Bianca Hester

Circuits of solar descent involves a walking series, un-mown circles of grass as gathering points, and bronze sculptures bearing impressions of Illawarra-based plant life from across timescales. Walks led by local plant specialist explore the ecologies of the Botanic gardens as well as remnant bushland within the Kiera Green Corridor and the Illawarra Lowlands Grassy Woodlands. Assembling sculpture, storytelling, and social engagement, the work highlights how plant life reflects ancient temporalities and future environmental care.

This project takes place within the exhibition Sculpture in the Gardens, ephemeral category, at the Wollongong Botanic Gardens between
April 1-30, 2025.

Dust of these domains

Friday 4 April 2025


10.00am–12.00pm


Dust of these domains is an ongoing work combining reading and walking that evolves in relation to the specific locations in which it is performed. It involves a script of textual fragments and a set of hand-scaled bronze objects that bear impressions from plant life across timescales associated with the Illawarra when it was part of Gondwana, around 250 million years ago.


This new iteration tracks a circuit through the Wollongong Botanic gardens on Dharawal land and involves listening, moving, and tactile engagement. The walk pauses at specific locations, where text-fragments written in response to the site are activated. These texts consider the geologic residues of past environments that persist in the present, traces of extinction and regeneration, and relationships between colonial inheritance and extraction. In this work participants are invited to reflect upon the entanglement of social and environmental forces within the current climate crisis.


Bookings can be made from 7th March. Please return to make a booking through the bookings link.

Keira Green Corridor

Sunday 6th April 2025


10am-12pm


Led by Leon Fuller and Emma Rooksby


This walk focuses on the Keira Green Corridor as a concept and ecology that extends from Mt Keira/Geera to coastal reserves such as Puckey’s Estate. Since colonisation, the native vegetation across the Illawarra coastal plain has become increasingly fragmented due to land clearance for farming, mining, housing and recently the Mt Ousley interchange. Starting in the 1990s, locals sought to link up remnant, recovering and replanted native vegetation between Geera and Puckey’s in the Keira Green Corridor, giving local birds and animals safe ways to travel between the escarpment and the coast. The aim of this walk is to equip participants with knowledge about the corridor, and the importance of reconnecting green areas within it by planting species local to the Illawarra, contributing to enhancing its biodiversity. Participants will be gifted a local seedling at the walk’s conclusion, so that they can participate in the regeneration of this corridor in a small but meaningful way.


Meet at the grass circle on the Mercury Lawn (on the SITG map see 9A, near the Education Centre closest to the Madoline Street parking spot). The walk will move between the grass circle, the Australian dry garden, rainforest garden and Conifer lawn, then beyond the gardens towards Richardson Park which has been rewilded by volunteers working in association with the Growing Illawarra Natives project.


At the walk’s conclusion at Richardson park, participants will be gifted a plant to take home and contribute to regenerating the green corridor in their yards and verges.


BYO lunch is also optional for participants at end of the walk.


This walk is led by Led by Leon Fuller (author of Wollongong’s Native Trees) and Emma Rooksby (Chair of Landcare Illawarra and winner of the City of Wollongong Environmental Achievement Award 2023), co-instigators of the Growing Illawarra Natives project.


Please bring closed shoes, long-sleeve shirt, broad hat, suncream and a water bottle.


Bookings can be made from 7th March. Please return to make a booking through the bookings link.

Caring for the critically endangered

Friday 11th April 2025


10.00am–12.00pm


Walk led by James Beattie & Beth Mott


The Illawarra Lowlands Grassy Woodlands is an ecological community occurring on the coastal plains and foothills below the escarpment between Wollongong and Moruya in the Sydney Basin Bioregion. With 75% of this community having been cleared and heavily depleted, it has been listed as critically endangered under the Threatened Species Conservation Act. Small, isolated fragments of this woodland can be found in the Illawarra at Croome Reserve, Blackbutt Nature Reserve, Wiseman Park, and Stream Hill, as well as in small pockets on private land along the edge of the escarpment. This walk will focus on why caring for remnants of this ecological community is fundamental to biodiversity and providing habitat for the threatened species that depend on them. We will walk to Wiseman Park in Gwynneville to experience a beautiful pocket of remnant woodland in situ.


Meet at the grass circle on the Mercury Lawn on the SITG map (see 9A, near the Education Centre closest to the Madoline Street parking spot). This walk will visit the endangered species that are currently curated in the gardens, then head through the neighbourhood towards Wiseman Park in Gwynneville to visit a beautiful remnant of the Illawarra Lowland Grassy Woodlands.


James Beattie is the Living Collections Curator at Wollongong Botanic Garden, a service of Wollongong City Council. His role overseas the Living Collection of plants within the garden, plant conservation work and assists with horticultural projects across the local council area. His professional horticultural career started at Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom, then moving to Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney before coming to Wollongong Botanic Garden in 2016. James’ role in part provides horticultural support to conservation projects including working with Threatened Species Officers for NSW Dept of Environment and Saving our Species programs working on locally threatened flora and Threatened Ecological Communities.


Dr Beth Mott is a Conservation Biologist with extensive experience as a researcher, and educator. She is currently a Senior Threatened Species Officer for the NSW Dept of Environment and the Save our Species program. Her work has focused on frog decline, quoll responses to fox baiting, feral cat impacts, urban conservation of large forest owls, communication in lizards and fish, building habitat corridors for Glossy Black-cockatoos and rebuilding rainforests after fire. Beth works actively to find ways to incorporate Indigenous learning into conservation, and to blend knowledge systems to care for and revitalise disturbed ecosystems. Beth wants to empower communities with the skills and knowledge they need to enact the change they want to make.


Please bring comfortable walking shoes, long-sleeve shirt, broad hat, suncream and a water bottle. Please note that we will be walking through the suburb of Gwynneville for approximately 1.8km.


Bookings can be made from 7th March. Please return to make a booking through the bookings link.

Healing landscapes

Sunday 13th April 2025


10.00am–12.00pm


Led by Aunty Joyce Donovan


The focus of this walk is upon plant knowledge and healing held by esteemed Dharawal Wodi Wodi elder Aunty Joyce Donovan. Aunty Joyce will share Dharawal medicinal knowledge of local plants held in the Wollongong Botanic gardens on a walk that will emphasise processes of deep listening and sensory engagement. Starting with a Welcome to Country, this walk will visit specific medicinal plants held in the gardens and conclude at the Towri Learning Centre.


Aunty Joyce Donovan has a lifetime of experience in the health care sector. She was a driving force behind the establishment of the Aboriginal Medical Service at Coomaditchie, a nurse for over 30 years, and the founder of the Narinya Grief and Trauma Healing program. In 2008, she was recognised as an Australian of the Year NSW Local Hero and in 2023 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wollongong.


Meet at the grass circle on the Mercury Lawn (on the SITG map see 9A, near the Education Centre closest to the Madoline Street parking spot). This walk will move through various zones in the garden and conclude at the Towri Learning Centre.


Please bring closed shoes, long-sleeve shirt, broad hat, suncream and a water bottle.


Bookings can be made from 7th March. Please return to make a booking through the bookings link.