Rebecca Fleming:

Good afternoon and welcome to the National Library of Australia. I'm Rebecca Fleming and I'm the Assistant Director of Digitisation Projects in Curatorial and Collection Research. I'd like to begin today by acknowledging Australia's First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and give my respect to elders past and present and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Thank you for attending today to this event, coming to you from Ngunnawal and Ngambri land.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that now would be a good time to silence any mobile devices that you might have on. This afternoon's presentation is 'Dr Isobel Bennett and The Secrets of Australian Seashores.' It's by Joy McCann. Sorry, Dr Joy McCann, our 2026 National Library of Australia Fellow. Our distinguished Fellowships programme supports researchers to make intensive use of the National Library's rich collections through fellowships of three months. National Library of Australia Fellowships are made possible by generous philanthropic support, and Joy's Fellowship this year has been supported by the Stokes family. I'd also like to acknowledge today that here in the theatre and online, we have members of Dr Isobel Bennett's family in the crowd, and I'd like to welcome them today.

Dr Joy McCann is an Australian environmental and public historian with a PhD in history from the Australian National University and a professional background in public history, heritage and policy. She is currently an adjunct associate professor at the University of Tasmania and has held the 2025 State Library and Archives of Tasmania Research Fellowship. In her presentation today, Joy will discuss her fellowship research on Dr Isobel Bennett's experiences and achievements within the context of Australia's role in the international post-war expansion of ocean and marine sciences. Joy will share Isobel's scientific insights and motivations for dedicating her life to the study and conservation of Australia's seashores.

I might also note here that the library is currently digitising Dr Bennett's papers, which we're very excited about with funding generously received through our 2025 Tax Time Appeal. Please join me in welcoming Dr Joy McCann.

Joy McCann:

Thank you very much and thanks all for coming today and for people who are joining us online as well. It's a real privilege to be here. And I too would like to thank Isobel's relatives for coming from Sydney today for this presentation and for those that are listening in online. I'm grateful to the Stokes family as well for supporting this fellowship and also to the National Library whose staff have been absolutely fantastic for the period of time that I've been here with their support and assistance.

I first encountered Isobel Bennett when I read her book about Macquarie Island during my research into the history of the Southern Ocean a few years ago. I was interested in her experiences as one of the first four women scientists to visit the island from Australia at least. At the same time, I was researching the history of ocean and marine sciences in Australia, and I was intrigued by the fact that while the vast majority of Australians live within 50 kilometres of the coast, so little was actually known about the marine life on our shores during the 20th century. Isobel Bennett bequeathed the bulk of her life's work to the Library in the 1990s, including nearly two metres of records with correspondence, field notes, manuscripts, transparency slides, and interviews. Such personal collections are of great interest to researchers because they not only shed light on an individual's experiences and life story, they also offer a window into the wider context in which they live, the historical context. But to give you a sense of who Isobel Bennett was and why her collections matter today, I'm viewing her story through some of the broader themes that frame my research. And you'll notice them in blue on my slides as I go through.

But first, let me introduce you to Isobel Bennett. She was born in 1909 in Brisbane, the eldest of four children, and was nine when their mother died. And her father moved his family onto a small dairy farm on Oxley Creek. She recalls never having seen a seashell in those early years, even though shells and the creatures that inhabit them would end up being at the centre of her life's work. She won a scholarship to attend a local girls school, but was too young to study science. So she would watch, as she said, with envy as the older six formers went off to the biology laboratory with petri dishes and dissecting instruments. A "holy of holies," as she put it, to which lower mortals were not allowed to enter.

As a result of her family's circumstances, and like many women of her generation, Isobel left school at 16 and enrolled in a business college, which for many offered an employment pathway otherwise unavailable to them. She found work with a patent attorney firm and when her family moved to Sydney in 1928, she worked as a stenographer with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. But with the onset of the Great Depression, she, like many other workers, lost her job. And newly unemployed, she and her younger sister, Phyllis, decided to embark on a week-long Christmas cruise to Norfolk Island, boarding the brand new ocean liner P&O Strathaird in Sydney as an interesting parallel with my own life because coincidentally, three decades later, I migrated with my family on that same ship on its final voyage from England to Australia. As fate would have it, absolutely, I was meant to be researching her. The young women were befriended by Professor William Dakin and his wife who occupied the neighbouring cabin. Dakin was the [unclear] professor of zoology at the University of Sydney and a renowned plankton scientist. And she later recalled that meeting as one of those amazing flukes of nature.

So on learning of her situation, he offered her work as a research assistant going through old ships logs and charts in the Mitchell Library in Sydney, looking for references to whales for a book he was writing. It was called Whaleman Adventurers published in 1934. And on discovering Isobel's love of boats and the fact that she never got seasick, another thing I share, he also invited her to help out on the university's research vessel Thistle, documenting the marine creatures holed up in plankton nets. And so began her career as secretary, librarian, demonstrator, and research assistant with Sydney University Zoology Department.

Aboard the Thistle, Isobel assisted with timing the net halls, collecting and preserving the plankton, and later sorting it all out in the laboratory as she recalled. She taught herself biology and zoology from textbooks and between Dakin's schedule of lectures and meetings became proficient at dissecting and identifying myriad species of marine organisms. She recalled removing their tiny appendages under a microscope was a nerve-wracking procedure, especially as if there were only a very few of each sort. "We couldn't dissect too many. The needles under high power looked the size of crowbars!"

