Biography

Australian agrostologist. Joyce Vickery served at the National Herbarium of New South Wales for over 30 years, where she carried out important work on the Poaceae family. Following in the footsteps of her father, a self-taught grassland ecologist, Vickery studied sciences at the University of Sydney. The youngest of four children, she had lost her mother at the age of 14 and, growing up in Sydney, became a particularly self-sufficient young woman. Her father encouraged an interest in natural history by taking her camping and exploring while on trips to rural properties in his care.

After gaining her degree Vickery remained at the Botany Department of the university for five years in postgraduate research, carrying out much fieldwork with Lilian Fraser. They shared a Chevrolet tourer which Vickery would drive far and wide, and together published the results of work at Barrington Tops and its rainforest species in the late 1930s. During this period Vickery gained her MSc and was elected to the Royal Society of New South Wales, before being appointed Assistant Botanist at the National Herbarium of New South Wales (NSW) in 1936. She was the first woman appointed as a professional officer in a scientific role in an Australian government department, and successfully fought to raise her starting salary, so that it was based on qualifications rather than gender. She also managed to win support for a year-long sojourn at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, just a year after beginning at NSW.

The 1930s were dark days for the National Herbarium and Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney; a lull in its activities had been brought on by both the Great Depression and the retirement of director J.H. Maiden. With the new director, R.H. Anderson, Vickery was instrumental in reviving the insititution's work, especially providing training for new taxonomists. She took it upon herself to organise the library and in 1939 she became the first editor of the herbarium's Contributions. She later personally helped to finance the publication of H.M.R. Rupp's Orchids of New South Wales, in the knowledge that it could be used for the as yet uncommissioned Flora of New South Wales.

Always happy to contribute, during the Second World War Vickery joined the National Emergency Services Ambulance Drivers, setting up a depot at her own home. Combined with the task of relocating precious herbarium specimens to a secure place, however, she told her friend Constance Eardley at Adelaide University that she was "driven partially (if not wholly) crazy" by these responsibilities. She also lamented to Eardley the constant "growing pains" felt by the overcrowded Sydney herbarium, which badly needed new buildings during Vickery's time there. In the 1960s, meanwhile, her identification skills of plant fragments associated with a murderer's dwelling were used in providing forensic evidence for the perpetrator's conviction. Her work in the 'Bradley case' (supported by other herbarium staff) resulted in her being awarded an MBE in 1962, though she insisted it be dedicated to the herbarium and her co-workers on the matter. A conservative monarchist, she was extremely pleased with the honour. She was also the recipient of the Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales.

Vickery's research was focussed on the Poaceae family, which she collected assiduously in the Australian Alps and Tablelands of northern Victoria and south New South Wales, as well as further afield. She provided the family's section in the Flora of New South Wales (Part I in 1961 and Part II in 1975) as well as completing in 1970 a revision of the genus Poa in Australia. Her other specialities were the Australian species of Festuca, Deyeuxia, Agrostis, Danthonia and Stipa. As L.A.S. Johnson notes in his foreword to the 1980 issue of Telopea dedicated to Vickery, she was a precise and methodical worker who concentrated on the discrimination of species, displaying little interest in theory or new technical approaches. "Generic concepts were of less interest to her, and suprageneric relationships she largely left to others. She was a close observer of variation, and was conscious of population characteristics in the field," he states. She nevertheless encouraged others to think about theoretical taxonomy and was renowned for her wisdom in matters of personal relations.

Following her early pioneering studies in rainforest ecology, Vickery was known for her dedication to nature conservation throughout her life, especially at Kosciusko in the bushlands near Sydney, for which she campaigned (e.g. against grazing) on behalf of the Kosciusko State Park. She began to concentrate seriously on grasses in the late 1940s, achieving her doctorate in 1959, before administrative duties at the herbarium curbed the hours she could devote to research (she was appointed Senior Botanist under the herbarium director H.K.C. Mair in 1964). Her post-retirement years saw Vickery continue with a revision of Stipa as well as complete the second part of the Poaceae for the Flora of New South Wales. Vickery was also an Honorary Research Fellow from 1975. In 1969 she took on the role of Joint Honorary Secretary of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (with W.R. Browne), moving on to become its honorary treasurer in 1971, which entailed much labour in fundraising. She was deeply concerned with the relocation of the Society when its premises in The Rocks, Sydney, were earmarked for redevelopment.

A staunch feminist, Vickery never married. She remained in lifelong contact with a circle of female colleagues from the University of Sydney, several of whom addressed their letters to her "Dear William", in reference to a nickname from her youth. She was eager to increase respect for women in science, writing to Gwenda Davis at the University of New England, in 1947, for example: "...recently I received a letter addressed to me as 'Lecturess in Biology' -- it may have been strictly correct but I am still trying to live it down in the Common Room." She mentioned in another letter that she preferred the title 'writer' to author or authoress, the former being too masculine for her but equally disliking the feminine version. She told Eardley, who shared Vickery's belief that motherhood was largely incompatible with their profession, how the "offspring" of Sydney botanist Alma Lee took up "all of her [Lee's] time". While Vickery did not pass explicit judgement on Lee (who penned a glowing obituary of her colleague in Telopea), it is clear that her own devotion to botanical work precluded any maternal instinct. Her independence was praised by Eardley, who, following a visit in 1947, says how impressed she and her family were "at the number of vehicles you drive -- motor-boat, lawn mower, car!"

Passing away in her 71st year after a short illness, Vickery did not live to see the construction of the new herbarium building in Sydney commenced in 1980. Her legacy to Australian taxonomy was both in reviving the institution and her tireless contribution to grass systematics.

Sources:
Anon., 1980, Taxon, 29(1): 170
C. Hooker, 2000, "Joyce Winifrid Vickery: Taxonomic Botanist", Australasian Science, 21(7): 46
L.A.S. Johnson, 1980, Telopea, 2: i-ii
A.T. Lee, 1980, "Joyce Winifred Vickery, 1908-1979", Telopea, 2: 1-9
J.W. Vickery, Papers of J.W. Vickery held at the Solander Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.