Allan McEvey's Field Journal, Macquarie Island, 1957.

Brief description

Allan Reginald McEvey became the Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Victoria in 1955. For the next 30 years he made an invaluable contribution to the museum’s ornithological collection, particularly to the avian osteological (bone) collection, which he developed into one of the best in the world. He was President of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) from 1968 to 1969 and was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1980.
McEvey had a passion for scientific illustration. He published material on the art of John Cotton, John William Lewin and John Gould and was the co-founder of the Society of Wildlife Artists (now called the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia). He was an avid artist himself and his own field diaries are filled with sketches of birds and other wildlife.
McEvey was also an active fieldworker. In 1957 he accompanied Phillip Law and Robert Carrick of CSIRO on the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition to Macquarie Island where he collected fossil penguin bones from Finch Creek. This is his field journal from that expedition.This expedition of 160 tasks is fully transcribed and validated.