Remembering Bob Carter A GSNZ Tribute

Remembering Bob Carter: A GSNZ Tribute 

9 March 1942 – 19 January 2016 

Photo source: Anne Carter 

Geoscience Society of New Zealand 

Newsletter 19A (Supplement) July 2016 

Compiler: Cam Nelson 

ISSN 1179-7983 (Print) 

ISSN 1179-7991 (Online)

Remembering Bob Carter: A Geoscience Society of NZ Tribute 

Contents 

Page 

Introduction - Cam Nelson (Compiler) ………………………………………………….. 2 

Tributes ...................................................................................................................... 4 

#1 Eulogy (24 January 2016) for Bob Carter, 1942-2016 - Bill Lindqvist 5 

#2 A supreme field geology mentor – Steve Abbott ............................... 8 

#3 Molluscan fossil collectors together – Alan Beu ……………………… 11 

#4 Temporarily being a petrophysicist - Greg Browne, Martin 

Crundwell , Craig Fulthorpe, Kathie Marsaglia ………………….…….. 13 

#5 A trilogy (A-C) of Bob Carter remembrances - Hamish Campbell …. 15 

#6 All at sea with Bob Carter - Lionel Carter .......................................... 20 

#7 Livening up geological discussions - Penny Cooke …………………. 21 

#8 A family of young academics - Alan Cooper ………………………….. 23 

#9 He sure made you think critically- Dave Craw ………………………... 24 

#10 He underpinned my career development - Barry Douglas ………….. 24 

#11 An influential Australasian ODP/IODP proponent - Neville Exon ...... 26 

#12 An insightful and inspirational geologist - Ewan Fordyce .................. 27 

#13 ‘Go-to’ person for A Continent on the Move - Ian Graham …………. 28 

#14 Two Bob Carter field stories - Bruce Hayward ……………………….. 29 

#15 An inspirational teacher and research mentor - Doug Haywick ……. 32 

#16 Evolution of JCU Marine Geophysics Laboratory - Mal Heron .......... 34 

#17 Tough field experiences - Fiona Hyden ............................................. 35 

#18 What a stimulating colleague - Chuck Landis ................................... 35 

#19 Spruce up your attire Piers! - Piers Larcombe .................................. 36 

#20 Bold ideas about New Zealand geology - Daphne Lee ..................... 38 

#21 Unstoppable, generous and legendary - Keith Lewis ……………….. 39 

#22 The wilds of Westland and Fiordland - Jon Lindqvist ……………….. 41 

#23 A masterful writer and editor - David Lowe …………………………… 42 

#24 ODP Leg 181 Co-Chiefs - Nick McCave …………………………….... 43 

#25 Partners in crime in Whanganui Basin - Tim Naish ........................... 45 

#26 Sailing with Bob - Helen Neil …………………………………………… 47 

#27 An exceptional sedimentary/marine geologist - Cam Nelson ………. 48 

#28 What a stimulating collaborator - Richard Norris …………………….. 50 

#29 Architect of JCU’s Marine Geophysics Laboratory - Alan Orpin …… 51 

#30 A quiet beer or two - Brad Pillans ...................................................... 52 

#31 The global warming issue - Ian Plimer ………………………………… 53 

#32 An incomparable teacher and communicator - John Rhodes ………. 56 

#33 Advancing Great Barrier Reef shelf sedimentology - Peter Ridd …... 57 

#34 ’Climate skeptics’ together - Gerrit van der Lingen ............................ 58 

Publications of Bob Carter – Cam Nelson ……………………………………………… 61 

Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………… 73 

Geoscience Society of New Zealand 1

Introduction 

Cam Nelson (Compiler) 

School of Science, University of Waikato 

Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand 3240 

c.nelson@waikato.ac.nz 

New Zealand (NZ), Australian and many other geoscientists were saddened to learn 

of the sudden death of Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter in Townsville on 19 January 

2016. During his long teaching and research career, based first at the University of 

Otago (Dunedin 1968-1980) and later at or associated with James Cook University 

(Townsville 1981-2013). Undeniably, Bob made significant contributions in advancing 

our knowledge and understanding of many aspects of the geosciences in New 

Zealand and the wider SW Pacific region, especially in the fields of paleontology and 

paleoecology, stratigraphy and paleoenvironments, marine geology and 

paleoceanography, and environmental and climate change science. 

