NEWSPAPER ARTICLES - Courtesy WA Newspapers

10 FEBRUARY 97 - Pillar of tourist industry.

THE Pinnacles, in the Nambung national park, 250km north of Perth, is familiar territory for Richard House. The tour guide recently made his thousandth trip to the area. During the past five-and-a-half years, the Forrestdale man has made the day trip three to five times a week, taking more than 10,000 visitors to the stark limestone pillars. He said most were Asians, mainly Japanese, who were fascinated at the thousands of pillars, which were up to 4m tall, and the fine white coastal sand dunes. The 12-hour Pinnacle trip travelled up the Brand Highway and returned along the coast. Mr House, 50, said there was always something different to see. "This summer has been exceptional for wildflowers," he said. Each year, about 150,000 people visit the Pinnacles, paying about $250,000 in entry fees.

10 July 99 - Botanic man. (Article about Dr. Steven Hopper on the Kings Park trip)

There are two Stephen Hoppers - the botanist who will stop a vehicle in the desert 10 . . . 20 . . . 30 times a day to jump out and snip a plant specimen, and the chief executive officer of Kings Park and Botanic Gardens. Stephen Scourfield travelled nearly 2000km through four deserts to meet them both. EVERY lunchtime, Steve Hopper can be found in the shade, back against a vehicle or under a tree, writing, sketching or sticking botanical specimens into the big red ledger he carries around. When he takes off over a dune or up a gorge (one minute he's there, suddenly he's gone), he has the red ledger in a canvas bag, along with a water bottle. Camera and binoculars round his neck. Hatted, dressed in khaki - the decorative motif of Kings Park and Botanic Garden on his clothes. He drifts undramatically from plant to plant, perhaps with the "rrrr" of zebra finches overhead, perhaps simply surrounded by the burning red of a Gibson Desert dune. This is Steve Hopper, the botanist. Spear wattle seeker. Granite outcrop groupie. This Steve Hopper is one of Australia's most highly regarded botanists and a specialist in West Australian flora, particularly kangaroo paws, eucalypts and rare plants. Focused, hard-working, practiced at his art. (For me, a man who proves that science can be an art form). Back in the city, Dr Stephen Hopper is the newly re-appointed chief executive of Kings Park and Botanic Gardens. In charge of WA's most visited tourist destination and an important behind-the-scenes scientific and conservation centre. And, more recently, now also responsible for running Bold Park Reserve. Financial budgets, increasing capital expenditure, departments, training, staffing, safety. Paperwork and bureaucracy. A man with a Minister. He is adjunct professor of Botany at the University of Western Australia and adjunct Professor of Environmental Biology at Curtin University of Technology. A member of countless committees. Member of the Royal Society of Western Australia since 1980 and a past president. His name is on more than 160 botanical articles, reports and other publications. Steve Hopper can cope with such vastly differing horizons and changing landscapes because he is a man with vast capacity and a broad view. For him, botany isn't just about naming plants. "There are other botanists in WA who can do that better than me," he says, with what I now know to be typical understatement. He is interested in whole systems. The way it all works. Botany, anthropology, birds, landscape. Understanding these relationships, and the results we see around us. It is what has kept him in Western Australia - and if you ask some of the people who work with him, they will tell you he is one of the State's great (but lesser known) treasures. We are here sharing other treasures - the Tanami Desert, the Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert, Little Sandy Desert, on an 1800km trek from Halls Creek to Wiluna, visiting Durba Hills, the Calvert Range, the length of the Canning Stock Route, and at a time when the deserts are at their best. This is as good as it gets, says Dr Hopper. "It is superb. Everything that is to be seen is there. You are spoilt, in some ways, if you haven't been out in the desert before." On one dune top, he and helpers set up 10m x 10m quadrates, measured by rope then marked with a line in the sand. I watch him count more than 20 plant species in the first alone. Dr Hopper is familiar with such botanical wonders. Familiar with the deserts. He has travelled many times in our sandy interior, and has a particular interest in the Little Sandy Desert. He has visited annually for the past six years to continue his botanical study of this area - only one of the six trips had conditions like these, he says. With him is a team of Kings Park and Botanic Gardens botanical experts and seed collectors, and members of the public joining their expedition down the Canning Stock Route. The expedition's aim is to further the KPBG corporate plan of conserving, enhancing and promoting conservation, horticulture and understanding of WA plants for the community. More specifically, it is to study, botanically, the areas travelled and collect seed for both propagation for display in the gardens and for the seed bank, for conservation purposes. There is also the underlying belief that more WA native plants should be available to the public for their gardens, and a desire to work towards making that possible. Herbarium specimens are pressed. Cuttings taken. In fact, 52 collections will be made during the trip, including eight species of ptilotus (mulla mulla) known to these specialists, and six they cannot immediately name. One plant, a type of mint spotted and collected near Lake Disappointment in the Little Sandy Desert, defies description. "It doesn't match anything I have seen," Dr Hopper tells the group around the campfire at the end of the expedition. "It could be a new rare species for Australia. But there's a fair amount of homework to do to prove it doesn't match anything." Stephen Hopper's 48th birthday also falls towards the end of the trip. Everyone comes up with a gift. Sand from the Calvert Ranges, which he has just visited for the first time. The 10m roll of orange rope which he later uses for the quadrates. There's a campfire party and spectacular revue, with 15 acts. If Steve Hopper has been collecting specimens and information out here ('it will take some years to study the information we have collected"), he's also collecting some memories. And collecting has been part of his way of life since childhood. His interest in biology started as a boy, in northern New South Wales. "As a kid I enjoyed exploring the bush and coastline. When I went with the family on picnics, I'd go off and explore." He spent some of his childhood in Mt Coot-tha, Brisbane, before the move to Perth, where his bush skills were driven by the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, run by mathematics teacher and mentor Max Scott at John Curtin Senior High School. "Max was fastidious about looking after yourself in the bush. I think a lot of people today have trouble coming to terms with the bush." He points to the "99-and-1" theory - that, in national parks, 99 per cent of people go to one per cent of places. But he believes people should be encouraged to venture further. "The benefit is conserving what is unique and special about WA. I think separating people from wild places will lead to neglect and destruction - it's a death sentence, keeping people away. But you have to manage it and manage well." (Perhaps the public reaction against logging in our old-growth forests bears this out. We love, and will fight for, what we know.) Steve Hopper certainly doesn't have any trouble coming to terms with the bush. He moves around unobtrusively, from campfire to swag, gully to dune. His vocation has made travelling to these unusual places usual for him. Camp life seems to come easily (right down to the ritual nightly change into thongs). Perhaps it is not surprising. He describes his father and mother as "like gypsies". They grew up in northern NSW, and met in Lismore. With young Stephen and his older brother and two sisters, they "worked their way up and down the basalt highlands". (Once you spend time with Stephen Hopper, it is not surprising that he should use a scientific term for the east coast). He says mother Pat and father Don are "both country people, if you like. They pick places that usually have rainfall and good soils". Pat is an "English-style gardener" - they improve garden and house and then move on. They have had 25 houses in Steve's adult years alone. By the end of high school, choices were emerging for Stephen Hopper - marine biology, nuclear physics . . . music. "By the end of high school my main interest was music," he says.