Plankton was an important area of research at that time. They were known to be the foundation of the marine food chain, but very little was known about the species that existed in Australian waters. The work had been done in Europe. So Isobel would identify them by referring to enormous bound volumes, as she said, of research articles published by German, Dutch, British or American oceanographic expeditions. Their work was eventually published in 1940 as a monograph on plankton in Australian waters. Dakin presented her with this special copy, which is in her papers, and a handwritten letter acknowledging her contribution. He said there are two authors' names on the cover and the title page. It would've been more correct if there'd been three, one of them being Isobel Bennett.

Over several years, every day with infinite patience, she used the microscope and her dissecting needles with an ability and a good cheer, which made her the ideal research assistant. No man could have been better served. Isobel's tasks also included assisting Dakin in his efforts to promote biology in school curricula and preparing for his popular ABC radio series, 'Science in the News.'

At the onset of World War II, Isobel travelled with Dakin and his colleague, Alan Colfax, to assist them with the production of camouflage nets as part of the war effort. And that's related to the camouflage used by marine animals that Dakin was interested in. When the war ended, he shifted his focus from the open sea to the rock platforms around Sydney's foreshores to study the animals and plants of the intertidal zone. "That narrow strip of land over which the ocean waves and the moon-powered tides are masters", as he wrote. And at that time, very little was known about this particular part of the coast.

Isobel accompanied him on these field trips, identifying the species that inhabit different locations from the open coast to sheltered harbour shores and sandy estuaries. There were no published species lists to work from, so she compiled her own. Dakin's plan was to study the distribution of marine animals all along the New South Wales coast, but ill health prevented him from travelling. So he sent Isobel and two assistants, Elizabeth Pope, a zoologist from the Australian Museum, and her friend Helen Newton-Turner on leave from the CSIR (Commonwealth Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), newly formed. Isobel recalled how the group of women set off in August 1946, "Loaded up with sleeping bags, a tent fly and cooking utensils, to explore the more exposed rocky shores from Sydney to the Victorian border." She said it was hard work camping on hard ground overnight and rising early to catch the low tide on the next rock platform, but it was also great fun.

The Library holds a number of Isobel's early field notebooks and photographic collections. She recalled their basic equipment consisted of billy cans tossed out after rusting, then jars and buckets and dishes which eventually went the same way, plus an oyster knife. Five cameras suffered watery graves. "And I'm still using my Remington portable, which I inherited in 1935, then about 10 years old. On this, I've typed about every word I've ever written, and very many that Professor Dakin wrote as well." And I just have as an aside here, I can't resist mentioning this. Having spent many weeks reading her type correspondence, reports and manuscripts, I was pretty excited to see that old Remington typewriter on display at the National Museum of Australia's 'Antarctic' exhibition, but more of her Antarctic connection in a moment.

The group's South Coast report was never published, but the manuscript is in her papers and it includes her lists of species and a large number of black and white photographs such as this. A significant archive of the beaches, intertidal landscape and ecosystems photographed at a time when the South Coast was relatively undeveloped and lightly populated. Its digitisation will be crucial for making this information publicly accessible and valuable for comparing environmental changes that have occurred over the decades since the 1940s. That's another page, a couple of pages of those albums. The group subsequently extended their field work north of Sydney all the way up to the Queensland border, accompanied whenever possible by Dakin and his wife. As she noted in their unpublished report: "The party comprised two thin people and two "pleasantly" proportioned cheery beings (who generally wedged themselves into the spaces left on the back seat after it had been occupied by oranges, a pair of field glasses, various hats to say nothing of the other equipment which worked its way down from the back shelf of the car)."

The field notes gathered during these early trips provided the raw material for Dakin's landmark book, 'Australian Seashores.' Isobel recalled receiving weekly batches of almost indecipherable manuscript to type and retype. Reflecting on her early years with Dakin, she was unsure how she'd managed to keep her head above water. As she put it, he was "a most inspiring person, meticulous in everything he did, mercurial in temperament, but he did not suffer fools gladly. With an agile brain that covered as many subjects in a day as there were hours, he ensured that there was never a spare or dull moment." Dakin sadly died before the book was completed, and it was left to Isobel and Elizabeth to see it through to publication by Angus & Robertson in 1952.

'Australian Seashores' was the first detailed study of the marine life of Australia's intertidal zone, and it became compulsory reading for every researcher and marine student of marine biology. It represented a clear departure from the European and laboratory based texts available to Australian students at that time. As the curators of a Sydney University exhibition noted in 2023, what resulted was not just a book for armchair reading, but an invitation to Australians to identify as coastal dwellers and turn their gaze from the interior of the country to the coast.

After Dakin's death, 'Australian Seashores' became Isobel's own labour of love. And over the next four decades, she saw it through 11 reprintings and updated editions, all the while honouring Dakin's memory as the author while receiving only a small share of the royalties with her original collaborator, Elizabeth Pope. Along the way, she updated the names and classification of species to ensure that the book reflected the latest taxonomy, often sending photographs and even specimens by post to local or international experts for confirmation.

And I can't help but mention an intriguing connection with the era of Antarctic exploration, the early so-called 'heroic era.' In her papers, Isobel noted that Angus & Robertson, "Got Hurley, the famous Hurley, to come out. And he did a couple of photographs with me on the shore." And so these colour photographs taken here were taken by Captain Hurley, who had accompanied both Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton on their expeditions, featured in the first edition of 'Australian Seashores.' Just love the way her life connects up these different parts of Australian history.

