Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Pauline Bond was born in King William Town,
South Africa on the 28th of October 1917. died in Atherton, QLD, on the 19th June 2010.
She obtained her Bachelour of Science from Rhodes
University in 1937, and was the Solly Scholar
at Kirstenbosch Herbarium in 1939, under the
then Curator Robert Compton. Pauline was an athlete of international
quality but an injury and the Second World War
curtailed this career.
Pauline was a Herbarium
Assistant at Kirstenbosch from 1940 to 1945.
During this time she married Arthur Fairall and
they had three children.
In 1946 she gained her Honours degree form the
University of South Africa. From 1950 to 1960 to
she worked part-time as Herbarium Assistant at
Kirstenbosch.
In 1962 the family came to Western Australia
when Arthur Fairall became the founding
Superintendent of the Western Australian Botanic
Gardens at Kings Park. Pauline became both a paid
and voluntary curator of Kings Park and Botanic
Garden Herbarium (KPBG), from 1962 until 1973.
While at Kings Park, Arthur and Pauline collected
extensively in Western Australian, especially
the Western deserts in 1966. These collections
are mainly in PERTH under AR Fairall (1240
collections) and in KPBG.
Pauline also provided the botanical descriptions
for Arthur's landmark book on Western Australian
Plants in Cultivation (Fairall 1970). This was
the first book on this subject and was published
after Arthur's sudden death in the same year. She
also identified many plants for John Beard when
he was undertaking his mapping of the State,
material for a catalogue of native plants of Kings
Park Bushland and prepared the second edition of
the Descriptive Catalogue of Western Australian
Plants (Beard 1970).
Pauline returned to South Africa and from 1973
to 1984 she worked as a Botanist at the Compton
Herbarium at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens
and helped care for an elderly aunt. During this
period she co-authored under her maiden name
(Bond) the descriptive catalogue of the Cape Flora
(Bond and Goldblatt, 1984). She also revised
the emblematic Asteraceae genus Oldenburgia
(Bond, 1987). Pauline has approximately 1670
collections in NBG, from her working career in
South Africa.
Pauline returned to Perth in 1984 and continued
working part time and in a voluntary capacity
at KPBG until 2001.
Pauline was a very active
member of the Western Australian Wildflower
Society and participated in many field trips and
the Bushland Plant Survey Program from its
inception both in the field and herbarium.
When her prodigious memory began to fail her
in the early 2000s she moved to Atherton to be
closer to her daughter Patricia. In Atherton she
continued with some volunteering with a local
plants group and her church. Over these years her
memory declined and she became increasingly
frail and died there on the 19th June 2010.
Pauline had 2 species from South Africa, named
after her by her botanical mentor Robert Compton:
Erica bondiae and Thoracosperma bondiae.
For those of us who knew Pauline she was noted
for her boundless energy, modesty, commitment
to work, quiet but deep religious convictions and
meticulous thorough approach to her botanical
work.
Source: Extracted from Obituary by Greg and Bronwen Keighery: 'A Botanist of Two Continents'
Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 144–5 (September–December 2010) p.28-29
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: above obituary.