commemorated on the site by the pedestrian thoroughfare known as Ludlam Way. A year after the Botanic Garden was established by means of a Crown Grant (dated 22 November 1869), Ludlam acted as a pallbearer at the funeral in Wellington of the Māori chief Honiana Te Puni, after whom the Lower Hutt suburb of Epuni takes its name. Marriage in Australia Ludlam was a periodic visitor to the Australian colony of New South Wales. The main reason for these trans-Tasman visits of Ludlam's was to do business in the City of Sydney, which served as New South Wales' principal trading port, population centre and seat of government. One of the businessmen with whom he dealt was Thomas Sutcliffe Mort—an industrialist, pastoralist and pioneer of the frozen-meat trade. Ludlam also found time to socialise while in Sydney and, on 1 October 1850, he married into Sydney's colonial establishment. The marriage was solemnised at St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney by Ludlam's friend, the clergyman-scientist William Branwhite Clarke, and his bride was Frances "Fanny" Minto Gibbes. Fanny (1822/23-1877) was the third daughter of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes and the Colonel's wife, Elizabeth (née Davis). London-born Colonel Gibbes (1787–1873) was a senior government official and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He had been head of the New South Wales Customs Service since 1834 and occupied a Crown-nominee's seat in the New South Wales Legislative Council. Then aged in her late 20s, Fanny was living with her parents at Wotonga House—nowadays part of Admiralty House complex on Sydney's Kirribilli Point—at the time of her marriage to Ludlam. She and her husband spent their honeymoon relaxing at a rural New South Wales property, Yarralumla, which belonged to Fanny's brother-in-law, (Sir) Terence Aubrey Murray. Following their honeymoon, the Ludlams left Australia for New Zealand, making the farm at Newry their marital nest. This move, however, almost proved to be a fatal mistake: on 23 January 1855, the Wairarapa earthquake destroyed Newry homestead, and the Ludlams narrowly escaped being crushed to death when a brick chimney in the living room collapsed around them. After the earthquake, as the Ludlams waited for Newry to be made habitable again, they went to live with the New Zealand politician and landowner (Sir) David Monro, who owned a farm at Nelson. Still extant is a vivid description of the earthquake and its destructive impact on the Wellington region, written