Now, it's extraordinary, I think, that Isobel undertook this work with no formal scientific education. She was employed as a secretary and eventually appointed as a technical officer and a professional officer, both of which attracted a higher salary, but she had no academic status, nor the equivalent salary, despite her skills and knowledge acquired on the job and over time, her international recognition of her expertise. Given this, I think it's interesting to view her career in the context of women's involvement in the biological sciences in Australia. So I'm going to take you onto a little bit of a different view of things here.

So in the 19th century, women were often engaged in collecting, classifying, and illustrating plants and animals for male naturalists. In the 1870s, for example, the renowned botanist Ferdinand von Mueller advertised in newspapers across Australia for "lady plant collectors." Biological collecting was widely regarded as a pursuit suited to gentile women in colonial society. So it's not surprising that women were drawn to the field, which by the end of the 19th century was recognised as a scientific discipline in its own right. In fact, women were so enthusiastic about the study of the natural world that by World War I, women's students outnumbered men in biology classes. As the Melbourne Argus put it in 1911, "flowers will always rank next to babies in the heart of the natural woman."

By then, the general impression was that collecting, drawing and classifying nature was a feminine pursuit, particularly as it appeared to require little training, equipment, or knowledge of scientific theory. In addition, women could be employed as low paid assistants by male academics. The British government was sufficiently concerned about the gender imbalance in biology classes in Commonwealth countries that it conducted an inquiry in the 1930s to determine why so few men were studying it, even though the most senior positions were held by men. As Jane Carey noted in her book, a recent book published called 'Taking to the Field,' universities were actively recruiting men to the biological sciences, citing one professor in 1939 saying that "biology is no longer a soft option and an accomplishment for a polished female, a polished female friend. It is rapidly taking its place as a mature science becoming more quantitative every year."

But the major shift occurred after World War II as men returned from wartime duties to full-time civilian employment. By then, the biological sciences were becoming more specialised and hierarchical and men were entering the field in large numbers while women were often relegated to the lowest rungs of the profession. As Carey put it, "there was an increasing tendency to portray science as a manly pursuit." And this was reflected in the media of the day where women scientists were often defined by their feminine qualities first before their academic credentials.

Now, Isobel herself commented on the trend towards specialisation specifically in the biological sciences, describing it as tunnel vision and noting that in his day, Dakin could have lectured on any phylum within the animal kingdom. But by the time she left the university in 1971, there were specialists on everything and they were unable to give a lecture on anything outside of their specialty.

Throughout her career, Isobel undertook extensive research along Australia's eastern coastline. This handwritten list gives you a sense of just how prolific and dedicated she was. Her particular interest was in the geographic distribution of intertidal species in different climatic regions. And it took her south to the cool temperate waters of Victoria, Tasmania, and the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island and north to the warm temperate waters of the Great Barrier Reef and beyond. She also participated in two oceanographic research voyages, the first in 1952, when she was encouraged by Dakin's successor, Professor Murray, to join the Australian leg of the round the world voyage of the Danish Galathea Deep Sea Expedition with the world-renowned scientist and expedition leader, Anton Bruun. Despite her misgivings about being allowed on the ship as a woman, she sailed from Sydney for Melbourne with 112 Danish and three Australian men, noting on one of her folders, just handwritten, Prof Murray says permission will probably be given to me as a woman because Danes more civilised than we are.

She also undertook an oceanographic voyage led by the marine biologist Rolf Bolin in 1962. He's an American. He knew of her interest in coral reefs and as chief expedition scientist on Stanford University's research vessel, Te Vega, he invited her to join the cruise as Dean of Students, fulfilling a dream of sailing in the South Seas from San Diego across the Pacific to Singapore. The list of lectures that she was required to give during the cruise nearly caused her to turn down the invitation, she recalls, but she had six months to prepare her notes and often worked late into the night reading books and journals to bring herself up to date on the subject matter.

As it happened, the publication of 'Australian Seashores' in 1952 had coincided with the increasing popularity of recreational activities such as skin diving and spearfishing. In 1953, the Underwater Spearfishingman's Association of New South Wales reviewed 'Australian Seashores' in their journal, noting that "the true skin diver is a nature lover seeking enlightenment concerning the teaming life he encounters. It's difficult to write of this book without resorting to superlatives." It was a very popular book in its day.

But by 1975, Isobel was at odds with the association over the prospect of the World Spearfishing Competition being held in the waters around the Solitary Islands near Coffs Harbour. In a letter to the Underwater Federation, as it was named then, she wrote that "recreational spearfishing was damaging the coral reef's ecosystem." She said, "I was invited as an observer to an amateur spearfisherman competition at The Entrance [on New South Wales] in January 1965, and I haven't yet recovered from the horror of that slaughter." The Federation responded by noting that spearfishing was a "healthy, valid amateur recreational sport." And while they would prefer to see everyone armed with a camera, they also considered that the natural resources of the sea harvested so diligently by commercial interests should not be denied the amateur, and most skin divers were initially spearfishermen. In any event, spearfishing competitions were governed by rules that protected vulnerable species and that she had the wrong impression of such competitions as mass slaughter. In the end, the international competition didn't actually go ahead for different reasons, but Isobel's advocacy for the Solitary Islands continued. And finally in 1998, the New South Wales government finally established a marine park in recognition of the significance of its subtropical coral reefs.

