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Allan Riverstone McCullochPrint Page Print this page

05-May-2016
05-May-2016

Photographs supplied by Heather Saunders

The monument commemorates Ichthyologist and Entomologist, Allan Riverstone McCulloch (1885 - 1925).

Allan Riverstone McCulloch was regarded as one of the most accurate and talented systemic ichthyologists of his time. In 1906 McCulloch was appointed head of the vertebrates section at the Australian Museum, Sydney. Throughout his twenty-seven year career at the Museum, McCulloch went on several other expeditions where he collected insects and other creatures, as well as fish. His collections took place in New South Wales, the Great Barrier Reef and many of the islands off the Queensland coast, and at many Pacific Islands.

He also wrote numerous articles for the Museum`s Records and other journals such as the Australian Zoologist. In the latter journal he published the Check-list of the fish and fish-like animals of New South Wales (1919) which was later re-issued as the Australian Zoological Handbook No 1 (1922). McCulloch was also a talented photographer and draughtsman who contributed illustrations to several other publications. McCulloch spent much of his time recovering from ill health on Lord Howe Island. He was found dead in his room at the Colonial Hotel, Honolulu, on 1 September 1925 with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His ashes were interred in a tall granite column on Flagstaff Hill on his beloved Lord Howe Island. 

Additional advices have been received in Sydney concerning the death recently at Honolulu of Mr. Allan R. McCulloch, who was for many years a prominent member of the scientific staff of the Australian Museum. Mr. McCulloch went to Honolulu to take part in the Fisheries Conference, and took a leading part among those who were engaged in the work of the conference. The bulletin of the Pan-Pacific Union said that Mr. McCulloch was a staunch and faithful worker. Dr. David Starr Jordan, with whom Mr. McCulloch had conferred on fishery matters, stated that the latter was unquestionably the greatest authority on fish in the southern hemisphere, and one of the eight men in the world who really knew about fish.

He had just finished a splendid piece of work in the form of an argument and tentative agenda for the Pan Pacific Fisheries Conference, in which, among other things, he advocated the establishment of a great biological university. Mr. A. H. Ford, director of the Pan-Pacific Union, writing in the "Mid-Pacific Magazine", says that it is hoped that there may be established at the Pan-Pacific Research Institution a chair on taxonomy in memory of Mr. McCulloch, so that the plans for the completion of the work he dreamed of in the Pacific may be carried to completion.  Mr. McCulloch's friends and admirers in Sydney have set on foot a movement to have his ashes removed Lord Howe Island, where they propose to erect a monument to his memory.  More than any other spot he loved that little island, where he often spent his vacations. 
Sydney Morning Herald (NSW), 9 October 1925.

Location

Address:Lagoon Road , Flagstaff Hill, Signal Point, Lord Howe Island, 2898
State:NSW
Area:AUS
GPS Coordinates:Lat: -31.524707
Long: 159.059785
Note: GPS Coordinates are approximate.
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Details

Monument Type:Monument
Monument Theme:People
Sub-Theme:Science
Link:http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/adbonli…

Dedication

Front Inscription

In memory of Allan Riverstone McCulloch

Naturalist

1885 - 1925.

Erected by friends & fellow workers.

Source: MA,ADB
Monument details supplied by Monument Australia - www.monumentaustralia.org.au