John Walter Gregory

Following the death of Frederick McCoy on 13^th May 1899 the University of Melbourne decided to establish a new chair in geology and mineralogy. The noted British geologist John Walter Gregory was appointed on 11^th December 1899.

Gregory was one of the world's most active geologists of his day. He had already made significant contributions to petrology and palaeontology as well as to geography and exploration and had written a number of books and papers on fossil bryozoa and corals and other fossil organisms, including several catalogues on Jurassic and Cretaceous bryozoa.

He first gained international attention after he led an expedition in East Africa in 1892-3, the results of which were published in his classic book The Great Rift Valley (1896) - a phrase that he coined. During his career he participated in expeditions on every continent except Antarctica (he even almost made it to that continent as well but had a falling out with the commander Robert Scott). He took part in the first crossing of Spitsbergen (1896) and explored the West Indies (1899), Libya (1908), Angola (1912), and Burma, Tibet and southwestern China (1922).

Gregory commenced duties at the University of Melbourne in February 1900 and immediately instituted numerous overdue changes in the teaching of geology including excursions and fieldwork and detailed mining and mineralogical studies. One of the attractions of coming to Australia was that it was a country rich in mineral resources. Gregory had developed an interest in economic work and well as pure geology and in addition to his university work he accepted an appointment as director of the Geological Survey of Victoria. He held this post from 1901-04 and travelled extensively throughout the state to study all the major geological and geographical features and mining areas. He encouraged staff and students at the university to take an interest and become involved in the work, for example, geological mapping.

In the heat of the Australian summer of 1901-02 he led a small contingent of staff and students from the University of Melbourne on an historic journey to Lake Eyre. It was not the best time of year to travel and Gregory received criticism in the local press for his foolhardiness but the Christmas holiday period was the only time the party was free to travel without interfering with their normal university duties. With a team of camels the group explored the Lake Eyre basin, collected Quaternary vertebrate fossils, interacted with and studied the local aboriginal people, and speculated on the origin of the hot waters of the Great Artesian basin. Gregory proposed that the waters were of 'juvenile' or deep-seated origin as opposed to 'meteoric' or atmospheric origin, however this hypothesis did not gain general acceptance.

The Lake Eyre expedition captured considerable public attention and was reported in a series of newspaper articles and later in Gregory's popular book The Dead Heart of Australia (1906). This book was significant for coining the evocative phrase the 'dead heart' for the central deserts of Australia (as distinct from the 'living heart' which this region would have been when the giant mammals and other organisms thrived there in the not so distant geological past).

Gregory had a relatively brief but busy residency in Victoria. He was an effective teacher and was personally popular. However, during his tenure the university underwent an acute financial crisis. Frustrated with the lack of funding and equipment, and also his wife's ill-health, he decided to return home to Great Britain. In 1904 he took up a new chair in Geology at the University of Glasgow and was a successful teacher, researcher and administrator until his retirement in 1929. Gregory died at age 68. He drowned trying to recover his field notebooks, lost as his canoe overturned in the rapids of the Urubamba River in Peru on 2^nd June 1932.