Building bridges, building worlds: the unique contribution to the University of New England of Lionel Gilbert

During the 1930s, whilst the elements of higher education were still being set in Armidale, three persons were making their own ways into activities and roles which would merge later to establish in New England a distinctive approach to the understanding of Australia's past: of its culture, local, family and applied history, and of the history of its botanical resources and of their collection. In Sydney, Lionel Arthur James Gilbert, born at Burwood on 8 December, 1924 to Reginald Arthur Gilbert and Alma Alice, nee Taylor, was progressing through schooling at Burwood Primary, Homebush Intermediate and Fort Street High Schools before coming under the important influence of emergent botanist, Thistle Yolette Harris at the Sydney Teachers' College. At the opposite end of the British Empire, William George Hoskins, a lecturer in commerce, was spending his weekends walking and bicycling the long-farmed fields of East Leicestershire.