Obituary: Richard Wallace Braithwaite, 6 July 1947 to 1 October 2016
2017; CSIRO Publishing; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1071/pcv23n1_ob
ISSN2204-4604
AutoresD. W. Saunders, Mark Lonsdale,
ResumoDick Snr) and Joyce (Joy) (nee ´Lusted) Braithwaite.His parents were both victims of the World War II prisoner-of-war atrocity now known as the Sandakan Death Marches.Between 1942 and 1945, members of the Imperial Japanese Army killed 2428 Australian and British soldiers captured during the fall of Singapore, the majority of whom were killed in 1945 when they were forced to march from Sandakan across Borneo to Ranau.Just before the war his mother married Wallace Blatch, who was killed during the second Sandakan Death March.Dick's father was one of only six survivors.Returning to Australia after the war, Dick Snr visited his friend Wallace's widow, and they subsequently married.Named after both his father and his mother's first husband, Dick was a 'walking war memorial', and the shadow his parents' war experiences cast over the family had a major impact on him, and his approach to life.His father categorized people into 'givers' and 'takers', and instilled into his children the need to be givers.Dick fitted clearly into his father's category of giver (Fig. 1).Dick attended Ipswich Grammar School, qualified as a teacher in 1966, and taught in Queensland from 1967-70.While teaching, he studied part-time at the University of Queensland, graduating at the end of 1970 with a BSc, majoring in zoology and botany.In 1971 he began his research career, studying full-time for a MSc, graduating in 1973 with a thesis titled An ecological study of Antechinus stuartii (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae).
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