Having been born in Parkes, NSW, I was raised on a wheat/sheep farm in the Goobang valley north-east of Parkes and, after a couple of years, on a similar farm a bit further north and west, near Alectown, about half-way between Parkes and Peak Hill.

My secondary education involved boarding for five years at All Saints College in Bathurst. Sport was my pre-occupation across all those years. Recently, while reading fellow-agger Neil Black’s autobiography (“A Fortunate Life”, self-published, 2021), I realised that I probably played football (i.e. rugby union) against Neil who was a boarder at Wolaroi, in nearby Orange. 

Despite having been awarded a scholarship to study Ag Science at the University of Sydney, I was intent on becoming a farmer. To this end, I spent my first year out of school at Yanco Agricultural College, created only a few years earlier by the NSW Department of Agriculture, specifically for introducing the concepts and practice of modern scientific agriculture to young people who planned a life on the land. It was one of the best years of my life. Sadly, Yanco Agricultural College closed in 2003, despite being all the more needed when Hawkesbury and Wagga Agricultural Colleges moved up a tier to become universities. Pleasingly, the spirit of Yanco Agricultural College lives on in the Yanco campus of Tocal College, which is still run, I am pleased to see, by what is now the NSW Department of Primary Industries. 

Armed with a Certificate in Agriculture, I spent the next year working with my father on the farm at Alectown. Among other things, by hopelessly failing to draft a mob of sheep according to their red or green ear tags, I discovered that I was partially colour blind! This helped to explain why I had always been completely mystified by the end point of titrations in chemistry at school! Despite this discovery, the year at home on the farm was as good as the previous year at Yanco! But the deferred scholarship could be deferred no longer. After much agonising, my parents and I decided that I should take the plunge into what was completely uncharted territory for all of us.

Very fortunately for me, during what was then called Orientation Week, I met a very special young woman called Jan Billington. Our backgrounds were very different: she had migrated as a young child from England with her parents; and she was a completely urban creature who was doing Arts subjects! Very quickly I became interested in Arts subjects. I started attending lectures on Anthropology and Fine Arts (with fellow-agger/chaperone, Bart Trott), in addition to the BScAgr science courses. Major highlights of those early years included lectures by Les Hiatt on Aboriginal kinship, and a seminar in the Main Quad basement rooms of the Anthropology department in which author Frank Hardy gave a first-hand account of his central involvement with the 200 Aboriginal stockmen who had walked off Wave Hill station a few months before we started uni; a landmark in the history of Aboriginal land rights. 

These experiences highlight, of course, the incomparable opportunities provided by a university education. Irrespective of the course actually being studied, there are innumerable possibilities for expanding the mind.

As fellow aggers will recall, Jan and I were married in third year. A highlight of genetics pracs in one of the Badham teaching labs that year was being presented with a vertical griller as a wedding present! I am very pleased to report that Jan and I have shared, and are still sharing, the rest of our lives together. (I regret to advise that we no longer have the vertical griller.)

Like many fellow aggers, I consider myself very fortunate to have been exposed to so much science in an applied context, presented to us by so many inspiring lecturers during our BScAgr degree. Running a strong risk of being seen to be biased, I reckon that learning science in an applied context provides a better-grounded foundation to science than doing a “straight” science degree. Without any risk of bias, I can confidently state from much first-hand evidence over several decades that the best of the BScAgr graduates can hold their own in any science research laboratory anywhere in the world. 

Apart from the vertical griller, the other benefit that emerged from those third-year genetics prac classes was great enthusiasm for the entire subject, to the extent that for fourth year, I switched from the animal stream to major in genetics, under the mentorship of Stuart Barker. The following year, to enable Jan and me to visit her family, and to enable me to further my love affair with genetics, we headed for the UK, where I enrolled for a PhD in the Institute of Animal Genetics within the University of Edinburgh. Reflecting a colonial era almost at its end, P&O still offered a free passage to any Australia-based student with a scholarship for postgraduate study in Europe. Jan and I thus found ourselves on a six-week voyage to England aboard the Orsova, in a cohort that totalled, by the time we left Fremantle, 25 students, some with spouses. As it happened, among our cohort’s Rhodes scholars was Elizabeth Blackburn, who, as some of you will recall, went on to win a Nobel Prize for her work on telomeres – the “caps” at the ends of chromosomes.

