William Boothby (1829-1903)was a career civil servant holding several positions including Sheriff of the Colony from 1856 to 1903 and Comptroller/Superintendant of the Labour Prison from 1869. Although he became an enthusiastic promoter of the olive industry, Boothby's initial interest was more "with a view to provide means of useful employment to the short-sentenced prisoners" at the Adelaide Gaol. As Sheriff, Boothby was probably instrumental in persuading the Adelaide City Council (through John Bailey) to plant the initial olive grove around the Adelaide Gaol in the late 1850s, its extension and replanting when the Adelaide-Nairne railway was built in the early 1870s; under his administration, the first commercially successful oil press in South Australia (possibly Australia) was established at the Gaol in 1870; and, as a result of his European tour in 1876-77, Boothby arranged for the importation of "a most valuable Italian kind of olive, producing the famous 'Lucca oil'" [R. Shomburgk, Report on the Progress and Condition of the Botanic Garden... 1877, 1878, p.6], almost certainly Frontoiana but known locally as 'Boothby's Lucca'.

Boothby's contribution to the early olive industry is significant and extends beyond growing olive trees, importing a new variety and publishing The Olive, its Culture and Products.... According to the editor of the South Australian Register in 1875, Boothby was "the first to take substantial steps with a view to demonstrating the value of olive oil manufacture."

Incidentally, Boothby maintained his cautiously reformist administration of the prison system, drafting the Prison Act of 1869-70. He was also also responsible for refining the provisions for the secret ballot in the Electoral Act of 1858, effectively the 'Australian ballot'; he superintended every parliamentary election in South Australia from 1856 to 1903, drafted every Electoral Act and prepared South Australia's electoral rolls for the new Commonwealth. Ironically the federal electorate named after him incorporates Davenport's olive groves at Beaumont.

From The Olive, its Culture and Products..., p.12-13:

Pruning the Young Plant- With a young plant that does not require grafting the first care when the roots are well developed is to form the head of the tree, by cutting off the lateral branches; during the first five years these only are suppressed. At the end of the fifth year it is time to determine the height of the trunk: this depends a good deal on the kind grown, and the nature of the soil where the trees are to be put. For deep rich soils, one to one and a-half yards; in dry soils, or exposed to wind, one yard. Six or eight branches are left to form the head. Seek to give the tree a spherical or vase form, to offer the most surface to the sun. It is not in a single year that this result is obtained; and the plant by some is trained until its twelth year before it is fit to be transplanted.

The yound plant shown in Fig. 6 is, in the spring, pruned down to C. The four branches in the form of a cross underneath develop in the following year several shoots, as in Fig. 7. They are cut again at C at the end of the branches of the second growth, and the shoot A then grows in a more vertical direction, and the shoots B and D are shortened. At the third spring, each of the four branches appear as shown in Fig. 8. Then if we prune at C, Fig. 9 will indicate the result obtained by the successive prunings at the fourth spring. The suppression of the branches B and C, and the shortening of the branch A, gives more vigor to the branch D, and makes it grow more vertical. We thus arrive at the desired form.