Stop procastinating, treat yourself, register now for the Annual SUGUNA meeting Aug 7-10 in Ottawa, Canada
This year's meeting promises to be both enjoyable and enlightening, with the usual mix of social and cultural events, as well as lectures by alumni. Dr. Richard Seccombe, Chairman of local arrangements had planned an opening night mixer, a golf tournament, tennis match, cycle tour along the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal, barbecue and evening banquet cruise. In addition you will have the chance to visit Ottawa, a truly capital city, of the Dominion of Canada since 1867. Some of the local attractions were described in the March 1997 Newsletter. These include the 19th-century Basilica, the Houses of Parliament of Canada with their blue-green copper patina roofs, the neo-Gothic Parliamentary Library, the Dominion Observatory, the National Museum (there are 19 different museums to choose from) and a relatively new (1988) National Art Gallery with a 140-foot towering glass cupola, designed by the renowned architect, Moshe Safdie . A Renoir exhibit will be on at the National Art Gallery (1 km from the University) during our conference and a visit will be an option on the Friday afternoon cultural tour.
For the lecture part of the program on Thursday evening someone from the Tourist and Convention Center will acquaint us with what is worth seeing and going on in Ottawa. On Friday morning we have scheduled the following speakers:
Prof. Neville Clouten, Dean of the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technical University, Michigan will speak on "The Focus of Artistry in Professional Education". He will address the instant intuitive processes that are part of artistry and how this can be included in post-professional education.
Prof. John Furedy, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, will surely stimulate some discussion with his talk on "Using an Andersonian Sydney University education to defend against the barbarism of North American political correctness".
On Saturday morning Dr. Michael Kleerkoper, Chief of the Bone and Mineral Division of the Department of Medicine at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit will tell you about why "You don't have to be all broken up about getting older", a generic talk about osteoporosis suitable for both lay and medical audiences. He will be followed by
Ian Bund, who has a B.A. in Economics, Sydney '64 and an MBA, Harvard'68, and is a lecturer at the University of Michigan MBA program .He heads a management company, White Pines Corporation, located in Ann Arbor and has served as Senior Vice President of a leading Michigan investment banking and brokerage firm. He speak about "Renewed interest in venture capital in Australia".
Gillian Beattie, our invaluable and hard working Secretary-Treasurer, who is also a biochemist working in the diabetes laboratory at the University of California San Diego will talk about "From Trehalose to Beta Cells: The SUGUNA Connection" based on some interactions between SUGUNA members at the meeting at Whistler in 1995.
An Immigration Officer from the Australian High Commission in Ottawa will inform us about "The current status of dual Australian/ USA or Canadian citizenship".
Altogether it promises to be a stimulating and pleasing meeting, one that you won't want to miss!
Remember you need to return both the Registration form to Glebe Pet Hospital, 591 A Bank St., Ottawa Ontario K1S 3T4 and the Accomodation form to the University of Ottawa, 100 Thomas More Ottawa K1N 6N5
Members are encouraged to submit nominations to Prof. June Ross at 600 Highland Dr. Bellingham, WA 98225, (e-mail: [email protected]) for persons to receive the annual SUGUNA Award. Although criteria for selection have not yet been formally adopted, the suggested guidelines are:
It is recommended that the awardee be present at SUGUNA meeting to receive the award. Names will be kept in consideration for 5 years from the time of nomination. The letter of nomination should include at least a paragraph or two to indicate why and how the nominee qualifies together with a current curriculum vitae.
San Francisco Bay Area SUGUNA members held a dinner meeting in honor of Vice Chancellor Gavin Brown during his June visit to the USA, where he was attending an Association of Pacific Rim Universities Conference in Los Angeles. Prof. Brown spoke informally to the group about the financial problems facing Australian Universities, including Sydney, caused by Federal Government cutbacks in support, while trying to maintain faculty and staff salaries at a competitive level. The University of Sydney has been exploring new ways of generating additional income, including admission of full-fee paying students. Needless to say this has generated considerable controversy. In attendance at the dinner was Dr. Joe Hlubucek, Australian Consul-General and Trade Commissioner in San Francisco, who also happens to be a SUGUNA member. This meeting was in keeping with the policy agreed upon at the last annual meeting, of holding small local meetings for SUGUNA members who can not all attend the annual meeting.
