Voyage to a Prize

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 2  12 May - 9 June 2008 ]

By Silvia Dropulich

Voyages to the South Seas, In Search of Terres Australes was a steep learning curve for University of Melbourne zoologist, Dr Danielle Clode. In her award-winning book published by Melbourne University Publishing, Dr Clode observes that Australia may never have been at much risk of being a French colony, but for many years she was the intellectual property not of the British who colonised her – but of the French, who understood her.

Voyages to the South Seas is a story about the exploration of Australia, about the French in the Pacific, about discovery and knowledge and Enlightenment ideals. It is, writes Dr Clode, about the birth of a science and the role of Australian fauna and flora in the development of that science.

“For the English, Australia very rapidly became ‘Botany Bay’ as they termed it, while for the French, Australia remained a vast land of intellectual curiosity, exploration and discovery,” she says.

For many years the strongest collections of Australian material were held in the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the majority of scientific work on Australian flora, fauna and people came out of Paris, according to Dr Clode.

Early French scientific research in Australia is still important to modern zoologists, particularly marine biologists; the French work is either the only previous work on certain taxa, or provides an important early baseline for modern research.

“Attempting to understand the significance of these early biologists’ work required me to strip away much of my modern biological knowledge or assumptions (particularly about evolution) and attempt to see Australia and my discipline before the development of evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and many other theories that colour the way we see the world today,” says Dr Clode.

“For this, I needed the help and perspective of anthropologists, historians of science and French historians, many of whom have been very generous and supportive in sharing their expertise and knowledge with me.”

Dr Clode wrote her book under a creative fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction in 2007.