Bob always maintained a very close association with the Geoscience Society of NZ 

(GSNZ), including as a long-time member and frequent annual conference attendee, 

as organiser and leader of several NZ field trips, through the supervision of many 

postgraduate research students on NZ projects, as a prolific publisher of peerreviewed 

papers on NZ geosciences, including being a major contributing author to 

the Society’s recent monograph A Continent on the Move, as the Society’s 

Hochstetter Lecturer in 1975, as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ since 

1997, and as a member/leader of 12 scientific research cruises in NZ waters, 

including notably as Co-Chief Scientist on ODP Leg 181 (Southwest Pacific 

Gateway) in 1998. In appreciation of these remarkable contributions to NZ and SW 

Pacific geosciences, and with my prompting, the Society approved the preparation of 

this special GSNZ Newsletter Supplement dedicated to Bob Carter. 

I agreed to act as the Compiler of the Supplement. Colleagues, students and friends 

of Bob, past and present, in NZ, Australia and elsewhere, were invited by email or 

advertisement [GSNZ Newsletter 18 (2016), p. 29] to submit some personal 

recollections about Bob for publication in the Supplement. By deadline, 34 

contributions had been received and, with typically only a small amount of editing to 

maintain some consistency in content, style and format, they follow this Introduction. 

Most will know that over the past decade or more Bob became heavily involved in 

researching and debating climate science issues, and he refused to accept the idea 

of any major influence by humans on global warming. His significant contributions in 

this regard are well documented on The Heartland Institute website which, following 

his death, also hosted many tributes for Bob from climate colleagues all over the 

world (see https://www.heartland.org/robert-m-carter). In comparison, the tributes 

appearing here for Bob focus more on his contributions to NZ, Australian (especially 

Great Barrier Reef shelf) and the wider Southwest Pacific geosciences field, but 

nevertheless do include some documenting his climate-related work. 

Bob’s CV and professional work history are already well documented online at 

http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_3.htm, and again by Wikipedia at 

2 Issue 19A Supplement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter, where interested readers can get 

further specific information. Using these sources, as well as personal contacts, I have 

produced a biographical synopsis for Bob Carter in Table 1 that provides a summary 

background and context for several of the articles appearing in the Supplement. 

Table 1 - Biographical synopsis for Bob Carter. 

Full name 

Robert Merlin Carter 

Born 

9 March 1942, Reading, England 

Died 19 January 2016, Townsville, Australia (aged 73) 

Usual first name Bob 

Citizenship 

British, Australian 

Nationality 

English 

Emigration To New Zealand (NZ) in 1956; to Australia in 1981 

Secondary education Roysses Grammar School, Abingdon, UK (1952-1955) 

Lindisfarne College, Hastings, NZ (1956-1959) 

Married Anne Catherine (nee Verngreen) in 1964 

Children Susan (born 1969) 

Jeremy (born 1972) 

Degrees * BSc(Hons First Class) in Geology, Otago, NZ 1963 

* PhD in Paleontology, Cambridge, UK 1968 

PhD thesis The Functional Morphology of Bivalved Mollusca (1968) 

Main career positions * Assistant Lecturer, University of Otago, NZ (1963-1964) 

* PhD research, University of Cambridge, UK (1965-1967) 

* Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, University of Otago, NZ (1968-1980) 

* Professor/Head of Department of Geology, James Cook 

University, Townsville, Australia (1981-1999) 

* Adjunct Research Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, 

James Cook University, Townsville, Australia (1999-2013) 

* Adjunct Research Professor, Geology & Geophysics, University 

of Adelaide, Australia (2000-2005) 

* Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs (IPA, Melbourne) 

(2010-2013) 

Main research fields Cenozoic paleontology and paleoecology, stratigraphy and 

paleoenvironments, marine geology and paleoceanography, and 

sea-level and climate change science 

Research cruises >15, mainly in NZ and Queensland waters (e.g. Fig. 1) 

Some committee and * Member then Chair, Earth Sciences Discipline Panel of 

other positions Australian Research Council (ARC) (1987-1992) 

* Chair, Australian Marine Sciences and Technologies Advisory 

Committee (AMSTAC) (1996-?) 

