Legends of the Garden - Maurice Kupsch

ANT: What’s the origin of the name Kupsch?

MAURIE: Its German or Prussian. My grandfather, Frederick was born 100 years before I came along, so I didn’t get to meet him, but he fled his birth country in 1870 and settled on a property near Cygnet. My father was one of 9 children that he and his wife Charlotte produced.

I was born at home on the apple orchard my parents owned in Franklin.

ANT: How did you get to come up to the North West Coast?

MAURIE: After I served my 8 years as a fitter and turner with the Zinc company in Hobart, I got fed up with being inside so we came up this way and went on to a dairy farm up at Rocky Cape.

We had that farm for about 12 years and then my Uncle Herbert, who had some money in it, wanted to get out so we sold out. Mum and Dad went back to Hobart and I stayed in Burnie.

I met Pam and we settled down and got married. This coming year will be our 50th anniversary. We bought 3.8 acres up Mooreville Road and built up there. Pam stayed at work for 5 years and that paid the property off.

ANT: What did you do once you’d left the farm?

MAURIE: I went back into fitting and turning again, at Webb’s Welding Works. I used to pistol shoot with one of the Webb brothers. They wanted to buy a small engineer-ing business and asked me to operate the machinery. I

spent 29 years there. I’d have liked to have been outside, but I ended up inside!

ANT: You used to shoot? How did that start?

MAURIE: I grew up with guns used by my father and uncle—.22 cartridges were my playthings and then at 8 years old I owned my first rifle - a single shot Bell.

I started work at 16 at the Zinc Company and there met up with target shooters and joined various clubs—big bore and small bore rifles, clay pigeon and pistol shooting and in 1966-67 I was State rapid fire pistol champion.

I’ve been State small bore rifle champion too.

ANT: How did you meet Pam?

MAURIE: I used to be a member of the Wynyard Camera Club. Pam’s father [Mr Garratt] was the manager of a camera shop. I used to go there to get film and to talk to Mr Garratt about cameras. He invited me to go back to their place to show my photos to his wife and son and daughter.

ANT: Tell me about your children.

MAURIE: Nick did well at school, Ridgley Primary, Parklands High, Hellyer College and on to University in Hobart graduating as a biologist, invited to go further with his studies but no, he became keen to travel instead. He visited many places and was always able to find work but the main places were Taiwan teaching English and learning Mandarin (10 years there) and onto Saudi Arabia teaching university stu-dents English. It was in Taiwan that he was able to procure the authentic tiles used for the Chinese pavilion. He is currently in South Vietnam and where next? Who knows? Charlotte went to university and graduated with honours as a teacher. She’s taught at Acton and Devonport Primary. She has two children, Fletcher and Maya.

ANT: How did rhododendrons come into your life?

MAURIE: On the property in Franklin there used to be quite a number of rhododendrons, and I got interested in them having different flowers. When we moved to Burnie, we started growing native plants and then we put in deciduous trees. In 1976 Bob Malone started the rhododendron society and our next door neighbour invited us to the first meeting at the Forth Hotel. We’ve virtually been to every meeting since. At the meetings we would talk about finding a spot where could display rhodos to the general public. Hilary [O’Rourke] said he had 30 acres that the council wouldn’t let him sub-divide. Hilary, Noel Sullivan and myself walked in across the paddocks. It was covered with silver wattles, manferns and blackberries. We decided it would be quite a nice spot to build a garden.

ANT: Who decided how to lay it out?

MAURIE: A joint decision between Hilary, Noel and myself. Hilary’s eldest son Stephen had access to a bulldozer to push a track in. Once that was in, if we needed money, Bob Sadler would take off his hat and go around members at the meeting for what they could contribute. He became quite famous for this. That’s how we raised money to have the bulldozer to come in again and build the dams and lay the rest of the roads.

ANT: How did you become the Curator of the garden?

MAURIE: Well, poor Hilary and Noel had to put up with this younger, very keen upstart putting in his pennyworth, so much, so that Noel finally said “You’d better take over as Curator!” He then put up with me for another 10 years before he retired.

ANT: Who designed and built the pavilions and bridges and so on?

MAURIE: I designed, and then helped build with a num-ber of very keen builders. The main gazebo is based on a Tibetan yurt . The American pavilion is based on a pavilion from the film “Gone with the Wind”. The covered walk-way is based on a picture of a causeway going across a lake on a calendar from Honda Motorcycles. The steel work was designed, built and assembled locally. As far as the Chinese pavilion (The Maurie Kupsch Pavilion) goes, I’d

wanted to build a Chinese pavilion for a long time, and from pictures, I knew what they looked like from the outside, but not from the inside. In 2005 we went to Japan for a rhodo conference and while we were there, we went to a “friendship garden” and there we saw the pavilion I wanted. I clambered up and took a million photographs, came home and showed the fellows. “No way” they all said. I took the photos and scaled them down.

ANT: But that’s the job of a draughtsman.

MAURIE: As part of my 5 year apprenticeship the last six months were spent in the draughting office.

ANT: If you had your life again, would you do anything different?

MAURIE: I don’t think I’d bother with the dairy farm, because I found that with only one hand that was a bit taxing at times. My headmaster told me that with my disability I needed to become an office worker, but I was only interested in using my hands. It’s not difficult, but I have noticed out of the corner of my eye, people watching to see how I do things.

ANT: It was a birth defect?

MAURIE: The doctors told Mum and Dad that it may have been the toxic sprays they used to put on the apple orchard. No proper protection in those days—just a handkerchief. Who knows?

These “Legend of the Garden” series of interviews were collated by Ant Dry and edited by Katie O’Rourke