My personal recollections of the Master of Environmental Science, which I completed at Monash University in 1979 are very positive. I indelibly recall the courses’ passionate and idiosyncratic founder and Director Tim Ealey OAM, and the equally passionate and far-sighted Frank Fisher, who died in 2020 and 2012 respectively. The Masters course required students to be cross disciplinary and to collaborate in a small group to produce a ‘group’ Masters thesis.
In my case, I was able to broaden my previous training in geology and geomorphology to embrace my interest in hollow dependent wildlife, in a group which included a professional forester (Tony Manderson) and a person whose interest was in the physics (particularly the thermodynamics) of tree hollows (Tom Calder). Grazing widely in my Masters course work from Environmental Economics, through Aridity and Forest Microclimatology to Comparative Cultural Ecology. This final Unit, taken by Dr George Silberbauer, who died in 2012 see a brief obituary from The Age: https://tributes.theage.com.au/au/obituaries/theage-au/name/george-silberbauer-obituary?id=44369733 ) a memorable small slice of this wild and mind-blowing ride.
Dr Silberbauer used to walk into our classes in a heavy overcoat and wax lyrical for hours without notes or apparent preparation, based in part on his deep and immersive experiences as an anthropologist with the San people in southern Africa. While the Masters course was typically rigorous in its formal assessment, George took a refreshing alternative tack. There was no mention of formal assessment during the semester and no one dared ask. Towards the end our final class, George checked in with us and asked whether we’d been wondering about how the Unit would be assessed. He then asked for a show of hands indicating whether we had learnt anything. His final words were “You’ve all passed” and he walked out. Unsurprisingly, the whole class was awarded an ‘Ungraded Pass’ when results were released.
While I grazed well beyond this Masters course in my subsequent formal study and work into Arts (philosophy of science & feminism), education, community and informal learning, it was the M Env Sc that gave me the interest and ability to confidently ‘cross the tracks’ imposed by traditional disciplinary boundaries.
I was recently contacted out of the blue by fellow course graduate, John Dickie, now living in India, suggesting it was time we finally had a reunion. By mid-August, with the assistance from the Monash Alumni office and a small number of other graduates between 1975-2005, we have a plan. Here is our invitation:
We warmly welcome all Master of Environmental Science graduates from Monash University (between 1975 & 2005) to a well overdue reunion over an informal lunch in a beautiful setting, 12 midday to 2.00pm Tuesday 6 Oct 2026 at The Terrace, Royal Botanical Gardens, Melbourne. Attendees will order and pay for their drinks and lunch on the day. Register your interest via https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/alumni-reunion-master-of-environmental-science-1975-2005-tickets-1998473661519?aff=oddtdtcreator , on behalf of a small graduate-led alumni group (Barry Golding, John Dickie & Chris Johnston). Monash Alumni office have undertaken to inform M Env Sc graduates they have email contacts for. We encourage you to forward this information on to invite any graduates (and former staff) you may recall or be in contact with.
A brief history of the Master of Environmental Science Course
Like many former graduates, I’ve moved on and lost contact with what happened to our course after we left and with many of our colleagues and former program staff.
I came across an account written by Christian Kull in November 2014 lamenting ‘The Rise and fall of geography and environmental science at Monash University’, see
… certainly marks a sad milestone for Monash geography and environmental studies, which just recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. To briefly review its history, Monash University, which opened its doors to students in 1961, established a Department of Geography in 1964 as part of the Faculty of Arts. …
In a separate development, the Monash Centre for Environmental Science was founded in 1972 as one of the first stand-alone environmental programs in Australia. Under the long-standing leadership of engineer-turned-environmentalist Frank Fisher, this centre later became focused around a graduate diploma and masters program and was known as the Graduate School of Environmental Science (GSES). This program trained 1000s of environmental managers over three decades. In 1988-9, the GSES merged into the Department of Geography (which was renamed the Department of Geography and Environmental Science and still located within the Arts Faculty), but the GSES still offered its distinctive masters program. This was the first of a series of similar mergers across Australia … and reflected an obvious synergy between the ‘old’ discipline of geography and the ‘new’ environmental studies at the interface of nature-society studies.