* Director, Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) 

(1995-1997) 

* Co-Chief Scientist, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 181 

(Southwest Pacific Gateways) (1998) 

* Chief Science Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition 

(ICSC) (2007-2016) 

* Scientific Advisor, Science and Public Policy Institute, 

Washington (2007-2016) 

* Director, Australian Environment Fdn, Melbourne (2011-2015) 

* Expert witness and invited speaker on many occasions in several 

countries on geological and especially climate science issues 


Table 1 (Continued) 

Some awards 

Some Society 

memberships 

* Commonwealth Scholarship, British Council, University of 

Cambridge, UK (1964-1967) 

* Nuffield Fellow, University of Oxford, UK (1974) 

* Hochstetter Lecturer, Geological (now Geoscience) Society of 

New Zealand (1975) 

* Bennison Distinguished Overseas Lecturer, American 

Association of Petroleum Geologists (1992) 

* Honorary Fellow, Royal Society of New Zealand (1997) 

* Special Investigator Research Award, Australian Research 

Council (1998) 

* Outstanding Research Career, marine geology, GSNZ (2005) 

* Lifetime Achievement Award, Heartland Institute, USA (2015) 

* Geological (now Geoscience) Society of New Zealand (GSNZ) 

* Geological Society of Australia (GSA) 

* Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) 

* Geological Society of America (GSA) 

* American Geophysical Union (AGU) 

* American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) 

* Society of Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) 

* New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) 

Publications * 137 peer-reviewed scientific articles (1965-2015) 

* 2 books and 6 major reports on ‘climate change’ (since 2010) 

* Numerous conference presentations/abstracts (1965-2015) 

* 266 newspaper/popular articles (mainly since 2002) 

* 25 radio interviews (mainly since 2002) 

* 21 video presentations (mainly since 2002) 

Fig.1. Bob reviewing some core 

logs on the JOIDES Resolution 

IODP Expedition 317 off eastern 

South Island, New Zealand in 

late 2009. Photo source: William 

Crawford, IODP. 

Tributes 

The following personal tributes for Bob Carter (#1 - #34) have been arranged in 

alphabetical order of the surnames of contributors, except that the eulogy given at 

Bob’s funeral by Bill Lindqvist, Bob’s brother-in-law, has been placed first as it covers 

many facets of Bob’s life. 


#1 - Eulogy (24 January 2016) for Bob Carter, 1942-2016 

Bill Lindqvist (Bob’s brother-in-law) 

3 Cazadero Lane, Tiburon 

California 94920, USA 

william_lindqvist@yahoo.com 

I first met Bob some 53 years ago. The year was 1962. He was a 3 rd year honours 

geology student at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand, and I was doing 1 st 

year geology as part of a mining engineering degree. 

I soon got to know Bob quite well since, being one of the most dynamic and 

enthusiastic of the senior students, he was asked to assist the teaching staff on 1 st 

year geological field trips. One early memory is that Bob, in addition to his geological 

skills, was able to roll cigarettes with one hand while driving the departmental land 

rover with the other. 

It was obvious early on that Bob had a passion for fieldwork on soft rocks and fossils 

and this was a love that never left him. 

And talking of love, Bob began courting a beautiful young arts student from 

Invercargill with the name of Anne Verngreen. And as luck would have it and quite 

independently, I started courting an equally striking young science student with the 

name of Helen Verngreen – Anne’s younger sister. 

Bob and Anne graduated in 1963 and shortly thereafter married. A few months later 

they set off for England where Bob, with a Commonwealth Scholarship tucked in his 

pocket, started a PhD on Functional Studies of Bivalvia at Cambridge. Anne took a 

teaching job at the Bell School of Languages to help keep Bob in red wine. 

Meanwhile Helen and I graduated and also married and two years later we arrived in 

London where I started a PhD at Imperial College. It wasn’t long before we met up 

with the Carters again. 

A deciding moment, or I should say deciding month, came along as the four of us 

embarked on a four week long camping trip to Scandinavia. Needless to say we all 

got along swimmingly and this experience cemented a close and valued friendship 

that has continued to this day. 

We have several memories of this trip and here is one. It was in a forest in southern 

Sweden infested with hordes of tiny biting flies known as ‘noseums’. Bob and I, being 

true gentlemen, retreated to the tents to smoke and drink beer in a valiant attempt to 

keep flies at bay – while the ladies stayed outside to cook dinner surrounded by 

clouds of the nipping insects. We never quite lived that down. 

