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Geographical Research

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December 2008

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46(4):466–467

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2008.00540.x

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Obituary

Jack Alan Mabbutt (1922–2008)

Jack Mabbutt was a small dynamo whodemanded almost as much from colleagues andstudents as he was able to give. He had an extra-ordinary capacity for work, a fierce determinationto finish whatever task he had set himself, avery short fuse and a sharp sense of humour. Hiscolleagues remember him with fondness orirritation, but certainly none could forget him.

Jack was English, and proud of his Cambridgedegrees. His wife Ellaine was similarly educatedat Cambridge, some years later than Jack, andher strong interest in literature, dance and finearts had a great influence on Jack’s life beyondhis professional commitments.

Jack served in Europe at the end of theSecond World War. He later taught for sevenyears in Cape Town and undertook research inthe Namib desert. He moved to Australia in1959 to the (then) Division of Land Researchand Regional Survey in the CommonwealthScientific and Industrial Research Organisation(CSIRO), and took part in northern and centralAustralian and Papua New Guinea (PNG) landsystems surveys.

Jack moved from CSIRO to the University ofNew South Wales (UNSW) at the end of 1966and established the Department of Geography inthe School of Applied Science, as the foundationprofessor. This was a lonely post in what wasthen still a very technology-orientated university.He quickly established and fostered links withthe other Geography/Earth Science departmentsin Sydney, encouraging students and young staffmembers in their research efforts, with the resultthat many later moved to UNSW, or sought jointsupervision for their research degrees. At thesame time he followed his vision to build upwhat he believed to be a comprehensive andintegrated applied geography department,selecting both young and enthusiastic researchersin most specialist strands, and a few moreexperienced staff with demonstrated teachingskills. The department grew quickly to be at theforefront of geography teaching and research,and its former students are now active over avery wide professional and academic field.

Jack knew the western European and Africanlandscapes, and spoke and read enough Frenchand German to fully comprehend the writings ofthe Europeans who had a profound influence onthe theories of landscape evolution that engagedphysical geographers for many decades of the20th century. So he was well-positioned to presentrobust arguments for his interpretations of thelandscape evolution of Australia and to begin toquestion traditional interpretations of tropicallandscapes when he undertook work in PNG.His enthusiasm for the north, for laterites, silcretesand weathering processes, later inspired many ofhis students to work in arid Australia or in PNG.

He loved the arid zone, but was enthusedby almost any aspect of better understandinglandscape processes. As a physical geographerhe had remarkably well developed observationskills – commonly horrifying students who hadlaboured for weeks at a field site when hebounced onto the site and asked ‘what do youthink caused those paler infills in the soil cracksnear the base?’ Inevitably they had to ask ‘what

Obituary

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© 2008 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2008 Institute of Australian Geographers

soil cracks?’ There was no better teacher for anaspiring geomorphologist than Jack in the field.Those of us who worked with him in PNG or inarid Australia remember those times with nostalgiaand gratitude for his guidance.

Jack’s research output was impressive. Hismajor early Australian-based publications wereon soil landscapes in the Port Moresby area ofPNG and on the theory and applications of land-scape classification. He published numerouspapers on sand dune formation and dynamics inCentral Australia, on landscape evolution incentral and northern Australia and on patternedland in arid Western Australia. He contributed toAtlas series with landform maps of Australiaand New South Wales and to numerous landsystems reports covering northern and aridAustralia. His books were classics in the disciplineof applied physical geography. He helped inspireand wrote a chapter of the ground-breakingcross-disciplinary

Aboriginal Man and Environ-ment in Australia

, collaborated with his friendand colleague Joe Jennings to produce thevolume

Landform Studies in Australia and PapuaNew Guinea

, and wrote the basic text on desertlandforms. He contributed widely to internationalliterature on deserts and arid catchments, withexamples from the Lake Eyre Basin, the Finkesystem, and other arid catchments. He was anadviser to the Australian Government in signingthe United Nations Treaty on Desertification,and his work in the 1980s with the UnitedNations University provided guidance and insightsgained from extensive work in arid landscapeson deserts and desertification, human impactsand land degradation, some developed withformer students and colleagues. But his interestsextended beyond his specialised research areato Antarctica and geoarchaeology, and hispublications included biographical outlines ofGriffith Taylor and other earlier geographers headmired. He is remembered in his old departmentat UNSW through the Jack Mabbutt Medal forthe best performance in the Year 4 (GeographyHonours) project.

As a leader and mentor Jack had few prejudicesor preconceptions about people, but insteadjudged them on their performance. He wasamazingly empathetic of people who caused him

considerable grief through genuine accidents –including removing the tip of his index fingerwith a farm gate, or losing the departmentaltheodolite when the Landrover door broke open.He was proud of the successes of the youngscientists he mentored, and he never attemptedto stake claim to their research that he supervised.He was fortunate to have taught before politicalcorrectness might have driven him from theclassrooms, but while he would never havethought of himself as a feminist, long before it wasfashionable or demanded, he supported womenwithout patronising them, and many young womenin CSIRO and UNSW owe their later successesto his support at the start of their careers.

It was part of his uncompromising nature thatmeant Jack is one of the few academics wholiterally stopped work when he decided he couldno longer produce high quality science. Heretired formally in the mid 1980s and as hefound he was losing touch with the ‘cuttingedge’ of his discipline, he turned to gardeningand Scottish country dancing.

Jack was a character. Talkative, gregarious,ebullient, a great raconteur: at ease in bothSydney’s fringe and more sophisticated academic-social circles and when he worked with theTerritorians in their heeled elastic-sided boots,demonstrating to the latter that he was anaccomplished swearer and bushman. He listenedto good music and loved literature, a love heshared with his family, and he and Ellaineintroduced many of his colleagues and studentsto their favourite authors, and to explorations inliterature and art, encouraging life-skills wellbeyond applied geomorphology.

Over recent years Jack applied his enormousenergy to the hillside property tucked under thesandstone escarpment above the small townof Berry, 150 km south of Sydney. His commit-ment to his garden, to literature and fine artsabsorbed the exuberance that was unstoppablethroughout his life. He leaves behind Ellaine,Stephen (not in Australia), daughters Bridgetand Sarah, and Jemima, the grand-daughter ofwhom he was especially proud.

Marjorie Sullivan

Australian National University