Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
"In July 1968 John Maconochie, myself
and a new assistant, Jenny
Must (Purdy) set off in the
lead in the heavily laden botany section Land
Cruiser; following us was a short wheel based
Nissan Patrol from Adelaide University in which
was Tony Orchard and an off-sider named Joe Weber.
The route of the six day trip took us through
Todd River Station, down to Andado, west to
Kulgera then north to Alice Springs. The first
few days saw some pretty tough going as the
countryside was sodden, with areas under water
and creeks flowing. The laden Land Cruiser sank
into some bad wet bogs causing much work by
shovel and tow rope. I had developed a trick of
pushing steel fence pickets under the tyres of
a bogged vehicle, which works very well.
As
this was Jenny's first trip, John generously let
her be the collector for the NT Herbarium. The
South Australians made their own collection.
By the time we came to a research site in big
sand dunes on Andado we had quite a few
very full plant presses. We met up with Al
Weiderman from Canberra, and Rod Hodder of
CSIRO Alice Springs. They were conducting an
ecological survey across the dunes. The weather
was cold with periods of light rain.
One day it
was decided that the botany group would help
Rod and Al with their work. The presses were
arranged around a big camp fire to help dry the
specimens. Joe stayed to keep watch while the
rest of us drove away several kilometres to go
trudging over the sand-hills. After some time
we noticed a distant plume of smoke. Its origin
was disastrously apparent when we returned
to camp.
Becoming bored, Joe had gone for a
walk. During his absence the plant presses had
ignited. All that remained of them was ash, belt
buckles and copper rivets. Luckily, we had a
supply of empty presses so we then had a very
busy time doing another collection, so Jenny
got her botanical start after all."
Recollections of Des Nelson, 2012
Source: Extracted from: "Working with John Maconochie (1941-1984)" by
Des Nelson
Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 150 (March 2012)
https://asbs.org.au/newsletter/pdf/12-march-150.pdf
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: George Chippendale photo collection at ANBG.
Data from 1,801 specimens