Keith Milne Harrower (1948-2010)

 - OBIT by Dr Bob Newby.

I've known Keith for nearly half his life (and vice versa).  There were good times and there were tougher times but we can celebrate the life of Keith, recalling particularly the good times.

Keith Harrower in the lab and in his beloved academic gown

Keith was the son of Charles and Williamina Harrower of Dundee, Scotland.   Keith's early life I only know in fragments, often heard over glasses of red wine.  He grew up in Dundee in a family of modest means.  Despite the city location he liked camping and trout fishing and in fact earned pocket money by making fishing flies for the Scottish gentry.  Keith once showed me a photograph of his old school and remarked that it looked like a real life version of Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame.  I am not sure which character in Harry Potter he identified with but I leave it to your imagination: maybe the lovable Haggrad, keeper of secrets, rugged exterior but heart of gold.

I suspect that Keith saw education as a means to a broader life beyond Dundee.  He took successive degrees from St Andrews and Exeter (BSc, MSc, PhD).  Of course we remember the flash academic gown that he loved to sport at graduation ceremonies with its blue satin and ermine trimmings of St Andrews.  Keith became a microbiologist by accident or rather someone else's accident.  He was attending a demonstration by a veterinarian who dislocated his shoulder while exploring the innards of a cow.  Young Harrower decided that hanging helplessly from the posterior of an angry cow was not for him.  At university, Keith supported himself by delivering expensive cars to dealers throughout the UK.  This may explain why he began collecting a fleet of similar cars in later life. 

Keith and I both came to Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education relatively early in our careers after brief stints at sandstone universities.   Keith came from ANU where he been appointed as a lecturer in the early 1970s to do research on wheat diseases.  He had an excellent background in mycology having studied under the internationally famous expert Professor John Webster.  Keith became something of an expert himself in fungal identification.

Keith's first wife and daughter Kirsty returned to England in the late 1970s but Keith was determined to be an Aussie.  As he often told us: ‘I have the paper work to prove it!  He later married Lyn and moved to Rockhampton.

Keith Harrower

In those early days we were appointed as lecturers on 3-year contracts and while the University HR system recoded us a temporary, Keith was a full academic staff member from 1979 (over 30 years ago). Like many people at ‘The Institute' or ‘The College' (as it was often called in the early eighties) we found ourselves in a fairly closed community and without the support of extended family.  A close association began between our families that was to last for many years.  I recall in particular many happy Christmases held at the Harrowers or the Newbys on alternative years (and yes I can hear Keith saying now - 'ah yes alternative is the correct  word, you cannot say alternate').  These Christmas functions were catered for by our wives but always presided over by Keith in fine form.  A side of Keith that not many people saw was that he could be quite affectionate with children and my three young children were always well looked after by Keith and Lyn.  He got them jobs as trap boy and even trap girls at the local gun club and took a general interest in their upbringing.  He was essentially a de-facto Godparent to them while they were young.

Another fond memory from those times of myth and legend involves the famous Field Techniques excursions run by John Parmenter and myself.  Keith was always a willing volunteer but his bush skills were more those of a city boy from Dundee rather than a nascent Crocodile Dundee.  On one memorable occasion he decided he had to have a bath (after all it had been 12 hours since we left home).  After the main party went off to check traps just before dusk, Keith took off his glasses and we believe his clothes and went for a skinny dip in the Connors River.  With the sun setting over the western bank, he was about to emerge from the water when his short sighted eyes spotted two big orange eyes looking at him.  In view of discussions earlier in the day, the image of crocodile immediately took form around the two eyes.  How he got out of the water we do not know but we suspect he walked across the top of the water and stayed well away from the water until we returned to camp.  Only later that night did we tell him about the floats from a net we had set earlier in the afternoon while he had been sleeping.  Even so I think he went without a bath for the rest of the excursion.  The microbiological risks were less than the macrobiological risks of the Australian bush. 

Keith of course loved a story and many of us have heard these stories many times.  He dined out on the crocodile story for many years.

These excursions were long hours but great fun and showed Keith in a different light to what  students' normally saw in the quite formal microbiology classes he ran with their emphasis on techniques and safety.

Which brings me to Keith's professional contribution to the University.  Keith was a well respected teacher and researcher.  I have received a number of emails and phone calls attesting to the regard in which he was held both as a teacher and researcher.  Keith was often seen by students as a somewhat intimidating figure.  In fact he always had the students' best professional interests at heart, particularly if they could demonstrate that they were interested in microbiology and were trying.  He had little time for those he judged to be wasting their time and his.  He used to say they were  ‘....enrolled persons, not students'.  Even before the age of emails, Keith was always available to his external students by phone at any time of the day or night or at weekends.  Keith valued education and took great pride in the academic achievements of his daughter, Kirsty, and in fact all of his students. 

