The main purpose of this trip was a meeting of SCOPE in Paris. On the way, I stopped off in Kathmandu, Nepal, for three days (as a tourist, very interesting) and in London, to interview applicants for positions in CRES and the Botany Bay Project. Peter Young came to CRES as Professorial Fellow in Applied Systems Analysis as a result of this visit. Then I went to Kiel for the General Assembly and Scientific Committee of SCOPE, from 5–10 October. After the meeting Dr Otto Fenner (a second cousin) and his wife Elizabeth, who live in Hamburg, picked me up for dinner.

This was the second stage of my Fogarty Fellowship, this time with Bobbie, leaving my son-in-law Arthur Marshall and daughter Marilyn to look after the house at 8 Monaro Crescent. We made it a holiday trip over and back, stopping off at Fiji, Tahiti, Peru, with a trip to Cuzco, and Guatemala, for several days; a total of 45 days of most enjoyable and interesting sight-seeing. In Washington, we were met by Dr Haggerty, the man in charge of the Fogarty Scholarships, and driven to Stone House. Other scholars in residence at the time were Michael Sela, an immunologist from Israel, Dr and Mrs Darling, who were involved in investigations of the Hiroshima bombing, a Finnish histochemist and Margaret Mead.

We had a wonderful time there, travelling extensively around the States, to see sights like Williamsburg and visiting academics involved with environmental studies in universities in many of the eastern states. We also spent a lot of time visiting the many galleries and museums in Washington, an experience which led me to become a Foundation donor (of $1,000) to the National Gallery of Australia when I returned home. We also saw a lot of Bob and Beth Chanock, who became our best friends in the United States. I had stimulating talks with René Dubos when I went to New York. Bobbie and I drove up the Adirondacks to Saranac Lake to see George Mackaness (former Head of the the Department of Experimental Pathology in JCSMR) and Alan Logie (former Head Technician of the Department of Microbiology), now Director and Manager of the Trudeau Institute. I persuaded Bob Blanden, a South Australian who had worked with Mackaness in Adelaide and went with him to the Trudeau Institute, to come to Canberra as a PhD student.

On 6 January, I flew to England for 12 days, primarily to attend the Ditchley Conference, which dealt with social aspects of the environment, and interview further prospective staff for CRES and the Botany Bay project. I went to Victoria Harbor in Canada for a week in February for the SCOPE 5 Conference on Environmental Impact Assessment, which resulted in a report of some 240 pages (Munn, 1975), a second edition of which was published in 1979. Looking over the diary of the visit, I wrote many letters and saw a great many people interested in environmental problems.

We left Washington for London on 11 April, where we stayed with Cecil and Beattie Hackett, and then went to Amsterdam, where we spent a lot of time in the Van Gogh Museum. After spending couple of days in Vienna we went to Athens, where we had booked for a five-day trip around the Adriatic on MS Aquarias. Marvellous. Then we went to Cairo, where we were met by Harry Hoogstraal. He showed us around Cairo, then we flew up to Luxor and spent two days there before returning to Cairo and then back to Canberra, with a day in Hong Kong, mainly to see Stephen Boyden's students, Keith Newcombe and Sheila Millar, at work on the ‘Metabolism of Hong Kong’.

This was a brief trip to Pattaya, in Thailand, to participate in the Expert Group Meeting on Environmental Studies and Development, organized by the UN Asian Institute for Economic Development and Planning. In my diary I note that I ‘felt that my contributions were useful and used’.

SCOPE meeting in Moscow. I went there via Tokyo. As well as the five day meeting, I went to the Kremlin Theatre twice, to Don Carlos and Rigoletto. Another day I was collected by my virologist friend of 1964, Vladimir Agol, and taken to his flat in a newly developed part of Moscow for the evening. On 23 November, I returned via New Delhi, where by chance I met Jack Crawford and dined with him, the Australian High Commissioner and Hedley Bull, of ANU, who was on study leave. Spent time at the Jawaharal Nehru University, discussing among other things, the proposed Australia-India Science Agreement.

This trip was made to attend a meeting at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna and a SCOPE meeting in Paris. Again, opportunities to go the opera, Karmen and The Barber of Seville. I went home via London and interviewed D. I. (Dingle) Smith, who was then appointed a Senior Fellow in CRES, with responsibility for the MSc (Environmental Studies) program.

