Former governor-general Sir William Deane declared he was an enthusiastic ''convert'' to the concept of a Bible Garden as he helped open Canberra's own on a site overlooking Lake Burley Griffin yesterday.
The garden is in the grounds of Charles Sturt University's Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in Blackall Street, Barton.
In time, it will feature all 148 plants mentioned in the Bible, with almonds, cyclamen, garlic, lentils, oleander and pomegranate among the almost 60 varieties already in the ground. The noxious weeds referred to in the Bible will be in a separate glasshouse.
The centre received a gift of almost $1.8 million to develop the garden, and for other theological work, from the trust of the late South African-born businessman Gerald Hercules Robinson. He created Australia's first Bible Garden at Sydney's Palm Beach in the mid-1960s after seeing a similar one in Bangor, Wales.
The trust was created when part of the Palm Beach site was subdivided and sold in 2006.
The centre's executive director, the Reverend Professor James Haire, said he hoped the Bible Garden would be a place of meditation, prayer and reflection, while educating more people about the Scriptures.
Standing between olive trees, Sir William, a Bible Garden trustee, said he was initially sceptical of the value of such a venture, first hearing about it at a time when he was chairman of Care Australia and conscious of the six million children who died of hunger each year.
''These days one tends to get a little bit set in one's ideas of where charitable funds are best applied.''
But time and knowledge turned him into a strong supporter.
''Gerald Hercules Robinson has made one convert at least and that's myself,'' Sir William said. ''In that, I see this as a focal point in a centre in which I see tremendous importance to our nation's spiritual wellbeing. It was, as with the old indigenous people, a meeting place, it's a place of coming together, it's a place of reaching out.''
Sir William said it was ''an extraordinary and wonderful thing'' that the garden was now a reality ''slap-bang in the middle of our national capital with the best view in the whole of the national capital''.
Mr Robinson's son Brian, grandson David and great-granddaughter Georgie, 9, were at the opening.
Brian Robinson said, ''I'm sure my father would be thrilled to bits to see this wonderful garden on site in the national capital with the potential to exist in perpetuity.''
Work on the garden started last year. Sir William said a large mural wall would also be built, on which a painting by the late Aboriginal Christian Hector Jandany would be displayed, showing a white owl in the Kimberley and emphasising the ''Holy Spirit in our land''.
''One thing I think non-indigenous Christians can learn from our indigenous fellow Christians is the focus and the understanding of the Holy Spirit in our land,'' Sir William said.
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