She was also active in campaigns to protect Sydney's foreshores from the early 1970s, raising public awareness of the significance of Long Reef on the northern beaches and the impact of unregulated harvesting of marine life such as shellfish and periwinkles and delicacies like rock oysters and blue swimmer crabs. It took nearly two decades, but the campaign for Long Reef eventually paid off with the establishment of a marine sanctuary in 1991, while Isobel herself became a mentor for coastal conservation groups like Project AWARE and Coastcare. Here's just an example of the extensive collection of news clips in her papers, including some of her handwritten notes expressing her frustration over delays in achieving formal protection for Sydney's foreshores.

But perhaps the field work for which Isobel is best remembered now was on the remote shores of Sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, 1500 kilometres southeast of Tasmania. The island was first cited by sealers in 1810 and it quickly became the focus of a first sealing industry with an estimated 200,000 fur seals killed in that first decade. Britain claimed sovereignty over the island in the same year, but it gained a reputation in colonial Australia as a dismal place, too bleak even for a penal colony. Nevertheless, its strategic location halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica would eventually make it an important resupply point for expedition ships voyaging south. Sir Douglas Mawson established a small station there during his Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1911. And on witnessing the devastation of its wildlife wrought first by sealers, then a penguin oil distillery. He began campaigning for its conservation. He succeeded and the island was finally declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1933.

And the Australian Government established a research station there in 1948, one of its first Antarctic territories. And it was there that Isobel stayed in 1959. She'd been working with Hope MacPherson, a curator at the Museum of Victoria, undertaking field work in the cool, temperate coastal waters around Victoria and Tasmania. And they'd wondered what might survive in the coldest sub-Antarctic waters further south. "That was very difficult," she said in an interview, because the Antarctic Division Station there was a case of men only. They'd never had a woman. "It took us quite a long time to get permission to go."

As it happened, the Museum's director was acquainted with Dr. Phillip Law. He was the first director of the newly formed Antarctic Division and persuaded him to allow Isobel and Hope to visit Macquarie Island during ANARE's brief summer changeover. That's the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE) Programme. And the changeover would happen aboard the Danish ship Thala Dan. As you can see, the entry into a male domain caused quite a stir in the Australian media, including this article, which began with "Antarctica, last citadel of masculinity, icebound stronghold of the bearded male, scene of the world's most exclusive men's club, is soon to be invaded by women."

The Danish ships typically had four birthed cabins, so it was necessary to fill the other two bunks with women. And so Susan Ingham, a secretary with the Antarctic Division, researching southern elephant seals and seabirds, and Dr Mary Gillham, a visiting British botanist, were invited to join them. Isobel recalled attending meetings in preparation for the voyage and how in Dr Law's final briefing, he made it clear that, "On our behaviour depended the future of women in the Antarctic. They were all," she said, "really quite indignant about it, but silence was the best answer." After several days at sea, the four women were ferried ashore and guided to the biological hut where they would live for six days. It was basic, but they assured their guide that they were perfectly capable of managing things on their own. However, they were not supplied with appropriate clothing for the harsh conditions, and Isobel remembers spending each day clambering across the treacherous wet rocky shores, slimy with giant kelp, wearing her own clothes and a pair of sand shoes. She said, "in our innocence and ignorance, we didn't realise that had we gone to the Division, we would've been issued with various bits and pieces. We just took all our own things. The only thing we did get was jungle green camouflage tops and trousers, which we had to hand back."

I'm just showing you here a selection of some of her original transparencies. They are going to be digitised, but it does give you a sense of the era and the fact that these were her original slides, which are now incredibly rare. Given the island's reputation for dismal conditions, it was a stroke of luck that they had six days of magnificent weather for their field work. Most of the intertidal animals and algae were unknown. So Isobel and her companions undertook a series of traverses on the rocky shores, systematically recording everything they found from high to low watermark.

At first glance, she wrote, "The rocky shores of Macquarie Island seemed bare and almost devoid of life," but beneath the giant kelp fronds, they found "the richness and brilliant coloration of the intertidal fauna in rock pools, cracks and crevices." Isobel was invited to continue her research the following summer aboard the Magga Dan. And on this occasion, Dr Law was the officer in charge, but he flatly refused to let the women sleep ashore. As Isobel tells it, "This was a great disadvantage since our working time was restricted by the tides. And the first duck, [that's the small boats,] the first ducks ashore did not land us until well after low watermark, making it impossible to work on the intertidal seashores in the afternoon. For even on the calmest of days, the wind always rose by noon."

And I was amused to find a telegram amongst Isobel's papers sent from the Wireless Station on Macquarie Island on the 5th of December 1960, I presume to her family, stating with rye humour, "Wonderful trip. Reputation upheld. Love Isobel." Her reputation was indeed upheld. She was invited to visit the island twice more by the Division in 1965 and 1968. And incidentally, it was not until 1976 that the first Australian woman would be allowed to over winter on Macquarie Island and in 1981 on the Antarctic continent itself.

Isobel drew on her experiences for her book, 'The Shores of Macquarie Island,' published by Rigby in 1971. And I'll quote it, "First impressions are the ones which always remain high forbidden cliffs looming eerily out of the misty dusk. With an echoing shout of human voices born on the wind." She observed how early visitors to the island had introduced feral animals such as rats, rabbits and cats, and were shocked at the wanton and unrestricted destruction of native species. The island's unique environment and biodiversity were eventually recognised on the World Heritage List in 1997, and the feral animals finally eradicated in 2014. The Australian Government established a marine park protecting one third of its offshore waters in 1999, and that was expanded quite recently in 2023.

