Revisiting Tony Price’s (1979) account of the native vegetation of Duck River and Rookwood Cemetery, western Sydney

The Duck River Reserve and Rookwood Cemetery in the highly urbanised Auburn district of western Sydney hold small but botanically valuable stands of remnant native vegetation. In the late 1970s, local resident G.A. (Tony) Price, recognised the value of these remnants, both for the species they held and the clues they could give us to the past, and spent three years surveying and collecting plants at these sites. Price recorded the species present and their abundance, and described the habitats in which they were found. He observed the ecology of plant interactions, moisture, shading and fire response, interpolating them into a picture of the landscape and vegetation of the district prior to European settlement. At a time when field botany was inaccessible to many, and the focus of conservation was largely on the broader scale, Price’s local scale work at these sites was unusual and important. Though never formally published, Price’s 1979 account ‘The Vegetation of Duck River and Rookwood Cemetery, Auburn’ has been cited in all subsequent work of consequence for the area. This paper presents and reviews Price’s work and discusses his observations in relation to the current vegetation of these areas. Tony Price’s contributions also highlight the value and role that ordinary citizens can play alongside professional botanists and plant ecologists in long term data collection, considered observation and environmental management. A copy of Price’s original unpublished account has been included as an appendix to this paper.