Prof. David Goldney AM
Adjunct Professor David Charles Goldney AM, Doctor of Science (honoris causa), a Charles Sturt University, ISCAST Fellow, passed away on Thursday 15 August 2024.
David was the youngest of six children born in Adelaide, South Australia. His father was a Methodist Minister, and his mother was actively involved in fledgling women's movements. Growing up in a house filled with music and books, David developed a love for learning early on.
Significant contributions to science and education mark David's career. He completed his science degree at Adelaide University in 1962, majoring in botany and biochemistry, and later earned a Graduate Diploma in Education. After teaching for a year, he accepted a lectureship at Wattle Park Teachers' College.
In 1965, he married Joan Chapman. David and Joan are survived by two children, Alex and Jodie; their partners, Sandra and Stuart; and four grandchildren, Jenna, Finlae, Ben, and Jesse.
David's academic journey led him to the University of Queensland, where he earned first-class honours and a Commonwealth Postgraduate Scholarship for his doctoral studies. In 1972, he joined Mitchell College of Advanced Education (MCAE) in Bathurst as a science lecturer, initiating various research projects and involving student teachers in field ecology programs.
When MCAE became Charles Sturt University (CSU), David collaborated with postgraduate students and staff from various disciplines, forming research teams to explore the links between nature conservation and agriculture. He supervised numerous postgraduate and honours projects, led research teams, and engaged in major educational initiatives, conferences, and seminars.
Throughout the 1980s and beyond, David focused on the relationship between nature conservation and production agriculture, raising awareness about land degradation and biodiversity loss. His work led to the "Save the Bush Toolkit" in 1997. He conducted defining studies on the conservation values of the Central Western region and set up long-term vertebrate studies, including for platypus populations in diverse regions.
David was a great collaborator, working closely with various individuals and groups, and served as Deputy Chair of the Central West Catchment Management Committee. He received several accolades, including an Outstanding Contribution to Environmental Education award from the NSW Government in 1996. He was a member of many learned societies, served on editorial boards, and was the foundation head of the Environmental Studies Unit and an Associate Director and later Director from 1997-1999 of the Johnstone Centre. His extensive research and community engagement earned him a travelling fellowship to investigate the integration of nature conservation and production agriculture in North America, the UK, and Northern Europe.
In 2018, David was named in the Queen's Birthday Honours List and made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his significant service to tertiary education in environmental science and conservation. He was also a fellow of ISCAST and initiated the local chapter, inviting speakers from ISCAST to present at local events.
David was remembered fondly at his memorial service for his deep Christian faith, humility, and involvement with community groups like the Uniting Church, National Trust, and Amnesty International. He was praised for his significant contributions to ecological research in the Central West of NSW, collaborating closely with farmers, Landcare groups, and Aboriginal custodians.
David was described as a generous educator with a great sense of humour, and his ability to reconcile science with his faith was particularly noted. The Bathurst Campus of CSU flew their flags at half-mast on the day of his funeral to acknowledge his dedication to science and religion and his generosity and support for the community.
Greening Bathurst chair, Ashley Bland, said: "Prof. Goldney was ahead of the mainstream in his ability to reconcile science and religion. While his faith was highly important to him, so was his defence of proper science and the value of research, data testing and peer review.
"The environmental and faith-based communities in Bathurst will miss David. He was generous with time, knowledge, and financial support, and many of us will feel his absence a lot for a long time."
This tribute was written by Dr Brian Stone, ISCAST Associate, colleague, friend, and PhD student of Prof. David Goldney.
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Dr. Tracy Sorensen
Tracy Sorensen was a friend, an author, an activist and environmental campaigner, teacher, filmmaker, journalist, crafter. She worked at Arts OutWest as media officer 2004 -2005.
She was a generous, thoughtful, joyous, creative human being.
Tracy died on 5 May in Bathurst with her partner Steve, her mum Yvonne and her sister Deb with her.
Friends have described her as courageous, a ‘brilliant and generous teacher’, ‘a gifted writer and hardworking environmental activist’, ‘creative, so kind, so funny’, an expectational human being who made an enormous, welcome contribution to her community. She had an ‘exceptional mind and was a big thinker’ who communicated in a welcoming, inclusive way. She drew stories that helped people see into the issues that she advocated for. She was enjoyable to work with, and generously engaged with friends’ and colleagues’ work.
To many of us at Arts OutWest she was a friend we were so much richer for having in our world.
