TRIBUTE from Professor Peter Quinn FTSE and Professor Thomas Spurling AM FTSE

Bernard Bowen was born on 6 October 1930 in Perth at the start of the Great Depression. His father was a fitter at the Midland Railway Workshops of the Western Australian Government Railways but lost this job in 1932.

The family moved to Marradong where Bernard’s mother and father ran the shop, telephone exchange and petrol depot. Bernard went to Marradong primary school, along with 14 or so other children, until he was seven. He then did correspondence school for two years and rode his bike the 14km to Boddington for another year until his mother decided that correspondence was the best option.

His elder sister, Gwenyth, studied for her Leaving Certificate by correspondence and won a scholarship to Perth Modern School (PMS), the first correspondence student so to do. The family decided that when she went to Perth to attend PMS, Bernard would become a boarder at Wesley College.

The barefoot country lad took a while to settle in at Wesley but eventually excelled both academically and on the sporting fields. He began a science degree at The University of Western Australia in 1949.

In 1951, Bernard graduated from UWA with a double major in mathematics and statistical mathematics, and started work as the Statistical Officer in the Department of Fisheries and Fauna in November. The Head of the Department, Alec Fraser, soon recognised that this was no ordinary statistical officer. Fraser started giving Bernard books about fisheries, arranged for him to do a zoology major at UWA and then, in 1957, appointed him the research officer in charge of the newly created research division of the department. His main task was to learn all about rock lobsters.

Bernard’s research, over a decade or so, established what happens to the rock lobster: it hatches from the egg, is transported by winds and currents well off the continental shelf for about 12 months, changes to its reef dwelling form and then returns to its shallow water grounds looking like a mature rock lobster. This work enabled the department to be able to predict the lobster’s population to within about 10 per cent. This was world-class research!

About this time, in 1968, at the age of 37, Bernard was appointed Director of the Department of Fisheries and Fauna. He was therefore able to convert his research findings into a fisheries management plan.

Later, in 2000, the Western Australian rock lobster fishery was the first in the world to be certified as a sustainable and well-managed fishery by the International Marine Stewardship Council. Very few scientists see their research through from the very beginning to a completed result.

When he was appointed as a research officer in 1957, one of Bernard’s tasks was to establish sound linkages with CSIRO and UWA. You might think that this sounds an easy task, but it isn’t. We in universities and research organisations generally think that we can do it all by ourselves – certainly without the help of a small Western Australia government laboratory!

But Bernard, through persuasion and charm, managed to assemble all the resources needed to solve his rock lobster- related and other problems. Many of us had phone calls from Bernard where he explained that he was involved in a highly significant activity that could only succeed with participation by someone with our intellect and wisdom!

The Bernard Bowen model of collaborative research has been replicated all around the country. It was reinvented by the WA Government in the early 2000s as WAMSI, the Western Australian Marine Science Institute. Bernard’s contributions were recognised nationally in 1978 when he became the sixth Western Australian to be elected as a Fellow of the Academy.

Bernard retired as Executive Director of the Department of Fisheries on 15 November 1991, 40 years after he joined as a Statistical Officer. But, of course, he didn’t really retire. The Commonwealth immediately appointed him to a three- year term as Director of the newly formed Australian Fisheries Management Authority. He was appointed Chair of

the CSIRO Fisheries Division Advisory Committee, Chair of one of the National State of the Environment Report reference groups and became involved with many other projects.

His next major work began in 1994 when he was appointed Deputy Chair of the WA Environmental Protection Agency. He became the full-time Chair in 1997 and remained in that position until 2003.

Bernard was the ideal person to head the EPA. He completely understood that industry’s “social licence to operate” included sound environmental management. He enjoyed talking about this to industry, bureaucrats, politicians and the public.

When he retired from this position, the staff produced a glossary to interpret Bernard’s sayings. For example, “I see” means “I’ve understood you, but it’s a load of rubbish so I’ll ignore it”.

In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science by Murdoch University for his contributions to fisheries research, marine resource management and environmental protection.

In 2008 Bernard was asked to work out how WA could develop a capability in radioastronomy. At that time, Australia was a contender for the location of a new megascience project called the Square Kilometre Array. This would be the largest ground-based astronomical facility in the world and it needed the radio quiet conditions in the midwest of Western Australia to achieve its goal of mapping the early history of the universe.

Bernard’s great skills in partnership building were called into action to form the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) as a joint venture of UWA and Curtin University. Bernard served as the chair of the ICRAR Board from 2009 to 2016 and guided it through the SKA site decision and its growth into a world-leading research centre in astronomy.

UWA awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2016. In 2017, to recognise Bernard’s contribution to the development of Australian astronomy and the SKA project, ICRAR in partnership with the International Astronomical Union, gave Minor Planet (6196) 1991 UO4 the new name “Bernardbowen”.

Bernard died on 19 March 2019, aged 88. He is survived by his wife Esmé, four daughters and 11 grandchildren.