There's something special about viewing Isobel's original Macquarie Island manuscript typed on flimsy paper with her trustee Remington. There's also her extensive collection of 373 slides, as I said, currently in cold storage, but soon to be digitised, offering insights into the conditions in which she and her companions undertook this pioneering field work. Indeed, such is the quality of her slides that you can almost hear the noise of the seabird colonies and penguin rookeries, the grunts and growls of the elephant seals on the beaches, the smell of the bull kelp in its giant swirling jires as it moves with the waves, the sound of crashing surf on the rock platforms at the chill of the sub-Antarctic winds.

But I want to briefly turn now from the cold sub-Antarctic waters to the tropical coral reefs of Queensland, for these were the very different ecosystems in which Isobel conducted her research and teaching activities over the years. She'd made her first visit to the Great Barrier Reef in 1946 to assist Dakin with a series of articles at a time when virtually nothing, amazing to think now, but virtually nothing was known about the reef's coral species. So as in New South Wales, she began from scratch classifying coral into families and in the process, developing a lifelong passion for the coral reef organisms. She returned to the reef in 1950 with Dakin's successor, Professor Murray, and a group of zoology students. And over the next 45 years, she led 23 field trips based at the Heron Island Research Station and Lizard Island.

In 1954, the University of Queensland invited her to join an expedition to re-survey the Low Isles and compare data with the 1929 expedition. And when a Melbourne publisher invited her to write her own book about the reef, she admitted that her knowledge of the reef system did not extend north of the Cumberland group of islands. So she applied for permission to travel to Torres Strait in a lighthouse vessel, servicing lights along the shipping lanes of the Great Barrier Reef. And on that, she voyaged as far north as Bramble Cay, then boarded a smaller vessel to visit the Murray Islands 100 miles east of Thursday Island. I'm using miles because that was from her papers. On the northeastern edge of the outer reefs, she described the challenges of that trip in a letter to her friend, Margaret Spencer. "Trying to walk on reefs is bad enough, but with the added weight and worry of cameras to say nothing of buckets, etc, for specimens and finding places to put everything when you went to turn over boulders and turning over boulders for hours on end isn't exactly restful. I've shinned up and down enough rope ladders over the shipside to last me a couple of lifetimes, all of which boils down to the fact that I must still be pretty tough."

The resulting book, 'The Great Barrier Reef,' was published in 1971, and I might say to great acclaim, the same year incidentally as 'The Shores of Macquarie Island.' So she was busy. It was the first book. 'The Great Barrier Reef' book was the first to give Australians a picture of the reef and its scientific significance. And it featured many of Isobel's own striking photographs for which she was quite renowned. And it was this period that Isobel also became concerned by the damage being done to the reef from human activities.

In the postwar era, the search for marine resources in Australian waters was escalating. And by the 1960s, conservationists were expressing alarm that the reef was under increasing pressure, sorry, threat from a range of activities, including fishing, coral and shell collecting, harvesting of fish for aquaria, pollution runoff from agriculture, mining of mineral sands, and extracting limes secreted by polyps for Queensland's cane growers. But by far the greatest concern was oil exploration. Hard to imagine it now, but by the end of the 1960s, drilling permits covered 80% of the reef and public concern increased amid revelations that the Queensland premier held a major interest in one of the exploration companies. The spate mining engineer even proposed that Heron Island should be used as a testing ground for a theory that escaping oil would do little harm to the coral reefs. This did not eventuate, thank goodness, but proposals to extract resources from the reef continued.

This is of course part of a much larger story about environmental activism around the reef, and it culminated in the Save the Reef campaign. I'm only just beginning really to tease out Isobel's part in that campaign, but suffice to say she was undertaking her reef research at the same time as a cohort of women activists, including the renowned poet Judith Wright, were calling for greater protection for the reef. It's worth noting that Isobel's own book on the science of the reef was published in the same year as Patricia Clare's 'The Struggle for the Great Barrier Reef,' just as the Save the Reef campaign was reaching its peak.

Also in 1971, Isobel decided to retire from the University of Sydney after nearly 39 years. The field of zoology was changing, she noted, and she'd received invitations from friends to join them in South Africa. So very reluctantly, she said, she handed in her resignation, "Leaving behind so much I had loved." Nevertheless, her retirement was just the beginning of another two decades filled with overseas travel, lectures, field work, and writing books. I love this picture. In 1975, she spent "an exciting year," as she called it, photographing shells in Japan, crewing on a shrimp boat in Alaska, banding migrating birds on Long Island Sound, and touring Africa's game parks. On a small, sorry, on a land snail hunting expedition in Hawaii with a marine biologist from London's Natural History Museum, she described being up to our knees in mud, almost lost from sight from one another in the mist, on the top of Honolulu's highest mountain. "We found them too. Retire? How did I ever find time to go to work?"

Isobel's papers also reveal how she shared Dakin's passion for educating the Australian public about the marine life on their doorstep. She was a prolific writer producing a series of books, some of which I've already mentioned, aimed at non-specialist readers. As she put it, my work is meant for ordinary people rather than for scientists. Her books blended scientific precision and lyrical prose illustrated with her own beautiful photographs that brought the secrets of Australian seashores into people's living rooms. For me, they bring to mind the American marine biologist, Rachel Carson, best known for her book 'Silent Spring,' which warned about the dangers of pesticides in the 1960s, but who also wrote three popular books about the sea. And in my view, Isobel is Australia's Rachel Carson.

