Obituaries for June 20, 2020: Mike Tyler, Lynn Martin, John Madigan
Today we pay tribute to Adelaide’s world famous “frog man”, to the head of a rapidly growing school in outer suburbia and to the last of the DLP senators.
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Today we pay tribute to Adelaide’s world famous “frog man” to the head of a rapidly growing school in outer suburbia and to the last of the DLP senators.
MICHAEL JAMES TYLER, AO, DSc
Frog expert
Born: March 27, 1937; Surbiton, UK
Died: March 26, 2020; Adelaide
HE incredible diversity of frogs and toads, and the threats that modern environments pose to them, were at the heart of Mike Tyler’s life in science.
From childhood, his need to observe frogs was insatiable and resulted in him volunteering at the British Museum.
Closely watching frogs would reveal their mysteries and lead to research with wide implications, perhaps the most radical the discovery of a frog that gestated its young in its stomach.
In 1974, Mike made world science news when he worked out how the southern gastric brooding frog from Queensland reproduced.
It was so revolutionary that scientists and journals for years doubted his work. The frog converted her stomach into a womb, switched off her gastric acids, swallowed her eggs, and spent six weeks without food until the fully formed frogs spewed from her mouth.
These frogs are rare, if not extinct, and that pointed to Mike’s other main concern: that frogs and toads with unusual and potentially valuable evolutionary traits were disappearing from Earth.
They were victims of the anthropocene: the combination of loss of habitat and the rise of pollution. Mike’s research successes were accompanied by an unusual career trajectory.
He had grown up in Surrey, England, the son of an accountant. His mother died when he was seven.
He won a scholarship to Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames but was forced to withdraw from his science degree at the University of London when he developed a tumour on his wrist, requiring surgery and radiotherapy.
In 1958, Malcolm Smith, a herpetologist at the British Museum, told him that if he wanted to find new frog species he needed to go to Australia and Papua New Guinea.
So, a penniless Mike spent more than a year hitchhiking and working his way to Australia. He was struck down with acute appendicitis in Turkey and worked for the World Health Organisation in Afghanistan before signing on as ship’s crew out of Mumbai, India, eventually arriving at Fremantle.
He took work as a railway fettler on the Nullarbor Plain, but a work accident put him in hospital in Adelaide.
Mike took a job as a laboratory technician at the University of Adelaide’s Medical School. He also became a volunteer, working on Australian amphibians at the SA Museum.
He finally made it to PNG by taking leave from the medical school to work as manager of a coffee plantation in the highlands. His interest in frogs had led to him meeting the plantations’s owner, Sir Edward Hallstrom, a philanthropist who was also chairman of Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. He replaced the manager who took six months leave.
He returned in 1962, with a collection of frogs to give to the SA Museum and was rewarded by being made an honorary associate in herpetology.
Now established in Adelaide, he married his schoolboy love, Ella Edwards, who had continued to live and work in London. They settled here and would raise three children.
Mike’s career progressed in a very unconventional way. Working as a laboratory manager in the university’s pharmacology department, he gained the rare distinction of attaining his masters science degree while skipping the bachelor’s degree.
Mike became a lecturer in zoology in 1975 and was awarded a prestigious Doctor of Science without having completed a PhD.
By then, his world-leading research and his passionate promotion of the precarious predicament of the world’s amphibious animals had made him internationally known as “the frog man” in TV nature series, including David Attenborough’s Life on Earth.
His legacy will include many novel substances derived from frogs that show promise for all sorts of pharmaceutical and industrial uses. Mike gave early warning that the introduction of the cane toad would be a threat to Australian species. He continued research in biological-control methods for the cane toad until his death.
Mike was chairman of the SA Museum for 10 years, helping develop its natural sciences building. He was also president of the Royal Zoological Society of SA and the Royal Society of SA, being honoured by institutions that once doubted how a frog could raise its young in its stomach. An associate professor at retirement in 2001, Mike was a visiting research fellow until his death.
He is survived by Ella, children Libby and Sally, and one grandchild. Son Paul died tragically aged 41. COVID-19 has delayed his memorial service.
