The Extraordinary Serventy Family

Beginning of Interview.

Christine: So, have you watched a great environmental documentary lately? Morgan Freeman, Leonardo DiCaprio, even Snoop Dog have put their voices to these types of things, but before it was cool, about three WA siblings were leading the charge to start films like this. Their family name is Serventy and Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library is in the studios to tell us about the influence they had. I can’t believe I can see your face [laughs].

Dr KG: [Laughs] It’s so nice to be here Christine.

Christine: [Laughs] Such a relief!

Dr KG: [Laughs] I know, it’s wonderful. Yes, lovely to see you too.

Christine: Honestly, it’s just…if I stare at you funnily it’s just because I’m not used to seeing people. It has been months and months and months. And thank you for researching this family. So, tell me who are they? Where did they grow up?

Dr KG: Yes, this is just such a wonderful story and I’ve been dying to do this with you for months and months. So, the Serventy family, well I mentioned to my colleague and this kind of says it all I think, “I’m going to be talking about the Serventys on radio” and she said, “Oh wonderful, I think of them as WA’s equivalent to the Darryl family”. So, I just think that is a really lovely analogy because…so this was a family of conservation devotees. They were utterly committed to environmental consciousness within Western Australia and indeed the nation and there were eight siblings in total and three of them went on to make a really significant contribution to WA environmental consciousness and to the conservation movement in Western Australia. So and we’re very lucky at the State Library to have the private archives of Dominic Serventy, Lucia Serventy. We have an oral history with Vincent Serventy and Vincent Serventy, he was the one who was really like a sort of equivalent of Australia’s version of David Attenborough if you like. He was a broadcaster and did a lot of TV documentaries and publisher of beautiful books, many beautiful books - over 70 books relating to the environment of Australia and he took a very broad view; so incredible contribution all three of them, in their own right, and I’ve had my nose in the archives these last few days and …

Christine: Yes, I can tell, you’re buzzing! You love…you genuinely love it!

Dr KG: [Laughs] I love it, yes.

Christine: So, the parents were from Croatia. They met in the Goldfields in Kalgoorlie.

Dr KG: Yes, that’s right, so take you back to sort of early twentieth century and so the mother and father had each migrated separately and from what is now Croatia…is Dalmatia. It was a part of Austria at that time, and this was like many migrants coming to the Goldfields in search of money and certainly that’s where they met and then they married and they had eight children. They lived in the Goldfields. So, Dom was born in Kalgoorlie and then the family did move to the outskirts of Perth; the bush outskirts of Perth around Bickley initially and then Cannington/Maddington area which at that time around 1910, was bush.

Christine: Yes, it would have been.

Dr KG: It was bush and I think that’s one of the things. So, the family - Dom was the eldest and I think that he really was a bit of a ringleader and instilled in the rest of the siblings a love of the bush. And so they did all sorts of things and there are some…we’ve got some wonderful accounts from Vincent’s oral history for instance. He recalls that the family had the bush at the back door:

“And we went almost brumby, like brumbies across the hills. We thought nothing of going barefoot across granite rocks and we gathered specimens, we grew little gardens and so on and we had all of this at our doorstep.” 

So that was the kind of…they were out there in the bush. They were doing things and they had a really lovely kind of little thing that the family…the siblings did. They produced a family newspaper.

Christine: Did they?

Dr KG: [Laughs] So Dom started it and we actually have a wonderful example of it in our archives, in Lucia Serventy’s papers.

Christine: That’s so cool!

Dr KG: It is so cool!

Christine: What was it called?

Dr KG: So it’s handwritten. So there were various titles but this particular edition, I’m not sure of the date of it but it must be around 1918 or so I think and it was called The Rainbow and so they’re pages of handwritten little kind of stories that the children kind of contributed with illustrations and they were beautiful illustrations of butterflies and moths and cauliflowers growing in the garden and they had…they had a notes on the garden section

Christine: [Laughs]

Dr KG: [Laughs] Number one, you know, the cauliflower, how is it growing [laughs]. But it’s so funny and kind of amusing so it kind of…that really sets the scene for this family who were passionate observers of the natural world and also great communicators.

Christine: Yes, I love that idea of a family newspaper. I thought it was going to be the Serventy Times or something.

Dr KG: [Laughs] That would be good, but yes.