In 1953, for example, the year after 'Australian Seashores' was released, she wrote this article, Isobel, sorry, wrote this article for Walkabout Magazine. And I think it displays her wonderful style of writing. She presented it as a travel narrative, introducing visitors to the treasures to be found along New South Wales shores from Queensland to Victoria. She said, "This is perhaps the most fascinating and most complex of all environments." Unlike naturalists of past who collected dead specimens in jars, she said that "marine zoologists now study living things in their precarious and transitory equilibrium." She said, "This particular kind of work is called ecology." It was quite a new idea at the time. Further south, she described the extensive rock platforms along the New South Wales Coast around Ulladulla. "It can show you all the colours of the Great Barrier Reef and the rainbow combined. Go to the edge of the platform and look down to a rock garden such as mermaids must dream of. You will never forget it and you will never see more beauty."

In 1978, she co-edited a coral reef handbook with Patricia Mather from the Queensland Museum, aimed at the interested layman, noting that scientists were only just beginning to understand the processes at work in coral reefs, but that they are "a laboratory in which the natural world can be studied and knowledge of it increased and used for our long-term benefit. They offer us a rich experience of wilderness and a place for recreation. Uses enhanced by their ready accessibility to the cities of the Eastern Seaboard of Australia."

She also continued to edit and update 'Australian Seashores' and completely revised it in 1987. In 1993, she donated her Kodachrome slides from 'Australian Seashores.' And the accompanying letter to the Pictures Librarian here gives an intriguing insight into how the new edition came about. The publisher had asked her to expand the book to include all the temperate shorelines of Australia. The earlier editions had focused on New South Wales and to replace all the black and white photographs with colour, please. She said that she had initially been "appalled at the enormity of the task, especially at her age," because she was 77 at the time. And she had refused point blank, but so much pressure was put on her that she finally weakened since she felt that there was no one else capable of doing it. And she owed it to herself and her reputation. She noted that the collection of slides was unique in that represented over 40 years of her experience in the field and that given the lack of funding, time and trends in modern marine biology, it was unlikely that such an exercise would ever be repeated. True to form, she embarked on that trip, finding and photographing in colour all the animals and plants that had featured in earlier editions and adding many more. As she observed, it was a daunting task as "many are seasonal and bad weather invariably coincided with the necessary low tides." She completed the new edition and expanded the text to include organisms identified in earlier surveys supplemented by information from marine biologists in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. And in 1992, she updated 'Australian Seashores' for the last time she was 83 years old.

The library also holds her extraordinary collection of marine biology slides taken between 1950-87, which is a treasure trove of life on Australia's seashores during a period of major social and environmental change. Her records reveal much about her as a person too. She was proud of her achievements, but hated that anyone would regard her as part of the women's liberation movement. As she put it, "I feel that women can do whatever they want to do without kicking up a great fuss about it." She was much loved by her family and friends, admired and respected by internationally renowned scientists, many of whom became friends, sharing research materials, specimens and photographs, as well as news about the state of affairs in marine science and scientific institutions more broadly. They often spoke of their pleasure in having worked with her or of how her books had influenced them in their own lives. Some described her as the last of the great naturalists.

Towards the end of her long life, she died in 2008 in her 99th year, the significance of her achievements and legacy were being recognised in a range of awards and honours. "Each year," she wrote in a memoir, "was filled with interest, work and travel. As time passes, one expects to quietly fade away and be forgotten. But a letter from the Secretary of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) in 1982 had shattered that expectation in more ways than one." She said, "I was to be presented at the 52nd ANZAAS Congress in Sydney with its Mueller Medal for my contributions to marine biology in Australia." For Isobel, the Mueller Medal was a crowning achievement. It had previously been awarded to the likes of Sir Douglas Mawson. And there had been only one other woman, the geologist Dorothy Hill, on the list. As she put it, "I felt I had joined the immortals."

Two years later, she received the Order of Australia for her services to marine biology. And the University of New South Wales conferred an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1995. At 85 years of age, Ms Isobel Bennett finally became Dr Bennett. A genus, five species of marine animals and a coral reef are named in her honour while geographic features include the Isobel Bennett Reef near Heron Island and Lake Bennett on Macquarie Island. In 2024, a new Paramatta Ferry was christened the Isobel Bennett while the Dr Isobel Bennett Southern Ocean Research Aquarium, a state-of-the-art research facility in Hobart is due for completion in 2028.

There is obviously much more to say about this remarkable woman and her legacy, and I've only really just touched the surface today, but her records held by the Library are a fascinating resource, as well as a testament to her self-discipline and tenacity, her capacity for hard work, her curiosity and formidable intelligence, and her wonderfully witty comments, which I've loved during this research about particular individuals or predicaments she encountered on the way.

In an address at the Mitchell Library in Sydney in 2008, Bruce Thom, a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, said he was struck by the contribution of women in coastal science, advocacy and conservation, noting that it's women who again and again stand out with passion and commitment for a better coast. Isobel was the first to receive his accolade, and he also applauded the many unsung heroes in councils and conservation campaigns all along Australia's seaboard, eastern seaboard. "These women," he concluded, "have made our coast a better place. We must all recognise their achievements and strive as individual men and women to build on what they have done. The coast needs us."

The aim of my research is to bring Isobel's story to new audiences, not only as a celebrated marine biologist in her own right, but as a touchstone for local communities and conservationists concerned with Australia's marine environment. As Isobel put it in this article for the Australian Women's Weekly in 1967, "It's strange. Australians love the sea, but most of us are blind to what's in it. Just on the sea fringes where we walk or swim. There's a whole fascinating world of strange and beautiful animals, but somehow we don't see them." Her story, I think, brings this hidden world into focus and offers us a sense of interconnectedness with these strange and beautiful life forms. And ultimately, I think this is Isobel Bennett's luminous legacy. Thank you.

