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The six-million-year record of ocean change in Australia: greenhouse/icehouse thresholds, currents and climate.

Stephen J Gallagher

Fritz Loewe Theatre, Earth Sciences Building, cnr Swanston & Elgin Sts.
Preceded at 5.30 p.m. by drinks and nibbles in the tea-room, 4th floor. $2/person.

Abstract

Palaeoclimate studies are relevant for future global warming predictions since they provide a record of long-term climate change and form the basis for interpreting future global climate change in greenhouse conditions. The Late Miocene (10 to 5 million years ago) was characterised by a period of Antarctic glacial expansion and the intensification of global wind driven and atmospheric circulation that established a cool strongly stratified ocean. Subsequently, warm conditions were established 5 to 3 million years ago (Pliocene) when average sea surface temperatures were 3°C higher and sea level was 10 to 20 m above that of today. Greenhouse CO₂ levels were 30% higher than today associated with a more intense global thermohaline circulation. Pliocene El Niño conditions were terminated by the onset of the Northern Hemisphere Ice Sheet at ≈ 2.75 million years ago. Further Northern Hemisphere Ice Sheet expansion was related to the precession dominated glacial/interglacial world of the last 1 million years. The Australian continental margin yields a superb record of oceanographic consequences of this climate change. By analysing microfossils (such as foraminifera) and facies it is possible to chart the evolution of key oceanic features such as the Leeuwin Current, the East Australian Current and the Subtropical Convergent Zone through this critical period in Australia’s history. For example, in the last 6 million years the Subtropical Convergent Zone has weakened and strengthened and migrated north and south of its present position on Australia’s southern margin. Presently the Leeuwin Current transports warm low salinity nutrient deficient water from the equatorial West Pacific Warm Pool southwards along the west coast of Australia. This current extends modern reefal development to 29°S and the tropical to subtropical transition as far south as Rottnest Island (33°S). However, 1.5 million years ago a vast outpouring of Warm Pool nutrient-poor high salinity water cascaded down Australia’s western margin representing extreme conditions unlike the present Leeuwin. By 800,000 years ago a combination of uplift in the Indonesian Archipelago and the onset of global 100,000-year cyclicity resulted in the cessation of this flow, leading to conditions suitable for the Leeuwin Current of our present ‘icehouse’ world. Extra tropical reef development initiated sometime after 500,000 years ago in Western Australia. In the last 1.5 million years West Pacific Warm pool water also escaped onto Australia’s eastern margin transporting diagnostic tropical microfossil assemblages via a warmer ‘Eastern Australian Current’. Ultimately this led to the development of the Great Barrier Reef ≈ 500,000 years ago. The modern oceanographic configuration of Australia is therefore relatively recent and ephemeral in the geological record. The best analogue for predicting oceanic behaviour with projected future greenhouse conditions is to look to the Pliocene!

Jack’s first passion was the bush. Born at Colac on 2 June 1929, his interest in nature was kindled during hikes in the Otway Ranges with his father who taught, among other subjects, nature studies at Lavers Hill. Here his knowledge of botany, especially of native plants, took root. Jack was to become a member, and eventually President, of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria.

From St Kevin’s College in Toorak he won a free place to Melbourne University, choosing Agricultural Science because ‘it sounded a bit outdoorish’. He graduated in 1954 with BSc. During a year’s study of forestry in Canberra, Jack furthered his knowledge of the native flora, providing a solid basis for his later career.

Sport was Jack’s second passion. Always a gifted athlete, he represented St Kevin’s at athletics and played football at the highest level with the Hawthorn VFL team for two years. On occasion this clashed with his undergraduate studies. When he preferred football to a geology excursion on the day of an important game, his professor, E.S. Hills, was not amused. One of Jack’s proudest memories goes back to 1953 when he beat Australia’s soon-to-be world mile record holder, John Landy, in a 440-yard race. Jack was in the running for a place in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics but missed being selected. In Europe he ran in international meets. Jack took up squash in his fifties and competitive tennis even later, honing his skills with colleagues Peter Kenley, Keith Bowen and Houw Tan. He even ventured in front of the footlights, playing the Major in an amateur dramatics production of ‘Separate Tables’.

Jack’s third, and greatest, passion was his family. As the eldest of five children, his siblings remember him as a loving and protective brother. He married Anne Moore, his laboratory assistant, on Melbourne Cup Day in 1960. He gained great happiness from his family life, his wife of 46 years, his six children and 16 grandchildren.

