Bougainvillea

Until the late 1960s, the Pacific Highway from Brisbane to the Gold Coast passed through the old farming town of Beenleigh. Now the Pacific Motorway passes further east, and Beenleigh seems forgotten unless you live or work there.

The highway was a narrower, slower affair during my childhood, when my Dad drove us down our grandparents’ house at Currumbin. It felt like an endless drive to us kids, packed into the Holden, but I remember the section down City Road in Beenleigh.  That is because I liked the bougainvillea baskets.

Bougainvillea is tough, and it can cope with dry, hot roadside conditions. Maintained by local council and road workers, up until the 1980s these bright magenta floral baskets were a feature of City Road.

I’d first become familiar with the old purple variety of bougainvillea creeper, with its vigorous growth, thick trunk and large, vicious thorns. One grew beside our Nambour house. It reached to the roof. There was also a thorny purple-flowering bougainvillea, rather scary, screening the outside toilet (also scary) behind the old beach house at Maroochydore.

Now they come in all sizes and colours, with fewer thorns.

Originating in the tropical forests of South America, now magnificent bougainvillea plants flourish across all parts of the world that have hot, dry climates, from India to Florida.

They festoon public spaces of Spain and Italy, and the white painted laneways of the Greek Islands.

In the Mediterranean Taverna which provides Greek Street Food in the main street of Atherton, in Far North Queensland, attractive décor invokes the atmosphere of Greece, with white-painted walls, photos of Mykonos, and for extra atmosphere, garlands of artificial magenta bougainvillea.

We shared a “Zorba for 2” plate. Good lamb chops.

Bougainvillea also flourishes on the Atherton Tablelands, from Mareeba to Yungaburra and beyond.

Across Queensland, from Brisbane to the bush, bougainvillea provides colour for months of the year, surviving in places where heat and drought defeat most other flowering plants.

The road from the Toowoomba to Brisbane once wound its way over the Marburg Range east of Plainland. It was a slow, tedious drive, dangerous in foggy weather. Now the Warrego Highway cuts through the hills, but if you look up, you can still see the line of the old road, because beside it were planted dozens of magenta bougainvilleas; and some of them, entirely neglected, still flower. They line the highway near Plainlands, too, and can be spotted climbing over trees and embankments. They are survivors.

Bougainvillea is often used to beautify public spaces in Queensland’s regional towns and cities.

From Perth to Sydney and South Australia; in parklands and private gardens, and in country where it seems nothing else will flourish, you will see bougainvillea. Sometimes a splash of purple or magenta in a bare paddock is all there is to show where once there was a farmhouse and a garden.

Sometimes, different colours are planted together, like this fine example, at a motel in Bororen, south of Rockhampton.

Of course, bougainvillea is a popular choice for Brisbane gardens, and always has been. Last month, in Harts Road, Indooroopilly, I visited the Bougainvillea Garden, a public park established by an enthusiast who started cultivating the plant in the early 1900s. Late in the flowering season, those huge old sprawling bushes covered in flowers were still spectacular.

Modern cultivars range through white and pale lilac through orange and shades of pink as well as the old purple and magenta. They can be seen at Brisbane’s Roma Street Parklands, where the Spectacle Garden focusses on the plants popular in urban private gardens.

At Southbank Parklands in Brisbane, magenta bougainvillea covers a kilometre pathway, stretching across curving steel tendrils. It’s the beautiful Grand Arbour, one of the city’s iconic sights.

Like the purple jacarandas now flowering luxuriantly all over Brisbane, bougainvillea is an immigrant to Australia. But like the jacarandas, we love it. It’s here to stay.

Main image: Bougainvillea at Bell, Northern Darling Downs, Queensland