Written by Mark O’Connor, Australia’s Olympic Poet, this is the humorous and enthralling story of his fight to plant a Botanic Garden on tropical Dunk Island against the ravages of time, cyclones and fellow man. O’Connor’s labours to grow an Eden were arduous, thrilling, life changing. You will hear about his struggles and the way his dream grew not only into a botanic garden but a love of plants, botanical names, and working with the earth and how the people and the beautiful and sometimes harsh weather made his job a joy and a trial.

The performance is directed by Emil Wolk an Olivier and Fringe First Award winning actor who has an international reputation as both a director and performer. The story is played against the stunning projected images of botanic artist Linda Martin as solo actor
David Malikoff weaves this passionate and funny story through the jazz rhythms of Todd Hardy’s masterful flugelhorn.

The show was recently presented at the 3rd Global Botanic Gardens Congress in Wuhan, China , April 2007 and was sponsored by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The island had become well known as the ideal tropical paradise when it belonged to the famous gardener, philosopher and author E J Banfield who “abandoned human society” and lived on Dunk Island for 25 years from 1897. He called himself “The Beachcomber”, and wrote a series of books about Dunk Island and its plant species, with such titles as “My Tropic Isle” and “Confessions of a Beachcomber” (1908). As an Englishman who had moved to Australia, Banfield was a disciple of the American nature-lover Thoreau; and like Thoreau he experimented in living in isolation. Yet his experiment in living a comparatively solitary life on Dunk Island his "Isle of Dreams - this unkempt, unrestrained garden where the centuries gaze upon perpetual summer" lasted over ten times as long as Thoreau’s sojourn. Mark O’Connor’s script describes Banfield as “that one-eyed man” and “ant-vigorous like all islanders that last.”

Dunk Island, a perfect tropical island, possesses everything from mature rainforest to mangrove deltas, and also in Banfield’s days a superb coral reef. Later the island belonged to an English lord and then to a shady businessman.

In 1976 the area of the resort had just been doubled. Mark O’Connor was able to convince and ignite the enthusiasm of the manager at the time, Lex Holden to turn Banfield’s old orchard into a botanic garden.

Mark O’Connor turned his experiences into the script of “Planting the Dunk Botanic Gardens” soon after he left Dunk Island in 1977. After thirty years ripening in sun and CO2 the story has become a passionate plea for the planet.

Today the island is divided between a national park and a resort on the site of Banfield’s house and orchard and Mark O'Connor's botanical garden.The Olympic wrestler and tapestry weaver Bruce Arthur (portrayed as “the hermit” in the play) set up what is now an artist’s colony in its rainforest.