How Ockie and Spooks changed Charlie’s life

CHARLIE Veron’s teacher used to call him “Mr Darwin’’ because of his small-boy curiosity of the natural world, which extended to a deadly blue-ringed octopus that would climb up his arm.

Back when Charlie was just eight and went by his real name, John, his parents, his teacher Mrs Collins and the scientific world did not realise the pet he called Ockie (which would change colour to show pleasure when fed and could flash vivid blue rings if displeased) was highly venomous.

“He obviously didn’t bite me,’’ Dr Veron said.

But it wasn’t Ockie or even another pet, Spooks the funnel-web spider, which led to the nickname that would stick with Dr Veron for life.

It was a jar of stinking, dead marine worms.

As a child, Dr Veron would scurry around the rockpools of Long Reef on Sydney’s northern beaches.

That was where he found Ockie. He took the pretty little octopus home and placed it in an aquarium where he played with it and fed it daily.

“He would come when I called,’’ Dr Veron said. “I believe he knew I was his source of food and he came when he was called, he crawled up my arm, took his bit of prawn and went back down again.’’

Dr Veron kept a range of odd and occasionally lethal pets, including Spooks.

“I didn’t let the spider crawl on my arm. They’re very vicious things indeed,’’ he said of funnel-webs.

Spooks hung around in a special spider jar for about two years, until Charlie’s mum found out – but not before Charlie had taken a funnelweb to school for show and tell.

He can’t remember whether it was Spooks. It was so long ago and, besides, he had looked after several before his mother put her foot down.

“I got on very well with the teacher, Mrs Collins. She used to call me ‘Mr Darwin’, after Charles Darwin,’’ he said.

The English naturalist was famous for his theory of evolution, revealed to the world with the publication of his seminal book, On The Origin Of Species.

The origin of Charlie’s nickname came though when he took along a jar of marine worms that he’d collected at Long Reef. His dad had given him metho to preserve them, but that had dried out.

“The stink was unbelievable. Mrs Collins yelled at me: ‘Charles Darwin! Get that out of here’, and the kids turned my name into Charlie.’’

The name stuck. His family adopted it too and it carried over into his adult and professional life as Australia’s first reef scientist and as the former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, near Townsville.