LYNN ANTHONY MARTIN
Educator, sportsman, community leader
Born: September, 22, 1956; North Adelaide
Died: May 14, 2020; West Lakes
LYNN Martin’s enthusiasm for education resulted in Gawler’s Xavier College growing rapidly, and its students achieving much-improved outcomes.
He was the eldest of Margaret and Brian Martin’s five children, growing up in suburban Grange and going to Star of the Sea Convent and St Michael’s College.
But pivotal to his life was the saltwater pool of Henley & Grange Swimming Club. It started a family tradition of swimming sports, lifesaving and waterskiing.
Lynn would captain South Australia in water polo and was Grange SLSC’s senior club champion. It was also where he met future wife Jo-Anne Courtney.
At St Michael’s, he was more noted as a tall and strong footballer than for his academic achievements, although he went on to qualify as a teacher at Adelaide Teacher’s College.
In 1977, Lynn married Jo-Anne and began teaching at St Michael’s. He would later teach at Mercedes College, Blackfriars Priory School, Gleeson College and Nazareth College, while the family grew to four boys. In 2003, he was appointed principal of Xavier College.
At the time, the school had been in existence for just eight years, still finding its place as a coeducational teaching institution in the growing northern areas community.
In Lynn’s time there it would grow from 600 to 1000 students enrolled this year, including the inclusion of Year 7s. He introduced a new middle-school structure and curriculum that has attracted national attention for the way it stresses a wide spectrum of learning across science, languages, arts and physical education for all students.
Educational outcomes have improved to the point where the school expects 100 per cent of students to complete SACE.
Under Lynn’s guidance, it has added many new facilities and buildings.
His success paved the way for a new Xavier College campus for Years R-6 for the rapidly expanding Two Wells area. That school will open in 2021 and is expected to grow to include secondary college.
Lynn’s 16 years at Xavier, concluding with his retirement at the end of last year because of ill health, has seen him play an important role in bringing a sense of identity and community to the school.
He established himself as a charismatic leader not only at the school but also in the wider community.
In 2020, the Light Regional Council awarded Lynn its Inspiration Award.
As well as promoting the school’s religious values through the Salesian tradition, he also stressed a set of school values – respect, understanding, affection and humour.
Lynn is survived by Jo-Anne, sons Daniel, Matthew, Nicholas and Patrick and eight grandchildren.
JOHN JOSEPH MADIGAN
Politician
Born: July 21, 1966; Melbourne
Died: June 16, 2020; Hepburn Springs, Victoria
JOHN Madigan was the first Democratic Labour Party senator in 36 years when he won a place in the Upper House at the 2010 election.
The DLP, a conservative Catholic offshoot of the Labor Party, had risen to prominence under the guidance of activist Bob Santamaria in the 1950s and had lost its last Senate seat in 1974.
John connected directly to that tradition. He grew up in Melbourne in a DLP loyalist family and joined a youth group run by Santamaria.
John had been fascinated by a local “smithy”, and completed his own blacksmithing apprenticeship at Victorian Railways. He worked there for 10 years before setting up a smithy and steel-fabrication business in the town of Hepburn Springs, where he lived with wife Teresa and children Lucy and Jack.
He became prominent in the DLP and was national vice-president when he unexpectedly won a close-fought sixth Senate seat in Victoria in 2010.
John’s 2.3 per cent of the vote was enough to put him ahead of a close bunch of mostly conservative groups to gain the quota of 14.3 per cent on preferences.
In the Senate, he stuck to DLP conventions against abortion, same-sex marriage and gambling. He supported the working man, the rights of refugees and making submarines in Australia.
John’s work with farmers in his region made him vocal on issues of food production, particularly in opposing free trade. He was also an opponent of wind turbines.
In 2014, as some of these ideas strayed from the party line, he resigned from the DLP, effectively ending its influence in the federal sphere.
Instead, John aligned himself more closely with his Victorian rural followers and formed John Madigan’s Manufacturing and Farming Party. He fought the 2016 double-dissolution election under that banner but gained only 0.15 per cent of the vote. He later joined the Country Party but recently was welcomed back into the DLP.
John was diagnosed with liver and bowel cancer in 2018, and is survived by his wife and children.