News – Page 10

RST 2022 Clive Lord Memorial Medal awarded to Emeritus Professor Stefan Petrow

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.

RST successful in community grant funding for art preservation

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.

*A Cool Debate*, Louisa Anne Meredith
(original watercolour for *Some of My Bush Friends in Tasmania*, 1890).

View a recording of the lecture by Rodney Gibbins – December 2022

The recent Royal Society of Tasmania lecture, “Truth telling and treaty as it relates to Tasmania now”, by Rodney Gibbins, is now available on the RST YouTube channel. Click here to read a full transcript.

For 60,000+ years the palawa people had sovereignty across this land lutruwita. All of this changed with the arrival of the white man. The invasion radically changed us in a very short period of time, our culture was interrupted, our language and freedoms taken from us. This has resulted in continuing contemptuous views and actions by successive governments that have rendered us almost voiceless and powerless in our own country.

We began to fight back in the early 1970s. We developed our own political movements and rallied as a people. Five years ago the Uluru statement was released. It was a forerunner for states to develop their own policies towards treaty and truth telling”.

In this lecture, Rodney Gibbins outlines the responses of successive governments to aboriginal issues and considers the needs and ambitions of the Aboriginal community in the development of a treaty and the truth telling process.

Rodney Gibbins is a palawa man born in Launceston. As a child, he experienced constant physical and racial harassment. This was the experience as well, of most, if not all, of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and this harassment was a direct consequence of the subjugation by the broader white community towards the Aboriginal community. Rodney has been actively involved in Aboriginal politics since the early 1970s and served in both the state and Commonwealth governments as a Senior Aboriginal Program and Policy Officer for over 30 years. He is currently retired.

RST member, Professor Trevor McDougall AC, awarded the 2022 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science

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 Trevor McDougall AC

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.

View a recording of the lecture by Dr Allison Trimble – September 2022

How much legal knowledge do school principals have, and how accurate is it? This presentation is based on a PhD study conducted in Tasmania concerning the impact of legal issues on school principals and their schools. It examines the legal literacy of Tasmanian government, Catholic and Independent school principals and asks whether they should really become lawyers.

Allison is a researcher in the School of Education at the University of Tasmania, based in Launceston. She has qualified in both Law and Education and combines those professional interests in her research on Education Law. In 2018 Allison was awarded the Australia and New Zealand Education Law Association Anne Shorten Prize for her PhD thesis, Education Law, Schools and School Principals.

The Royal Society of Tasmania 2022 Christmas Dinner and Lecture

Thursday 8 December, 5.45 pm for 6 pm, Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, Sandy Bay

Members and guests are invited to join us for the annual Christmas Dinner ($70 per person) and Lecture. Please fill in and return the acceptance form (click here to download it) to admin@rst.org.au before 16 November.

The lecture, entitled “Fifty years in the law: A few chocolate frogs amongst the jelly”, will be given by Magistrate Chris Webster AM.

Magistrate Webster will give an overview of his career and discuss four high-profile cases in which he has been involved as a lawyer and magistrate.

About Magistrate Chris Webster AM

Chris Webster graduated from the University of Tasmania in 1974 and then practised as a barrister and solicitor until March 2006 when he was appointed a Magistrate. He is still a Magistrate.

Whilst a solicitor in private practice he held several government appointments including Hearing Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Senior Member of Administrative Appeals Commission, Chairman of the Parole Board, and Member of the Medical Council of Tasmania.

He was President of the Law Society of Tasmania in 1994 and is involved in Rotary, Community Based Care and the Hobart Community Legal Service. Chris was President of the Association of Australian Magistrates until 2021 and is a Life Member of the Australian Judicial Officers Association.

In 2021, in recognition of his contribution to the Law and the Community, he became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

View a recording of the lecture by Dr Mike Pook – October 2022

The location of Tasmania exposes the island to climate influences from the tropics and subtropics to the north and the Southern Ocean and Antarctica to the south. This presentation will identify the dominant climate drivers in the region and interpret how their interactions contribute to climate variability in Tasmania on seasonal, interannual and longer timescales. The distinction between climate and weather will be discussed.

Mike Pook is an Honorary Fellow at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. He worked as a meteorologist in Australia and Papua New Guinea before becoming a senior forecaster in Hobart and spent a summer at Casey in Antarctica. After completing a PhD at the University of Tasmania he became an academic, science communicator and administrator at the Antarctic CRC until taking up a research scientist position with CSIRO. Mike was ABC Tasmania’s TV weather presenter for approximately 18 years from 1985 to the end of 2002.

Interested in the Royal Society of Tasmania Art Collection?

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.

Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery: a catalyst for cultural activation

The Northern Branch of the Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to a public lecture at 1.30 pm on Sunday 27 November 2022 by Shane Fitzgerald, City of Launceston General Manager Creative Arts and Cultural Services, in the Meeting Room of QVMAG (Inveresk). Full COVID vaccination and the wearing of face masks are highly desirable.

Admission is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania. The charge is $4 for students, QVMAG Friends, TMAG Friends, and members of the Launceston Historical Society. For all others, admission is $6.

You may if you wish view the lecture remotely via ZOOM. In this case you must register in advance to ensure that you receive an email containing instructions for joining the webinar on the day of the talk. Click here to register for ZOOM.

Click here to view the latest flyer for the event and print if necessary.

How can QVMAG become a sustainable, dynamic and accessible cultural and economic driver for Launceston, the northern region and the state? Join Shane Fitzgerald as he discusses the recently released QVMAG Futures Plan and shares insight into this imaginative and bold vision for one of Launceston’s most treasured institutions.

Mr Fitzgerald holds a Masters in Visual Arts and several qualifications in Museum Studies. He has held leadership roles in museums and art galleries in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales, most recently as head of Production at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney. He is a strong advocate for making culture accessible to all audiences.

Generously supported by

View a recording of the lecture by Dr Rebecca Carey – October 2022

Volcanic eruptions are fascinating for scientists and the public alike. Visual observations of eruption on land have been central to the scientific understanding and development of various models used in hazard forecasting.

However, in a submarine setting the interaction between hot magma and seawater is hidden and therefore not well understood. Recent submarine eruptions like the Hunga Tonga eruption in 2022 are extraordinary and can be devastating. International scientific teams with innovative robotic technologies have responded to these events to characterise and further understand submarine eruptions. These well characterised events underpin step changes in our understanding of how magmas and volcanoes interact with the ocean. In this presentation, I will describe case studies of recent submarine eruptions and underwater exploration of the eruption products to highlight advances and remaining challenges in the study of underwater volcanoes.

Associate Professor Rebecca Carey is a former Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, Tasmanian Tall Poppy Scientist of the Year, and the 2020 winner of the Australian Academy of Science Dorothy Hill Medal. Rebecca won the RST MR Banks Medal for an outstanding mid-career researchers in 2021. Rebecca is interested in volcanic processes and environments, geological hazards, and indigenous cultural narratives around volcanic events. Her research focuses on understanding volcanic eruptive histories, mechanisms and drivers of volcanic eruptions, explosive eruption plumes, submarine volcanoes and eruption dynamics, and volcanic hazards.