Sometimes English acronyms unknowingly have a meaning in other languages. SUGUNA in Sanskrit means nicely or well formed, shapely.
For those planning to come to Ottawa you can find tourist information at: http://www.tourottawa.org and http://www.ottawa.touch.com.
My professional career differs from that of most SUGUNA members who came to North America because of professional opportunities. I went in the other direction, to Australia, with plans to stay for one year -- I stayed 37 years (25 in Sydney, and 12 in Launceston, Tasmania).When I arrived in Sydney in 1958, the AWA Tower on Hunter Street was the tallest structure, and Robert Menzies was Prime Minister of Australia. In the city B. Miles would quote a verse of Shakespeare for 6 pence, and the Eternity Man was leaving messages in chalk on the footpaths in perfect penmanship. At the Geology Department, June Ross had already received her Ph.D. and, though she was at Yale University, she was talked about in the department for years; as "the Bryozoan expert." In Australia in 1958 there were about 600 geologists, of whom about half worked for the Commonwealth Bureau of Mineral Resources and the State Mines Department, or taught geology at universities or high schools. The remaining 300 geologists explored the entire continent for mineral and oil deposits. By comparison, my home town of Grand Junction, Colorado, where the Atomic Energy Commission's Uranium Exploration Division had its headquarters, over 1000 geologists were looking for one commodity: uranium. Each of several cities, such as Houston, Tulsa, and Denver, had more than 1000 geologists looking for oil and gas deposits. Clearly professional opportunities for geologists in Australia, at that time, were better than anywhere else in the world. I remained at Sydney University for seven years, and received my Ph.D. in Geology in 1965. My thesis topic was the Hawkesbury or Sydney Sandstone. Many of the older buildings at Sydney University, such as The Great Hall, and the buildings around the Quadrangle, were built of this sandstone.
Briefly, the highlights of my Hawkesbury research are as follows:
The post-depositional history of the Hawkesbury Sandstone is one of tectonic stability over a vast period of time. During this period of stability, circulating mineral-rich water deposited silica, in the form of quartz crystals, around existing rounded sand grains. Many of these crystals have well defined crystal faces which give a glittering effect to the sandstone. While examining the heavy minerals of the sandstone, I found metallic spheres about the size of BBs. These metallic balls often had elongated protrusions, or tails, which tapered to a point. Some of these points were twisted in a spiral fashion, like a pigs' tails. They gave the impression of having been formed from a molten mass, while traveling through air at high speed. A DTA analysis of the metallic balls indicated that they were almost pure lead. It is extremely rare to find lead occurring in nature in its pure form, and very few occurrences have ever been recorded. Lead isotope studies of the metallic balls gave an age of 3.5 to 4 billion years, making them considerably older than the Hawkesbury Sandstone which is 160 to 170 million years old. I speculated that the metallic balls were of extraterrestrial origin. In view of the enormous increase in our knowledge of astronomy over the last 30 years, I now postulate that these lead spheres were originally formed in a supernova explosion, 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, and that they remained in outer space until they were captured by the earth's gravitational field during the time the Hawkesbury Sandstone was being deposited. To my knowledge no metallic balls have been found in other sedimentary rock since my discovery, thirty years ago.
Jim Standard, BA '50, Univ. of Colorado, Ph.D. '65, Univ. of Sydney, has worked for the US Atomic Energy Commission, US Geological Survey. He currently lives in Grand Junction, CO.
