Harold Frith

Harold James Frith AO (16 April 1921 – 28 June 1982) was an Australian administrator and ornithologist.

He was born at Kyogle, New South Wales and studied Agricultural Science at Sydney University.

Harry Frith (as he was usually known) first joined the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry but later transferred to the Division of Wildlife and carried out extensive research on malleefowl, waterfowl, especially magpie geese, and pigeons.

He eventually became Chief of the Division and was instrumental in proposals that led to the establishment of Kakadu National Park.

Harold James Frith was born on 16 April 1921 at Kyogle, in the north-east corner of New South Wales, the younger of two children of Richard and Elizabeth Frith.

His father was a butcher later based at Lismore.

Frith credited his father as a major influence on his early interest in natural history.

Harry received his first rifle aged eight years and often accompanied his father to shoot pigeons for the table.

On his tenth birthday he received the newly published Neville Cayley's What Bird is That?.

Harry and his brother, Alexander, were educated at Lismore High School and Scots College in Sydney.

Griffith was in the heart of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and the CSIR research station had been established there in 1926 to carry out horticultural research and provide advice and assistance to the irrigation industry.

As an assistant research officer Frith was engaged in experiments with horizontal wind fans to protect orchards against frost.

His job included outreach to community and industry groups reporting on the results of his research, which were the subject of a number of his early publications.

After matriculation Harry Frith studied Agricultural Science at Sydney University, completing the bachelor's degree in 1941.

After completing his degree at Sydney University Harry Frith enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in September 1941.

He was initially sent to the Middle East with the 6th Division, but returned to Australia in March 1942 when the division was redeployed to meet the threat of Japan's entry into the war.

In September 1942 the 6th Division was deployed to New Guinea to meet the southward advance of the Japanese Army towards Port Moresby.

In December Frith was posted to the 2/1st Anti-Tank Regiment within the 6th Division.

He took part in the Buna-Gona campaign when Australian and US forces sought to re-capture key Japanese beachheads on the northern coast of the Papuan Peninsula.

In April 1943 Frith was promoted to sergeant.

Harry Frith returned to Australia in October 1943 and on November 20 he married Dorothy Killeen at St Philip's Anglican church in the Sydney city-centre.

In September 1944 Frith was commissioned as a lieutenant and appointed as an inspector of food supplies at Land Headquarters in Melbourne.Harry Frith was discharged from the AIF in October 1945.

Harry and Dorothy Frith relocated to Griffith in the Riverina district of NSW after Harry gained a position as assistant works manager and technologist at the Griffith Cannery.

By May 1946, however, Frith had joined the Griffith Research Station run by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, later to become CSIRO) under Eric West.

In 1951 the officer-in-charge of the CSIRO Wildlife Survey section enlisted Harry Frith to assist with monitoring the spread of the newly released myxoma virus among rabbit populations.

Frith had found himself increasingly drawn to the diverse wildlife of the district and took this opportunity to make wildlife biology the focus of his research.

From 1951, working when he could in his own time separate from work, Harry Frith began to study the ecology and behaviour of the malleefowl.

He had located a small number of breeding birds in remnant mallee woodland on a farm 38 km north of Griffith (22 km south-west of Rankins Springs).

Frith documented the behaviour of the birds and the roles played by each sex.

He made observations and conducted experiments on the mounds of soil and fallen vegetation that the malleefowl used to incubate their eggs, with the male bird constantly monitoring the temperature and making adjustments to the mound.

In July 1952 he formally transferred to the Wildlife Survey section.

Frith's 'unofficial' work on the malleefowl was published in nine scientific papers published between 1955 and 1962.

His malleefowl research was "one of the first Australian ecological studies in which rigorous experiments were conducted in the field to test hypotheses".

Harry Frith was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), and prominent among those pressing for reform of the organisation in the late 1960s.

In 1962 Frith published his findings in a book intended for the general public, The Mallee-Fowl: The Bird that Builds an Incubator (1962), "which set the style for a new genre of books on Australian wildlife that combined scientific findings with a writing style that appealed to a wide public".

In 1963 the area of remnant mallee woodland in which Harry Frith studied the malleefowl was dedicated as a reserve comprising 145 hectares.

Isolated and surrounded by cleared farmland, Pulletop Nature Reserve is nowadays a refuge of natural habitat for many native species within the region.

He was Secretary-General of the 16th International Ornithological Congress held in Canberra in 1974.

Frith was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1974.

He was an Officer of the Order of Australia.