Murray McCaskill (the late)

Professor Murray McCaskill was Foundation Professor of Geography at Flinders University. He passed away in April 1999. This is his Web page, which was completed earlier in the year. An obituary follows.

Emeritus Professor
Historical Geography; Geographic Thought; Australian Resources

Qualifications

MA, PhD (NZ)

1929: Helping grandfather Christchurch, New Zealand	1991: With students on a field trip	1999: Being helped by grandson

Recent Teaching

Principally with the University of the Third Age (Flinders and Adelaide Branches) where he recently gave courses on:

• The Growth of Cities; and
• The Great Gold Rushes, 1848-1898 (California, Victoria, NZ and the Yukon)
  

At the other end of the age scale he helped in the Learning Advancement Program at a local primary school (Years 5/6).

Nevada City, California Mother Lode country	Victoria 1852	Shotover Goldfield Otago, New Zealand	Bonanza Creek, Klondike, Canada

Recent Scholarly Activities

• In retirement he co-edited Australian Geographical Studies 1992-1997 and was co-editor and an author of Explore the Flinders Ranges ed. Sue Barker, Murray McCaskill and Brian Ward, Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (SA Branch), Adelaide (1995).

• Professor McCaskill also co-edited with Sue Barker, Discover Kangaroo Island (due for publication 1999).
  
• Also was a frequent book reviewer for Australian Geographical Studies.

Personal Interests Included

• Classical music including playing the piano and pipe organ;
• Gardening;
• Travel;
• Walking;
• Reading;
• Creating stories for the grandchildren
  

Grass Valley California	Malakoff Mine North Bloomfield California	Waiuta Westland New Zealand 1953	Klondike River Valley Yukon

Obituary

Murray McCaskill died on 6 April 1999 at the Flinders Medical Centre, aged 72.

The bald fact is simply stated: the import for his Flinders friends and colleagues of over thirty years will be much less readily grasped.

Appointed as Foundation Professor of Geography to the University of Adelaide at Bedford Park in November 1964, Murray McCaskill was one of that select group of young professors whose vision and energy established the academic blueprint for what was soon to become the Flinders University of South Australia. He had been a student, and subsequently for 17 years a member of staff, at the Canterbury College of the University of New Zealand at Christchurch, which in 1958 gained independent University status. Geography as an academic discipline had developed rapidly in New Zealand during the forties and the fifties, and the New Zealand universities provided a rich source of senior appointments to the new departments of geography established in Australia during the sixties. Professor McCaskill had been a visiting lecturer at University College London in 1945-55 and had had frequent contact with many distinguished North American geographers during their visiting lectureships at Canterbury: he was well equipped, therefore, to establish geography in an innovative institution.

Under Professor McCaskill, the discipline of Geography established a major academic niche in the then School of Social Sciences. His strong sense of history together with his understanding of New Zealand landscapes, where human agency has carved such unmistakable imprint, led him to emphasise the tradition of geography as the study of interactions between society and the bio-physical environment, an emphasis which prepared the Discipline well to respond effectively to subsequent concerns with the management of environmental systems.

The Atlas of South Australia, of which Professor McCaskill was co-editor, will long stand as a memorial to his scholarship and imagination, his breadth of view of the historical geography of the State, and the lucidity of his writing. The many student who have been the beneficiaries of this scholarship, and whose subsequent careers were a constant source of interest and satisfaction to Professor McCaskill throughout hi s life, are also testimony to his continuing influence in the wider community.

Professor McCaskill served as Chairman of the then School of Social Sciences during the period of student activism in the seventies when his qualities of understanding, equability and quiet determination served the University well. This was equally true of his years as Pro-Vice-Chancellor as the University adjusted to the pressures of political priorities in the post-Dawkins deluge of managerial measures of accountability and e fficiency.

It was perhaps in retirement, freed from the constraints of what must be done, and able to engage in what seemed most worth doing, that Murray McCaskill was able, in Max Dunn's memorable phrase, to show mostly clearly "the true north of his mind" . Scholar, churchman, musician, proud grandfather, active servant of the community, he quietly lived out his belief that the harvest of insights of a lifetime ought never to be hoarded in the barns of self-interest, but rather shared for the common good.