No flies on George: Australian pastoralists owe a great debt to this Hungarian-born, beetle-mad scientist

摘要

GEORGE BORNEMISSZA always believed he was destined to achieve something big, and he knew Australia was the country in which he would do it. "I felt that I had a kind of mission to find something important," he says. "I had no idea what it was, but I thought I would just expose myself to every experience and impression and see what was waiting for me." As it turned out, the entomologist's destiny lay in an old cow pat in a small paddock near Wooroloo, 60 km northeast of Perth. It was June, 1951. The Hungarian-born scientist had arrived in Perth six months earlier, seeking refuge from the repressive Soviet communist regime that gripped eastern Europe after World War II. He brought with him a doctorate in natural history from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a formidable knowledge of beetles, amassed from the age of seven, when he began scouring the forest near his hometown of Baja for "anything creepy-crawly". He spoke little English and was yet to find a use for his scientific expertise, but the instant he saw the cow pat, he knew he'd found his mission.