In The Press

All articles have been reported with permission

C.Y. O’Connor Pipeline Named as Global Landmark

Robyn Lindley

Charles Yelverton O’Connor’s (11 January 1843—10 March 1902) extraordinary water pipeline has received

one of the highest honours in the engineering world: it has officially been designated as an International Historic Engineering Landmark by the prestigious

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The award places it alongside the great engineering feats of the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity scheme, the Eiffel Tower, the Panama Canal and the Golden Gate Bridge which have all received similar recognition.

C.Y. O’Connor’s water pipeline was built to carry fresh water from Mundaring, in the hills outside of Perth, to the hot and dusty eastern goldfields of Kalgoorlie, more than 566 kilometres away. It took five years to build the pipeline and its eight steam-powered pumping stations. It was completed in 1902.

When Potenciano Leoncio, the International Director of ASCE visited Mundaring to present the award on the 20th October 2009, he spoke of the magnitude of C.Y. O’Connor’s engineering feat as he fought to defy the many challenges required to build his “impossible dream”. It became the longest fresh water pipe in the world when it was completed. It was also the world’s first major water pipeline to be constructed of steel.

Since learning about the C.Y. O’Connor legacy at the CYO ERADE Village, I have become more intrigued about his story. It is a truly Australian story about

Since learning about the C.Y. O’Connor legacy at the CYO ERADE Village, I have become more intrigued about his story. It is a truly Australian story about a brilliant and daring Irish engineer with incredible foresight and tenacity. It is about an amazing man who played a significant role in the development of Western Australia at a time of rapid growth and social chaos. The pipeline drew heavily on his engineering ability, and it demanded some extraordinary political and management skills. While confronting some huge engineering challenges, he also faced enormous personal criticism in parliament and the media as he brought to life his vision. At the time the fresh water pipeline was the most radical, costly and logistically challenging engineering project the nation had ever contemplated.

When the first drops of water finally trickled the length of the pipeline in 1902, his critics were silenced. Left tired and

depressed, he rode his horse into the ocean and shot himself. He left a note that simply said: “I could finish if I got a chance and protection from misrepresentation but there is no hope of it now and it is better that it should be given to some entirely new man to do who will be untrammelled by prior responsibility.”

Now, more than a century later, the C.Y. O’Connor pipeline is receiving international accolades, and it has continued to deliver fresh water to the people of Kalgoorlie. The C.Y. O’Connor ERADE Village sits as a reminder of the legacy left behind. It is also a reminder of its potential in an age when intellectual power and courage can be leveraged to build a new future for Western Australians.

http://www.goldenpipeline.com.au. Copyright (C) 2003 The National Trust of Australia (WA)

Scholarship to back career-changing degree

A Professor who is a world authority on immunogenetics is funding a scholarship to help students undertake a Bachelor of Medical Science degree because he values the degree so highly.

Emeritus Professor Roger Dawkins completed the BMedSc degree in 1963 in a year he found was career changing.

He is now backing the Roger Dawkins Bachelor of Medical Science Scholarship in honour of Professor Rolf ten Seldam, who was the Faculty’s Foundation Professor of Pathology. The scholarship, which is for $6000 per year, will be awarded on the merit of a research proposal within the field of pathology. If more than one student submits a proposal, the award will also be based on academic merit.

For the BMedSc degree, medical students take time off from their MBBS degree to complete one year dedicated to medical research and then resume their medical studies.

The funds for the Roger Dawkins Scholarship will be drawn from the A.L. and M. Dawkins Foundation, which was established by Professor Dawkins and his family in honour of his father Alec Letts Dawkins, who was an orthopaedic surgeon, and his mother Muriel. Professor Dawkins’ daughter Kate Duncanson,

who is chair of the Foundation, said her

father felt the BMedSc had been a starting point for his lifetime of multi-disciplinary research.

An immunologist who is renowned for his work in tissue typing and genomics, he worked for a number of years with pathologist Professor ten Seldam, who greatly inspired him. “Something he found very valuable from that experience was the idea of multidisciplinary problem solving and the innovation that comes out of working with people from different fields who have different experiences and who can contribute something new and interesting,” Mrs Duncanson said.

