Western Australian ornithologist Geoffrey Lodge has been recognised for his work studying birds as part of the recent Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2011. Geoffrey Lodge was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia, for service to ornithology which caps a remarkable career involving over forty years volunteer work studying birds in association with the WA Museum.
Geoffrey is a former farmer and shire president from the Western Australian wheat belt town of Boyup Brook, who is now retired along with his wife Diana living near Albany on WA’s south coast. Geoffrey’s interest in birds started from an early age growing up on a farm near Beverley, which is about 120kms east of Perth.
As a child his playground was a patch of untouched Wandoo woodland forest which he had to walk through each day on his way to catch the school bus. “At that stage all clearing and development of the farming properties had stopped because of the Second World War and the Wandoo woodland was left in its natural state. I became interested in the birds in the woodland at this early age but was more interested in the ecosystem that made the woodland exist”, Geoffrey says.
At twelve years of age, Geoffrey was sent away to boarding school to complete his education. In the meantime his father had bought a new farming property at Boyup Brook in the Blackwood Valley region, 260kms south east of Perth. Upon finishing school Geoffrey returned to the farm and remained working the property until his retirement from farming in 1993.
Geoffrey’s interest in birds developed through his association with a friend of his fathers, a neighbouring farmer by the name of Major Hubert Whittel, who was a retired soldier from the British Army living in nearby Bridgetown. As Geoffrey explains, “Major Whittel had a great interest in birds and had an egg collection and had teamed up with Dr Dom Serventy, who was head of CSIRO in WA and had a bird skin collection. Together they wrote the first book about the birds of WA based on their own and the WA Museum collections. I became friendly with both men and assisted with the many reprints of their book ‘Birds of Western Australia’”.
Dom Serventy from CSIRO proved to be an important mentor for Geoffrey, insisting that if he was to do any work with birds, that everything be done scientifically correct, which Geoffrey says formed an excellent grounding to have this early training. “At the time Dom was monitoring the Short-tailed Shearwaters on the islands of Bass Strait as the harvesting of Mutton Birds was allowed to continue. His offer of a trip to the islands had to be refused as my father considered farm work much more important. However, my interest in assisting in fieldwork was created and has continued virtually ever since”.
Geoffrey soon became involved with regular field trips to various regions of Australia, mostly in association with the WA Museum, but also accompanying University of Western Australia chemistry lecturer Julian Ford who was studying the classification of bird families which involved field trips into the desert regions of central Australia such as along the then newly created Len Beadell tracks from Woomera to Talgano. However most of Geoffrey’s field work occurred in conjunction with the WA Museum and he has covered extensive ground across Western Australia, “Field trips have been wide-ranging from the Recherche Archipelago to the Houtman Abrolhos, to the islands off Onslow and the islands from Broome to Wyndham, in fact nearly all the islands of WA have been visited. Nearly all the tracks through the deserts of WA have been traversed. On all these trips breeding data and other information on birds have been recorded”.
On many of the field trips Geoffrey provided his own 4WD vehicle, plus use of his seaworthy boat the “Sea Eagle” for the Kimberley coastal islands biological survey, in which the University of WA was involved in a survey of thirty remote islands in conjunction with the WA Museum geneticists. Geoffrey and his wife Diana moved to Kununurra in WA’s Kimberley region after retiring from farming in 1993. From then on, Geoffrey coordinated most of the work done by the WA Museum regarding natural history in the Kimberley and this included involvement in various field trips.
Geoffrey is modest about his long career studying birds, saying that his work in the area of ornithology has been important – but only as part of the overall study of nature, “As our cities become larger, more and more young Australians are being born into concrete jungles and are going to have less contact with nature and therefore lose their relationship with their role as part of the ecosystem. If man ever considers he is above being part of nature, we will be battling to survive”.
He also highlights that through the study of birds, we can extend our knowledge about how birds fit into the ecosystem, “I am not really concerned about finding new species, but understanding birds and our knowledge of them is the first step in saving them and the second step is preserving their habitat, which is far more important than rules and regulations”.
Geoffrey reacted with surprise when he learned about his being awarded the Queen’s Birthday Honour, “None of the work was ever done with a view to being rewarded. In terms of the recognition, it is a great honour as I believe in the principles of the WA Museum and their collections being a very important part of the study of the ecosystem”.
Geoffrey was made an Honorary Associate of the WA Museum in 2001 in recognition of his contribution to the Museum’s work, including his involvement in preparing specimens for the Museum and his contributions to research collections and databases. The former farmer still travels extensively through the remote regions of the outback, and is keen to point out the importance of field research work in developing our further understanding of nature, “Research work and collections in our museums are a vital part of our knowledge and should not be down-graded in importance”.
Phil Tucak