Any change to the Rules of the RST requires approval at an Annual General Meeting.

A small change is recommended for the second paragraph of Rule 64 ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT. This change will be presented for approval at the AGM. The change is intended to ensure that the Society will remain compliant through future changes in the relevant government bodies and the legislation.

The current version of the second paragraph of Rule 64 is:

ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT
64. …..
The Society will register with the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission (ACNC) or its successors in law, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the Australian Business Registry (ABR), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), any similar Tasmanian Government body where that registration will benefit the Society, or is required by law. All material issued by the Society will comply with all rules and regulations created under the legislation created by each of the above bodies.

Changes to this paragraph have been proposed, as follows:

ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT
64. …
The Society will register with the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission (ACNC) or its successors in law, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the Australian Business Registry (ABR), and any similar Tasmanian or Federal Government body where that registration is required by law or will benefit the Society. All material issued by the Society will comply with all rules and regulations created under the legislation created by each of the above bodies.

Jocelyn McPhie
President

Congratulations to Royal Society of Tasmania member, Mrs Joyce Mackey, on being awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2023 Australia Day Awards, for service to community history preservation.

Joyce is an Honorary Costume Curator for TMAG at Narryna, an 1830s merchant’s house and collection that tells the story of early colonial life in Hobart. In 2016 Narryna received a National Library of Australia Community Heritage Grant to undertake a significance and preservation-needs assessment of its nationally-significant costume collection. Over the Winter of 2018, Joyce led volunteers in upgrading the cataloguing and photographic documentation of the collection as it was rehoused, using archival materials provided for by a second successful grant application.

Joyce now curates both the textiles and costumes collections at Narryna, arranging their exhibition at events such as the “Ashes to Ashes” exhibition held as Narryna’s contribution to the Dark MOFO program of 2015.

Joyce is also a highly accomplished lace maker. In 2017, Joyce designed and made a mixed bobbin lace pattern placemat of Tasmania’s floral emblem of blue-gum leaves and flowers against a lattice fence, which was presented as part of an Australian official anniversary gift to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Queen Margrethe II and Crown Prince Henrik of Denmark.

A beautiful lace bonnet, created in 2016 by Joyce to commemorate the memory of 1790’s convict Mary Reibey, is now on permanent exhibition at Entally House in Hadspen.

Congratulations to the Royal Society of Tasmania’s Honorary Editor, Council member, and renowned Wildlife Scientist and Conservationist Dr Sally Bryant, on being made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Awards, for “significant service to wildlife and land conservation in Tasmania”.

Sally has worked in many of Australia and New Zealand’s wildest places focusing on threatened fauna mainly birds. Her conservation assessments of Tasmania’s shorebirds, eastern ground parrot and forty-spotted pardalote have been foundational for three decades. In Tasmania she has surveyed many of the remote offshore islands including Macquarie Island and was instrumental in establishing the Hamish Saunders Memorial Island Survey Program. At the Tasmanian Land Conservancy Sally was instrumental in protecting 11 permanent nature reserves and establishing long term monitoring across 15,000 hectares. Two reserves had World Heritage Status and one reserve in the heart of Kingborough protected a critical colony of forty-spotted pardalotes.

In 1991, Sally authored the Forty-Spotted Pardalote National Recovery Plan for the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Water, which aimed to secure major colonies of the forty-spotted pardalote on private land, maintain or increase the amount of potential habitat available to the species and maintain or increase the populations at or above those recorded in 1991.

Sally has authored and co-authored numerous books, chapters, journal papers, technical reports and popular articles on conservation issues, including those for the Royal Society of Tasmania. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at UTas, on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Ecological Management & Restoration, and has recently lectured for the Society of the plight of the Forty-Spotted Pardalote.

Sally is probably best known for her popular ABC Radio wildlife talkback programs, which have been running since 1999.

The RST Doctoral Award is intended to recognise recent PhD graduates who have made significant advances in the course of their doctoral research. The value of the award is $1,000 (AUD).

Dr Zhen Zhou has been selected as the winner of the 2022 RST Doctoral Award. Dr Zhou is a medical scientist and completed her PhD at the Menzies Institute of Medical Research, University of Tasmania in 2021. The focus of her PhD research was primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and the use of lipid-lowering medications (known as statins) for elderly people.

Cardiovascular disease is the top killer at the state, national and global levels. Tasmania has scored poorly in heart health, and the risk factors for developing heart problems are among the highest in Australia.

Dr Zhou’s PhD results supported widespread use of statins for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in older adults, given that this treatment is relatively safe and widely tolerated. However, statin use does not have a mortality benefit and many questions remain. Large, randomised trials over several years are required to fully understand the role of statins. In the meantime, Dr Zhou’s research will inform clinicians making judgments on the appropriateness of prescribing statins to their older patients.

Since graduating, Dr Zhou has taken up a National Heart Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Menzies Institute of Medical Research.

The Royal Society of Tasmania’s Clive Lord Memorial Medal has been awarded to Emeritus Professor Stefan Petrow (pictured below). Professor Petrow has made an outstanding contribution to diverse aspects of Tasmanian history through prolific research, teaching, post-graduate supervision and public engagement sustained for more than 30 years.

Stefan completed an undergraduate degree and Masters at University of Tasmania followed by a PhD at University of Cambridge. He was appointed to the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania in 2000, and revitalised the teaching of Australian history, inspiring many students to take on Tasmanian topics. He has supervised 37 PhD and MA students. Professor Petrow served as Director of the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies (2013-19) at the University of Tasmania and two terms as President of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association.

