Geoffrey Dabb 'The Strange Story of Ellis Rowan's Bird of Paradise Pictures'

Several books have been written about the remarkable life of Ellis Rowan. In general, they do not deal very well with the later years when Ellis travelled within New Guinea to assemble a collection of paintings of the plant and bird life there.  The reason is, in part, the complicated geography of the region and its wildlife, and in part the absence of records about how the New Guinea part of the collection was put together. This presentation looks at the bird of paradise pictures in light of what we know now about where each species is found, and about the geography of New Guinea.

Geoffrey Dabb, a long-time bird observer and photographer, has previously given talks on the birds around Canberra, including the Alison McKenzie Memorial Lecture in 2015. His relevant background here relates to New Guinea where he lived and worked for 17 years, before and after PNG independence in 1975.  Having arrived as a government lawyer in 1962, he was a founding member of the New Guinea Bird Society in 1965. In the course of work within the court system he travelled over most of the country – in small aircraft which flew between the mountains rather than over them. As a student of bird literature, he has been comparing what is in the great illustrated books of the 19th century with what we find in the recent explosion of books about New Guinea birds. Together, they help us understand what we now see when we look at Ellis Rowan’s birds of paradise.