RGS-IBG archive
Michael Alfred Spender, 1929
This image shows researchers from the 1928–29 Great Barrier Reef Expedition working on the outer reef. Led by Dr Charles Maurice Yonge, a prominent marine researcher at the University of Cambridge, the research project, also known as the Yonge or Low Isles Expedition, was first suggested by Sir Matthew Nathan and Professor Henry Richards of the Great Barrier Reef Committee, which was set up in 1922 by the Queensland branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia. The project was designed to investigate theories about the origin of coral reefs as formulated by Charles Darwin and others, and pioneered studies into coral physiology.
The site for the proposed project was the Low Isles, two small islands off the north coast of Queensland surrounded by a large reef formation. The group of young scientists chosen for the expedition, which included surveyor Michael Alfred Spender, who took this photograph, arrived on Low Island in 1928.
The project was notable for the number of women participants. Although many newspapers trivialised their involvement – including the Sunday Chronicle, which was more concerned with ‘the large stock of fashionable frocks’ packed for the journey – all were experts in their field.
The expedition published seven volumes of scientific material, describing its programme as ‘successively completed and also extended in many respects’. Its many discoveries were also widely reported at the time, in particular by Australian journalist Charles Barrett, who travelled with the expedition from Cairns. Barrett’s reports, published in the Adelaide Register, provide an insight into the comfortable life led by the researchers on the island, which he describes as a wonderland set in the sapphire and purple tropic sea with honey birds calling in the palms. ‘I envy the folk who for 12 months will remain here on a three-acre flake of coral rock and sand,’ he wrote.
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