Susan Irvine

[1][2][3][4] Her self-supporting mother ran a full-time and wide-ranging business called Arts and Antiques.

[5] At the same time her mother was socially and geographically prominent, her house Lynfield overlooking Toowoomba from The Range.

"Elegant, charismatic and vivacious", she presided over Lauriston's response to the enormous professional and material expansion of private education in the Whitlam era.

Things worth achieving undoubtedly included high standards in mathematics, science and languages.

[19][20] Originally a solicitor at Hedderwick, Fookes and Alston, Bill was chairman of the National Australia Bank 1979–97 and its associated companies in the UK and New Zealand.

Bill Irvine makes an early appearance in Susan's Garden of a Thousand Roses as a lawyer friend and visitor to Bleak House who reveals a light touch adjusting Shire planning decisions.

[22] In 1982, Irvine retired[17] to establish a garden and what became a well-known rose nursery on 15 acres (6.1 ha) at Bleak House, Malmsbury[23][24] and, with Bill Irvine in 1992, the garden of Erinvale on 1.5 acres (0.61 ha) in Gisborne, Central Victoria.

[26] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Irvine used her social and garden connections to find, save, identify and revive scores of roses by the best-known Australian breeder, Alister Clark.

[29] By 1992, Irvine had named after her mother 'Niree Hunter', a Rugosa rose she had discovered at Bleak House.

[33] In 1996, she and her husband moved to Forest Hall at Elizabeth Town in Northern Tasmania where she again established a large garden.

They lack the vividly eccentric character of the early books laid out for Hyland House by Al Knight[36] using Irvine's own amateur photos.