He plays guitar, mandolin and banjo and by the end of high school, he and school mate Norm Leslie were making themselves good pocket money out of their music. They were mainly playing coffee shops . . . "we were all playing Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary . . ." Through first year at the University of Western Australia, much of that was going into the till of the legendary "Greasies" in Hampden Road, Nedlands, close to Kingswood College, where he was living. He became involved in what he loosely terms the "Bicton musicians" - a group in which musician turned writer Dave Warner was involved. Then he joined up with Fred Kuhnl, just out of a band called Big Time Fred and the Chickens (and later of The Sensitive New Age Cowpersons), Scott Wise and Bob Searles, who had been performing together, and Johnny Johnstone, on washboard. They became Mud - 'a jug band" - and played together for nearly four years. At the same time he was teaching guitar and mandolin at Zenith Music, Claremont. "A claim to fame, if you like, is that I once taught Jim Fisher." (Also later of The Sensitive New Age Cowpersons). He moved on to the band Duck Soup, and played jazz and blues with them until 1977. They filled places like the Victoria Hotel, signed up with a South Australian company and were flown there to record . . . a rare thing more than 20 years ago. Music was a real option, but he chose biology. He still plays guitar with daughter Claire, 14, whose own musical career is taking shape. She sings and plays guitar in the band Silver City, which recently recorded on a joint CD. "I got into botany as an afterthought," Steve Hopper says. He had studied zoology and anthropology at UWA, but passed his degree with first class honours in 1973 with a double major in botany and zoology, with anthropology to second year level. He went on to complete his PhD in botany in 1978, for work on the specialisation in kangaroo paws in the South-West. He particularly focused on those in Gingin cemetery, an important example of hybridisation because of the shire's long-term policy of slashing and burning, which stimulates regrowth.