Rebecca Fleming:

Thank you so much, Joy. That was an incredible presentation. And I feel like I've learned a little bit, but I want to learn so much more about Isobel, so I can't wait to dive into her collection when it's digitised. We now do have some time for some questions. And as this presentation is recorded, please wait for the microphone to reach you before asking your question. Does anyone have one? Up the back.

Audience member 1:

Thanks, Joy. That was fabulous. I really, really enjoyed that. Scientific achievements aside, she has a great eye. Does she speak much about her photographic practise in her papers and about the role that photography actually plays in her research?

Joy McCann:

I haven't read a lot about her practise of photography. I mean, she obviously, and I've been listening this morning to some of her relatives talking about a person who used to help her or used to photograph some of her specimens in a shed in Sydney when she'd bring them back from the beach. I think she probably learned, as with everything, she would've learned on the job, learned it from some of the best like Frank Hurley, heavens. When I saw his name, I just about fell off my chair. Because that was also early days with some of that equipment. She obviously always had a camera with her. Would've been incredibly challenging to do that sort of photography. And she does talk about the challenges of being on rock platforms with ocean waves coming through, losing several in the process, cameras that is. So it's about, for me, it's not just the quality of the photos, but the fact she achieved such incredible photos in such difficult conditions.

So I think it's that larger story of her passion for photography that she obviously developed. And the fact that she was actually internationally renowned for her photographs because they were the earliest that people had seen for a lot of, particularly the Great Barrier Reef. But in many places, people simply hadn't seen not only the environment, but the creatures themselves. So I think it's a bigger story about her photographic achievements and skill. But interesting question, I will actually look a bit more closely at that because as you can imagine, I'm covering a lot of ground, but I do think it's worth looking at because today I think those slides and so on that I've been showing you in the photograph albums, to me, they're incredibly special. And it's so important that the National Library has them because people can now look at those. It was a different era, pre-digital. It was just such a different time. A lot of her slides, incidentally, she had to send overseas to be developed. So huge kind of challenges. But yeah, great question. Thank you.

Audience member 2:

Dr McCann, thank you very much. That was a very enlightening talk. I know this sort of comes through in what you said, but one of the things that was remarkable to me as a 17 year old in 1959, first year zoology student, going to Long Reef with her, was her fabulous, radiant enthusiasm. I mean, she sort of made you want to, you had to, I mean, there she was with this bunch of 30 or so bored, boring, first year zoology students. And she actually sort of demanded that we love this place. And she had this amazing, I mean, it was a sort of radiant energy to get enthusiastic about seashore zoology, which I have to confess, I had very little interest in until I went to Long Reef with her.

Joy McCann:

Okay yeah. Oh, that's a lovely comment. Thank you. I mean, that's lovely to hear that. In fact, that, of course, in her own papers, she doesn't really say that. It doesn't come through unless it's in letters from other people. But to get that kind of a feedback and people today can remember her work and her presence. And certainly her passion comes through very much so, but that's a wonderful way of paying tribute to her that she had that quality as well. I would've loved to have met her. I mean, it's a bit before my time, but she clearly was very, as I said before, she was very loved by a lot of people who never forgot her. And who, in fact, some people said that she inspired them to study marine biology and go on from someone from her relatively humble background to have done that. Pretty special kind of person. So yeah, thank you. That was a great comment.

Rebecca Fleming:

I think we've got a question up the front here. Yeah.

David Bennett:

Thank you very, very much, Joy. Is it turned on? Yeah. Okay. My name's David Bennett. Isobel was my aunt. And I have my cousin here, Sandy [unclear] Brown. You've brought Isobel's life to this presentation like I've never, ever seen before.

Joy McCann:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

David Bennett:

Absolutely. It's fantastic. We spent many times out on the reef and accompanying her on that, but the depth that you've put into this presentation, I just loved it. And we always loved Isobel as our auntie. She was always there. She was always lending a hand describing this or that, the other thing. The family car always had a bucket in it in case we found something interesting. And yes, we took it back to ask Auntie Isobel. So I hope you've all enjoyed it today. I certainly have. It's been a real privilege. Thank you.

Joy McCann:

Thank you very much.

Audience member 3:

Thank you for a very interesting lecture. I'd have a couple of comments. First of all, Helen Ennis is working on a book about Australian women photographers for the National Library. And I heard her excellent talk, but I think she's missing a chapter on women scientists because it is absolutely routine for women field scientists to take all their photographs. They have to be submitted for theses. And I think that Isobel Bennett would be one of the best examples. Now, I was one of the people who was fortunate enough at primary school to have my seashell collection identified by her and Elizabeth Pope.

Joy McCann:

Wow.

Audience member 3:

And what struck me was that they seemed to speak in Latin. And I was still at primary school. Once I got to high school, I studied Latin, which I found enormously useful. And I believe Greek would have been useful. But I don't think we're giving enough emphasis to her extraordinary intellect to be able to work in multiple languages, to be able to do all the taxonomic work, as well as what was the very beginnings of ecology of relating why one species would be in Sydney Harbour above the intertidal zone or in the splash zone and one would only be found in deeper water. So I just think a little bit more emphasis on that side of it.

