“Bogger Dick” and the Road to Sandringham

When you come from the northern plains
Where the girls and grass are scanty
Where the creeks run dry or ten foot high
And there’s either drought or plenty.
Pass the billy around boys
Don’t you let the pint pot stand there
For tonight we’ll drink the health
Of every overlander.
Traditional Bush Ballad, ca. 1850

Stimulated in part by my conversation with Basil Marlow about large populations of native hopping-mice (Rodentia: Notomys) in southwestern Queensland, and, in part, by learning that the Spinifex Pigeon also occurred in that sector of the country, I proposed to Tony Lee that we mount a collecting expedition to obtain experimental animals. By returning with both or either species to Tony’s lab at Monash University, we could then proceed with our collaborative studies of the physiological attributes that contribute to their successful arid-zone existences. At the time Tony was a Lecturer in the Department of Zoology and Comparative Physiology at Monash, near Melbourne. He and I had been graduate students together at UCLA, where we earned our Ph.D.s under the guidance of George Bartholomew. Tony is Australian, with a Bachelor’s Degree (with Honours) from Melbourne University, and subsequent graduate work at the University of Western Australia prior to his arrival at UCLA. At that time (1966), we were both brash, young (mid-thirties) neophyte academicians; now we’re older and retired!

Tony was enthusiastic about the prospect of a collecting expedition to the Queensland Bush and arranged for use of a four-wheel drive, long-wheel base Toyota Landcruiser that belonged to his Department. He proposed further that we be accompanied by Mike Waldman, a Departmental Ph.D. student in paleontology from Great Britain, and Dione Gilmour, a close friend of Tony ’s, the wife of another Departmental graduate student and an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Commission; neither Mike nor Dione had ever gone bush before, nor had I (at least in Australia). Mike was interested in dinosaurs, and there was the chance that our trip could traverse some known fossil fields; for Dione the trip would provide an opportunity to develop ideas for future nature programs, an endeavor for which subsequently she has become renowned.

It was August, late winter, and theoretically an ideal time for trekking in the outback, with typically cool temperatures and lowest rainfall (Kalma and McAlpine, 1979). Our destination was to be two cattle stations north of Birdsville in southwestern Queensland that I had learned about from Basil Marlow, Sandringham Station and Marion Downs. I had written to the managers of each, indicating our probable arrivals. In retrospect I think I was inwardly more excited about the possibility of locating hopping-mice for study than Spinifex Pigeons, as I had always been attracted more to furry than to feathered critters. And the thought of arid-adapted, seed-eating rodents living in Australian deserts otherwise dominated by marsupials really intrigued me.

After several days of preparation and packing supplies we were off, the four of us and our gear barely fitting into the Landcruiser. Since we were heading for the arid Centre, and it seldom rains in August, we did not include a tent, and would sleep out under the stars. Luckily, we had the foresight to include a large tarpaulin!

$15.95
Paperback, 6x9
ISBN: 978-159858-383-0
248 pages

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