Six to 10 tourist buses a day visit the cemetery in spring to see the red and green kangaroo paws and cats' eyes. The combination of interest in botany, zoology and anthropology still shapes Dr Hopper's drive - that interest in whole systems, the functioning of landscape, the complete picture. How it all works. "I became very interested in the question of why there were so many species of wildflower in WA," he says. "It was more than just botany, but how things work and evolve. Pollination ecology . . . the relationship between honeyeaters, birds and plants . . . looking at systems . . ." After completing his degree, in 1977, he spent six months with the WA Herbarium. His interest in the kangaroo paw family continued. "It had become obvious that there were a lot of plants in that group to be named. There are some 100 species in the kangaroo paw family." In fact, Dr Stephen Hopper has named about a quarter of them. "All you have to do is to be in the work - getting out there. And observing where the plants are in their habitat . . . like the spear wattle on this trip. "The South-West of WA is anyone's oyster still. There are any number of wonderful things to be explored." This excitement in WA has kept Dr Hopper here. And, he says, it will continue to do so. As far back as 1977, there have been pressures to move away.

Then he had to choose between a position as Flora Conservation Research Officer with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife or applying for a fellowship to research in California. "The pressures were to go to California and academia," he admits now. "But my feeling was that I wanted to stay in a place and get to know it very well. I had read a fair bit of anthropology and one of the most striking things to me was that we evolved in small groups that got to know their country very well. Today's tendencies are to uproot and move around. "I was interested in biology and had a taste of what WA had to offer. I had no desire to know what was going on elsewhere." Philosophically, he wanted to stay - and he is a man of clear philosophies. Also, he says, this may be a reaction against the constant movement of his childhood. At the Fisheries and Wildlife research centre at Woodvale, he devised policies for conserving flora in the State. He was also out in the field researching. "My job was always a mix of administration policy and research." It was, perhaps, the foundation of the "two" Stephen Hoppers of today - CEO and field botanist.

It was also a good grounding in the "people skills" that make him a figure of respect and admiration at Kings Park and Botanic Gardens. "Part of my role then was to devise ways of administering the wildflower industry . . . the picking of wildflowers in the bush . . . for people not interested in filling out forms. It gave me a focus on country people and industry and it gave an insight into bureaucracy and how you can really stuff people up, or improve their lives." Meanwhile, he was identifying rare and endangered plants in WA and working out exactly how you could define them. He produced the first descriptive guides of rare WA plants, an atlas of WA orchids, on which he worked from 1980 to 1984, and The Banksia Atlas, worked on from 1984 to 1986 and published in 1988. He also worked on a database for rare plants. "The list just grew - until 2000 of the 12,000 in the State were believed to be of conservation concern. Some 350 are genuinely rare and threatened. "I spent up to a third of the year away in the bush, working on surveys, working on eucalypts." The periods spent in the bush didn't necessarily come at the best time for family life, he admits. He had married Chris, a teacher specialising in children with behavioural problems, in 1975 and first son Luke was born in 1979 (he is now two years into a ballet course with Perth City Ballet). He was followed three years later by Jonathan, then Claire. When Fisheries and Wildlife was taken into the Department of Conservation and Land Management in 1988, Dr Hopper became Senior Principal Research Scientist. Then, in 1992, he took the position of Director of Kings Park and Botanic Gardens. He is cautious in speaking about the Department of Conservation and Land Management, but will say he felt the conservation aspect was under-funded. "I got to the point where, as a research scientist, I could do 'so much', but that is not where the majority of decisions are being made. You can do a good job, but the results are summarily ignored. "Coming to Kings Park and Botanic Gardens was a wonderful opportunity to be involved in the hub of the life of the State." The botanic garden, he says, offered a scientific challenge. There was research work. There was the aspect of keeping bush in the city. "The place just needed a fresh look because the structure was not much changed from John Forrest's view of what Kings Park was. There was a board, a director and a gang of day workers. I took the view that the staff were the most important asset, along with the public and volunteers." But the future of botanic gardens is in moving away from the old "stamp collection" approach, he says . . . "being more relevant to a modern society". A forward plan was drawn up and publicly debated. "We wanted to be world class with our facilities and services in 10 years time," he says.

