This came as a shock: it hadn’t occurred to me that anybody might publish my findings as their own, and I had no idea what to do about it, particularly since students were forbidden to publish their work before their degree was conferred. How times have changed. Despite this, the editor suggested I write it up as best I could and send it, and my colour slides, to him to ‘fix up’ and publish in his journal.
Back home I did as he said, and that wonderful man did as he promised.1 Things were looking up. I had four post-docs to choose from, one of which was in Canada and came with a large research budget to work on hormonal control of migratory locust outbreaks, which were decimating crops around the tropical world. Yet something about that offer wasn’t quite right. Would this post-doc give me the freedom to do as I wanted or would I just be a small cog in a big machine, unable to follow my own nose? Worse, the journal editor’s words kept repeating in my head; I imagined I’d be working with the sort of people who stole others’ work.
On hearing this, O’Barrell told me to go away and grow up. Nevertheless, I kept delaying, until I finally took the plunge and accepted the offer of the post-doc in Canada.
A few days later I heard the postman’s whistle and took delivery of a telegram from James Cook University offering me the post-doc they had long been advertising. I wrote a polite ‘no thankyou’ for a job I had dreamt of only a year earlier. But the telegram reminded me that I should write some sort of report, for whom I didn’t know, about the corals we’d found at the Solitary Islands. This was something I’d always intended to do but kept putting off until I had learned something of the subject.2 I went to the university library to find a book that might help me put names to the corals. There weren’t any, but there was a book, just published, written by Isobel Bennett, my childhood mentor, called The Great Barrier Reef. Maybe it would help? It did, but not much. I absentmindedly turned the pages. It was full of photos of a spectacular part of the world I had just said I wasn’t going to work in – challenging work that would be all mine, in a place so important and so beautiful.
I was at a crossroad, an important one. Should I continue a career path in Canada on a subject I found enormously interesting and rewarding, and knew a lot about? I would be in the company of high achievers, part of a world-class team, and maybe even have a mentor. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but would I have my much needed autonomy? Or should I start afresh, working on corals? I knew next to nothing about them, but it seemed that no one else knew much either.
I borrowed the book and hurried home. After much soul-searching with Kirsty I wrote two strange letters, both offering apologies for changing my mind. One to James Cook to say yes please and the other to Canada to say no thank you.
In the end, this was not an academic decision. Deep within me I’d always had a vague feeling of destiny, that I would some day return to marine life. Every few days there was something on television or in newspapers about the threats to the Great Barrier Reef from mining and oil drilling, threats to the most fabulous place I had ever seen. This was something I felt deeply about, something more important than just landing a job. My inner self tends to get the upper hand at such times and this was one of them.
In writing those letters I sowed the seeds for two records. The first was becoming the Great Barrier Reef’s first full-time research scientist. The second was becoming a marine biologist without ever attending a single lecture on marine biology.
News of this decision turned Professor O’Farrell into a blubbering barrel of fury: if I was going to chuck in a career for a diving holiday, as he put it, then I could go to hell. He ordered me out of his office and told me never to return.
Had I done the right thing? With O’Farrell’s words ringing in my ears I felt very insecure about leaving a project that had been so successful and enjoyable in favour of working on something I knew little about. Moreover, my little family was happy in a house that we’d turned into a comfortable home, one which was only a couple of hours’ drive from Stonehenge. And although Armidale was a small city, Kirsty could pursue her interests in music and acting there. Why leave?
My mother was horrified at the idea of us going to Townsville; it was so very far away and Noni had become the centre of her life. But move we did, in November 1972.
The Great Barrier Reef
Matters of politics
Some five years before we moved, at a time when I was busy collecting snakes, the attempt to open the Great Barrier Reef up to mining and oil drilling was raising its ugly head. It all started in 1967 when an enterprising sugarcane farmer applied to the local mining warden for permission to mine Ellison Reef, near Dunk Island, for limestone to fertilise his crops. He claimed the reef was ‘dead’.