When I was growing up in Sydney, during those hot sticky afternoons in the class room when time seemed to stay still and we all were waiting for the bell to ring to relieve us from our boredom, I remember the history lessons. We learned about the hardships experienced by the early explorers of Australia: Robert Burke and W. J. Wills, Charles Sturt, Friederich Leichardt, John Stuart. They went to places far, far away and some lost their lives in the attempt to penetrate central Australia. In the 1940's that seemed so remote that I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would ever see Ayers Rock or Darwin on the Timor Sea. It was not until Australia's vulnerability to the north was exposed during the Second World War that a road was built from Adelaide to Darwin. Of course all that has changed with the advent of jet travel and the popularization of tourism in Australia, these once remote places are now relatively easily accessible.
Kakidu National Park
At the end of October, 1995 in what is the pre-monsoon season, while we were visiting friends and family in Sydney, we took a trip to "The Top End" as the northern end of the Northern Territories are now called and then flew to Alice Springs to tour the Red Centre. We flew directly to Darwin where we stayed overnight and then early in the morning (7:00 a.m. departure), flew to Jabiru in the Arnhem Peninsular adjacent to Kakidu National Park. It became a National Park in 1979 !st stage, then in 1984 2nd stage and since 1987 3rd stage. These stages represent steps undertaken to restore the original ecology, which had been damaged by the introduction of water buffalo, feral horses and pigs. We went via Outback N.T. Air Safaris, which runs the flights from Darwin and back and arranges the connecting van tours with guides as well as the accommodations at Gagudju Crocodile Hotel. Alternatively Quantas and other travel agencies organize group air and bus tours. If one has more time and a tight budget one can drive all the way from Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide or pick up a rental caravan in Darwin. There are camping facilities through out the park. Flying from Darwin to Jabiru one clearly sees the three components of the park, namely the coastal fringe, the woodlands and the plateau. Along the coast and river estuaries, mangroves mark the tidal zone. Mangrove forests are the nurseries for many fish including Barramundi. Beyond the tidal area lies the woodlands, home for a great variety of plants and animals. Here one finds pandanus-fringed paperbark swamps, freshwater billabongs and grassland. The plateau consists of a sandstone escarpment with pockets of monsoon rain forests and is distant from the major tourist routes.
From the airport we drove to the Ranger Uranium Mine to view a huge open crater, about 1 km in diameter and very deep, which is now being filled in as a new underground mine is being excavated. Next we proceeded north to Ubirr on a park road, that is 1-2 m under water during the wet season. Ubirr comprises several sandstone rock out layers which host many galleries of superb Aboriginal rock art. The art sites of Kakadu National Park are recognized as major international cultural resources. Aboriginal rock art is naturalistic art, depicting the physical, social and cultural environment, and is a tradition that has continued for thousands of years. The paintings can not be dated precisely but evidence indicates that some paintings could be more than 20, 000 years old, others are as recent as 1985. Different rock art styles are represented at Ubirr. Some are simple stick like figures in red ochre, believed to be among the oldest. An example of this is the Mabuyu, a male figure with hunting equipment consisting of spears and a woomera. X-ray painting, showing the internal structure of animals and fish, is a more recent style. Animals were often painted in the belief that this would increase their abundance and to ensure successful hunts. Events in life were also depicted, such as "contact art" marking the arrival of Balanda (non-Aboriginal people) sometimes in ships.
Five main materials are used in painting, giving the following colours:
Pigments are crushed on a stone palette and mixed with water. The wet paint is applied with brushes of human hair, sedges, fibrous strips of bark, roots of pandanus or feathers. Wet paint was also blown out of the mouth around objects to create stencils, the hand stencil being the most common. Sometimes the paintings were covered with wax from beehives in order to preserve them.
