Reginald Claude Sprigg, (1 March 1919 – 2 December 1994) was an Australian
geologist and
conservationist. At 17 he became the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia. During 1946, in the
Ediacara Hills,
South Australia he discovered the
Ediacara biota, an assemblage of some of the most ancient animal
fossils known. He was involved with
oceanographic research and petroleum exploration by various companies that he initiated. In 1968, he acquired a derelict pastoral lease, Arkaroola, and transformed it into a wildlife sanctuary and wilderness reserve.
Early life
Reginald Claude Sprigg was born 1 March 1919 on
South Australia's
Yorke Peninsula where his family were living in the small town of
Stansbury.
[ His parents were Claude Augustus Sprigg and Pearl Alice Irene née Germein, who had married on 17 September 1913 in Stansbury. Reg was their third and youngest child, a brother to D'Arcy Kingsley and Constance Vera (Connie).
His father's family were pastoralists, whilst the Germein family were mariners. The Sprigg family had relocated to the Yorke Peninsula after being "forced off their pastoral lease at Oulnina because of drought". The Germein family were ship chandlers i]
Mutton Cove, Devonport
Plymouth, England: three brothers came to Australia. One, Ben Germein is remembered as a hero of the ''Admella
SS ''Admella'' was an Australian passenger steamship that was shipwrecked on a submerged reef off the coast of Carpenter Rocks, south west of Mount Gambier South Australia, in the early hours of Saturday 6 August 1859. Survivors clung to the wre ...
'' rescue mission.
Before he was five years old, the family had relocated to the Adelaide suburb of Goodwood, which gave the young Reg access to the beach where he collected shells and fossils. This boyhood hobby developed into a serious interest in geology, which brought him into contact with the geoscientists at the University of Adelaide to whom he took collected samples for identification.
Education
In addition to pursuing his studies in geology, Reg developed drawing skills which gained him credit in the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts merit lists for 1934 and 1935.
He matriculated from the Adelaide Technical High School
Glenunga International High School (GIHS), formerly Glenunga High School (GHS), is a publicly-funded international school in Adelaide, South Australia. It is located approximately south-east of the Adelaide city centre in the suburb of Glenun ...
in 1938.
At the University of Adelaide, he was a pupil of Sir Douglas Mawson who said that "Sprigg was his best-ever student". He completed the requirements for his Bachelor of Science and then graduated Master of Science in 1942.[
]
Career
In 1940 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Engineers, and worked with Munitions from 1941 to 1942. He transferred to work with the soils division of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentar ...
) until 1943.
Sprigg next worked for the South Australian Geological Survey, which sent him to reopen the Radium Hill Uranium Field in 1944, and to map the Mount Painter
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, ...
uranium field. At the time, uranium was believed to be rare, and was required for the Manhattan Project.
Sprigg was sent by the South Australian government in 1946 to inspect abandoned mines in the Ediacaran Hills, to ascertain whether old mines could be reworked profitably using new technologies. When he discovered the fossils, apparently while eating his lunch, he realised that they were very ancient, either of Early Cambrian
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...
, or possibly even of Precambrian
The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...
age. He thought that the organisms had probably been jellyfishes. He submitted a paper to the journal '' Nature'', but it was rejected. He travelled to London and presented his findings to the 1948 International Geological Congress
The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology.
About
The IUGS was founded in 1961 and is a Scientific Union member of the Inte ...
, but failed to excite either interest or belief.
Subsequent work by Prof Martin Glaessner
Martin Fritz Glaessner AM (25 December 1906 – 23 November 1989) was a geologist and palaeontologist. Born and educated in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he spent the majority of his life in working for geoscientific institutes in Austria, Russia ...
at the University of Adelaide demonstrated that they were indeed of latest Precambrian
The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...
age. Although Precambrian animal fossils had been reported before, they had not been accepted universally as organic. This discovery resulted ultimately in the definition in 2004 of the Ediacaran Period, the first new geological period
The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochronol ...
created in more than one hundred years.
Of other significance, Sprigg helped establish Santos (an acronym for ''South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search''), which discovered gas deposits in Cooper Basin, including the Moomba Gas Field, which supplies natural gas to South Australia, New South Wales and Canberra
Canberra ( )
is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
. In 1954 Sprigg formed the company Geosurveys of Australia, which was a consulting and contracting company for geological and geophysical work. They prospected for uranium in the Northern Territory and nickel in the north west corner area of South Australia as well as working for Santos.
In 1962 Geosurveys became incorporated into Beach Petroleum, of which Sprigg was General Manager.
In 1968, Sprigg purchased the pastoral lease of Arkaroola, a property and important uranium exploration field of 610 square kilometres in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, and converted it into a wildlife refuge and tourist attraction. A governing board of Reg Sprigg, his wife Griselda and Dennis Walter, a mineralogist and old friend, oversaw the creation of Arkaroola Village out of existing buildings and the opening to tourists in October 1968.
ASIO
Sprigg attracted the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 1950, due to Sprigg's knowledge of uranium deposits in Australia and throughout the world. In 1943 Sprigg had been secretary of the Australian Association of Scientific Workers. The association was concerned with the transfer of scientific workers from wartime to peacetime projects once hostilities ceased, and encouraged debate on the social responsibility of science. ASIO suspected the organization of communist ties, and as a result Sprigg was surveilled for some ten years.