Four divisions were set up . . . living collections and natural heritage, visitor services, plant science and corporate services. Each had a director and Dr Hopper became CEO. Then he spent the first year "going round talking to everyone". But there were still major financial problems. The infrastructure was run down. There was no capital budget. Records show he has improved this from "$0" in 1992/93 to $2.8 million in 1997/98, and also raised $2.6 million through sponsorship agreements with the likes of the Lotteries Commission, WMC Resources, WA Newspapers and Channel 7. He simplifies this major and skilful financial restructuring to the phrase "rejigged the finances". It was all done working with the staff, he stresses. "I place a lot of store in management by wandering around. I need to have confidence in staff and delegate. I feel perfectly comfortable coming out on to the Canning Stock Route as a botanist, for example. There are four directors who can run the place. "It's just about treating people as thinking human beings. Most days it is just meeting after meeting . . . I have a wonderful Keeper of the Diary." But Dr Stephen Hopper is no pushover.

His staff will tell you he "doesn't suffer fools gladly" and will cut through any waffle in meetings like a knife. He will only admit: "I am autocratic under duress." As part of the early changes under Dr Hopper, work practices were restructured. "I had to change the structure and bruise a few egos on the way," he says. "I'll make changes if changes are needed. A dozen people opted for voluntary redundancy. They decided they didn't want to go the way we were going." "In the main I would rather have communal ownership and commitment for the outcome and respect for people and their ideas. I expect mistakes, and don't mind as long as people learn from them." He also expects staff to care about Kings Park. "I care for the place. It's a privilege to be there." The same could also be said of Bold Park Reserve. "Caring for urban bushlands is one of the strongest things we can do," he says. After long hours in the administration block on Fraser Avenue, Steve Hopper continues his botanical research and reading at home in Mullaloo.

He has also been working with artist Philippa Nikulinsky on a book on granite outcrops called Life on the Rocks - the Art of Survival (being published in October by Fremantle Arts Centre Press). "It started as Philippa's project for an art exhibition and she has been working on it for two years. I suggested I might be able to help with the program - then it became a book." Granite outcrops are another of Steve Hopper's big interests. "I am still focused on what made me stay in WA originally - understanding the West Australian landscapes and what makes them function. It's one of the oldest landscapes on Earth, with incredibly rich flora. "All of the elements are there. It's just a story to be told . . ."

