One of the really good things about working in local government is you get to meet some very interesting people as part of your days work. Take yesterday for example. Your humble scribe joined up with our Bushland Project Officers Belinda Rowe and Stuart Chadwick to do a promotional story to satisfy one of the strings attached to the $90,000 we collect from the NSW Environmental Trust to help conserve native vegetation in the shire.

Earlier in the day I had received an email from Stuart suggesting I Google the name Dr Ken
McCracken before we go out to his Mt.Jellore property. “I’m not easily impressed by people, but this guy is something else,” wrote Stuart. So I did.  The bloke is nothing short of remarkable. A world renowned scientist, probably Australia’s leading physicist and I’d never heard of him. He has quietly lived on his Jellore property for the past twenty years, using it as a base for an absolutely amazing life. Now this bloke isn’t young. He was founding chief of the CSIRO Division of Mineral Physics in Sydney, and Director of the CSIRO Office of Space Science until his retirement in 1989.

But he didn’t retire. Apart from running a beef property he still works as a private consultant to the minerals exploration industry. The man doesn’t stop. Stu and Belinda were trying to line up a time for another chat. “No I’ll be off to Tasmania for a few days tomorrow.” “What about I phone you on Tuesday, then,” suggested Stu hopefully. “No that won’t work, I’ll be in Switzerland next week.”

We had a cup of tea. On the table was a book titled Blast Off. So that’s the sort of book Ken
McCracken reads in his spare time, I thought. I looked further. He had written it, not read it. It had just come in from the publisher. The book had a forward by former Science Minister and all round genius, Barry Jones. Ken told us a good story about Barry, then we mentioned the legendary Professor Harry Messell. Another story. These were the sorts of people Ken worked with every day.

The Google search Stu recommended told me Dr McCracken is a fellow of both the Australian
Academy of Science and of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. As a post-doctoral fellow he became involved in space science in 1959 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later at the University of Texas, designing instruments that flew on nine US space probes. His research for NASA was instrumental in protecting US astronauts from exposure to possibly fatal doses of cosmic radiation from enormous explosions – called flares – on the Sun. As Professor of Physics at Adelaide University between 1966 and 1969, Dr McCracken led a team that pioneered X-ray astronomy of the southern sky with instruments launched on Skylark rockets from the Woomera Rocket Range. In 1970, he was founding chief of the CSIRO’s new Division of Mineral Physics in Sydney where he worked closely with NASA.

The story goes on. In addition to his interest in remote sensing, Dr McCracken played a key role in the development of a number of forms of geophysics, which allowed Australian minerals explorers to detect deeply buried mineral deposits. Yes an amazing bloke, is Ken McCracken, and he has lived quietly here on our doorstep for twenty years quietly revolutionising the world in which we live. 

This story was written by Geoff Goodfellow for ‘The Whisper’ A weekly publication for Wingecarribee Shire Council staff 16 May 2008