This was a long and complicated trip, which included five main items: a climate conference in Norwich, the 13th Pacific Science Congress in Vancouver, a virology conference in Madrid, a visit to the UN Environment Program Headquarters in Nairobi, a Climate Conference, and a visit to Kruger National Park in South Africa. I went via Bangkok to Kathmandu, mainly to replace a topaz earring that I had purchased there on an earlier trip. This took a few days, so I worked for most of the day on a climate change report and went to some Nepalese dance shows in the evenings. Then to Tehran via New Delhi. I went on tour to Isfahan, with its superb Blue Mosque. Then to Vienna, where I left my luggage at the airport and took a bus to Bratislava to see Zlata Wallnerova, who had worked in the Department of Microbiology for two years. She and her husband later came to Canberra as immigrants. Back to Vienna airport and on to London and by train to Norwich and the University of East Anglia, where I attended the week-long World Meteorological Organization–International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, on Long-Term Climatic Fluctuation. There were several Australian experts there; I was very much a learner. On 23 August, I took a Great Circle flight to Vancouver, for the 13th Pacific Science Congress, where I gave a lecture in a Symposium on Mankind's Future in the Pacific (Fenner, 1976a). Looking at the text almost 30 years later, I am surprised how much in tune it was with present-day views.

Then to the Virology Congress in Madrid, where I spent most of my time with the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), of which I was then President. Besides agreeing on the substance of the Second Report (Fenner, 1976b), I was successful in getting a plant virologist, New Zealander R. E. F. Matthews, elected President. This was important because at the time there was a serious possibility that the plant virologists would break away from the International Committee. After the Congress I travelled around Spain, visiting many wonderful places including Toledo and the Alhambra palace in Granada.

Then by plane to Nairobi, to visit the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). This was useful visit; we discussed interactions between SCOPE, as the principal environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) and UNEP. Then a minibus trip to a National Park and then to ‘Treetops’ for an overnight stay, to see all the African animals coming to drink or lick salt, under brilliant floodlights. Then to Pretoria and met by George Bornemissza (dung beetle expert); later met with South African members of SCOPE and visited the local Department of Planning and the Environment. Then to the Conference on Climate Change at the Transvaal Museum. After talking with staff of the University of Witswatersrand I went on a long drive through Kruger National Park. This was most interesting. Then three very interesting days in Capetown before embarking for the long flight back to Sydney.

Short trip to Tokyo via Manila to attend a meeting of the Council of the United Nations University in Tokyo, where I gave a talk on Resources and Reserves.

This trip was to Paris to attend a meeting of the General Assembly of SCOPE, at the UNESCO Building in Paris. It had been called to ratify the new Constitution. I was made Chairman of the Resolutions Committee, which discussed future programs, so I was kept quite busy.

The prime purpose of this trip was to attend a meeting of the Executive Committee of SCOPE in Washington. As usual, besides attending the meeting and seeing friends in Washington, especially Bob and Beth Chanock, I stopped off in Hawai'i and Phoenix, Arizona, on the way over and went to Toronto to see the arrangements for environmental studies at the University of Toronto and York University. On the way over I stopped in Hawai'i with my old friend Edgar Mercer, who lived on the Big Island. He drove me all around the island, and to the crater of the active volcano, Kilauea, a wonderful site for someone interested in geology. Then, on the way across America, I went to Flagstaff, Arizona, and from there got a bus to see the Grand Canyon. I spent three days there, walking around the rim and going on a plane flight. A marvellous sight. Then to Washington, where I stopped to attend a meeting of ICSU and the Executive Committee of SCOPE, both held at the National Academy of Sciences. I stayed at the Cosmos Club, in central Washington. It was there that I had dinner with Gilbert White, the new President of SCOPE and Ronald Keay, Treasurer of SCOPE, and Gilbert suggested that I should take on the job of Editor of SCOPE Publications; I agreed. I also visited the museums and National Gallery, went to a concert and then to a reception at the National Academy of Sciences, where I met several other SCOPE friends and also Michael Stoker, the new Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society, and Carleton Gajdusek.

From Washington I went to Trentin, New Jersey, where I was met by George Mackaness, then President of the Squibb Institute of Medical Research. He was living in a converted barn, three storeys high, built in 1790. Then a brief stop in New York to see friends at the Rockefeller University and on to Toronto, where I met the President of the University of Toronto and gave a lecture on CRES. The next day, I met with eight Directors of Institutes in the University of Toronto (like our Centres) who saw themselves as the cutting edge of new interdisciplinary developments in the university. I spoke about the position in ANU. After a day at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University I returned to Australia.