Christine: 20 minutes past 2.

Dr Kate Gregory is in the studios. Battye Historian from the State Library. We’re talking about the Serventy family. Eight siblings, a family newspaper. 

Now, where did they go to school?

Dr KG: Yes, so the family…the parents were great believers in education and believed that education was the key to opening all doors. So, the children were educated at Perth Boys, Perth Girls and Perth Modern School so they went through the government education system but Dominic Serventy for instance, he was classmates with Sir Paul Hasluck.

Christine: [Surprised] Ohhhh.

Dr KG: So [laughs] the calibre of people that were going to Perth Mod was fantastic, and so Dominic Serventy; so, educated at Perth Modern. He went on to become a world-renowned ornithologist (expert on birds) as well as being a conservationist and so he ended up starting life as a journalist in fact, so he was a writer first and foremost.

Christine: I mean he’d already published a newspaper so logically.

Dr KG: [Laughs] It’s a natural progression. Yes. But then he did eventually make his way back to a science degree in zoology at UWA and then he went on and did his PhD at Cambridge and this was in the early thirties and another treasure that I discovered in the archives in Dom’s papers was this collection of postcards and included, because he married a lady called Gertrud Lang, a German lady and they met while Dom was in Cambridge doing his PhD, and we’ve got these series of…they are love letter postcards. It’s just, it’s just beautiful. Between Dom and Gertrud in this…when they were courting in 1933 and they are just…look…part of…some of them are written in German so I wasn’t able to read every word of those [laughs]…this I will confess. But quite a few of them are written in English as well and they’re just beautiful. They adored each other and it was this kind of beautiful love affair that was…yeah…evolving and in very interesting times of course; 1933, Germany. One of the postcards actually shows a picture of Adolf Hitler; Heil Hitler…yes…so you can see. They were living in these…in this time and it kind of…it is quite…striking to sort of picture this evolving love affair set within this period of social upheaval and political turmoil.

Christine: And so, where were they living? After going to Cambridge, what happened?

Dr KG: Yes, so they made their way back to Western Australia. So, Gertrud came back with Dom to WA and Dom was then for many years a scientist with CSIRO.

Christine: Yes.

Dr KG: Yes. And he did a lot of really important studies but most importantly I think again, it’s this kind of marrying of the interest in scientific study and particularly of fieldwork and publishing and sort of conveying to the public what it is that is important about these observations of…so part of our collections have these wonderful field books with his fieldnotes of bird sightings and observations; very detailed and meticulous and we’ve got his drawings, specimen drawings as well. Just drawing in pencil and just page after page of these very accurate scientific drawings of various species.

Christine: Yes, so that’s Dom. Lucia - tell us about Lucia. She followed in her brother’s footsteps.

Dr KG: That’s right. So, Lucia, she falls somewhere in the middle in the sibling order. I’m not quite sure exactly [laughs].

Christine: Mmmm fair enough. There’s eight of them.

Dr KG: That’s right. But look she was…look, for a woman of that time, really did break some ground as well because she studied to be a qualified accountant and then she joined the Attorney-General’s Department in 1928 and she had the distinction of being the only permanent woman verbatim reporter in the bankruptcy court and she retired in 1970. It’s quite a unique thing after 42 years of service and was awarded the Imperial Service Medal so that was her sort of professional life so she was involved with various women’s professional associations at that time, but I think from the point of view of this family…wider family interest in nature and conservation, she was also a committed conservationist, so okay, Dom had established in 1924 the WA Naturalist Club.

Christine: [Surprised]

Dr KG: Okay, so this is really this period of the early twenties is really the beginning of the conservation movement in WA.

Christine: And she was the Treasurer.

Dr KG: And Lucia…Lucia was the Treasurer.

Christine: Yes.

Dr KG: And she was an integral part of the WA Naturalist Club over many, many decades and in particular one of the things that they did were these now quite well known wildlife shows that were held at the Perth Town Hall and they…I mean the whole aim of that was to engage the public in Western Australia’s unique flora and fauna and they went on year after year I think they started…they started off as wildflower exhibitions and you and I have talked in the past about wildflowers and wildflower mania and so many incredible people involved in the conservation of wildflowers.

Christine: Now Vincent Serventy was the youngest of the siblings and I’ve got a clip from the 1969 nature walkabout with Vincent and Carol Serventy. Can I play this.

