Gill, Walter (1851 - 1929)

Born at Welford, Northamptonshire, England, on 13 October 1851 and died at Malvern, S.A., on 17 July 1929.  

In England Gill started work in a Dorset nursery, of which an uncle was a senior partner, and later joined the staff of a country bank, but in 1876 he migrated to South Australia, working first on the holding of another uncle.  After a brief visit to England in 1881 he returned to South Australia, again working on the land, but in 1884 joined the Government service as an inspector of Crown Lands.  Two years later he became Chief Forester at Wirrabara and in 1890 he succeeded Ednie Brown as Conservator of Forests, a position he held for 33 years.

Gill was responsible for the initial, though by present-day standards somewhat small-scale, planting of Pinus radiata.  This was followed up by larger plantings, notably by G. J. Rodger, which have led to South Australia's prominent position as a supplier of softwood timber.  In an age when few people appreciated the pending shortage of softwood timber, especially in Australia, Gill published a pamphlet (1902) on The Scarcity of Coniferous Timber.

There was a close association of botany and forestry during the period Gill was Conservator, and he collected extensively whilst examining land potential in his State; many of his specimens went to F. Mueller, whilst both J. H. Maiden and R. T. Baker, made use of his material and notes in .their respective works on the genus Eucalyptus. An acacia, was also named after him.  He was a skilled photographer; he wrote a number of papers, mostly on forestry, published in J. Agric. Ind. S. Aust., or in papers of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, and there is a valuable record of his work and of forestry in the period in the long series of Annual Reports of his Department.  He was a member of the Board of Trustees of National Parks of South Australia.

He is honoured in the name Eucalyptus gillii Maiden (1912) (he is also collector of the type)