The weather was superb for the opening of the I.O.B.U. Bunker at the weekend. It was a most memorable day and a credit to those people who worked so very hard to make it possible.

One of the photos given to me by Max Huxley for the Gabo display board at the Bunker showed sailors from the R.A.N. Station enjoying Christmas dinner with the Huxley family (Assist. Light Housekeepers.)

William Fogarty, who died last year, was one of those men and after serving on Gabo was with the Fleet in Japan after that country surrendered, in the 1930s he joined the Footscray Swimming Club, captaining two premiership teams and was a junior backstroke champion.

After the war he Completed a course in cabinet making. with the Myer Furniture Factory. Later he became a Footscray councillor in Kingsville ward ‘and was Mayor of Footscray ‘ for two years in the late 1950s. He was chairman of finance and was Footscray’s representative-for the Western Bulldogs, then known as Footscray, for six years.. He was instrumental in the funding and building of the social club stand at the ground now known as the Whiten Oval.

Mr Fogarty’s local government experience led him into state politics in 1973 when he was elected MP for Sunshine. He held the seat for 15 years until his retirement in 1988. The list of his achievements in community life is endless and the Huxley family are very proud to have known him.

The Age Newspaper May 4th, 2002 printed a column of tributes to Dr. John Layton Rouse who recently passed away; Dr Rouse, who was stationed at Mal1acoota during WW2, trained in. radio direction finding, which came to be called radar. Following his discharge, he graduated Master of Science (with first-class honours, sharing the Dixon
and Kernot Scholarships) in 1953 and Doc tor of Philosophy in 1957, having designed and led the team that built the world’s first variable-cyclotron.

His research activities moved in 1960 to low-energy nuclear physics. and in 1977 to the application of physics to biological systems. He was sole or joint author of more than 100 articles in journals and chapters in books.

Over 70 of these concerned rhododendrons, especially the Vireya (tropical) species which he propagated in the garden of his Toorak home. His skills in this field earned him the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1995. His propagation units have been adopted in the greenhouses of the Royal Botanic Gardens in -Edinburgh, where there are incubators known as “Rouse Houses,” and where in 1998 a species newly discovered in the Philippines after him. Dr Rouse helped establish the Cranbourne branch of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Mathematician, Physicist, Botanist, Horticulturist.

An incredible career and to think, it commenced when Dr. Rouse, a leading aircraftsman used his spare time at Mallacoota RAAF station completing a mathematics course by correspondence, a preparation for the honours course that followed at Melbourne University.

Leone Pheeney