A 1936 portrait of Paul Sorensen by Harold Cazneaux. Image: National Trust of Australia (NSW) Archives.
Next time you are traversing the long stretch of Springhill Road opposite BlueScope, perhaps take note of the impressive line of trees on the western side.
They are a massed planting, beautifully spaced, of Hills Figs (Ficus macrocarpa hillii), one of several species favoured by the famous garden designer Paul Sorensen.
He even planted a few to replace the coral trees (now declared noxious weeds) that had been planted on the old Fitzgerald dairy farm at Keiraville before the fabulous Gleniffer Brae was built there in 1939.
But even though some of Sorensen’s wonderful garden designs are still evident in several places in the Illawarra today, I remain unsure about who planted the Hills Figs on Springhill Road and whether Sorensen had anything to do with it.
Paul Edwin Bielenberg Sorensen – nurseryman and landscape gardener – was born in 1891 at Frederiksberg, Copenhagen.
He immigrated to Australia in 1915 and found work as a gardener at the Carrington Hotel, Katoomba. Eventually he completed nearly 100 significant NSW gardens.
In the Illawarra Sorensen was a very busy boy indeed and his local gardens included the Australian Iron and Steel Co office grounds at Port Kembla (1936–1937), Green Hills and Hillside at Figtree (1936–1938), Gleniffer Brae at Keiraville (1938-1939), the grounds of Mt Keira Scout Camp (from 1940) and even what is thought to be a now ruined one at Farmborough Heights very slightly visible surrounding the remaining Port Kembla No 2 Mine buildings and houses there.
How this all happened was that in 1935, a prestigious new administration building had been built at Port Kembla. After disputes with some local contractors, the Hoskins’ brothers Arthur Sidney (known as Sidney or Mr Sid) and Cecil began to look elsewhere for a landscape designer to work on the grounds.
Through the recommendation of their friend Ronald Beale – one of the famed family of Australian piano manufacturers which even included the late Wollongong solicitor Edgar Beale – Cecil met Sorensen who at the time was creating the beautiful Everglades garden at Leura.
Highly impressed with what he saw, Cecil gave Sorensen responsibility for the grounds surrounding the Hoskins’ offices at Port Kembla.
This work led to a number of commissions with the Hoskins family including the gardens (1937-1938) for Invergowrie at Exeter – a two-storey tudor revival style house designed by Cecil and Sidney Hoskins’ brother-in-law, Geoffrey Loveridge (the brothers had married two of Loveridge’s sisters). Loveridge also designed Gleniffer Brae at Keiraville.
I had originally found it hard to believe that such fine work could be designed and supervised by just one man over such a short and intensive period from 1937-1941.
But how it happened was that all construction and maintenance was by Australian Iron and Steel staff, with Sorensen only making two- to three-day visits. And at Gleniffer Brae and Mt Keira Scout Camp, Sidney Hoskins had employed workmen directly with Sorensen giving them instructions on similar visits.
A single highly skilled workman employed directly by Sorensen made all the rockwork and walls at all of the Hoskins’ garden sites.
Not only is this a testament to the skill of one (sadly unnamed) man, the quality of workmanship and design at all sites possibly also attests to Sorensen’s apparent ability to pass on his creative ideas to workers who could be entrusted to work without supervision between visits.
The Hoskins-Sorensen partnership also related to a once famed Illawarra tree. Paul Sorensen and Sidney Hoskins successfully lobbied Wollongong City Council to save the giant ancient Moreton Bay fig (Ficus macrophylla) at Figtree when it was threatened by 1940s road widening plans.
Tragically, this venerable tree died in 1986 and was then removed by Wollongong Council.
The other remarkable achievement of Sorensen is that he is reputed to be the first person to successfully remove a mature Illawarra flame tree from the surrounding bush to the grounds in front of Gleniffer Brae’s stockbroker tudor facade. Whether or not this is true, it remains a remarkably fine tree and it still flowers to this day.
As Region Illawarra’s Kellie O’Brien reported in March, the NSW Government will honour Paul Sorenson as part of its Blue Plaques Program.