Family life
In 1942, Sprigg married Patricia Day who had been born in Wiltshire, England and relocated to Adelaide with her parents in 1927. In 1943, she graduated as a BA (Adelaide), scoring first place in Political Science and worked in the History School during 1945 and 1946 reading essays and lecturing. In 1948, Patricia, aged 25, left Adelaide on the P&O ship , arriving in London on 27 March 1948. In London she worked at Magazine of the Future whilst reading law at Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...
. Reg and Patricia divorced in 1950 and she moved to Sweden in 1951 to marry Gillis Een.
On 3 February 1951, Sprigg married Griselda A. Findlay Paterson, daughter of Robert Findlay Paterson and Grace née Dreghorn, born December 1921 in Paisley, Scotland.[Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives. Series BT26, Piece 1345, Item 63.] Griselda had studied in Glasgow and qualified as a radiographer.
During 1948, Reg, still with the South Australian Mines Department, was in Britain in association with uranium on behalf of the government; Griselda has said that she met Reg "on ...the island of Arran, .... Well there was I with three nursing sisters I’d held up with, and as I walked out of the restaurant that night, they stopped me and said, 'I bet you can’t get a date with the Australian before midnight tonight, for tomorrow. I said 'How much is it worth', they said 'five quid', and I said 'that’ll do me'. I got the five quid, got the date, and I always say, I won him in a bet."
In 1952, a daughter, Margaret and in 1954, a son, Douglas were born in South Australia.
Griselda and the children often accompanied Reg in his outback travels. In 1962 the entire family completed the first vehicular crossing of the Simpson Desert. In 2001, Griselda published an account of those travels in ''Dune is a four-letter word.''
Reg Sprigg died on 2 December 1994 whilst on holiday in Glasgow, Scotland. His ashes were scattered at Arkaroola.
Griselda Sprigg died 20 March 2003.
Bibliography
Reg Sprigg is the author or coauthor of these books:
* ''Uranium Deposits in South Australia'' with Dickinson, Samuel Benson, D. King, M. L. Wade, B. P. Webb, A. W. G. Whittle, F. L. Stillwell, and A. B. Edwards, Australia (South) Geol. Survey Bull., 1954.
* ''Arkaroola – Mt Painter in the Flinders Ranges'' with Griselda Sprigg, 1976.
* ''Arkaroola – Mt Painter in the Flinders Ranges: The Last Billion Years'', 1984 and 1988.
* ''Geology is Fun'',1989
* ''A Geologist Strikes Out'', Recollections by Reg Sprigg, December 1993, .
Awards and honours
* In 1980, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by the Australian National University.
* In 1982, he was the inaugural Lewis G Weeks Medalist awarded by the then Australian Petroleum Exploration Association. Reg had been foundation president during 1959 of the association. The association has renamed its gold medal for "highly valued contributions within or for the Australian oil and gas industry or through sustained, notable leadership within APPEA" in his honour.
* In 1983, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
* In 1986, he was the recipient of the Royal Society of South Australia's Verco Medal
The Royal Society of South Australia (RSSA) is a learned society whose interest is in science, particularly, but not only, of South Australia. The major aim of the society is the promotion and diffusion of scientific knowledge, particularly in rel ...
; at age 17, he had been the youngest fellow of the society.
* In 1990, Flinders University
Flinders University is a public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia, with a footprint extending across 11 locations in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of British navigator ...
conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
* In 1998, the Geological Society of Australia, South Australia Branch initiated the biennial Sprigg Symposium "in recognition of the contributions Dr Reginald Sprigg made towards many aspects of geology in South Australia".
* In 2001, the University of Adelaide announced that it had established the Reg Sprigg Chair in Petroleum Engineering in the (now) Australian School of Petroleum.
* The genus ''Spriggina
''Spriggina'' is a genus of early bilaterian animals whose relationship to living animals is unclear. Fossils of ''Spriggina'' are known from the late Ediacaran period in what is now South Australia. ''Spriggina floundersi'' is the official fossi ...
'' has been named in his honour.
* The mineral Spriggite, a uranyl hydroxide mineral, has been named in his honour.
* The annual ''Sprigg Lecture Series'' is held by the South Australian Museum to commemorate his discovery of the Ediacara fauna.South Australian Museum > Sprigg Lecture Series
Accessed 22 July 2012
* The main-belt asteroid 5380 Sprigg
5380 Sprigg, provisional designation ', is a background asteroid from the middle regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 7 May 1991, by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in ...
, discovered by Robert McNaught
Robert H. McNaught (born in Scotland in 1956) is a Scottish-Australian astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Australian National University (ANU). He has collaborated with David J. Asher of the Armagh Observato ...
at the Siding Spring Observatory
Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia, part of the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (RSAA) at the Australian National University (ANU), incorporates the Anglo-Australian Telescope along with a coll ...
in 1991, was named in his honour.
See also
* List of fossil sites ''(with link directory)''
References
External links
Reg C. Sprigg – Biographical Notes
* Sprigg, R.C. 1947:
Early Cambrian (?) Jellyfishes from the Flinders Ranges, South Australia
'. Trans. R. Soc. S. Aust. 71: 212–224.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sprigg, Reg
1919 births
1994 deaths
20th-century Australian geologists
People from South Australia
Officers of the Order of Australia
Flinders University alumni
Australian paleontologists