Her father wanted to fund a scholarship to help a student undertake a BMedSc degree who otherwise might not be able to do so. “He felt it was really a valuable way to get into biomedical research,” she said.

Professor Dawkins named the Foundation in honour of his father and mother because they had instilled a culture of devotion to public service in their family, said Mrs Duncanson, who is a social worker. Her three brothers all sit on the board of the Foundation. The Foundation aims to encourage innovation and research.

The signing ceremony of the Deed of Gift for the scholarship was attended by Dr Ralph ten Seldam, who is the son of the late Rolf ten Seldam, Winthrop Professor Paul Waring, who is the Head of School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Winthrop Professor Jennet Harvey, of the School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, who worked with Professor Dawkins and Professor Rolf ten Seldam.

Another guest was Mr David Gibb, who was the senior laboratory technician in the former Department of Pathology in the time of Professor ten Seldam and worked closely with Professor Dawkins when he completed his BMedSc.

Dr Ralph ten Seldam (left) and Emeritus Professor Roger Dawkins (Article and photo reproduced with permission from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.)

Dr Steele’s Life Work Recognised with R Douglas Wright Medal

Dr Ted Steele delivered the prestigious R Douglas Wright Lecture at the University of Melbourne after which he was awarded the R Douglas Wright Medal (October 5). The motto on the medallion reads: DEXTER DIMOVERAT UMBRAM—which in reference to Wright say something like: “Propitiously and skilfully removed the dark shadows of ignorance”

Dr Ted Steele’s public lecture was entitled, “Is there any purpose in evolution? Darwin or Lamarck?” The Public Lecture and Medallion honour the memory of Professor R Douglas “Pansy” Wright former Chancellor of the University of Melbourne by the R Douglas Wright Group headed by Professors John Coghlan and William Louis. They are occasional lectures and the chosen speaker is “usually a scholar or scientist of international standing who through their life’s work has marched to the beat of their own drum”, a theme that characterised the remarkable life of “Pansy” Wright. His achievements at Melbourne University were first as Professor

Photo: Margaret Rolfe

Professor James Angus, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Science, congratulating Ted and presenting him with the medal after the lecture

of Physiology and then as a great institution builder (ANU, Howard Florey Institute, then Chancellor). The award of the Wright medallion is in recognition of Dr Steele’s research that has prompted widespread reconsideration of Lamarck’s theory of evolution.

Intellectual Ventures (IV)

Robyn Lindley

While the basic principles underlying the CY O’Connor ERADE Village are unique in Australia, other similar models are emerging in places like Seattle where Intellectual Ventures (IV) is clearly flourishing. Shortly after the CYO ERADE Village was established by Professor Roger Dawkins, a former Microsoft Executive called Nathan Myhrvold (CEO) co-founded IV in an old windowless warehouse that used to be a Harley-Davidson repair shop in California. In the old building, IV provides labs and equipment for a multidisciplinary and inventive group of active and retired scientists.

Myhrvold previously did quantum cosmology research with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, and moved on to Microsoft where he worked on a diverse range of challenging projects like moon satellites, missile defence systems, computers and climate change. At Microsoft he held a number of senior positions, including as a futurist, as a strategist and as a founder of its research lab. Listed as one of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, he left Microsoft in 1999 to focus on setting up IV, with Bill Gates as an investor.

IV operates as an invention company drawing on its intellectual and scientific think tank that is now infamously known for trying to answer questions that others

would never ask: as a multidisciplinary group (mainly in the physical sciences), they have decided to tackle some of the greatest scientific challenges of our day using their collective intellectual and technical expertise. IV’s researchers have investigated some novel ways of reversing the effects of global warming by asking questions like, “Will eating kangaroos save Polar Bears?”, or “Would sending liquefied sulphur dioxide skywards with a garden hose stop global warming?”