Fortunately for the future of the entire Great Barrier Reef, this caught the eye of the artist John Büstt, who immediately saw the ramifications of such a precedent and filed an objection to the farmer’s claim. On what grounds could Büstt object? Political manoeuvres commenced that quickly developed into one of the biggest conservation battles in Australia’s history. Both the Australian and Queensland governments claimed jurisdiction over the Great Barrier Reef but it transpired that, as The Reef is submerged at high tide and therefore not land, most of it is arguably in international waters, beyond the 12-mile territorial limit of sovereign countries.
It wasn’t long before much of the Queensland coast had been quietly leased by the Queensland government for prospecting, leaving little doubt about the fate of The Reef should it fall into the hands of environmental vandals like Joh Bjelke-Petersen. And indeed, when Bjelke-Petersen was elected premier in 1968 he quickly became a conservationist’s worst nightmare.
The mining warden required proof that Ellison Reef was not dead, and so began a string of conflicts that became both complicated and dirty. One after another, scientists, not wanting to get involved in anything that might tarnish their professional status, washed their hands of it, and even the longstanding Great Barrier Reef Committee, chaired at that time by Professor Bob Endean of the University of Queensland, declined to help. The University of Queensland even announced its ‘official position’: Ellison Reef was indeed dead. Where were the experts?3
It fell to Len Webb, a prominent rainforest ecologist; Eddie Hegerl of the newly formed Queensland Littoral Society (now the Australian Marine Conservation Society); Don McMichael, the newly appointed director of the Australian Conservation Foundation; and Vincent Serventy, the author of popular natural history books, to carry on the battle for the conservationists. In the end their efforts were unnecessary because the Queensland Minister for Mines stepped in and rejected the cane grower’s application on legal grounds. There were celebrations all round, but they were short-lived because by 1969 the Bjelke-Petersen government had approved petroleum exploration licences over almost the entire Great Barrier Reef and had called for tenders to start drilling for oil.
This woke Australians up: it was a time I remember well, even though I was by then just starting my work on dragonflies. Most geologists supported the drilling, most biologists opposed it, and all politicians feared it because of the growing groundswell of public judgement. Ill-informed views raged back and forth: wasn’t the Great Barrier Reef mostly just rock? Wasn’t the best way of conserving it to use it for commerce? Wasn’t oil actually good for corals? And so on. Opinion polls and newspaper editorials proliferated across the country and they made it clear that public opinion was decidedly against drilling.
As drilling rigs headed for Australia an all-powerful ally of the conservationists waded in. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, probably to goad the Queensland premier, banned the oil rigs and anything to do with them from all Australian ports. Many cheered, others thought it dangerous that unions had such power over governments. One outcome was an agreement to hold an inquiry into drilling, to be chaired by a judge and staffed by a petroleum engineer and a marine biologist. There were plenty of judges and petroleum engineers but where could an impartial
marine biologist be found? The whole thing was shaping up to be ‘the trial of the century’, as one newspaper put it, until right at a critical point, in March 1970, the 58 000-ton oil tanker Oceanic Grandeur struck a rock in the Torres Strait, spilling its oil and creating a slick that started moving towards the far northern Great Barrier Reef. From then on, every oil spill on the planet got headline newspaper and television coverage and the inquiry was turned into a royal commission.
I was acutely aware of these events but slow to play any part in them, being preoccupied with so much else when my family and I first came to Townsville. Australia’s ‘long starvation of marine research’, as Judith Wright put it, meant there were few scientists with qualifications in marine biology.4 I certainly knew that, but had no idea what was in store when I was summoned to a meeting of the royal commission early in 1973. It was at the fledgling Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), and had to be held outside, under trees by the beach, as there was no room big enough in any of its buildings.
Someone from Canberra, sweating profusely in his suit and tie, chimed up, ‘Ah, er, Dr Veron – doctor, is it?’ I nodded. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t heard about you before – what exactly is your field of expertise?’
