As early as 1960 Hugh Wilson had concluded that as there was little progress in the care of existing parks or the declaration of new ones, the VNPA would again have to shoulder the burden of providing leadership in the community and acting as a needle in the side of government and the NPA. In March 1960 it organised a major conference on new parks and the management of existing ones. The conference demanded great stamina from participants, running from 10.00 am to 10.00 pm, with an excursion to Churchill National Park on the following day. Presentations included: •P rinciples in Selecting New National Parks, by Hugh Wilson •V ictoria’s need for a Representative System of National Parks and Nature Reserves, by Jack Jones •K ulkyne National Park Request, by Jack Jones and Hugh Wilson •A lpine National Park Proposal , by W. Rege Mann •P roposal for a National Park in the Little Desert by Keith Hateley •A National Park Service, by Ros Garnet23
A long list of motions was passed and sent to the government, but with no result.24 As the subjects of the presentations indicate, an increasing focus of the VNPA was the need to develop a range of parks that was representative of the state’s ecological systems, and particularly of its vegetation communities.25 This matter was discussed over a number of years, but there was little progress as the government and the NPA lacked the drive and/or resources to undertake the necessary preliminary detailed scientific survey of public lands. Finally, the VNPA decided that it would have to do the work itself, or at least undertake the first stage of evaluating existing national parks
John Hart-Smith, son of Dr L. H. Smith, Director of National Parks 1958-75, looks down on the Wilsons Promontory lighthouse in 1951. Built by contract labour in the 1850s, the lighthouse was the site of a radar station in World War II and is still an important navigational facility. and other conservation reserves. The main initial driving force was academic biologist Ray Specht when he was President in 1963-64. Known at first as the Master Plan, the survey was rebadged as a ‘study of nature conservation in Victoria’. In 1965 a fund-raising campaign promoted by
David Lahey raised sufficient to start the work. With invaluable assistance and guidance from Professor John Turner, who from 1959 was a VNPA Council member, the VNPA in 1965 employed a young biologist, Judith Frankenberg, to do the
THE DIFFICULT YEARS – 1957-72 25