Book review: A Year on the Reef, Maurice Yonge

A Year on the Great Barrier Reef

By Maurice Yonge

Maurice Yonge published this book about his time on the Great Barrier Reef the year after he led the 1928-29 Great Barrier Reef Expedition. Almost a hundred years on, this unique environmental and social account of a large swathe of the Great Barrier Reef is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

As Yonge describes their first sight of a coral reef while transiting to Australia from the deck of an ocean-crossing liner, the 1920s narrative reads like an Agatha Christie novel. Like Darwin, this was at Cocos (Keeling) Atoll and it set the scene for a profound encounter with what at the time, for Europeans at least, was one of nature’s lesser-known natural wonders.

The Expedition established a base at Low Isles to study the reef over an extended period of time, thereby departing from ship-based approaches reef science that had been typical in the early twentieth century. The scientific aims of the expedition, explained by Yonge in the opening pages, were: ‘ the elucidation of the conditions under which coral reefs thrive and flourish so exceedingly as to build this vast rampart of limestone; the nature and population, animal and plant, of the reefs, and of the sea which washes them, and of the sea bottom on which their foundations are set; the manner of life of corals, how they reproduce, develop, grow, feed and how their various organs function’.

Significant scientific advances were made on each of these fronts and reported elsewhere, but here Yonge keeps the science to a basic outline of coral and broader reef organism biology, preferring to document his time on the reef. Descriptions cover how the Expedition huts were built, how scientific instruments were improvised, how specimens, measurements and observations were collected daily and how local Aboriginal kitchen and boat staff from Yarrabah helped with operations, including Minnie the cook’s tracker husband Claude, whose leg troubled him after he was ‘shot in the memorable affair of the Ned Kelly gang’.

Only seven of the fifteen chapters focus on the time they spent at Low Isles. The remainder of the book describes visits to the nearby Howick Islands, Lizard Island, the Outer Barrier and further afield in the Torres Strait and Capricorn-Bunker Group. Yonge’s interdisciplinary outlook is one of the most remarkable features of this book. He provides a comprehensive account of Torres Strait coastal and maritime trade, including the earnings and market dynamics of beche-de-mer, trochus, oysters and pearl (for Japanese buttons). The description of the diverse cultural makeup of Thursday Island could have been penned by an anthropologist, indeed, he drew heavily on the work of anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon, who had visited Torres Strait in 1898 to describe the harvesting activities of the Aboriginal, Papuan, Chinese, Japanese, Sri Lankan and Malaysian island inhabitants.

The book is illustrated with many detailed photographs, sketches and several foldout maps. At times, Yonge writes with a flourish reminiscent of Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us, which conveys his enthusiasm and passion for coral reefs. All of this makes for an informative and entertaining read that will engage reef scientists with an interest in expedition life or the environmental and social history of the Great Barrier Reef.

Maurice Yonge with a coral boulder on the reef crest at North West Island

Sir Maurice Yonge was a renowned English marine zoologist. He led the 1928-29 Great Barrier Reef Expedition

Photo left: Maurice Yonge enjoying the birds at Michaelmas Cay

Photo right: School of fish. Photo credit Matt Curnock

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