Photo by Topa Petit, Cercartetus concinnus

Graeme Coulson

THE EYE OF THE KANGAROO: GRAEME COULSON

It’s official! Graeme Coulson is the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Ellis Troughton Memorial Award. He had no idea that he had won this award when I asked him to be our next featured member. I was privileged to read a beautiful nomination letter highlighting not only Graeme’s fabulous research contributions, but also his service to others as a supervisor, office bearer in various organisations, adviser in the context of conservation and management, reviewer, and educator via engagement with the community. The letter did not fail to mention his generosity. And generous he is. With my former students Helen and Damian, I was able to benefit from Graeme’s generosity. We needed some training in kangaroo handling, as one does, and asked Graeme to provide it. Not knowing us from a bar of soap (we smell just as delicious, except maybe for Damian), Graeme did not hesitate to invite us on one of his research trips and train us extensively. It was a memorable day, and yes, Graeme acts like a kangaroo if necessary to serve science.

Modesty is apparent in Graeme's interview. As a young retiree, he plans to serve more and learn more. I only wish he would dedicate some time writing what could be a very funny book of anecdotes, don’t you? Soft and furry, moving in leaps and bounds, his tailor is a kangaroo – here is Graeme.

Topa Petit, Membership Officer

Below: Graeme leans on a poor friend

History

I started at Melbourne Uni intending to be a psychologist, but soon realised that I enjoyed comparative psychology (i.e. animal behaviour) the most. I broke the mould in the Psych Department by doing an Honours project on dominance behaviour in rats, but mine were bush rats, Rattus fuscipes, not the ubiquitous lab rats. I then sat in on some Zoology subject for much-needed background on ecology and evolution, and began a classical ethology project on kangaroos in a walk-though enclosure at the zoo. It just happened to have both eastern and western grey kangaroos, which began my love affair with the two species.

We had a young family so I started teaching science and biology in a suburban high school to help keep us afloat, then moved to a country high school. In spare moments I worked on an external masters in Zoology to follow the interest in kangaroo behaviour. In 1980 we moved to Hobart to do masters in environmental studies at the height of the Franklin River debate. I worked in a dynamic department there, and did a research project on interactions between endemic Pacific gulls and newly-arrived kelp gulls.

We came back to Melbourne two years later and I definitely had the research bug by then, so I started a PhD in Zoology on behavioural ecology of eastern and western greys, what else? I did some work on threatened legless lizards as a research fellow, then started a lecturing position in biology at Melbourne CAE, which later merged with Melbourne Uni, so I transferred to Zoology and taught there until I retired at the end of last year. I still have a desk there.

Retirement? Really?

I have one PhD student and one MSc student still hanging around! It’s going to be a strange feeling when they’ve gone because so much of the research and conservation work has been by, and through, a great bunch of students over the years. I’ve enjoyed that aspect of academia a lot, and I’m glad that I’m still connected with some ex-students on projects that have come up along the way. Still, it’s time to move on I guess. I want to devote more time to recovery teams and advisory bodies that I’m on, and maybe take on some new roles like that. There’s a big digital pile of papers yet to be written, and perhaps a book on grey roos. I’m also involved in two longitudinal studies of eastern greys, an urban one in Anglesea and a more natural one at Wilsons Prom, and they will run for another ten years at least, so there’s plenty to do.

Some of your best achievements

That’s very hard to say. Right from the start I’ve tried to inject good science into management of kangaroos and other species. I’ve also tried to use management actions to probe the theories, which raises new research questions and tells us if our precious assumptions are actually true.

Future mammalogy and mammal conservation for Australia

Mammalogy has a bright future in Australia. We have amazing mammals that are still poorly understood, particularly by our colleagues in other parts of the world. Really basic issues that held things up when I started, like population survey, capture, genetics and tracking, are now pretty much routine. That makes it sound easier than it really is, but the research opportunities are much greater now. What sort of work we will be doing is another question. Clearly, the mammals of the Top End are in serious trouble, and a new wave of extinctions may be coming. There’s heaps of work to be done further south too. I suspect we will be doing mammalogy much less in pristine parks and much more in agricultural and urban areas.

Favourite activity in mammalogy

I really enjoy watching animals just going about their business. Not having an invisibility cloak, we have to resort to telescopes, radio-tracking, camera traps and so on to get these glimpses into their private lives. One of the best parts about working with habituated kangaroos is that they mostly just ignore us. Being close enough to hear soft calls between mother and young, and two big males kicking the wind out of each other, is a privilege and great fun.

“Mammal anecdote(s)”

There are too many really, often involving personal embarrassment. Most of the kangaroo stories come from chasing animals around, usually in the dark: near emasculation by a western grey male in the middle of Murray-Sunset; a tussle with an eastern grey male at Wilsons Prom, which converted my second-best lecturing trousers to shorts; finding a darted eastern grey female in the driveway of a house in Anglesea then carrying her back on their wheelie bin. Wombats have produced many funny moments too: running down the road after one with a net then tripping over a speed-hump; struggling (as quietly as possible) with one in the net under a caravan while a human snored above us; cleaning up after one got out of her bag and smeared shit all over the walls of a room in an historic cottage!

Advice for people interested in Australasian mammalogy

It sounds corny, but just get involved. There are plenty of species of mammals in Australia, plenty of questions to answer and not many mammalogists, so there’s lots of work to do. Working on threatened species is noble but hard, whereas common species have a lot of advantages, and won’t necessarily stay common anyway.

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