Officer, Ernest   (1870 - 1936)

Born at 'Zara', NSW, on 29 December 1870; died on 1 December 1936, at his home in Toorak, Victoria.

('Zara' was the family property, located c.13 km NW of Wanganella, southern NSW)

According to his obituary in The Age, he “was educated at Geelong Grammar School and Trinity College, Melbourne University, where he graduated Master of Arts and studied law for two years before returning to Zara and giving his whole attention to pastoral affairs.”
After the property was sold in 1927, he moved to Melbourne to live. Ernest married late in life (May, 1923) to Doris Lyne Veale, whose Wikipedia page notes him as “an English-Australian physician and paediatrician,”

In 1928, Ernest joined the Michael Terry Expedition.

(Michael Terry was born in Britain in 1899 and, after a stint in the Royal Navy moved to Australia in 1919. He made his name as an adventurer in 1923 when he and a friend drove from Winton, Queensland, to Broome, Western Australia, in a 1913 T-model Ford.)

Terry is said to have made numerous trips to Central Australia many of which were privately financed by mining companies undertaking exploration. The 1928 expedition seems to have had the same objective since the Adelaide Advertiser said that its purpose was to 'study matters relating to the customs of the natives, botany, zoology and minerals' in northern Australia. The Terry Expedition left Fremantle on April 27, 1928, by the motor vessel Koolinda, for the north-west of Western Australia and was equipped with two six-wheeled Morris trucks. Terry planned to traverse the country between Broome and the Northern Territory and, from there, travel through Central Australia to reach Adelaide around the end of the year.

Ernest made at least 44 collections while on the Terry Expedition. According to AVH, all but one is held at the Melbourne Herbarium; mostly tagged as 'Ex Herb. W.R.A. Baker'. Baker worked at Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, for more than 40 years where he served as Keeper of the Herbarium and the Museum of Economic Botany.

Ernest Officer collected the type of Kochia cheelii R.H.Anderson (Dec. 1913) and the type of Frankenia latior Sprague & Summerh. (Mar. 1917).

Confusingly his sister, Edith Officer, also of 'Zara', (same initial) also collected.

Source: Extracted from:
Wilson, P, 'The Officer family of 'Zara'', ASBS Newsletter, No.196, Sept. 2023
https://forsterfamily.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-officer-family.pdf
Portrait Photo: Date unknown, possibly c. 1935, The North Midland Times January 15, 1937.

Collecting localities for 'Officer, E.' from AVH (2023)

Data from 497 specimens
These would include Ernest Officer and his sister Edith Officer.