Professor Petrow has published on public health, urban planning, juvenile delinquency, technical education, libraries, religious sectarianism, wild life conservation, animal cruelty and military service. His 1997 paper on the events surrounding the mutilation of the body of William Lanne in 1869 has informed many during the recent discussion over the future of the statue of William Crowther.

The Clive Lord Memorial Medal was established in 1930. It is awarded every four years to a scholar distinguished for research in, alternatively, Tasmanian science or as in 2022, Tasmanian history, with the awardee giving the Clive Lord Memorial Lecture.

Clive Errol Lord, a naturalist and museum director, became Tasmania’s leading ornithologist, and was instrumental in the inception of Tasmania’s first national park in 1916. He successfully campaigned for the protection of land and sea animals that led to the Animals and Birds Protection Act of 1936, and also for the preservation of penguins and seals of Macquarie Island that resulted in the island being proclaimed a wildlife reserve. He was Secretary of the Royal Botanical Gardens for many years, and Secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania from 1918-1933.

Successful Community Heritage Grants – RST Art Collection

The Royal Society of Tasmania has been successful in gaining funding through the National Library of Australia Community Heritage Grants (CHG) program. The CHG program is an Australia-wide plan helping community organisations preserve locally owned, but nationally significant, Australian cultural heritage collections. The application involved a significant amount of work from the RST Art Fundraising Committee, Honorary Curator and Art Committee.

Gaining a grant from the CHG of $6500 represents an acknowledgement that our collection is of national significance. The grant will be specifically used for a significance assessment, preservation needs assessment, and the purchase of cataloguing software, to help in the management of the collection.

The services of qualified experts in the fields of significance assessment and art conservation have so far been successfully secured, and we look forward to pursuing further opportunities to advance the preservation of the collection using the CHG grant.

The Art Fundraising Committee has also been successful in gaining a $2000 grant from the Community Underwriting Small Grants Program, a yearly initiative of Community Underwriting, an Australian insurance provider for not-for-profit organisations. The grant will provide further contribution to the restoration of the RST Art Collection. Honorary Curator Dr Anita Hansen will work alongside the recently appointed Art Conservator, Amy Bartlett, to identify appropriate works for restoration. Warm appreciation is expressed to both the CHG program and Community Underwriting for their support.

The bulk of the Royal Society of Tasmania Art Collection was assembled from the 1890s, through donation, purchase and exchange, in a deliberate effort by the Society to acquire important Tasmanian cultural items. A recent valuation confirmed the unique nature and importance of many works in the collection. Learn more about the collection here.

See below an example of an artwork needing conservation assessment. At some time, the card mount was pasted to the artwork. Click on the image to see more detail.

Congratulations to long-standing Royal Society of Tasmania member, Professor Trevor McDougall AC, on winning the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, 2022, for his research into the ocean’s role in climate and climate change. This prize recognises outstanding achievements in scientific research and is awarded annually by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. The Prime Minister’s Prize for Science is regarded as the most prestigious national award for the advancement of knowledge through science.

Professor McDougall, a global leader in oceanography, is recognised for his discoveries of new ocean mixing processes and his work to redefine the thermodynamic definition of seawater. He has developed a specific temperature variable to track heat transference that has now been adopted internationally, by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, as the new standard for representing heat in marine science.

Professor McDougall has been a Scientia Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at UNSW in Sydney since 2012. His undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide was followed by a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He held an appointment as a physical oceanographer with CSIRO in Hobart for almost thirty years before joining UNSW in 2012. During that period in Hobart, Professor McDougall became a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania. He has previously been awarded both the MR Banks Medal (1998), being an outstanding mid-career researcher, and the Royal Society of Tasmania Medal (2013), being an outstanding scholar who was also an active member of the Society.

The Royal Society of Tasmania owns a large and valuable Art Collection of over 900 artworks. The majority of the collection was acquired by the Society at the end of the nineteenth century in a campaign to collect items reflecting Tasmanian cultural identity. The collection includes works from many famous convict and colonial artists such as Simpkinson de Wesselow, John Skinner Prout, Benjamin Duterrau, Owen Stanley, W.C. Pigeunit and Louisa Anne Meredith. The RST Art Collection is currently housed in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. This collection is of national cultural significance, containing many rare and unique works.

This short video presents an interview with Prof Ross Large, Chair of the RST Art Committee. We extend very warm thanks to film maker Anthos Simon for producing this video.

More information about the RST Art Collection and its significance is available here.

The Royal Society of Tasmania is proud of its role as the custodian of one of the most significant collections of colonial works on paper in Australia. It is also our responsibility to make sure that these works are repaired, conserved and finally exhibited, and this requires considerable funding. The Gala Fundraising event at Government House on Tuesday 6 September – our most significant fundraiser yet – drew much interest from a large group of those who appreciate the quality of the collection and are supportive of our efforts. A feature of the evening was a commissioned work “Echoes of Van Diemen’s Land” from composer Thomas Rimes which was written as a direct response to a selection of exceptional Tasmanian landscape paintings by Francis Simpkinson de Wesselow – 1819-1906.

We are pleased to provide a short film recording of the event and express our gratitude to film maker Anthos Simon for capturing the evening for us to enjoy and share more widely. Click below to start the video.