Blackburn, Gerard (Dick)   (1918 - 1999)

Dick was born in 1918 and grew up in Melbourne, Victoria; he died on 6 August 1999 in Adelaide, SA.

He was raised in a very political family, his father, Maurice, was an elected politician on the left side of politics.

Dick graduated from the University of Melbourne with a B.Agr.Sci. degree and began his career as a pedologist (soil scientist) at CSIRO Division of Soils in Adelaide in 1946.

He was based in the Division's Adelaide laboratories for 37 years, until his retirement in 1983.

He became a member of a group of pedologists, recruited by J.A. Prescott and J.K. Taylor, who had established soil survey as a basic tool for the assessment of land capability, especially in relation to irrigation.

One of Dick's earliest field studies, starting in 1948, was to relate erosion in the north of South Australia to soil factors.

Soon afterwards, he began his long association with work on the soils of western Victoria and the south-east of South Australia.

His name is notably associated with the surveys of the Ninety Mile Desert region and its development for agriculture. His work in the south-east region culminated in the identification and meticulous mapping of extensive stranded beach ridges originally proposed by the geologist Reg Sprigg.

In 1956, Dick collaborated with Bob Baker on the international stage when they carried out an arduous and foot-slogging survey of the soils of the State of Brunei, North-West Borneo.

After his retirement in 1983, he began to gather information for a history of the development of irrigation from early settlement to 1920. The manuscript of this book was completed shortly before his death. During his retirement he also meticulously edited hundreds of profile descriptions for the CSIRO archival soils database.

There is another side to Dick Blackburn – his lifelong association with the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). When he entered the University of Melbourne at age 16, enrolling in an Agriculture degree, he soon joined the CPA in 1936, and the communist-led Labour Club. His great period of activism was the 30 years from the 1940s to the 1960s.

"In 1961 when long-term ASIO spy, Anne Neill, retired, telling her story to Adelaide's Sunday Mail, Dick was one of many in the South Australian Branch who was publicly exposed to the broad public as a communist. It did not affect his [CSIRO] employment, though it led to the occasional harassment of his children at school. Dick remained firmly with the CPA."

Source: Extracted from:
K. Lee, B. Emerson, R. Fitzpatrick and M. Wright, Profile, Issue 120, Oct 1999, 'Vale GERARD (DICK) BLACKBURN 1918-1999'.
Craig Campbell in www.search.org.au/dick_blackburn
Portrait Photo: 1968, www.search.org.au/dick_blackburn.

Collecting localities for 'Blackburn, G.' from AVH (2026)

Data from 107 specimens