In the afternoon we took a boat trip on the East Alligator River that had been misnamed by early explorers as there are no alligators in Australia only crocodiles of which there are plenty in Kakadu. Crocodiles are reptiles, the only large carnivore in Australia, that are very well camouflaged and can travel at amazing speed. Their body temperature depends on the environment, so when they are hot one can see them with their mouths open trying to cool off. Two species are found in Kakadu National Park. The Estuarine or Saltwater Crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, which has a broad snout and grows up to 6 m in length inhabits coastal and tidal rivers as well as freshwater and billabongs. The other species is the Freshwater Crocodile, Crocodylus johnstoni, which has a narrow snout, grows up to 3 m in length, lives in freshwater and billabongs. Crocodiles can remain under water for a long time their heart rate dropping to 2-3 beats per minute. In short bursts they can run at 10-18 kilometers per hour, they are a vital part of the aquatic food chain, helping to maintain the natural balance. They are protected in the park.
On our second day in the park we drove to the Mikinj valley and Oenpelli with an aborigine guide who was very knowledgeable about the local ecology, particularly the medicinal use of bush plants. This trip included some superbly scenic areas of sandstone outcrops, forests, flood plains and billabongs. We crossed the East Alligator River to enter Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal reserve for which an entrance permit is required. At Oenpelli, an Aboriginal township we watched some artists painting and bought some art at the co-operative Injuluk arts and craft centre.
On our last day in the park we drove south to Nourlangie Rock to view more Aboriginal rock art that included legendary ancestors of particular religious significance depicting birth and lactation using stick figure style. From there we drove to the headwaters of the South Alligator River for a boat cruise on Yellow Waters which is rich in exotic bird life including Jabiru, black kites, magpie geese, egrets, lorikeets, fruit bats, ducks, heron and brolgas. For good reason Kakadu is reputed as one of the finest bird watching areas in Australia. Finally we returned to Darwin where the next day we had time to inspect the new Supreme Court Building, beautifully finished in brown and black granite and white marble as well as a fine mosaic of Italian mosaic glass "Milky Way Dreaming" by Aboriginal artist Nora Napaljarri Nelson.
The Red Centre
From Darwin we flew to Alice Springs where we rented a car and drove directly to Ayers Rock Resort arriving just in time to catch a glorious sunset view of the Olgas to the west, but not in time to get our confirmed reserved room with a view of the rock at the Desert Sails Hotel. So we stayed instead at the Desert Gardens Hotel where we did have a "room with a view." Early the next morning I climbed Uluru, as Ayers Rock is now referred to by its aboriginal name. The ascent is very steep at first, but fortunately there is a steel cable for support, and then flattens out at the top where one enjoys an exhilarating 360� view of the surroundings. The aborigines discourage climbing Uluru because it is a sacred site, nevertheless hundreds of tourists from all over the world scramble up every day. In the afternoon we drove over to the Olgas, now known as Kata Tjuta (meaning many heads), where we took a 6 km hike in the Valley of the Winds through steep gorges between the towering red rocks rising out of the ancient desert plain. We returned to Uluru in the evening in time to catch the un-believable sunset as the colour of the rock changes. The next morning we drove about 325 km through scrub to Watarrka National Park in which is Kings Canyon, part of the George Gills range. Kings Canyon is a spectacular sandstone chasm descending hundreds of feet below the sun-parched landscape, its weather-worn surface is scarred by time. In the afternoon we took a strenuous 8 km hike on an excellent trail around and through the canyon, where we saw wonderful birds, interesting rock formations and cyads, the single surviving family of tropical plants resembling palm trees. Altogether we were a week in the Northern Territory, saw much of great interest, beautiful scenery and wildlife, but realized that one could easily spend much more time there as there is so much to see.
Ernest Newbrun, BDS '54 Univ Syd, MS '57 Univ Rochester, DMD '59 Univ Alabama, PhD '65 Univ Calif, Odont Doc (hc) '88 Univ Lund. Prof Emerit Univ Calif. San Francisco,President '89 Internat Assoc Dent Research
If you have not already renewed your membership for 1997, please send US $30 to our Secretary-Treasurer, Gillian Beattie at 13615 Sagewood Drive, Poway CA 92064.
It will make her very happy and stop SUGUNA from going broke!
For the past two years, Ernie Newbrun has been doubling up as Executive Director and Editor of the NewsLetter. He desperately needs help from someone who has word processing and writing skills. Any volunteers?