The University Years, 1933 to 1940

Although I had failed to get a bursary, my parents were determined that I should go to the university; naturally, to the University of Adelaide, then the only university in South Australia. With the exposure that I had had to geology, it was not surprising that I wanted to do science, majoring in geology. However, my father dissuaded me. My year of entry was 1933, before the mineral boom of the 1940s. He pointed out that there were very few jobs in geology; besides the Government Geologist (one job, held by Dr L. Keith Ward, brother of the Professor of Bacteriology in Sydney, whom I later came to know very well), the number of positions at the university had just been expanded by 33 per cent by the appointment of Kleeman as a lecturer. Further, Father had observed that when he was studying biology and geology at the University of Melbourne in 1910–12 there were many ‘duffers’ there studying medicine who were now getting salaries three or four times as high as his, and, more importantly, that there was a much wider range of choice in professional courses such as medicine and engineering than in a specialized field of science. If I wanted to, he suggested, I could become a physician, a surgeon (both with many potential specialties), a pathologist, a general practitioner or even a research worker. I accepted his argument, but then had to spend a good deal of time studying Latin to Intermediate level, since this was a required subject for entry to medicine. Ever since, I have found it useful in understanding the origins of many English words, but I did not do enough Latin to get a feel for Roman culture.

In 1933, since the courses in Physics and Chemistry for First Year Science and Medicine at the university covered much the same ground as those in Leaving Honours, and medical students did only one term of Botany and two terms of Zoology, I initially enrolled in the Faculty of Science and did a full year course in Botany and Zoology. I won the John Bagot Scholarship for Botany, but was unable to accept it because I had transferred to Second Year Medicine. I also received the top credit in Zoology and a credit in Chemistry.