Myhrvold is noted for loving his gadgets and discussions with his researchers, and he believes that IV’s solutions should be cheap and simple wherever possible. Myhrvold and around a dozen of his scientists regularly sit around an old oval table to discuss their research. This all sounds rather familiar to CY O’Connor ERADE researchers. However, since 2000, Myhrvold’s small group of unconventional scientists has been successful in establishing a formidable patent portfolio. Now with over 27,000 patents covering around fifteen hundred areas, the Intellectual Asset Management Magazine (13 July-August 2009, pp.9-18) described them as a, “Sinister patent guzzling troll poised to assert its massive war chest of assets.” By creating, buying and licensing patents, IV has generated over US$1 billion dollars in revenue, and it

has raised US$5 billion from its investment partners (including 10 year capital commitments). While some aspects of how IV operates are similar to how CYO ERADE researchers operate, I wondered what CY ’Connor ERADE researchers could do on a slim budget to make the world a better place.

Nathan Myhrvold, CEO Intellectual Ventures

AAco Boss Knows the Lie of the Land

ASA Wahlquist

THE AUSTRALIAN, Monday, November 9, 2009

David Farley learnt his first lessons in business as a jackaroo at Boonoke Station, in southern NSW, which was then owned by Rupert Murdoch.

"The relationship I had with Murdoch and his lieutenant Ken Cowley was excellent,” says Farley, who will take up the position of CEO of Australia's largest cattle company, AAco, next month.

"To be able to be an observer in their business conversations, how they strategically positioned themselves, was just amazing."

A turning point came on the Boonoke tennis court, listening to Murdoch outline his media vision.

“For months, I wondered ‘how can I achieve what he intends to do—how can I do that in agriculture?’”

One year later he left the wool industry and joined the cotton-producing Colly Farms.

By the time he left, in 1999, Colly had grown from 160ha of cotton to 30,000ha. It had expanded into marketing and the US, it was in the top 10 traders in the world.

In his 19 years at Colly, the company was the subject of a takeover tussle between Kerry Packer and Anglo American, was floated in 1984, acquired by Commonwealth Funds Management in 1989, and floated again in 1996.

Farley's time at Colly ended in 1999 when the Kahlbetzer family gained a majority share.

Realising he would not fit the family's business model; Farley made the painful choice to move on.

"My leaving was fortuitous because it didn't rain again for years”.

Farley, who will be the sixth CEO at AAco in a decade joins the company after two hard years. Drought, followed by floods, and high fuel and grain prices followed by a high Australian dollar led to a loss of $38.7 million for 2008, and a half-year 2009 loss of $30m.

This week the company warned it did not expect “any significant earnings before interest and tax contribution in the second half of the financial year on the company's yearend results”.

AAco's board has just come through two turbulent years. The AGM last year threw out chairman and acting CEO Nick Burton Taylor, ostensibly because the company had failed to divest itself of Futuris, now Elders, and its 43 per cent stake.

Earlier this year, the main board, Futuris appointee Charles Bright, Philip Toyne and Brett Heading, recommended the purchase of Tipperary Station, owned by lawyer Alan Myers, who proposed to then purchase a 19.9 per cent stake in AAco.

But that proposal was rejected by an EGM in May. Neither Bright nor Toyne stood for the board at the June AGM, and Heading was voted out. Nick Burton Taylor who had lobbied against the Tipperary purchase, was returned to the board, along with former board member Chris Roberts, who had stood down after Burton Taylor was dumped.

Well-respected cattleman Peter Hughes

and businessman Stephen Lonie, who were appointed in April, were endorsed with Lonie becoming chairman Arunas Paliulis from the company's biggest shareholder IFFCO, who also opposed the Tipperary purchase, joined the board.

Farley readily admits that leading AAco is going to be challenging. But he is impressed with the current AAco board. “I was impressed with ... the skills base across it, but more importantly the integrity of the gentlemen that are representing the shareholders.”

Lonie says Farley was chosen because of this very broad experience in agribusiness, “a very strong empathy and understanding for the source of the business, an understanding of the remote locations where our people work, an empathy for the industry and a very strong managerial capability, analytical skills and very strong leadership qualities”.

Over the past decade, Farley worked with Dick Pratt on the Southcorp packaging take over as CEO of US company Calcot, and a director of the Farmers Cooperative Marketing Association of America. He then set up his own company, Matrix Commodities.

His first task at AAco will be to meet management and staff, and visit the company's 19 stations and two feedlots. “My focus will be to really make sure that what assets we have are working at their best level. And if we can't make them work, we will take that capital and turn it into something else.”