News location:

Canberra Today 15°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Tom’s big birthday among the bugs

Volunteer Tom Vangerwen…  “The volunteers provide enormous benefit to the health and future of the collection, they help improve it and make a big difference.” Photo by Andrew Finch
Volunteer Tom Vangerwen…  “The volunteers provide enormous benefit to the health and future of the collection, they help improve it and make a big difference.” Photo by Andrew Finch
WITHIN the CSIRO lies the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC), home to more than 12 million insect specimens dating back to the 1890s. The largest collection in Australia, the ANIC boasts of having one third of Australia’s collection of insects and features international specimens and related species such as a spider collection. Each specimen is painstakingly preserved and labelled in display cabinets and drawers that are maintained by a group of dedicated volunteers, co-ordinated by retired CSIRO researcher, Tom Vangerwen.

For the past 18 years, Tom has led the group of 116 past and 24 present volunteers, who have collectively clocked up over 90,000 hours of volunteering since the inception of the scheme in 1998.

The collection informs researchers, agriculturalists and ecologists about the impacts of the environment on insect species and grows by 100,000 insects each year.

Since Tom was 20, he has been involved with insects, starting at the CSIRO in Canberra as a new immigrant from Holland in an assistant-researcher role in 1956. Tom assisted with a large-scale population study of blowflies in the district.

“Blowflies are a major pest to sheep farmers,” explains Tom. “We discovered that blowflies are activated to fly in the morning due to the heat of the sun, but when the temperature peaks at the middle of the day, we found that blowflies like to take a siesta and sit on a leaf and wait for the temperature to drop before flying again,” he says.

“In 1959, a very fortunate thing happened to me, I fell in love and wanted to marry my wife, Margaret,” says Tom.

“I wanted to make a career at CSIRO but needed more money to marry so I resigned against my better judgement and worked at the Charles Rogers department store, delivering furniture and working in the grocery department,” says Tom.

Three years later, Tom was approached by Dr Barton Brown who has done his thesis on the Queensland fruit fly to come back to CSIRO as his assistant. Tom was delighted, although he kept his weekend and Friday evening shifts at the East Row store and married Margaret in 1961.

“I set a goal to make a career out of research and stayed for the next 38 years, studying blowflies mostly. In research, you find that once you answer one question you get 10 new questions so there was always interesting work to do,” says Tom.

In 1996, Tom retired but still kept in touch with his colleagues. He was invited to set up the volunteer scheme at the ANIC in 1998.

“I knew the ins and outs of entomology and was always interested in this area although I never really worked in the taxonomy field, I wanted to know more about the collection,” he says.

Starting as the inaugural volunteer, Tom had recruited 20 others by the end of the first year and the scheme grew from there.

“All our volunteers have an interest in insects but not all have a science background. Six students have secured jobs with us and others have gone on to find work in related areas.

“The volunteers provide enormous benefit to the health and future of the collection, they help improve it and make a big difference,” says Tom.

Tom celebrated his 80th birthday on Tuesday, (December 8) and his colleagues at ANIC marked the occasion with a special celebration.

“Having set goals throughout my career, my goal on retirement was to live 100 years, so I look forward to continuing my work for many years to come,” says Tom.

 

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Kate Meikle

Kate Meikle

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews