Article courtesy of The Cairns Post.

Scientist and CQU Alumnus Ceri Pearce is on a mission to find thousands of microscopic fungi and has invited 1500 international experts to Cairns to lend a hand.

-- GROWING up on the urban fringes of Melbourne, Ceri Pearce could not wait for the weekends to arrive.

"We lived in Werribee, a suburb of Melbourne but we had a block of land with a tin shed on it up in the mountains at Daylesford.

"We went up there every weekend and every holidays so we used to say that we lived at Daylesford and went to school at Werribee.

"We would go bushwalking, fossick and I was a mad keen bird watcher so I'd be looking at everything," says the director of the Australian Tropical Mycology Research Centre at Kuranda who has just secured a major scientific conference for Cairns.

Ceri (pronounced Kerry) says it was those weekends at Daylesford that sparked her interest in science.

"One of my ambitions - among many - was to be a biologist. Others were to be a nurse and teacher." In the end, she became both nurse and scientist but not without a long and dedicated struggle.

Leaving school at 15, Ceri spent two years working in a Melbourne clothing factory before arriving in Cairns with her family.

"My job prospects weren't brilliant so I volunteered to work at Calvary Hospital three days a week and made such a pest of myself, they eventually let me do my enrolled nurse training." Her appetite whet, Ceri wanted to go further but could not.

"I had only the equivalent of Grade 10 so I went back to high school, did two years at Cairns High as an adult student and was 21 when I finished.

"From there, I did my general nurse training at Cairns Base Hospital, then worked at Yarrabah as a general nurse for a couple of years, which I loved." But she loved science even more and embarked on a Bachelor of Applied Science, majoring in biology, through Central Queensland University in Rockhampton.

"That was one of the things I'd always wanted to do and I started learning so much more about the environment.

"As part of my studies, I had to collect 100 plants, press them and identify them.

"I began looking more closely at the ground under my feet and noticing the little plants - not just the big ones.

"There's this huge diversity but we just don't notice them because we don't look close enough." As a mycologist - she did her PhD through the University of Hong Kong - Ceri is specifically interested in microscopic fungi.

"It's been predicted that in Australia there are about 250,000 fungi species and we only know about 10 per cent.

"Now we have to go out and prove whether they are there or not." Researchers from around the world have been making their way to the Australian Tropical Mycology Research Centre at Kuranda since it opened two years ago to help in the search.

Ceri says the research centre also is involved in biodiscovery work.

"That means we collect fungi from private land in the rainforest and sell them to biotechnology companies.

"Our main companies are pharmaceutical companies looking for new drugs." Making light of the huge task ahead, Ceri has recruited the services of 1500 mycologists from around the world, who will meet in Cairns in 2006 for the International Mycological Congress.

The congress is a first for the southern hemisphere, a first for the tropics and promises a $2.5 million windfall for the city.

Ceri organised a small conference in Cairns last year for the Australasian Mycological Society and was encouraged by the Cairns Convention Centre and Cairns Convention Bureau to bid for the international congress - held every four years.

In the end, the society decided the bid should come from Melbourne, an international conference being considered too much for the two mycologists based in the Far North.

"When I found out in April that Melbourne was no longer going ahead with the bid, I was horrified that we were going to miss out so I jumped in and said `let's do it in Cairns'.

"I felt we could do it, the Cairns Convention Centre could do it and Cairns could do it. We have all the facilities.

"The convention centre and convention bureau helped me put together a fabulous bid document and I gathered a conference organising committee from members around Australia and New Zealand." But when news came through Cairns had won, no one was more surprised than Ceri.

"I was blown away. I think I walked around in shock for about an hour." She says the region has a lot to offer 1500 mycologists, apart from a holiday.

"I love science and I love sharing it with other people." .

This article, written by Roz Pulley, first appeared 23 December 2002 in The Cairns Post and is used with permission.