, and the grape vines were sadly wiped out with downey mildew (which affected far and wide). The farm was taken over by Charle’s only daughter Alice, who had married Mr Harry Dawson.
After the deaths of Mr Charles Flay and Mr Dawson, Mrs Dawson and her son George carried on the property until the Second World War when the labour problem became acute. For a time work was carried on by Land Army girls and with the services of 75 year old Mr George Wilkinson, who had worked on the property, and who returned to help as his contribution to the war effort, while George was in the army……By the end of the Second World War, the former beautiful gardens were no longer a viable proposition, and Mr George Dawson turned to other employment. Eventually there were only a few surviving ornamental trees, and thickets of self-sown cypresses together with century-old date palm tree that marked where once the attractive gardens created a popular resort”
Source: Gympie Two Mile School Centenary Book 1883-1983
References:
ABC Sunshine Coast. (2019). Aristocracy, plant breeding, a shipwreck and floods part of Phenomenal strawberry’s history. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sunshine-breakfast/phenomenal-strawberry-has-rich-history/11485330
Bowman, R. (2017). History of gardening in Gympie: 1867 to 2017.
Dawson, A. (1989). The Two Mile story
Gympie Times (various dates). Articles and advertisements
Gympie Regional Memories 