I explained my PhD on dragonflies.
‘So you have no qualifications in marine science?’
‘No.’
‘Then anything you say will be inadmissible. Thank you for your time.’
That was a slap in the face that didn’t go away.
Although he continued to cling to power, the conservation victories of 1974 substantially eroded the authority of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. As a last resort, the Queensland government issued a High Court writ restraining the Commonwealth from making laws affecting Queensland’s coastline. However, by mid-1975 it was mostly over: the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, pre-empted the writ by declaring federal ownership of the Great Barrier Reef, henceforth to be a marine park, and the High Court promptly backed him up.
Well do I remember that time. I might have been useless to the likes of a royal commission and I had no idea what Whitlam was contemplating, but for months I’d been getting strange phone calls from Canberra parliamentarians about corals, and more particularly, where reefs occurred.
‘So, eh, Dr Veron, let me get this straight. You say corals can be found where there are no reefs, right? And that the . . . uh . . . Great Barrier Reef actually extends to the coastline, even if there aren’t any reefs there, right?’
And so on. I knew something was afoot, but Whitlam’s proclamation took me by surprise, as it apparently did everybody else. Although I had helped, all this made me feel ill at ease. So little was known about coral, or in fact anything to do with The Reef. There was nobody to turn to, and almost nothing had been written about most of the questions that were put to me, not to mention the many more I was asking myself.
The tropics
When Kirsty, Noni and I first arrived in Townsville it had a population of only 72 000, although that made it the second-largest city in Queensland, a state almost twice the size of France and Germany combined. I imagined the university would be beside the sea with a nice view out to the Great Barrier Reef, but it was well inland, amid flat scrubland covered with chinee apples – nasty thornbushes. The city itself was nothing like it is now. There were hardly any trees in the suburbs, Cyclone Althea having devastated the place the year before our arrival, and most houses still looked barren and uncared for. And Kirsty soon discovered that as far as music and the stage were concerned she had none of the connections she so much valued in Armidale. However, we soon found a good side – people never needed to take the key out of their car, or lock their house, and almost everybody wore thongs, shorts and T-shirts everywhere, which suited us fine. And it was a very friendly town.
We’d been advised to avoid coming in the wet season, when the Bruce Highway, the only access road to Townsville from the south and in places just a single lane, was frequently closed for weeks on end. But as my post-doc could be started any time we decided to risk it in November, mostly because I couldn’t wait to begin my new job and O’Farrell had all but thrown me out of my old one anyway. We arrived without mishap, and as expected we found the city oppressively hot after the cool climes of Armidale. We were installed temporarily in a house with so many cane toads around it that the ground seemed to move at night.
The day after our arrival I was wandering around the university’s biological sciences department when I spied a door with the name Professor Cyril Burdon-Jones on it. He was the head of the department and the man who’d written to offer me my job. After getting his secretary’s uninterested nod I knocked and went in, dressed in my newly acquired Townsville regalia. The professor, a rather supercilious Welshman who put great store in formalities, didn’t seem to appreciate my tropical attire. Almost everything about him contrasted with everyone else in his department, half of whom were poms he’d recruited on coming to Australia. And so he kept his distance even from his recruits, who were a laidback and friendly lot and generally no better dressed than the locals.
‘G’day Prof, I’m Charlie Veron.’
‘I see,’ Burdon-Jones replied in a disdainful tone, an eyebrow slightly raised. He gave me a cool handshake, waved vaguely in the direction of the Great Barrier Reef and announced, ‘Your job is to go out there . . . and do something.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘And try to stay out of trouble.’
That was in fact the only job description I ever received, which meant I had a free hand – just what I wanted – but then neither of us knew anything about coral or the Great Barrier Reef. As it turned out, that day was the high point of my relationship with my boss for a long time. Over the ensuing nine months Burdon-Jones repeatedly announced, for no reason I could see, that he would be finding someone ‘more appropriate’, or ‘more suitable’ for my job. Not exactly what I’d hoped for, but at that time I had more important things on my mind.
