Editorial Team – Roe

Principal Editor

Dr Marion Hercock.

Editorial Team

Ian Abbott since 2008 has been a part time Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Science Division of the Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation and its successor, the Department of Parks and Wildlife. An ecologist with wide field experience in western and eastern Australia and the Galápagos; he has degrees from the University of Sydney, Monash University, and the University of Western Australia. Dr Abbott has expertise in biogeography, island, forest and historical ecology, and ecological history, as well as expert knowledge of trees, invertebrates, birds and mammals. Since his first scientific paper in 1970, he has published more than 200 papers. He prepared the Appendix on animals and ecology.

John Baas is a retired public servant with particular interests in remote area four wheel driving, landscape interpretation and amateur plant identification He is an active environmental campaigner and was the campaign convenor for the highly successful Mount Lesueur and Yannarie Solar Salt project campaigns. John helped with the proofreading of this Volume.

Shirley Babis is a retired primary school teacher. She is a member of the Genealogical Society of Western Australia, and a foundation member of the Bayswater Historical Society and the Bassendean Historical Society. Shirley is the treasurer for the Western Australian Explorers’ Diaries Project, and assisted with proofreading for this Volume.

Shirley Barnes is a proofreader with the Western Australian Explorers’ Diaries Project. After more than 20 years experience in recreation and community planning, she is now retired. She lived for many years in rural areas, especially the Eastern Goldfields and has always been keenly interested in the human component of ‘communities’, including during the early years of settlement and the gold rushes.

Doreen Blackwell died in November 2011, during the preparation of this Volume. A proofreader with the Western Australian Explorers’ Diaries Project, she applied her experience with librarianship, records management and archives to assist the project in a variety of ways. Doreen held a Bachelor of Applied Science (Library Studies), and a Graduate Diploma in Business Management. From 1984 until 1992, she was the Librarian for the Building Management Authority (WA), and from 1997 to 2001 she was Records Manager/Archivist for several small gold mining companies in Perth. While living in Armadale she was member of the Community Heritage Advisory Committee for Armadale, Roleystone and Kelmscott. When Doreen and her husband, the late Peter Bloomfield, retired to Augusta they became active and contributory members of the local community.

Peter Bridge, OAM is a series editor of Western Australian Exploration and a founder of the project. He established Hesperian Press in 1969 and has produced over 500 publications, mainly on aspects of Australian history. His own published works include research and geological indices for the mining industry, several books and many edited collections and reminiscences.

Lesley Brooker has travelled extensively in the wheatbelt of Western Australia in a technical and research capacity for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. She has authored and co-authored scientific papers on ornithology and habitat reconstruction, and was a co-recipient of the Serventy Medal for scientific publication in 2005. Lesley has a special interest in the geographical history of exploration in south-west Australia and has written three books on the subject. She wrote the introductory essay to Roe’s 1836 expedition to Wongan Hills with attention to Roe as a scientific collector.

Joe Bryant helped prepare the descriptions of the exploration routes and the maps listed in the synopses. He has a degree in engineering and spent his career working as a general manager. After retirement from the corporate world he ran Explorer Tours, a remote area tour company with his wife, Marion Hercock. He is now a volunteer ‘outback helper’ caretaking on cattle stations.

Nina Cameron did much of the proofreading for this volume. She completed general and midwifery nursing qualifications in Kalgoorlie and King Edward Memorial Hospital in the early 1960s. While living in Darwin she retrained as a library technician in the early 1990s and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts in history at Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University) where she worked until returning to Perth in 2005.

Gail Dreezens is the project’s typist and made the original transcription from Roe’s handwritten field notes, which was a difficult task. An amateur historian, her passion for Australian history has been further developed by travels throughout this country.

Kim Epton is a series editor of Western Australian Exploration and a founder of the project. He is the author of Publishing Your Book with Hesperian Press; C.C. Hunt’s 1864 Koolyanobbing Expedition; and Rivers of the Kimberley. Since helping to establish the project, his role is now one of marketing, assisting in financing future volumes, and the determination of prescriptive documents for proofreading and editing of the diaries.

Alex George, AM is a retired consultant botanist, editor and indexer, and holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Murdoch University. He worked at the WA Herbarium for 22 years and then spent 12 years in Canberra as the Executive Editor of the Flora of Australia project. He has also served at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, as Australian Botanical Liaison Officer. His taxonomic research has focused on the families Proteaceae, Myrtaceae and Gyrostemonaceae, resulting in naming many new species and several new genera. His main research interests are now Australian botanical history and bibliography. Professor George prepared the Appendix on plants, advised on the indexing and interpreted the Latin and French words and expressions.