We proudly shared her quiet, humble joy at the publication of her novels. Her debut novel, The Lucky Galah (Picador, 2018), was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the UST Glenda Adams Award for New Writing (NSW Premier’s Literary Awards), the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2018 and longlisted for the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction 2019 and the Dublin Literary Award 2020.
Her second novel, The Vitals, was published by Picador/Pan Macmillan in 2023. Both novels played with giving voice to non-humans: The Lucky Galah is narrated by a pink and grey galah, and The Vitals is narrated by a middle-aged woman’s abdominal organs.
About The Vitals other authors wrote:
“The most original book about cancer ever written.” – Nick Horne.
“Tracy Sorensen writes and thinks like nobody else. We’re so lucky to have her.” Tegan Bennett Daylight.
“In her second novel, Tracy Sorensen took the worst experience of her life and turned it into a tragi-comic work of gobsmacking originality. The Vitals (2023) is a cancer ‘memoir’, in which the affected organs literally tell their story, one by one, after their idyllic lives are disrupted by a tumour called Baby. It’s a witty, surprising, self-compassionate and paradigm shifting work of creative imagination. Read it and you will never think of your own body the same way again.” Sian Prior (author, lecturer in Professional Writing and Editing RMIT in The Conversation ‘Best Australian books of the 21sy century: as chosen by 50 experts’).
Tracy Sorensen was born in Brisbane, grew up in Carnarvon on the coast of Western Australia and moved to Sydney in the 1980s, with a stint overseas and then Wollongong and the Blue Mountains. She moved to Bathurst in 2003 after meeting partner Steve Woodhall.
From early years as a member of the Socialist Workers Party in Perth and as an activist she became a journalist in Sydney for Direct Action and then Green Left Weekly in the 1980s and 90s.
In her role as media officer at Arts OutWest she travelled around the region to record and present the weekly Prime TV arts news segment. She returned as a casual staff member across the following years and produced short videos on projects like In Site Out.
She worked locally in Bathurst as a journalist, taught journalism at Charles Sturt University and taught media at TAFE.
As passionate crafter Tracy crocheted all her abdominal organs as a creative outlet while undergoing cancer treatment in 2014. She was most recently stitching creatures for an animated storyboard about Bathurst endangered species the Purple Copper Butterfly
As founder and initiator of craft-activism group The River Yarners her work was part of Arts OutWest’s While the World Waits touring exhibition (2022-24). She often made thoughtful pieces for Waste to Art. In 2008 she collaborated on Lost Arts of the 1970s, a multimedia installation at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.
Both a storyteller and a campaigner on environmental issues, her style was to very respectfully educate and enthuse, often using whimsy, to gently bring people with her in her passion for the planet and the local environment. Her activism work with Bathurst Community Climate Action Network included a long running column in the Western Advocate. In 2021 she was awarded Bathurst’s Jo Ross Memorial Award for her commitment to the local environment. That year she was also Bathurst’s nomination for NSW Environmental Citizen of the Year for her central role in fostering grassroots action on climate change and conservationism.
In 2019 Tracy received the $100,000 Judy Harris writer-in-residence fellowship, an annual grant given by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, which she use to research and develop The Vitals. She was given her own office inside the medical research institute; the specialists down the hall were only too keen to jump into the “creative playpen” with her.
Tracy Sorensen earnt a Phd in Creative Practice from Charles Sturt University where she was also a member of Charles Sturt University’s Creative Practice Circle . Her PhD thesis was on Handicraft and Storytelling in the Anthropocene. She officially became Dr Tracy Sorensen from Friday 2 February 2024. Her wider research interests included environmental communication, writing the more-than-human, and the role of handicrafts in storytelling.
A film maker, she was involved in the Warp TV community television initiative in Bathurst the 2000s. Her film work included a documentary on the Songs for Kate (2013) project in Forbes which led to involvement in the Big Skies Collaboration and anthology.
Tracy was often involved in the Bathurst Writers and Readers Festival as a panelist and interviewer. Her 2024 festival panel, and too the special local launch of The Vitals in 2023, at BMEC were packed with friends and fans and so very warmly received.
Tracy was diagnosed with the BRCA1 gene in 2010, and despite preventative surgery was diagnosed and treated for primary peritoneal cancer in 2014. There were 8 and a half years’ remission, with cancer returning on the eve of her second novel The Vitals being launched in 2023. The recurrence of cancer cut short plans to talk about the book on the wider literary circuit.
This account of Tracy's life and work was published by Arts Outwest in March, 2025.