Antarctic continent station leaders for 2005–06 have departed for Casey, Davis and Mawson. A station leader for Macquarie Island has also been selected and will begin work in March 2006. The new Antarctic station leaders are:
Marilyn Boydell — Casey: This season will mark Marilyn’s third year as a station leader in Antarctica. She previously occupied the position at Casey in 2000 and Mawson in 2002. Marilyn began her Antarctic service after more than 20 years experience in the area of education, training and assessment. This included working with an aboriginal community in the north of Western Australia, teaching in the juvenile justice system, training and supporting adults with disabilities in the open workplace, and delivery of occupational health and safety programmes to specialist groups. She has also worked as an instructor in outdoor centres in the United Kingdom where she first discovered the joys of ‘potholing’. Marilyn is also a keen bushwalker and an experienced trainer of Scuba diver instructors. She has dived all over the world and delivered training in areas as diverse as the Nullarbor caves, Irian Jaya and the Christmas Island.
John Rich — Davis: John has spent two winters as station leader at Macquarie Island (1990) and Casey (2002). He grew up in Canada, where he received his initial training as a geologist and worked extensively in northern and arctic Canada, before coming to Australia in 1979. John holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Impact Assessment and recently completed his PhD in wetland hydrology. In 2004–05, John worked in Namibia as an exploration geologist. He and his wife Kathryn live in Albany on the south coast of Western Australia and have two adult daughters. John’s outside interests include bush walking, canoeing and aviation. His current ‘very long term’ project is the construction of a two-seater home-built aircraft.
Ivor Harris — Mawson: Ivor has worked for most of his career as a veterinarian, including large and small animal practice and TAFE teaching. For many years he specialised as a laboratory animal scientist and also developed a research interest in microbiology. In this role he has managed biomedical research support facilities in the Commonwealth Department of Health and the University of Queensland. He was in the Army reserve for 17 years and, since 1999, has been in the regular Army as Major, administrative/scientific officer at the Army Malaria Institute in Brisbane. In 2000–01 he was deployed to East Timor as coordinator of a major antimalarial drug trial. This season will be Ivor’s second in Antarctica — he was the station leader at Casey in 2003.