Allan Harris was a proofreader for this volume. He has had a life-long interest in all aspects of Western Australian history and in particular explorers’ routes. A keen four wheel drive enthusiast, Allan has rekindled an earlier interest in researching family history since he retired to Borden on a couple of hectares.

Marion Hercock, FRGS has a PhD from the University of Western Australia, where she is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the School of Earth and Environment. A geographer, her publications include works on environmental management and history, environmental resources, geographical thought and 19th century geographers, as well as tourism and recreation. She was the principal editor of Western Australian Exploration 1836–1845.

Zoe Inman has travelled extensively in Western Australia, as a child with family; working as a country relief medical scientist and as a 4WD tour company hostess/ cook. Her more recent travel includes sailing the Kimberley and greater southern coasts, desert walking with camels and 4WD driving with her partner. Her love of Western Australia’s flora, fauna and history was instilled at a young age and continues to flourish, so involvement with the WAEDP team was a natural and exciting progression. Her publications to date are science-based, as is her career. Her current position is Senior Medical Scientist in Charge, special chemistry, for the WA Department of Health.

Michael Lance has been a farmer in the Gnowangerup district for nearly 40 years, and is an amateur historian with the Gnowangerup Heritage Group. Keen to see Western Australian local history recorded before it is lost, Michael has prepared for publication the memoirs of one of Gnowangerup’s first settlers: A.H. Allardyce (1903). He has a particular interest in Roe’s record of the 1835 expedition from Perth to King George Sound, and wrote the introductory essay to the accounts of that expedition.

Sheryl Milentis is an historical researcher and a principal editor with the Western Australian Explorers’ Diaries Project. She took all the digital photographs of the Roe Fieldbooks, which were used for the typescripts and proofreading. Sheryl also researched most of the biographical material. Her interests are in early criminal history, prostitution and genealogy, with some 30 years research experience. She has contributed to a history of policing in Western Australia, and co-edited The Scarlet Stain, a social history of the early years of Kalgoorlie prostitution. Sheryl’s forebears arrived on the Marquis of Anglesea, the third ship to the Swan River Colony, in August 1829. Her other colonial ancestors include the King family of Guildford and of Gingin, and the Andrews family of Fremantle. She was a principal editor of Western Australian Exploration 1836–1845 and she is currently preparing the third chronological volume in the Western Australian Exploration series for publication.

Jeff Murray is a cartographic draftsman with over 40 years of experience in mapping, photogrammetry, surveying and nomenclature. He is a researcher of history specialising in retracing Western Australian stock routes and exploration. Extensively travelled, he has detailed knowledge of Western Australia’s environment and geography. He prepared the two locational sketch maps for this volume.

Rob O’Connor, QC assisted with the proofreading for this volume. He is a retired barrister with a keen interest in Western Australian history, Federation history, Commonwealth and State current political affairs, and books on early Australian maritime and land exploration. He is a past councillor of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, and is currently a member of the Management Committee of the Friends of Battye Library, the State Records Office (WA) Advisory Committee, the Friends of the Western Australian Museum, the Friends of the State Library of South Australia, and the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia.

Karen Peradon-Alaga has had a passion for words for all her life, be it reading, writing or proofing. In 2011 she joined the editorial committee on the book Kardinya – a History of a Modern Suburb which was published in March 2012, and has fuelled her interest in the history of Western Australia. Karen has a Diploma in Proofreading and Copyediting and is an at-home mother to a daughter and son. She has enjoyed proofreading the adventures of some of the explorers of Western Australia.

Susie Pover came to Western Australia from London in 2011. She trained and worked as a secretary before moving into office management, administration and treasury management, spending the last 15 years working as secretary to the board of a private European investment company. Susie’s interests are many and varied and she has always had a love of learning, the English language and literature, and history. Horticultural and garden history is a recent pursuit, and she completed a four year course at Birkbeck, University of London with particular interest in the 17th, 18th and 19th century plant hunters and their discoveries. Proofreading satisfies the pedant in her while increasing her knowledge of the state’s early development.

Allan Zweck has a particular interest in Roe’s explorations in the vicinity of Lake Grace, and was greatly involved in preparing this volume. He wrote the introductory essay to accounts of the 1848–49 expedition to the Russell Range. Allan is a native of Blyth, South Australia, who moved as a New Land farmer to Lake Grace. He has worked there from 1965 to retirement, when he became an enthusiastic family history researcher.