26TH AUGUST 99 - Desert blooms for veteran trekker

A regular traveller in WA's desert regions, Richard House wants more people to sample the delights of these special places. Words and pictures by STEPHEN SCOURFIELD of The West Australian FOR much of the year, Richard House sees WA's desert vegetation lying low on the red earth under a hot, china-blue sky. But he has just returned from a 15-day expedition through carpets of yellow and white and pink. After the long trip up the southern half of the Canning Stock Route, and then west through the Mt Magnet area to Mt Augustus, he reports that the wildflower season is in full swing. "I reckon it's an excellent year," says Mr House, who with wife Beverley owns and operates Wilderness Wanderer tours, specialising in sharing the desert areas he loves best. "It's excellent south of Mt Magnet, with the everlastings out and the mulgas flowering very well." Mr House is running three Wildflower of the Wild West tours next month, leaving on September 3, 9 and 15. The four-day tours take in the scenery from the Pinnacles to Dongara, the Cue area, Mt Magnet and Paynes Find for $480. Mr House first ventured into the deserts of WA in the early 70s. He says they seemed drier and harsher then. Particularly in the last couple of years, there seems to have been more rainfall, and there has been more life to the vegetation and flowers. His recent explorations of the Gibson, Great Sandy and Little Sandy deserts have certainly been more comfortable than that of 1971. Then he was part of the 10-man Western Australian North-South Expedition. Starting in November 1971, they travelled, often cross-country, from Kalumburu on the northern coast of the Kimberley to Twilight Cove on the south coast. They covered more than 11,000km in six weeks, averaging a little under 6.5kmh in Land Rovers. Led by geology teacher Mark de Graaf, the expedition travelled through the Great Sandy, Gibson, Great Victoria and Nullarbor deserts in the summer . . . to make things look more dramatic for a film being shot about the trip. And even before it started, they covered more than 19,000km laying three fuel dumps, travelling with Aborigines Long Willy and Shovel who "shared the food, the fire and the conversation". At the time, it was a dramatic undertaking. And they met what were then called "the last of the nomads" - five Aborigines who asked to be brought out of the desert. The family group - the old man Tijina, his wife Deleba, their sons Yewa and Teberu and son-in-law Tjipiri - were living a nomadic life. But Tijina wanted to come into town so that the men could find wives. Mr House keeps a scrap book, slightly battered, with him. With extensive cuttings from The West Australian, it documents the trip comprehensively. Now, through Wilderness Wanderer, he is sharing his undiminished love of WA's deserts. "I like the desert areas and want to do more tours into these areas to show people some of the beautiful spots," he says. The major expeditions for 2000 are to the Great Sandy Desert (leaving June 3), Canning Stock Route (July 1 and July 24) and Little Sandy Desert (August 13). Wilderness Wanderer has a 12-passenger OKA and full, high-quality camping kit. In the OKA, Mr House takes expeditions for up to 15 days. For example, his Little Sandy Desert trip travels north up the Canning Stock Route as far as Durba Springs and then explores that interesting area. The trip costs $1950 for passengers in the OKA, fully catered, and "tagalongs" can follow in their own four-wheel drives for $700 a vehicle. Mr De Graaf adds his anthropological knowledge to some trips. "We started Wilderness Wanderer 20 months ago," Mr House explained. "We have spent a lot of time getting things set up and getting material on the Internet." Their Web site address is www.wanderer.com.au Mr House's introduction to tourism was with Safari Treks. He led their expeditions for nine years before branching out on his own. Wilderness Wanderer can be contacted from the contact page

2nd November 99 - Desert odyssey helps turn back sands of time.
STEPHEN SCOURFIELD travels through the deserts of Western Australia with a group of seniors. EIGHT men are sitting under a tree around a billy of tea. It is smoko near Well 37, more than halfway up the Canning Stock Route, and it is 1931. Seven are erect, tough-looking bushies. The one on the right is tough too, but much older. He has a white moustache and is slightly stooped. It is Alfred Wernam Canning, photographed in the Gibson Desert on the stock route reconstruction expedition of 1930 to 1931. Canning had originally surveyed a route to bring stock from the Kimberley to Wiluna, in the busy Goldfields, in 1906. Leading six men, with 23 camels, he steered a path through three deserts. From 1908 to 1910 he established 54 watering points, 48 of them wells. But he was 69 when the wells needed major maintenance and reconstruction. The job went to a younger man, but the expedition failed. Canning - then 70 - was called out of retirement and led a successful expedition. He had crossed the deserts six times. BOB BRAND is 70 too as he travels the stock route, through the Great Sandy, Gibson and Little Sandy deserts. Across many of the 1000 red dunes which roll down the landscape like big, soft waves. Through 1800km of country which is pretty much as Alfred Canning saw it. Bob, from Bayswater, is a member of a Kings Park and Botanic Gardens expedition to collect seed both for propagation and the park's seed bank, press cuttings and study the botanical landscape. Fifty-two collections are made on the 15-day trip, including six species of ptilotus (mulla mulla) unknown to the experts. The expedition is led by five Kings Park staff. The members of the public who have joined the trip are predominantly senior in years. Sleeping in swags and tents, rising as early as 4.30am, in the dark and sometimes rain, climbing the dunes and gorges, knowledgeable and eagerly seeking out more botanical information. A pivotal event is responsible for some being here. George Good, 68, from Australind, had a brain haemorrhage when he was 54. The former school principal was in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital for two months.