Joy McCann:

Absolutely right. I was thinking about it. Actually, I woke up this morning with this very thought. That that whole focus on the actual organisms and her clear expertise and the way she learned about them. But the reasons why they're so important and that whole ecosystem approach, which that whole trend towards laboratory science and theory was missing that. Effectively, that was the kind of what I was trying to convey by talking about the context of what was happening after the Second World War. And what really drew me in was her attention to the detail and the understanding a particular kind of environment and looking at the animals in their context, which was really unusual at time. But it kind of in a way has that origin in the 19th century attention to women, particularly women botanists, collecting plants and describing the environment that they found them in, plants that had never been seen before outside of Australia.

So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think this, dare I say it, my husband's here at the moment. I might have to do another whole exercise because to me, that's the next place to go is to look at her relationship with those creatures and then their habitats and where they lay. I never really quite got a handle on what an intertidal zone looks like because I've never studied one. So that I think is actually a really rich area for drawing out, because again, it's about bringing new audiences or people who are unaware of her work into an understanding of that environment that most of us, if we go on the seashore and we might look in rock pools and show children, but it's bringing that environment into a greater clarity. And the beauty of it, I loved her description of the mermaids in that the rock pools and things would be amazed at the beauty and the colour. And that's the aesthetic of it. But there's also the interest, the scientific dimensions of that too. So why are they important? And what have we lost? And I think that's the conservation aspect of her work too, that needs more focus.

Rebecca Fleming:

One more. Yeah, there we go. The mic's coming.

Audience member 4:

They might interfere with it. So I also had her as a demonstrator at the Sydney University when I did biology a little bit later than Max. But again, very enthusiastic taking us to the Long Reef and running the excursion. And really she was terrific. But I just wondered if she ever swam or if she ever dived or did snorkelling or with a mask and whether she went down any, used the new techniques of scuba or, I presume she didn't scuba dive, but whether she actually did also explore that bit just under the low tide.

Joy McCann:

That's a good question. I haven't really looked at that closely, but I imagine she did in the reef areas, like the Great Barrier Reef, because she was based on the Heron Island Research Station for a long time. So I imagine so. I haven't read anything of hers about her experience of underwater other than a reference to the incredible richness of the life in the intertidal zone, which she thought was richer than the sea floor. I mean, I guess that's obvious, isn't it? It's kind of an environment that has such, she always used to stress the diversity of the organisms, which you don't find other than in the reef area. Well, I suppose it's all part of the intertidal zone, but she never really. I don't know whether she, her family might be able to answer that one? But I don't think she would've - there's no reference to her diving as such or experimenting with the new scuba technology or anything. So yeah, I'm really sorry I can't answer that one, but it's a good point because that would've opened up a whole other world too, wouldn't it? But I suspect around the reefs she probably would've had some involvement, but perhaps? There's a "no, no she didn't" - consensus from the family.

Rebecca Fleming:

Was there one more question over here or did I imagine it? Yep, there we go.

Audience member 5:

Hello. It makes me realise that we actually studied the intertidal zone in high school in, it must have been 1963 or 1964 for the leaving certificate. And in really great detail, we had to do a whole assignment on it and it makes me realise that the teacher must have had some knowledge, probably with the book. And this was Bar Beach rock platform in Newcastle. And then years later, of course I bought the 'Australian Seashores' book. I've always been a really keen swimmer and surfer. And we used to go every year to Green Patch, Jervis Bay, and that book was so well worn. And my daughter was only talking about it the other day. And then one day, I think she was 97, I actually met her [Isobel] over at the Northern Beaches.

Joy McCann:

Oh, really?

Audience member 5:

It just happened to be somewhere where I happened to be that particular day. And I just said how much that book had been, how much we loved it.

Joy McCann:

Oh, that's a wonderful thing to be able to give her that feedback. I presume she would've been chuffed. Yeah.

Audience member 5:

Yeah.

Joy McCann:

That's what's interesting about this life of hers. It was a long life, very productive life. And it's that, as I said earlier, that connecting us with the history of Antarctic exploration right through to recent study of marine biology and the seashores. So it's just this incredible, through her life, you can kind of see a whole lot of things happening, changing attitudes, awareness, and as I say, the conservation side of it, which kind of really came through much more from the 1970s onwards. But that 'Australian Seashores' was, as I said, it was 11 reprints and updated editions. It was called a "bible" in its day. I've seen that written in some correspondence. And from overseas too, internationally, this wasn't just Australia. And it just kind of makes me think we need another reprint, don't we? But the interesting thing is that of course her commitment to updating and having accurate taxonomy was a really important part of this. So maybe there's scope in the future to bring it into new audiences with updated information and also more about the threats that we now know about to these environments. Thank you.

Rebecca Fleming:

Well, I think you wrapped it up perfectly on time there, Joy. Well done. So as we draw to a close, just some quick plugs before we leave.

If you enjoyed today's presentation, which I imagine you did, it was pretty amazing, and you'd like to know more, you can find more in Joy's current book, 'Ice Bound' in our very own Bookshop on the ground floor. I hope you can join us for our next Fellowship lecture, 'Histories of Cyclones in Australia: Culture, Memory and Response,' which will be delivered by 2026 National Library of Australia Fellow, Dr Margaret Cook, at 12.30pm on Thursday the 24th of September. Our website is the place where you'll be able to find recordings of our recent talks and performances from our Fellows, and they're also available on the Library's YouTube channel. Thank you all for attending, and if you can join me once again in congratulating Dr McCann.