“[Noise of magpie-goose] The magpie goose. Once this bird was found in numbers in Southern Australia. Today these geese are largely birds of the tropic North. Probably, there are about half a million of these birds left but as their swamps are drained, they will disappear. However, sanctuaries have been set aside to make sure some birds at least survive.”

Christine: [Sighs] And I have to say the pictures on YouTube were stunning. It had a minute and a half of just different slides which showed numbats and possums and frill neck lizards and blue tongues and all sorts and I…it’s funny to see how TV has progressed in…it goes straight into the content now. You don’t get that.

Dr KG: Absolutely. No, that’s right. And it is. It’s this…look, they were wonderful. So this is in…he got these sort of TV opportunities after. So, Vince…Vincent had studied as a teacher and been a teacher. He’d been at Northam High School teaching and then taught at Perth Modern. He was head of science I think in the end. But always also along with his brother, are kind of committed conservationist and birdwatcher and he had…he also had very broad interests and then he got these…he started writing about nature and then he got this opportunity through the medium of TV to develop this nature walkabout TV program in about in the late sixties I think and so he then travelled around with his wife Carol and their children. They travelled around Australia basically recording footage and recording audio and making observations and it’s just…it is wonderful because what the TV series and the books…he produced books as well. What they do is that they bring a kind of personal dimension to the observation of nature and what…I think what that does is that it shows that nature…he is saying that nature is about enjoyment. We need to, you know, it is a source of joy, wonder and that is just kind of instilled in the programs. So, he kind of combines that sort of personal perspective with the science and with the kind of…the documentary kind of informative, educational kind of aspect of it, so it’s a really, it’s a really very clever tactic I think because what he is trying to do is just in the widest possible way appeal to the public to get behind and support I suppose the preservation….

Christine: Yes, it’s David Attenborough before David Attenborough.

Dr KG: Yes, it is, that’s right. In fact, they were kind of I believe they did have some contact as well, Vincent Serventy and David Attenborough and obviously he…David Attenborough did do filming in Australia in the sixties as well. So, they would have been kind of contemporaries I would have thought but yes, look Vince just has an incredible, incredible kind of legacy that he has left. He was very active in saving the Great Barrier Reef, in having a number of really important sights listed for world heritage within Australia, so he had a real national focus but he also produced some really important books, like in 1970 he produced a book called Dryandra and it was a year in the life of the Dryandra Woodland.

Christine: Dryandra Woodland. Yes.

Dr KG: Yes, exactly! Just South of Perth. And he…and it was beautiful because it was like the…it was almost like the biography of a forest. It went through from January to December and it notes all that the changes through the year and of the animals that appear at different times and it’s just a really beautiful…and that was actually instrumental in saving that forest from bauxite mining.

Christine: Really?

Dr KG: Yes. So, they had…it had a direct impact, but his method…I mean he was a member of the National Trust in first National Trust Council here in 1959 and his method was very much ‘get the public message out there’. So yes, incredible.

Christine: Wow, what a family. And you know what’s interesting? After I get news headlines from Tony Cow, we’re actually going to be speaking to Dr Helen Milroy about the Premier’s Reading Challenge. Yes and of course she has Backyard Birds, Backyard Bugs, Backyard Beasties, so before you go, what is your favourite Australian animal and why?

Dr KG: That’s...there’s so many! [laughs]. Um, I think the numbat. The numbat.

Christine: Yes, [indecipherable] Dryandra [laughs]

Dr KG: Yes, exactly and I think that might be because I probably did like a year four project on it and I still remember the coloured pencils and the drawings and the borders and the you know [laughs].

Christine: [Laughs] You know you can tell them apart by their stripes? That’s how you…yeah.

Dr KG: Ok. Well thank you I didn’t know that.

Christine: Yes, yes, I learnt that the other day. Yes, and apparently there’s lots in Upper Warren which is a good thing. Anyway, we digress. 

It’s been great to get you in the studio, Kate.

Dr KG: Thank you.

Christine: It’s so nice to see your smiling face and we’ll speak to you again soon.

Dr KG: That’s great, thanks, Christine.

Christine: Dr Kate Gregory, the Battye Historian from the State Library talking about the Serventy family; eight siblings all great in their own right.

End of Interview.