Lumen Winter 2013 - Flipbook - Page 25
K
nown as ‘Con’ or ‘Miss Eardley’,
she was a familiar sight at both
the University of Adelaide’s North
Terrace Campus and the Waite Institute,
where she was curator of the herbaria
and, later, lecturer in Systematic Botany. A
curiosity to some, a mentor and source of
inspiration to others, Eardley was one of
Adelaide’s pioneering women scientists.
Eardley was born in Adelaide in 1910
and lived her entire life on Wattle Street,
Fullarton. Her father, Frederick Eardley,
was the University’s Assistant Registrar
from 1911, and Registrar from 1924.
It is likely that from him she inherited a
capacity for organisation and systematic
thinking. The same qualities that he
applied to University administration, made
for her own success as a taxonomist.
Eardley attended Walford House
School, taking Leaving Honours in 1927.
Her final-year botany notebook survives
and reveals a young woman with an
obvious flair for the subject. Following
her matriculation and encouraged by her
parents to pursue further education, she
entered the University of Adelaide as a
science student.
She seems to have thrived at
university, being awarded the John Bagot
Scholarship and Medal in Botany in 1929
and on completion of her Bachelor of
Science a further scholarship to undertake
Honours. Her thesis, ‘The Occurrence of
Mycorrhiza [root fungus] in the Plants of
South Australia’, was supervised by the
young lecturer in botany, Joseph Wood.
Wood shortly afterwards became the
nation’s first Australian-born Professor
of Botany, and he and Eardley shared a
close working relationship over the next
three decades.
In 1933, Eardley was hired by the
University as curator of the Adelaide and
Waite Institute herbaria. In recognition
of her growing expertise she was asked
to lecture in Systematic Botany at North
Terrace and also the Waite Institute from
1938 and 1943 respectively.
Her first decade in charge of the
Adelaide and Waite herbaria saw a
considerable expansion in their size
with the incorporation of several private
collections. In the mid-1950s, Adelaide’s
various collections of plant specimens
were consolidated in the State Herbarium,
but in the meantime a large portion
were overseen almost single-handedly
by Eardley.
In the late 1940s, Eardley was conferred
a Master of Science following the
completion of a thesis titled ‘Comparative
studies of some Australian and extraAustralian floras from an ecological
aspect’. In 1950, she was appointed
Systematic Botanist, a full-time position
with the University. Lecturing, collaborating
on research projects, leading field trips
and supervising postgraduate students,
she remained in this position until ill health
forced her to retire in 1971.
Apart from various articles in
newspapers and magazines, her most
widely-known work was the reference
manual Wildflowers of Adelaide Hills,
published shortly after she retired. During
her career, however, Eardley produced
important studies of the flora of arid
regions including the Simpson Desert and
the University of Adelaide’s Koonamore
Vegetation Reserve. She also published
botanical studies of other regions of South
Australia including Eight Mile Creek and
Kangaroo Island. The data she collected
during her regular field trips to Koonamore
in particular have continued to be of
value to researchers across a number
of disciplines.
Her standing among fellow scientists
was reflected in her election to fellowship
of the Royal Society of South Australia
and, later, the Linnean Society, London.
She was also an active member of
the International Association for Plant
Taxonomy, ANZAAS and a number of
conservation groups.
Eardley was in many respects ahead
of her time. Most obviously, she was an
independent woman with an academic
career in an era in which space for women
in the public and professional spheres
was extremely limited. It is difficult to
say whether she would have considered
herself a feminist as such, but we know
she was frustrated by the stark choice
between marriage and work – a dilemma
faced by well-educated young women
at this time.
Eardley was also a passionate
conservationist throughout her life.
As someone whose work was deeply
connected to the natural world, she had
an intuitive sense of the dangers to our
wellbeing of wholesale habitat loss. As a
young woman, she helped form a group
called the Tree Lovers Civic League, one
of the forerunners of the contemporary
environment groups. She spoke about
conservation issues to groups of young
teachers, and among her papers is a
draft of a message to botany students, a
prescient plea for “courageous and wise
voices” to make the case for national
parks. She wrote: “inviolate areas are of
the greatest scientific and often practical
importance; they are the Australian
heritage which we could easily lose and
never replace. Few Australians realise their
value, even in terms of tourist attractions”.
Eardley was also an early advocate of
native gardens and one of the first to
develop guidelines for estimating the value
of vegetation in national parks.
When she died in 1978, she was
remembered for her meticulousness and
dedication to her work. Her service to
the University over 40 years, including
involvement in the Women’s and
Graduates’ Unions, and the goodwill
she fostered in the broader community
through her plant identification service,
was recognised with the naming of a
reserve and prize in her honour.
Those who knew her also spoke of
her generosity with her time, and her
many acts of kindness, particularly to
international students. When her friend
and colleague Joseph Wood died
suddenly in 1959 she wrote an extended
obituary that concluded: “his life has
been a very full one, to the great benefit
of his University, his country, and the
science of botany...But much more than
a distinguished botanist, he was modest,
kindly, tolerant and wise”. Perhaps she
would have objected, but this is an
equally fitting characterisation of the life
of Constance Eardley herself.
Left: Photograph of
Constance Eardley in the
field taken by student
Elizabeth Gordon-Mills
c. 1965.
The University of Adelaide | Alumni Magazine 23