His family were called to the intensive care unit three times because he was on the verge of dying. When he eventually left hospital, he was in a wheelchair. When he eased himself up on to a walking frame, handrails were planned for his home. He and wife Patricia opened Leschenault Bed and Breakfast - as he couldn't go to see people, at least they could come to see him. But he worked at his recovery and soon was walking again. "Having been in a wheelchair, you appreciate being able to walk," he says. He joined Bunbury Bushwalking Club and took up windsurfing and kayaking. He and Patricia, who have five daughters and a son, travelled overseas - three months in Spain, two months in Austria, two months in France and time in England. He learnt German and Spanish. And he took up an active role in the community, playing the mandolin at old folks' homes and helping Legal Aid, Citizens' Advice Bureau and Meals on Wheels. He says being so near death made him more tolerant. Noreen Kennealy, 67, of Nedlands, had turn back sands of time cancer last year and a big operation. "But I had things to do and had to get on with them," she says. "It's terribly important for people to keep doing things. It keeps your mind active - it is preventative medicine both physically and mentally" She is a voluntary worker at the University of WA information centre, a Rottnest guide and a Kings Park guide and is on the committees of both. Ethel Lucas is on both too. She and her sister Win, 72, both of Claremont, enjoy their work as Rottnest guides.

Ethel also guides in Kings Park and is president of the Master Gardeners at the park, a group which runs a telephone information service on growing native plants. They are both also Friends of the WA Museum and trace their connection with Claremont Museum back 15 years. SAYS Win: "We have been cataloguing photographs for the museum, working on negatives to get on to Australian Museums On-Line. We've handled 800 negatives already. "We work on photos because we know Claremont so well we can identify places. Some of the displays in the museum are like going home." In fact, the sisters' mother, Mary, moved to Claremont in 1901 when she was six months old, and father George Lucas had a horse lorry business there, and later a fruit shop in Bay View Terrace.

Win worked in accounts for Wentworth Motors, Claremont, and Ethel was a high school principal. "But my diary now is busier than when I was working," says Win. "I can't believe people who say they haven't enough to do." Ethel agrees: "If you have got a bit out of life you should give something back." Dorothy Patullock, 73, from Victoria, does that through her family. She has four daughters, 12 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. And she never stands still. She spends much of her time on the road in her Hi-Ace campervan. When her second husband was alive, they had a four-wheel-drive. When he died, she carried on travelling in a small car, but recently bought the camper van. "It's great," she says So great, in fact, that she drove from Victoria up the east coast and across the top of Australia to Kununurra, in the Kimberley, for the start of the expedition. Straight afterwards she went back to Kununurra to explore the Mitchell Plateau with one of her daughters. "There's a bit of gypsy in me," Dorothy says, with unusual understatement. Her travels have taken her overseas and she has worked at whatever was available. In London, she was housekeeper to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dennis Healey. She rang him at the Houses of Parliament one day to ask how to open the front-loading washing machine. That housekeeping stint followed a French cordon bleu cooking diploma course in England. She's also had a restaurant, a milk bar and a takeaway food store. Oh, and cooked at camp for jackaroos. ONE of her first jobs was on a farm at 14. "I was in the army for three years from 1944," she says. "I had three kids at the time my first husband died and I had to work three jobs to keep them. Luckily jobs were plentiful in the 60s. "I would still have a job today if I hadn't had a knee injury. "There are so many people sitting around vegetating. Getting sick. Spending too much time thinking about themselves.

Watching soap operas, and then associating themselves with them. There's no reason to stop - there are so many things to do." Family is of central importance to Bob Brand too. He is the father of Grady Brand, the curator of display and development for Kings Park and Botanic Gardens and an expedition staffer. Grady keenly collects beetles on the trip. By the end he has between 140 and 150, to offer first to the WA Museum. Whatever they don't want will go into his collection. Before coming on the trip, Bob, formerly a wood machinist with the Westrail Midland workshops, made six timber storage and display units for the beetles. Grady is one of four children and there are 12 grandchildren. "I spend a bit of time doing repairs and work for the kids," says Bob. But the stock route expedition gives him time for another interest, photography. And time to wonder. "Out here there's a sense of the work of God," he says. "I see that in everything, but this is a new facet I had never seen before. I had never seen waving fields of spinifex. It is very inspiring." I too am inspired by these sights but also by the people rustling round at 4.30am packing their tents and rolling their swags, preparing for another day's travel in the desert.