Keith of course had an amazing memory for detail.  In fact he had a near photographic memory.  Some people found this a bit daunting but properly harnessed it was a great asset.  He was a very good proof reader who would always spot a typo or a careless expression in your work.  This skill was put to good use in later years as he became Editor then Editor in Chief of the prestigious CSIRO publication, Australasian Plant Pathology. Under Keith's stewardship, APP has become the pre-eminent journal for Plant Pathology in the Southern Hemisphere, publishing a wide range of scientific papers, not just from the Australasian region but also from SE Asia, South America and the Middle East.  He later started a new scientific journal Australasian Plant Disease Notes: quite an achievement for someone in a small regional university.  Even more notable professionally was that under Keith's stewardship, these journals improved their citation ratings.

Equally prestigious was the fact that Keith was made a Fellow of the Australian Society of Microbiology (the FASM as he liked to say) in 1990 (aged 42).  This slips off the tongue easily but we should pause to recall that there are only a few hundred people with such an award.  You only get this qualification if you have a long list of original publications or undertake an examination about equivalent to becoming a senior medical specialist (and Keith achieved this 20 years ago).

Keith also had a steady stream of honours and postgraduate students and played an important part as we made our way towards university status.  Others are going to give a student perspective but the general university community perhaps forgets these days that it was the research activity in science particularly that pushed some of the early decisions towards full university status and that people like Keith were important in that effort.  For many years he did consulting work for the public (for a fee) and he had a knack of finding research funds.  He even convinced the University to pay him to tell them that some of their rooms were infested with microbes.  The money was put back into his research and to sponsor students to conferences.

For his efforts, Keith was promoted to the level of Associate Professor in 2006.

Many of us have had disagreements or robust discussions with Keith.  He was forthright in his opinions and did not use weasel words.  One thing you could always be sure of however was that Keith would have all the facts at his fingertips (or in that amazing mind of his).  Some people found that hard to deal with, but as Head of Department, I found it kept you on your toes and in fact real universities are meant to be about challenging the accepted wisdom and telling as it is.  This got Keith into trouble sometimes.

Keith's last year was not a happy one as the institution became obsessed with small processes.  However, in previous times and at the level of the Department of Biology (or the Boilogy Department as we were sometimes affectionately known) Keith was always an active member.  He served as Chair of the Board of Studies, as Timetabling representative and was a long serving member of the Faculty Promotions Committee.  He served many years as the Vice-Chancellor's nominee on various University Promotions Committees.  In all these jobs it was Keith's meticulous attention to detail that was important and for which he will be remembered.

Similarly in the community Keith was always an active member of various clubs: be it the gun club, the pistol club or more recently the car clubs.  In fact Keith was something of a perfectionist.  This trait saw him become one of the few people to hold simultaneously, the AA Rating for both Trap and Skeet shooting.  He shared his skill by becoming an official coach.  He was also a national champion in the Bench Rest for rifle shooting, first obtaining a silver medal and the following year a gold.  In fact many of us thought Keith's enthusiasm for shooting only began to wane when Lyn began to shoot as well as him (under his tutelage of course!).

We know of his love of cars (be they four, six, eight or even twelve cylinders) but less well known was his love of classical music.

One last tale from the early days since we should celebrate these rather than let them fade away.  For many years before the inception of a specific Marketing Division, academic staff went out all over the state to promote our courses.  Keith found himself in a school in Maryborough just at the time the new Tertiary Entrance scores were being introduced.  He was asked an obscure question about rescaling TE scores to which he replied ‘I don't think that even the Minister for Education understands the new TE score system.'  At this point a young girl put up her hand and said ‘My father is the Minister for Education'.  Un-deflated Keith promptly replied with impeccable logic, ‘Then I don't think your father understands TE scores'.  I don't think Ms Powell came to the CIAE.

I am sure I speak for everyone here when I say we will miss Keith one way or the other.  We didn't always agree with him, we often had robust discussions or a good debate.  He had a fine intellect and once you penetrated the sometimes forbidding exterior, there was a generous spirit who loved a good tale, a good wine and of course a good car.  I will also miss being chauffer driven to the airport in ‘Alfie' (the Alfa Romeo) or ‘the dame' (Daimler) or even ‘the jag'.  He will live on in our memories through the dozens of stories he used to tell and which we should continue to tell.

Keith is survived by his wife Lyn, his daughter Kirsty in the UK and a grandson Frank.