Betty Westwood, Tree Lady of Strathalbyn, Owl Lady at St Peter's College, South Australia conservation enthusiast
Betty Westwood, who did nurse training at Royal Adelaide Hospital (inset), became the long-time matron at Adelaide's St Peter's College and in retirement a devoted herself to conservation and tree planting around her home region of Strathalbyn, on Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide. South Australia's Trees for Life named its nursery (at right) in Adelaide's Brooklyn Park after her.
Images courtesy South Australia environment hall of fame and Trees for Life
Betty Rutherford Westwood, the Tree Lady of Strathalbyn, was added to the South Australia environment hall of fame in 2022, was a founder of the state’s Tree for Life with her plantings running up to half a million.
Westwood also was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia and conservation Civic Trust award for promoting environmental concerns. Westwood father came to South Australia from Scotland after World War I and took up land outside the mainly Scottish settled rural town of Strathalbyn on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula. He and another male relative married sisters from the local Taylor family and settled down to farming life.
Westwood’s life childhood on the family farm Hill Top taught her to appreciate the natural world,. She excelled at school then, against her family’s wishes, chose a career in nursing, training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. After graduating in 1942, she served in the Pacific islands at the rank of lieutenant during World War II.
She later spent a few years nursing in the United Kingdom before working at Geelong Grammar in Victoria. She eventually moved back to Adelaide as matron at St Peter’s College in 1955, dedicated to the wellbeing of “her boys” for the rest of her working life. To the boys she was the Owl Lady, passing on life skills and a love for the environment. Over the years, they gave Westwood a collection of all things owl, from tea towels to carved ebony statues. These all ended up in Hoot Hall, as it became known, the front room of the old butcher shop at the family home Dollar in Strathalbyn.
The many visitors during her retirement to Hoot Hall were given detailed instruction on how to puddle a seedling into the soil to give it the best chance to grow. The backyard at Dollar had propagation benches with shade cloth over the younger seedlings with an old table nearby as the tube filling centre.
Westwood’s little blue Volkswagen Beetle, its back seat crowded with dozens of tubes of little trees, could often be seen along the Strathalyn region roadsides as she planted. The schools around Strathalbyn also helped, with many planting days organised in local reserves.
As a founding member of South Australia’s Trees for Life in 1981, Westwood volunteered her time and expertise raising seedlings, tree planting and propagation. She also was a member of the Friends of the Botanic Gardens, and was one of the first guides there, a foundation member of the Friends of the Waite Arboretum and a member of the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia. A “modern day warrior” for conservation, she warmly and enthusiastically never missed aa chance to encourage her many friends to engage in some aspect of conservation.
Westwood died at Strathalbyn in 2004 and the Trees for Life nursery, on the corner of Sir Donald Bradman Drive and May Terrace in Adelaide’s Brooklyn Park. was named in her honour.