Biography - John Byrnes

John holds degrees of Master of Policy Studies (UNSW), Ph.D. (U.Syd.), and B.Sc.(Hons I) from UNSW. Starting well back in the past, John began tertiary studies at UNSW in the 60s.  This was when it was still a relatively new-starter university (it was originally just a university of "Technology" before it got the Arts and everything else going) and it was a site then still quite visibly built on dune sands.  Although later on also spending many years at University of Sydney, he still thinks of UNSW more as 'alma mater' than U. Syd.  John and Ann both have been dribbling on with 'mature years' studies at UNSW.  John currently contemplates doing a M.Soc.Sci thesis there (on a topic like the abovementioned "acquisition, preservation and re-usage of information"). This will be a bit like considering the 'social aspects' of geology to some extent, but also will include quite specific comparison of how different 'geological survey' type organisations around the world "do it" in tackling the similar information issues which all of them may deal with.  This hopefully could lead to conclusion that there's some ways of "doing it", or not doing it, which are superior to other ways (e.g. as just one tiny example there's clear down-the-track severely adverse consequences which flow what is known as "joint reporting" practices - and such might well outweigh the  seemingly 'obvious' initial advantages that people see in joint reporting).  This all seems clear enough in broad thrust, however the precise formulation of a thesis proposal hasn't yet been achieved.  In fact not a single academic has been located anywhere yet who had published on such matters (and who could be approached as a suitable potential supervisor).  John is first of all trying to find any such academics with similar interests, before doing the topic proposal. John has worked briefly in industry (EZ and MIM) and universities, but has mainly worked in government.  He has spent years in each of regional geology, coal, metallogenic mapping with special interests in Cu/Au and the Cobar-Bourke region, and in the roles of Senior Information Officer, Ministerial Liaison Officer and Minerals Executive Officer (See resume}. Up until the day it left for Maitland on 5 November 2004, John worked in Sydney with the NSW Mines Department (also later known as Department of Mineral Resources, DMR), which he first joined at the now discontinued Geological & Mining Museum.  The Museum was for many years open to the general public next to the Harbour Bridge in the Rocks area of Sydney.  John, Larry and Lawrie in fact all spent some years together at that venerable institution.  In its heyday (when geology used to be taught rather widely in New South Wales schools) it was a very important and well respected geological educational centre.  Untold numbers of schoolchildren passed through its doors and it must have been where many a Sydneysider saw their 'first real rock' - or fine mineral specimen, or a mock mine they could walk through.  The Museum was also the locus for specialist services provision to the whole Department, for determination of rocks, minerals or fossil specimens (mostly collected by departmental geologists but sometimes brought in also by members of the public). At the time John worked at the Geological & Mining Museum, it also housed the Chemical Laboratory of the Department.  Another (relatively quite minor) service that the Museum performed was a function of forensic examination and comparison of 'dirt' for the NSW Police (e.g. dirt on supects' or victims' clothing and shoes, dirt in vehicle tyre grooves, dirt left on marijuana plant roots from bushland plantations which Police had found and destroyed, dirt or rocks from crime sites. etc.).  Police did apprear to much appreciate this sort of service and the 'evidence' it gave them, although it could never be considered in court as more than 'circumstantial' or auxilliary evidence).  The Museum had been doing such forensic work for Police from long before any of us joined it, and it is thought that advice to Police provided from the Museum helped a great deal or was pivotal in the location and arrest of the man later convicted of having kidnapped a child, Graham Thorne. Over a number of years John performed the bulk of the forensic work carried out at the Museum, although the mineralogists there also did parts of it as well, and the chemists on the floor above us provided all the quantitative aspects that proved most useful in sample and sub-sample comparisons.  A standard clay fraction sub-sample extracted from whatever the Police submitted was the most frequent basis of comparison that was employed. Otherwise all sorts of odd tiny little bits and pieces, as seen during stereomicroscopic examination, also proved interesting or useful.  Such was mostly man-made fragments, but plant fragments and hairs were also commonplace in Police samples.  Occasionally palynology would also be used if sample size was adequate for that.  This all led to many days having to be spent at court houses to give testimony (The most memorable cases were related to what is termed the "Hilton Bombing" and also the murder of Kristine Rose at Armidale - which latter case stretched on for over twenty years until a conviction was finally achieved that rested very heavily on evidence from the work done by DMR geologists in Sydney and Armidale). Although he has never worked as a palaeontologist, John's Ph.D. years (at Sydney University - for Ann and John were living at Glebe at the time) were very largely concerned with marine invertebrates (especially the coelenterates) and the shallow marine carbonate depositional systems that they dwelt in along volcanic ?arcs or island chains.  All that belongs to the long distant (earlier Palaezoic) past of New South Wales.  Of course it wasn't called 'New South Wales' back then - and in the sense of such geological theorising that it may have accreted bit-by-bit, and/or that it could contain chunks of crustal matter (even 'microcontinents'?) that had 'drifted' in and 'docked' onto other chunks from perhaps extremely far off places - it could be imagined that nothing even remotely resembling the NSW-to-be existed back then.  All this sort of "Tectonic" theorising was brilliantly exposited upon by a specialist in such matters who the Geological Survey employed until his retirement, Dr Erwin Scheibner - John never understood ever half of what he was talking about in detail, but it did always seem very relevant somehow to palaeogeography, palaeoenvironments and palaeoecology, all of which interest John and Ann alike.   John still much enjoys "living in the past", for dwelling on earth history and all about the evolution of life forms.  His most noteworthy failure, however, in this regard stands at having intensely considered the nature of the  Receptaculitoid group of fossils, to decide if they were plants of animals.  At the end of six years (and ever since) it's still uncertain what the critters are ... Very frustrating indeed!  Some have thought them to be closely related to sponges, others have considered that they were calcareous algae - but basically it still remains undertain if they were animals or if they were plants.  They thus remain fossil "problematica". John has knowledge of another coelenterate-like calcareous shelly fossil problematical organism which lived in great numbers on the 'Molong Rise". It was also occasionally carried downslope into the Hill End Trough as well (to as far east at least as Hargraves).  This undescribed little beastie (for it was certainly an animal and looks nothing whatsoever like any known Palaeozoic plant) would most certainly be something "new" at the Superfamily level, and probably even at Ordinal level .. but the trouble is that it cannot even be placed in any phylum at the moment.  At least a note on this organism needs to be written up, and published.  Anyone who'd like to be a joint author for working on that, please email John (who'd appreciate any help as he's never "gotten around to doing it" himself over all the years that have passed since this 'thing' was first known about (It has been colloqually called "The Peace Coral", even though likely not a coral, by the very few geo's who have ever seen it - which is because in cross section it looks a bit like the CND peace symbol of the 60s).  It would also be nice (but not absolutely necessary) if we could seek and obtain any sort of very small grant or patronage that might assist in writing it up, e.g. just to defray travel costs to the type locality near Wellington, etc.