Tribute to Audrey Moriarty

Audrey Moriarty died suddenly on Tuesday September 12th 2006, at her home in Bergville Retirement Village , George. Audrey was born in Smyrna , Turkey , at the end of the First World War. Went to school in England , attended college in Edinburgh where she trained as a cordon bleu chef, worked in a hospital as a nurse during the blitz in London , then joined St John’s Ambulance and became a Junior Commander with the ATS . In 1946 she came to South Africa in a troopship to visit her parents. She met Brendan Moriarty on the ship and they married later.

In 1958 the Moriarty’s moved to Rhodesia ( Zimbabwe ) then in 1961 to Malawi ( Nyasaland ), for 10 years. During her time in Malawi she began to collect and paint the local flora and met Dr Dick Brummit, a Kew botanist, who persuaded her to compile her paintings into a book. “Wild Flowers of Malawi ” was published in 1975 and covered some 360 wildflowers of Malawi.

In 1972 the Moriarty’s retired to George where Audrey’s passion for collecting and painting flowers was fuelled by the diversity and beauty of the flowers that they found on their rambles through the veld. These paintings resulted in her 2nd book ”Outeniqua, Tsitsikamma and Eastern little Karoo ” published in English and Afrikaans as one of the series of Botanical Society Floras of South Africa, in 1982.

This book was republished in 1997 as ‘Flower guide to the Outeniqua, Tsitsikamma and Eastern Little Karoo”, with additional species and colour plates bringing the total number of species illustrated to 500. The launch was held at the Southern Cape Herbarium then situated in the George Museum .

She gave the Southern Cape Herbarium all her original paintings and notes. These paintings have been scanned by volunteers and illustrate more than 2000 species, many of them small and cryptic, which have never been illustrated anywhere else. These images are being included in a very large” Image Herbarium of the Southern Cape Plants” which is in process of being edited. This will be available to the public on CD, to view on a computer in the Herbarium, and also hopefully on the GRBG Website.

Audrey lost her husband and her mother in quick succession soon after she & her husband had moved into Bergville Retirement Village . She subsequently donated enough money for the Southern Cape Herbarium (which then amalgamated with the Garden Route Botanical Garden Trust) to purchase No 49 Caledon Street, adjacent to the Botanical Gardens, in 2001. This building is now known as the “Moriarty Environmental Centre”. Audrey was made a patron of the Garden Route Botanical Garden Trust.

Audrey has also been extremely generous to other causes in George, such as the Anglican Cathedral, the Cancer Foundation and many others. She also worked in a voluntary capacity in the Mzoxolo School Library while she was still able to. An additional donation made possible the alterations to the Moriarty Environmental Centre in 2005.