Australian Dictionary of Biography

Alex Griffiths Memorial Bronze Statue, 2023, by Liam Hardy, Sculpt Studios, Gold Coast

Courtesy of Liam Hardy

Alexander Morris Griffiths (1911–1998), apiarist, floriculturist, and conservationist, was born on 5 October 1911 in Wellington, New Zealand, second of five surviving children and elder son of Fiji-born Leonard Viti Griffiths, farmer, and his New Zealand-born wife Catherine Lena, née Morris. His grandfather was George Littleton Griffiths, editor and proprietor of the Fiji Times, who had campaigned for British annexation of Fiji and later contributed to trans-Pacific debates regarding Australasian federation. Relocating with his family several times as his father tried different occupations, Alex attended Maranui (later Lyall Bay) School (1918–21) in Wellington and the primary section of Taihape District High School (1922) before finishing his education in Auckland. In November 1926 Leonard moved the family to Norfolk Island to grow bananas. On the island Alex, whose health as a child had not been robust, took up beekeeping. After sailing with his parents to Sydney en route to Queensland in 1934, he worked for some of Australia’s leading apiarists.

By 1941 Griffiths’s parents were living on Brisbane’s South Coast (later Gold Coast), in Tomewin Street, Currumbin, where they occupied adjoining parcels of land comprising 2.5 acres (1.01 ha). The following year he joined them, set up an apiary, and commenced growing flowers, including more than twelve thousand gladioli, as a complementary enterprise. It was the first indication of his canny business sense. During World War II, he reputedly did well by selling flowers from a roadside stall to military personnel on leave.

Birds, mainly rainbow lorikeets, adored his flowers for their nectar, damaging them and making them unsaleable. Rather than shoot, trap, or otherwise harm these colourful creatures, Griffiths took the innovative approach of diverting them from the flowers by feeding them daily with bread and honey. To draw in tourists to buy his honey, he established a kiosk serving Devonshire teas. He soon found holidaymakers were attracted by his bird feeding as much as tea and he began to advertise the 4.30 p.m. feed on a road sign and to provide metal plates of food for people to hold. Visitor numbers grew substantially. With his parents helping in his rustic kiosk and baking their own scones and bread on site, he was able to increase his income without charging visitors who only came for the bird feeding. He also began caring for injured birds and animals in 1947, naming his property The Sanctuary.

Griffiths’s humble property became a tourist attraction with an international following. In 1956 the nature photographer Paul Zahl visited and produced a nine-page article on the sanctuary, with colour photos, for the American magazine National Geographic. Six years later the British author and naturalist Gerald Durrell filmed the birds for the British Broadcasting Corporation children’s television show Animal Magic. Increasing visitor numbers, eventually some six hundred thousand per year, enabled Griffiths to purchase 46.2 acres (18.7 ha) of land adjacent to the sanctuary for a wildlife reserve. He was still not charging an entry fee but had added income-generating ventures such as a rock shop, a butterfly display, and a miniature train to take visitors around the park.

The sanctuary required an immense amount of work. Members of the public had been bringing injured wildlife to Griffiths from as early as 1947. Although he had no veterinarian or naturalist training, he and his mother tended their injuries and kept hot-water bottles up to them through cold nights. Recuperating animals had to be fed according to their needs, which meant starting before sunrise. He also had to prepare the daily feed for the thousands of wild birds that flew in each afternoon, clean up afterwards, and maintain the commercial enterprises. His next acquisition was 44 acres (17.8 ha) of former farmland in the Currumbin Valley to release recuperating joeys and other wildlife safely. By the mid-1970s he was employing ninety-five people to operate the park, and more than one hundred during peak holiday periods, and charging a small entrance fee.

Griffiths participated in environmental-protection campaigns, including the earlier successful prevention of the mining of beach sands for rutile at Currumbin in 1956. He became concerned about the loss of a natural tree corridor for birds as the coastal strip was cleared in the 1960s for rampant urban development. In 1976, a bachelor soon to turn sixty-five and with no family member available to succeed him, he sought a method of passing on responsibility for his sanctuary. On 24 June he signed an agreement gifting it to the National Trust of Queensland. The Bjelke-Petersen government claimed the arrangement was illegal and attempted to block it. Griffiths was horrified and wrote to the Courier-Mail, insisting that all he wanted was ‘to provide a natural oasis in a materialistic world to preserve the beauties of nature around a sanctuary for wild creatures’ (1976, 4). Following resistance from some Liberal Party members of the coalition, the government backed down, while denigrating Griffiths and insinuating he was profiting from the transfer.

The agreement provided for Griffiths to continue living in his cottage and to chair a board of advice on the running of the sanctuary. Unready for changes taking place in mass tourism and for the scientific management of fauna the National Trust was now impelled to institute, he clashed with the trust’s management over its development and modernisation plans. Contention between members of the board made it easy for the trust to abolish it in 1980. With no longer any formal role in the sanctuary, he publicly criticised its commercialisation and practice of keeping caged birds. From 1980 he refused to enter the main grounds, instead spending time at the property in the Currumbin Valley, where he often stayed in a caravan. He attracted significant local community backing, which included a Friends of Alex Griffiths group.

In 1991 Pat Comben, the Queensland minister for environment and heritage, attempted to resolve matters but Griffiths rebuffed overtures by the trust. A reconciliation was effected by the sanctuary employee and film-maker Garth Threlfall, who persuaded Griffiths to attend its 1997 Christmas party; that Christmas would prove to be his last. He had been appointed AM (1976); the Gold Coast bestowed the Freedom of the City on him, jointly with the naturalist David Fleay (1989); and Griffith University awarded him an honorary doctorate of the university (1995). Despite his improved relations with the National Trust, he bequeathed his remaining parcel of land in the Currumbin Valley, Trees, to the Australian Bush Heritage Fund. He died on 29 July 1998 at Tugun and was cremated. His ashes were buried at Trees in a service officiated by an Anglican priest; a plaque with words selected by Alex marks the spot. The renamed Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary commissioned a portrait of him by E. Mack (1987) and a bronze statue by Liam Hardy (2023). They depict a lean man with even features and thick hair, very white in later life.