John GouldPrint Page

The monument commemorates John Gould, his wife Elizabeth Coxen Gould and John Gilbert. It was erected in 2004 to mark the 200th anniversary of John Gould`s birth.

The memorial was rededicated and a new plaque erected in April 2009 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the WA Gould League and 25 years at Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre which opened in 1984. 

John Gould was a zoologist, who was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England.  It is probable that after some slight education he served with his father as a gardener, and thus became attracted to both plants and birds. At 23 he was appointed a taxidermist on the staff of the Zoological Society of London, and in 1829 he married Elizabeth Coxen, a talented artist.

In 1831-32 he published in twenty monthly parts A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains, a volume notable for its eighty colour plates painted by Elizabeth Gould, and the precursor of a remarkable series of books on birds and mammals. In 1832 also he began the publication of The Birds of Europe, a work of five volumes that was completed in 1837.

Gould turned his attention to the birds of Australia, and he issued in 1837-38 four parts of a so-called synopsis, with seventy-three plates by his wife, and immediately afterwards two more parts appeared. Very soon, however, he discontinued this work.  He planned an expedition to Australia and he sailed in May 1838 with his wife and eldest son, aged 7, a young nephew, a man-servant and a maid-servant, and, most important, a zoological collector, John Gilbert.

On 18 September 1838 in the Parsee the party landed in Hobart Town and at once Gould and Gilbert, accompanied at times by the servant James Benstead, began fieldwork in Van Diemen's Land and adjacent islands. In the following months, while Gilbert was operating in Western Australia, Gould visited New South Wales, spent several weeks exploring the Murray scrubs in South Australia, mainly in the company of Charles Sturt, and also visited Kangaroo Island. 

He also spent some time in Sydney, where in March 1840 he issued a prospectus relating to his proposed publications on the birds of Australia, already published before he left England, as indicated by a reprint in the Sydney Herald, 9 September 1839. 

The Gould party left Sydney on 9 April 1840, and publication of The Birds of Australia began in London on 1 December 1840. The final parts, making a total of thirty-six, appeared in 1848.  As with his earlier books, these were published with admirable colour plates; many of the drawings had been executed by Mrs Gould, but after her death in 1841 other artists were employed. The total number of colour plates in the eight volumes is 681, and the whole production is undoubtedly the greatest of Gould's eighteen major works.

Although grievously affected by his wife's death, and left with the care of six young children, he continued to work diligently at research and publishing. Gilbert died in 1845, but Gould subsidized other collectors and also kept in touch with Sturt and other explorers and naturalists in Australia. In addition to numerous papers in scientific journals, he issued works on humming-birds, on the birds of Asia, and on the birds of Great Britain, all beautifully illustrated; and during 1845-63 he produced in three volumes, The Mammals of Australia, followed in 1865 by a two volume Handbook to the Birds of Australia. He was engaged in compiling The Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands at the time of his death, and this work was completed by Dr R. B. Sharpe.

During his lifetime Gould was honoured by numbers of scientific societies. Now his name persists as that of the 'father' of bird study in Australia, and he is commemorated in a nation-wide institution, the Gould League of Bird Lovers.

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