Lawrie Peak's Random Recollections

Random Recollections from Lawrie Peak  (More to come)

 
These are just a few memories that come to mind (having been prompted lovingly by Leo!) I must say firstly that Jim McCaughan has done a very good job in his book “The Messel  Era” of capturing much of the early history of the School of Physics. This includes the early days of the Falkiner Nuclear Department as it was called before “Nuclear” became a dirty word.

 

John Malos

 If anyone ever met John they would never forget him! Huge, rugged pitted face with wild hair and bushy eyebrows. One would be excused to think he sounded like a Greek until he opened his mouth. He actually sounded very much “true blue”  coming from Tully with a far northern Queensland accent! He could however also speak Greek fluently which was no surprise I suppose.

 

He was an electronic wiz who had an intrinsic feel for the subject. Reportedly, he designed and built the first fast CRO (oscilloscope) with nanosecond timing – as it was needed for his research work. He swore by his “Bible” – the Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill ; still a great book. but necessarily dated (I don’t know about recent updates).

 

One day he was boasting that it was nothing to tear a telephone book in half!! I was sceptical until he took me down into the basement, grabbed the white pages next to the phone there and proceeded to tear it down the middle with his bare hands. I remained gob-smacked and the phone remained without any white pages for quite some time!

 

Although he looked so coarse and rugged, he delighted in fine cuisine and was quite the wine and whiskey connoisseur. He moved back to Bristol in his later years, and towards the end was in the process of buying his own Greek island ! The last time  I interacted with him he was in the process of designing a solar and wind power system for his island which had no electricity at all.  In fact it didn’t seem to have much of anything but it was to be his island.

 Phyllis Nicol

 Here was another character from the past !! I first met her in the second year laboratory. Not exactly the most attractive and she would spit in all directions as she talked to you. Her pet peeve was to wire up the necessary circuit for the experiment without writing down the principles of the experiment. If there were no principles, she would rip the circuitry apart rather violently and you would have to start again – after the principles had been finished satisfactorily of course.

 
She always gave me a warm welcome in her office whenever I came to her for a question or two – except that you could hardly see her for the smoke as she smoked like a chimney. She was co-author of Physics – Fundamental Laws and Principles - by Booth and Nicol which was quite a good but rather short text. I understand that the first editions had to be revised as they tried to explain surface tension purely in terms of gravity.

 
Hugh Murdoch

 Hugh died just recently and many may have met him also in the second year laboratory. Although he moved to radioastronomy when Bernie Mills came on the scene, he started in Cosmic Rays. He was a student of Henry Rathgeber working on the magnetic spectrograph to measure the muon momentum spectrum using the South Head tunnel. Dave (Crawford) and Derek (Nelson) can fill in more details of this I am sure.

 
Recreation

 
We were big on table tennis for a while. We played in the central room right up on the roof and down in the basement before it became all built up. Leo and I once invited Stuart Butler to join us thinking that we would be able to show him a thing or two. Much older, a little portly – so we decided to go easy on him. Well after much grunting and perspiration flying in all directions, I think we were able to get a point or two. How our balloon was burst! He was REALLY good! He was also really good at bridge so we never invited him back into our midst.

 
We also got together for bridge. In the West Tower we would play most lunch hours. Juris, Tony (Bray) John (Sutton) and myself. I can’t remember whether Tony (Gray) joined us for some occasions but he certainly did later on.

 
We moved to Juris’ Office in the New Wing (Room 368) and continued with Leo. Leo was just a little better than we were and I remember him asking politely one day whether we would mind if he didn’t play with us any longer. Apparently he was picking up our bad ways and we were polluting him!

 So we parted company in a very amicable way. He continued on to be a Grand Master (though missing out on our brilliant repartee) and we continued to delude ourselves that we were no too bad after all!

 

I currently have a desk in the very same room (368) so I have turned full circle – except that I have lost even more ability in bridge.

 Although not part of the team, I have vivid recollections of extensive post mortems each Monday after the catamaran adventures over the week-end in Botany Bay. I am sure members can fill us in more here (Don Melley, Mick Ryan, Geoff Chapman ???)

 
I remember being invited to play tennis with Bob May, Rod Cross and a visitor who liked to play. I was to make up the fourth. In a hurry to get there I left home grabbing a junior racquet and two left shoes ( I had two pairs). After the match, the racquet was broken and my knee had succumbed. It took a while for me to walk properly again.

 
Assorted (in no particular order).

·         Murray climbing the 150 foot tower at the Narrabri base station to service the transmitter. No-one else was bold enough!

·         Laurie and Eileen Horton arriving (by Land Rover) from England  (With Harold the dog in tow)!

·         Laurie’s  grand vision of a fireplace that seemed to be in the construction phase forever at Yarramalong  (it may still be!)

·         Great hilarity from the 346 club as various beers were sampled (and sampled and sampled)

·         Fred Yuan’s seminar with Bob May in the front seat. Fred was totally annihilated by Bob’s criticisms and comments. Bob May went on to elevated positions in the UK (close to God) – Fred successfully completed his MSc thesis.

·         Morning teas out on Physics Road at 11 AM.  Ron holding forth generally loudly and maybe throwing his thongs about from time to time.

·         Murray racing around banging on all door shouting “everyone out, everyone out – we have a triple!!” The first triple coincidence from the pilot SUGAR array around the campus.