Vincent Serventy
c. 1975
Vincent Noel Serventy AM (6 January 1916 – 8 September 2007) was an Australian author, ornithologist and conservationist.
Life and career[edit]
Born in Armadale, Western Australia, the youngest of eight children of migrant Croatian parents, Vincent Serventy graduated from the University of Western Australia in geology and psychology. He was a CSIRO researcher and teacher before beginning a career as a writer, lecturer and film-maker. He joined the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) in 1942 and served as either its Branch Secretary or State Representative for Western Australia 1943–1959. In 1946 he became a life member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia and was for many years its president.
In 1956 he bought a movie camera and began making documentary films which later led to Australia's first television environment program, Nature Walkabout (1967).[1]
In 1974 he was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 1976 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.[2]
In 1985 Vincent Serventy assisted the Conservation Council of Western Australia in its unsuccessful campaign to stop a major road being built through the Trigg Regional Open Space. This public land had been identified by the System 6 Study Report to the Environmental Protection Authority as having important conservation value with the bushland extending from the sea to tuart and banksia woodland, a rarity in the metropolitan area. Vincent spoke publicly of the importance of this land for its vegetation, landforms and habitat for local fauna and migratory birds.
Vincent Serventy was a younger brother of the Australian ornithologist Dom Serventy.
Serventy wrote numerous articles on natural history and conservation. Some of his books are:
- The Archipelago of the Recherche. Part 2: Birds (AGS Report No.1. Australian Geographical Society: Melbourne, 1952)
- The Australian Nature Trail (Georgian House: Melbourne, 1965)
- A Continent in Danger (Survival Books. A Survival Special. Andre Deutsch: London, 1966)
- Nature Walkabout (Reed: Artarmon, 1969)
- Southern Walkabout (Reed: Artarmon, 1969)
- Around the Bush with Vincent Serventy (ABC: Sydney, 1970)
- Dryandra. The story of an Australian forest (Reed: Sydney, 1970)
- The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds (Reed: Sydney, 1971) (with Dominic Serventy and John Warham)
- Australia’s World Heritage Sites (1985)
- The Desert Sea. The Miracle of Lake Eyre in Flood (Macmillan Australia: Melbourne, 1985)
- Flight of the Shearwater (Kangaroo Press: Kenthurst, 1996)
- An Australian Life. Memoirs of a naturalist, conservationist, traveller and writer (Fremantle Arts Centre Press: South Fremantle, 1999)
Notes[edit]
- ^ Stephens (2007)
- ^ "Search Australian Honours". It's an honour. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
References[edit]
- Robin, Libby. (2001). The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001. Carlton, Vic. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-84987-3
- Serventy, Vincent N. (1999). An Australian Life. Memoirs of a naturalist, conservationist, traveller and writer. Fremantle Arts Centre Press: South Fremantle. ISBN 1-86368-232-5
- Stephens, Tony (2007). "Green before it was fashionable: Vincent Serventy, 1916-2007" in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2007-09-12, p. 20 [1]
External links[edit]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- 1916 births
- 2007 deaths
- Australian ornithologists
- Members of the Order of Australia
- Australian memoirists
- Australian nature writers
- Australian travel writers
- Australian documentary filmmakers
- Australian people of Croatian descent
- People educated at Perth Modern School
- University of Western Australia alumni
- Writers from Western Australia
- Scientists from Western Australia
- 20th-century memoirists
- 20th-century Australian zoologists