Jack’s passion for botany was one he eventually fashioned into a career. He became a geologist in 1955 when A.D.N. Bain, then Deputy Director of the Geological Survey of Victoria, hired him when Jack walked into his office asking for a job. A second chance event, the inspection of a lens of black coal near Traralgon that contained Cretaceous plants, kindled his lifelong interest in the Cretaceous flora. He made it the subject of his doctoral thesis in the early 1960s, later published as a Geological Survey of Victoria Memoir which earned him a worldwide reputation. He pioneered the use of plant cuticles for taxonomic purposes. He published widely on his research into palaeobotany and palynology with a record of over 70 scientific papers. Through his contributions to palaeobotany he was much in demand at both local and international conferences devoted to his specialty. He was Australia’s representative of the International Organization of Palaeobotanists at their Australian conference. He gained a large circle of international palaeobotanical (and athletics) friends and colleagues, many of whom he visited in the course of his travels and who in turn stayed with Anne and Jack on their visits to Australia.

Unhappy that scientific papers were inaccessible to the general public, Jack conveyed his love for palaeobotany in a booklet titled ‘What fossil plant is that?’ In this he showed what these earlier plants looked like, and how plant communities developed during their 420-million-year long evolution.

Jack’s passion for fossil plants took him into the public arena when it became clear that a plant fossil locality near Yea was in danger of being destroyed. This locality in central Victoria contains the earliest land plants in the world and the only ones known from the Late Silurian. They include the world-famous Baragwanathia. Pointing out its unique value, Jack gained the cooperation of the shire to preserve the site as a geological monument, thus saving it for study by future generations of fossil hunters and professional sleuths. The site has recently been added to the National Heritage list.

A grant from Ian Potter Foundation provided the start of many state government-funded overseas trips. He obtained a Government Scholarship from France and studied at the Sorbonne. He presented many papers at international conferences, travelling to the USSR, France, Canada, USA, China, Romania, Argentina, and Morocco to share his wealth of knowledge. He participated in a visit to the Sakhalin Island Cretaceous, making him one of the few Australians to have been there. This gave him a spot in the media when he was interviewed on TV after a plane crashed on the island.

Jack’s organisational skills came to the fore when, together with J.A. (Lex) Ferguson, he accepted the task of getting the first Geology of Victoria out of the doldrums. This first comprehensive account of Victoria’s rocks and geological history, to which nearly 60 earth scientists contributed, was published in 1976 and rapidly became the ‘bible’ for all earth scientists keen to learn about Victoria’s rocks, minerals and resources, fossils and earth structures. As if that weren’t enough, Jack and Lex repeated the exercise with a second edition published in 1988. Jack contributed a most readable chapter on the Victorian Division to ‘Rock me hard, rock me soft’, the history of the Geological Society of Australia compiled by Cooper and Branagan (1994).

Jack spent most of his working life at the Geological Survey of Victoria, mostly as Officer-in-Charge of the Regional Geology Section. During his twenty-odd years there he oversaw the completion of the first 1:250 000 scale geological mapping program. He even completed several of these maps himself, showing that drawing cross-sections was not his forte. His management style was very relaxed, letting his staff get on with their job with a minimum of interference—those chosen few that were fortunate enough to join the small mapping crew regarded him more as a friend than a boss.

In 1977 Jack was invited to join the organising committee for the Atlas of Victoria. To this atlas, published in 1982, he not only contributed the Geology chapter but also the Sport and Recreation chapter! This included the first account of Australian Rules Football’s history in Victoria, with Country ‘footy’ given a prominent place.

Jack never hid his political beliefs. He was firmly on the side of the ‘common man’ and a long-time member of the Labor Party. He represented the Geological Survey on the Public Service Association for most of his working life, negotiating a substantial salary increase for geologists of the Survey. He fought hard, and successfully, to shift the GSV out of its totally inadequate accommodation in a converted garage on Russell Street. He was an equally devoted Christian, firmly believing that adherence to a religion was no bar to a scientist. Former colleagues will look fondly back to Christmas parties at the Douglas clan’s Monbulk property—these ceased only when the Monbulk property was swapped for another at Princetown.

In retirement Jack maintained his varied interests. He spent much of his time on his beloved Cretaceous fossils, and at his block near the Twelve Apostles, where he established a significant habitat for the endangered Rufous Bristlebird. His most recent publication was The Nature of Warrnambool (Warrnambool Field Naturalist Club Inc., 2004) and at the time of his death he was working on a book on The Whales of Warrnambool. Emails asking for updates on the age of the Grampians rocks were still flying around in the months leading to Jack’s death. Suffering from cancer in his final years, he nevertheless remained an active sportsman, using tennis to gauge the effect that chemotherapy was having on his body. He died on 6 February from a heart attack during his regular Tuesday afternoon tennis game (he won the point).

Jack was an Honorary Member of the Geological Society of Australia.

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last updated: Tuesday, 24 July 2007