The principal reason for this trip was to participate in the International Commission for the Certification of Smallpox in India (see Chapter 10). After spending three weeks there I had a week to fill in before attending a meeting of the SCOPE Executive Committee in Paris. So I flew to Dubrovnik, a wonderful old city on the Adriatic and spent two days there and on a bus trip along the shores of the Adriatic to the south of Dubrovnik. Then on to England, where I went down to Chichester to see Dr Howard Jones, of John Wiley and Sons, in my new job as Editor-in-Chief of SCOPE publications. After a day in London, during which Bobbie rang me while I was with Cecil and Beattie Hackett to say that I had been elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, I flew to Paris for a meeting of the Executive Committee of SCOPE.

The initial purpose of this trip was a meeting of the Executive Committee of SCOPE in London. It was a busy meeting that went on for four days, including a full day at Wileys in Chichester. Then I flew to Geneva for a major meeting on the Certification of the Eradication of Smallpox.

After a few days in England, during which I went to Chichester for a day to see Dr Jones about SCOPE publications and interviewed Professor Maynard Smith as possible Director of the Research School of Biological Sciences (on behalf of Vice-Chancellor Low), I went to Warsaw for a week before going to a meeting of the SCOPE Executive Committee in Moscow. As well as seeing a good deal of the fascinating history of Warsaw and Cracow, I gave a lecture on smallpox eradication at the Institute of Medical Microbiology in Cracow, another on the activities of SCOPE at the Silesian Centre for Environmental Studies and a third on environmental studies in Australia at the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Then flew to Moscow, where we had a four-day meeting of the SCOPE Executive Committee. Meals at the Moscow hotels were poor, but each evening members of the Committee were taken to dine at very good restaurants. One evening Gilbert White, President of SCOPE, spoke of his days as a Quaker travelling around Europe during the World War II.

Once again, a trip encompassing smallpox and SCOPE. I went first to Geneva for meetings of the Global Commission and the Monkeypox Consultative Group. After three weeks in Geneva, I went to England and down to Chichester to see Wileys and then flew to Nairobi, where the SCOPE Executive Committee met with the officials of the United Nations Environment Program. After four days there I flew back to Geneva for the first meeting of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication, of which I had been elected Chairman.

This rather long trip began with a meeting of the SCOPE Fourth General Assembly, followed by a meeting of the Executive Committee, in Stockholm, from 9–15 June. Then I went to London, where I stayed with Cecil and Beattie Hackett, who were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. I went to Cambridge to see Peter Young (just recruited to CRES as a systems analyst) and Joseph Needham, the great authority on Chinese science, to discuss early Chinese experience of smallpox. Then to Geneva for a few days to discuss my forthcoming trip to China concerning smallpox eradication there and to work on the agenda for a meeting of the poxvirus expert committee to be held in Atlanta. I visited Lloyd Thomson, who had worked with Bobbie in the blood bank at 2/2 Australian General Hospital in the Middle East and Queensland, he was then Australian Ambassador in Switzerland. Then to Atlanta, where I worked on the final report of the Commission for the Certification of the Global Eradication of Smallpox. I went with Walter Dowdle to his home in the woods and then to Stone Mountain, where gigantic carvings of the heads of some US presidents have been carved on the side. Then New York, where I stayed at the Rockefeller University and saw old friends, René Dubos, Merrill Chase and Jim Hirsch. Talked with Barsky (Academic Press) about Medical Virology, a possible Veterinary Virology and a possible third edition of The Biology of Animal Viruses; the latter two to be post-retirement options. Then to Washington, I went with Chanocks to the National Gallery and the next day to the National Institutes of Health to see scientists and enquire about a third and six-month spell of my Fogarty Fellowship, probably in 1982. On 11 July, Joel Breman and I flew to Japan, en route to China, to check their smallpox eradication program.

This trip was initially to Geneva, to work on smallpox final report and also, in another section of WHO, to discuss the United Nations Environmental Program 1982 Report. Then to Paris, for three days, for another meeting of the SCOPE Executive Committee. Then Geneva again for the final meeting of the Commission for the Certification of the Global Eradication of Smallpox.