In 1998, the “Department” became a “School”, after the Faculty of Arts underwent an extensive review. In the 2000s, under the rotating leadership of Chris Cocklin and Nigel Tapper, the School renewed itself with a series of hires around human geography, development studies, corporate and urban environmental management, climate, and indigenous archaeology. The 30-year-old GSES masters program was replaced with a new suite of masters programs in 2003-2005 focused on sustainability, development, and corporate environmental responsibility. The full history of GES awaits the pen of a suitable scribe …
I’m not going to be that scribe. However what is missing from this account is what those of us experienced while Tim Ealey was the courses’ Director. In 1973 Tim became the foundational Director of the Graduate School of Environmental Science. He continued, as once source accurately recorded, to ‘encounter much resistance from scathing academics along the way, but was driven by a growing alarm at the planet’s diminishing resources. The Masters of Environmental Science course was the first of its kind in Australia and one of the world’s largest. [Tim] was proud of the fact the School produced 800 graduates between 1973 and 2000 (when it closed), many of whom obtained influential positions in Government and industry’.
Monash University recorded a wonderful and wide ranging ‘Vale Dr Tim Ealey OAM’. See https://www.monash.edu/vale/home/articles/vale-dr-tim-ealey-oam
This was penned one week after Tim died in Adelaide on 21 Oct 2020 age 92. This was while COVID lockdowns were still in place. I was fortunate to make phone contact with Tim through his then wife just before he died.
The account within this Monash obituary about a wombat, ‘Wombalina’ was one the self-effacing Tim loved to tell. It is worth retelling as it says a lot about who Tim was.
[Tim] once recalled a woman ringing to say she was leaving Melbourne and would the zoology department take her pet wombat, Wombalina? Tim kindly obliged. Several years later, the woman rang to say she was back in Melbourne for a few hours and could she possibly visit Wombalina? Tim agreed but panicked when he subsequently discovered that the animal had died and there were no other wombats on the premises. He made a few frantic calls and found “a mate in Frankston” who had just caught a wild one, so he sent down a car to “borrow” it for a few hours. The beast turned out to be huge, savage and male. Tim had the grim job of holding it firmly at a certain angle which disguised the fact it was most certainly male, whilst the “owner” fed it handfuls of grass and attempted to pet it. She left soon after, none the wiser.
In our final year, as a thank you, the students in the course presented Tim, a diminutive but colourful character, with a brightly, painted garden gnome, accepted with great humour. I recall in that same year singing ‘If you go down to the woods today …’ as part of our group thesis presentation to peers about managing hollow dependent wildlife. It could only have happened in the M Env Sc course.
I was fortunate to keep irregular contact beyond the course with Frank Fisher through mutual acquaintances in Daylesford and Apollo Bay. Frank took over as Director of the Graduate School of Environmental Science after Tim departed, later joining Swinburne University in 2006 as the convenor of graduate programs with the National Centre for Sustainability. Frank died in 2012, too young age 68, after bravely and creatively living with chronic Crohn’s disease. The link that follows was originally published in Chain Reaction #116, November 2012. It tells us more about this remarkable and generous public intellectual and activist whose contribution to the M Env Course was similarly monumental https://mountainsandplains.wordpress.com/people/frank-fisher/
Chris Johnston has recently identified a strong link between our former course and RMIT’s Socio-Environmental Assessment and Policy course, through various former students including Ian Thomas in later years. Chris taught in that course too as did Carol Kunert. It was started by Dr Chris Ryan and held a reunion with alumni, founders and current students in 2025.
I welcome and am happy to add other personal recollections here from other former students or staff in our course, which you might be willing to publicly share, via b.golding@federation.edu.au
Barry Golding 