Curtis, Herbert Sydney (Syd)   (1928 - 2015)

Born on 12 March 1928 in Queensland; died on 27 December 2015 in Killarney, Qld.

Born to Herbert Curtis and Hilda Geissman Curtis. Syd grew up on Tamborine Mountain in South East Queensland.

He was educated at the North Tamborine State School, Brisbane Grammar School, Marist Brothers Tamborine, Gatton College, and the Australian Forestry School in Canberra.

The Curtis family have had a very long association with the community, farming, forestry and national parks in the Mount Tamborine-Canungra area. In I877, Syd's paternal grandfather, Sydney, and his brother Edmund selected land on Tamborine Mountain.

Syd was appointed a cadet forester with the Queensland Sub-Department of Forestry in 1946 and graduated from the Australian Forestry School and the University of Queensland in 1950, along with thirty-four others.

Syd's first appointment after graduation in 1951 was to Dalby as assistant to the district forester. He met his wife Anne there (married in December 1952) and in March 1953 he was transferred to Imbil in the Mary Valley. Here, Syd was the silvicultural research forester and did a lot of work in spacing and thinning trials in the hoop pine plantations.

In 1959, Syd was transferred to Head Office and appointed assistant forester involved in general forestry activities including forest inventory survey and timber assessments for the conversion of crown grazing selection leases to freehold tenure. This latter required the assessment and valuation of standing timber on the leases for presentation to the Land Court.

Syd was the most senior of the younger unclassified foresters and had a good chance of getting appointed as a district forester at the time the new national parks management structure was being introduced. However, his heart was with national parks and he was appointed to the position: forester-in-charge, National Parks.
In Syd's words:

"It was a general interest in all forms of natural history not merely birds that atracted me to national park administration. I had the good fortune to be working in Head Office when the Department decided to appoint a graduate forester to National Park work and I was able to talk my way into the job. My special interest in lyrebinds (fostered by my mother) started before I started primary school.
CSIRO had carried out a major study of Superb Lyrebirds and wanted data on Albert Lyrebinds to compare. My special interest in and knowledge of Abert's Lyrebirds was known, and CSIRO proposed, and the Oueensland Forestry director agreed, to a jolnt research project on Albert's Lyrebind vocal behaviour, for which I did the feld work."

Source: Extracted from:
Huth, J. (2022) 'As We Were - prose, poetry and people, from Queensland's Forest History', p.141-142.
https://rainforestaustralia.blog/2016/03/25/vale-syd-curtis/ (Aust Rainforest Conservation Society)
Portrait Photo: https://rainforestaustralia.blog/2016/03/25/vale-syd-curtis/

Collecting localities for 'Curtis, H.S.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 536 specimens