After six weeks of living with the cane toads, which Kirsty found unnerving, we bought our own house. It was a roomy new fibro box on stilts, in a suburb of roomy new fibro boxes on stilts, just like the song about ticky-tacky boxes except there was no hillside, only flat clay. Certainly an aquarium was called for, but that was my thing; what was really needed was something for Kirsty. We had no money, so we bought a piano. Kirsty’s instrument was the violin, but she’d also learned piano at school.
New friendships came easily at James Cook University, and several people Kirsty and I met there became friends for life. One of these was Alastair Birtles, a large, bearded Englishman who had graduated from Oxford and then made some fascinating journeys to exotic places like the Red Sea. When we first asked him to dinner we discovered that he never did anything on time. No matter, in his normal style, which we were soon to get used to, he arrived only a day late. He was also late in leaving, having bunked down in our spare room, which became his room for the next nine months. Al was a welcome addition to our family, always interesting and always ready to pitch in when something needed doing.
Kirsty and I were still trying to cope with Ruari’s death and had decided the best way to do that was have another baby. Kirsty was already pregnant by the time we left Armidale, but soon after we arrived in Townsville she started to get repeated bouts of bleeding. The medical advice was to take it easy, but that changed when she began having contractions: she was sent to bed to rest. When the contractions got worse her doctor prescribed four ounces of Bacardi rum every two hours. At first one or two doses did it, but soon the treatment had to be kept up for longer, sometimes for days on end.
Being confined to bed in the oppressive heat and humidity of a Townsville summer, and at the start of a new life where there were no old friends and no family on hand for support, had a devastating effect on Kirsty. Gradually she withdrew from the day-to-day world and became less and less interested in wellwishers, until even reading to Noni became a chore. As the weary weeks unfolded she subsided into a st
ate of confusion and disorientation. When she finally lost the baby, at the beginning of March, she was a mental and physical wreck with few feelings and no interests.
The effects of this prolonged struggle on top of Ruari’s death turned Kirsty’s life into an ordeal from which she took a long time to recover, and when she did we decided enough was enough – we would not have any more children. The only good side of the ordeal was that both Noni’s grandmothers came to help. We were able to get Noni into kindergarten three mornings a week, but most of the rest of the time she had one or other grandmother to play with. My mother was reluctant to return to Sydney at all until Kirsty was completely back on her feet, but also because she couldn’t bear to part with Noni, who was developing into an extraordinarily colourful character. It was a mutual love. Noni adored her gran, as did Kirsty – all part of the wonderful magic of my mother.
Throughout this turmoil I had to at least try to learn something about corals. The university library, as it turned out, had foreseen the potential for reef studies and purchased many books about marine life, including some about corals. These weren’t guide books, which didn’t exist in those days, but ancient monographs about taxonomy, mostly long and complicated and full of unexplained jargon. I despaired of most of them – they would have been no less incomprehensible to me had they been written in Latin, as indeed several were. So I decided I would try to do with corals what botanists often did with plants: map the community types, work out what the dominant species were, and classify communities accordingly.
This was not as straightforward as it sounds, because it depended on my being able to identify the dominant species, a task which inevitably turned me back to the daunting old monographs. But gradually a sense of determination took over. I would go out on the university’s new research vessel, the James Kirby, to local reefs to see the corals in real life, collect them, and then return to see what the monographs had to say about them. I had plenty of helpers on these trips as by then scuba diving on The Reef had started to become popular with students and they all wanted to come with me. This soon created a problem for the university: wasn’t diving dangerous? I kept being asked about regulations and qualifications. All such matters have a solution, at least they did then: I agreed to be the university’s diving officer and promptly gave anyone who’d taken a diving course and knew what they were doing permission to go diving. I believed then, as I do now, that for divers with sufficient experience, safety is a matter of personal responsibility, not regulation.
A Life Underwater Page 8