The Scots proved to be very welcoming. Of particular agricultural interest, we were befriended by a young woman who had recently inherited a 6000-acre estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh, complete with an 18th-century William Adam stately home and multi-generational tenant farmers. More importantly, the heiress happened to own a very sporty convertible, which she lent to us when she was away for several weeks soon after we had arrived. 

The winters in Edinburgh were somewhat challenging - going to work and coming home in the dark. The bonus was that in summer, we could start a game of cricket at 6pm, safe in the knowledge that it could be completed before the sun set. 

Another Edinburgh highlight was the annual Burns Supper, commemorating the birth of one of the world’s greatest poets. His very agricultural poem (“To a mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785”; written while Burns was farming in Ayrshire) is inspirational. It contains several memorable lines, including “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/gang aft agley” and (with Burns addressing the mouse) “Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!/The present only toucheth thee”. Incidentally, the US man of letters John Updike published a marvellous pastiche of this poem in 2003, to celebrate the publication of the first drafts of the human and mouse genomes: “To a Well Connected Mouse (Upon reading of the genetic closeness of mice and men)”. It is very cleverly written, and very funny. (The New Yorker, January 6, 2003, page 30). 

Only a year into my PhD, an unexpected opportunity arose for me to apply for a lectureship back at the University of Sydney. Even more unexpectedly, two months later I got the job! Frighteningly, the deadline for me to take up the job was 15 months, in which time I would have to complete my PhD research, submit a thesis and be examined. Strange to say, this short deadline was made somewhat easier because of my colour blindness! Before I arrived in Edinburgh, my supervisor had planned for me to do an experimental project on Drosophila, the vinegar fly widely used in genetics research. The project involved arranging matings according to eye colour, which, of course, was impossible for me. The second-best alternative was computer simulation, which has the distinct advantage of not relying on any vicissitudes of nature. So, while I may not have been able to complete a Drosophila project in time for the deadline to be back in Sydney, I was able to meet the deadline with computer simulation. 

Teaching and researching in animal genetics in the Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney was a pinch-me experience. There were, of course, challenges and disappointments. But overall, the next 34 years (until I retired in 2007) were very special. Very special students came and went; some became colleagues – fellow seekers of new truths; some have now also retired! Very special staff came and went. Throughout all of those 34 years, and the following 15 years during which I have still been very much involved with the university, I have witnessed, over and over again, staff going to extraordinary lengths – way beyond the call of duty – to provide extraordinary experiences for students and for colleagues; sometimes (and, sadly, increasingly) despite administrative and bureaucratic hurdles (especially mindless re-organisations!) being placed in their way.

Just a few years after I returned to Sydney, my exceptional mentor Stuart Barker moved to UNE in Armidale. To my great good fortune, his replacement was Chris Moran, one of the best scientists I have ever encountered, and a very special person as well. I could not have wished for a better colleague. For nearly 30 years, we worked as immediate colleagues, each free to go his own way, but continually sharing the teaching, and collaborating (together with marvellous students, postdocs and other colleagues) on genetic research in species ranging from honey bees to carp to crocodiles, in addition to all the common domesticated species.

Retirement has provided the opportunity for new adventures, including learning to make bread and cheese at home, and becoming involved in the religion/science issue. The more I evaluate the evidence on this issue, the more convinced I become that in order for scientists such as Francis Collins to claim, as they do, that religious understandings and scientific understandings are compatible, they knowingly ignore compelling evidence to the contrary. A far more constructive approach is to acknowledge the irreconcilable differences in understandings, and to celebrate both understandings! This involves accepting the mediaeval concept of double truth, which (I am discovering) is as controversial now as it was in mediaeval times!

Having already mentioned how Jan has shared my life since I started as an undergraduate, I shall finish by expressing my gratitude to her. She has enriched, and continues to enrich, my life beyond measure, mostly in ways not mentioned here. She has borne our two children, who have added yet more dimensions to our lives. She has delighted with me in our three grandchildren. I have done my best to balance the two synchronous love affairs of my life without causing too much strain! It’s been an amazing series of adventures shared with an amazing wife and a wonderful extended family, to all of whom I owe far more than I can ever repay.