Professor Barry Fox

I grew up in Swansea, NSW, Australia and attended nearby Belmont High School, where I won both a Commonwealth Scholarship and a Teachers College Scholarship to put me through University.  My graduation with a BSc in Physics from the University of Newcastle was in 1964 and in 1965 undertook a Diploma in Education year at Newcastle Teachers College. Towards the end of that year I married Marilyn Dale Jackson, who was completing her teacher training at the college, and we were both appointed to teaching positions in Wollongong, NSW, Australia in 1966. 

After three years we returned to teach in Newcastle for the first two terms of 1969 before heading to Canada to broaden our teaching experience with two years teaching at W.F. Herman, Collegiate Institute, a High School in Windsor, Ontario.  Teaching in Canada was lucrative and we saved enough money to take a full time year of study for me to complete a Master of Science degree in Solid State Physics. We then bought a VW Kombi from the factory in Germany and spent a year and a half to travel in Europe and North America, before returning to Australia at the end of 1973.  We both began post-graduate studies in Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW, where I completed research for my doctoral thesis in Myall Lakes National Park, graduating in 1980.  I began my University teaching in the School of Zoology, that became the School of Biological Science at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.  I progressed well and won promotion to full Professor at the end of 1996.  From 1992 I set up and was in charge of the Environmental Science Program at UNSW, Sydney.  I took early retirement in 2001 to nurse my wife  Marilyn Dale Fox, who died from Ovarian Cancer in 2002.  Although retired, I still retain a position as a Honorary Professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UNSW, Sydney.  I continue to write up research from the 25 years that I spent working on bushfire and sandmining effects on the flora and fauna in the Myall Lakes National Park.