Open Access

Alison Hewitt

• 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 A copy of Price’s original unpublished account has been-included as an appendix to this paper.