After Cambridge, Bob and Anne returned to Otago University in Dunedin where Bob 

was appointed to a lectureship in Geology, and in the years that followed two bright 

young children came along – first Susan and then Jeremy. 


And so our lives diverged once again. I became an exploration geologist in the 

mining industry, started work in the UK and in the early 1970s we moved to the USA. 

Along the way Helen and I also came up with two children in the same order – first a 

daughter and then a son. 

Over the decades that followed we shared many adventures and family gatherings 

with the Carters – in New Zealand, Australia and the States, and on several 

occasions we had the three sisters – Anne, Helen and Clare - present with their 

families. Bob liked to refer to the sister trio as “The Three Graces” – which of course 

they all lapped up. 

During one visit by the Carters to Denver, where we lived at the time, Bob and I 

spent an exciting day looking at the spectacular geology along the Front Range of 

the Rockies. But on the drive home we were stopped by the county sheriff amidst a 

flurry of sirens and flashing lights, ordered out at gun point and told to stand at the 

back of the car with our arms raised high while they searched the vehicle. Fifteen 

minutes later we were told to stand down since they had nabbed the bearded purse 

snatcher at the same quarry where we had looked at the rocks. Two innocent but 

frightened geologists breathed a sigh of relief and headed home for a stiff, single 

malt scotch. 

Bob was a great travelling companion and he was a huge fund of knowledge whether 

it be sports, arts, politics, science or gadgets. He and I had an easy going 

relationship and were frequently bragging and debating as to whom had the longer 

telephoto lens, whose binoculars were better, who was the better birder (he won 

hands down), pcs versus macs, who had the best single malts (I won that one) and 

other subjects that are not appropriate to mention here. 

He also liked to quip that I was the Economic Geologist while he had to settle for 

being the family Uneconomic Geologist. 

Bob had a very distinguished teaching career at Otago University (NZ) and later 

James Cook University (Queensland) which spanned some 35 years. And not 

surprisingly he left his mark for the better at both institutions. 

Bob always retained a passion for fieldwork but his own interests broadened and 

expanded with time especially into Marine Science. He participated in several 

scientific cruises both in New Zealand waters overlying the continental shelf with NZ 

based groups and in the southern Pacific with the big time Ocean Drilling Program 

research ships funded by the USA (e.g. Figs 1, 2). 

Over the last 15 years, as we all know, he has been increasingly involved with 

climate science and the climate record, both recent and historic, much to the chagrin 

of the believers and large segments of the academic community that preach free 

speech and tolerance but act otherwise. 

Whatever Bob tackled, he did so with gusto and focus and incredibly hard work – and 

he invariably excelled. But somehow he always made time for home projects 

including his recent marathon genealogy study covering all sides of the family. 


Fig. 2. Bob and Xuan Ding sampling sediment core on IODP Expedition 317 of the 

JOIDES Resolution in 2009 off the Canterbury coast, New Zealand. Photo source: 

William Crawford of IODP. 

Fig. 3. Bob in field mode against a backdrop of Paleogene Red Bluff Tuff in northern 

Chatham Island, offshore eastern South Island, 2008. Photo source: Bill Lindqvist. 

However, without the dedicated help and support from his loving wife Anne, Bob’s 

endeavours may not have reached the heights we have witnessed. Anne often 


ecounts the many times she was on her hands and knees bagging and labelling 

fossil specimens in such exotic locations as vineyards in France, precipitous slopes 

in the Dolomite mountains in Italy and hot, dusty deserts in Turkey. Anne’s knees tell 

the story! 

Over his 50-year career of teaching, research, lecturing and academic leadership, 

Bob has travelled the world, often with Anne and their two children (when they were 

younger) by his side. He has studied, done field research and/or lectured in Australia 

and New Zealand (e.g. Fig. 3), the UK and most of Europe, North and southern 

Africa, parts of the Middle East and Asia (including Japan and China), Antarctica and 

across the USA and Canada. His scientific papers are almost endless and he wrote 

and had published two climate books to boot. What energy that man had! 

Not many of you may know that at the tender age of 21 he joined a scientific 

expedition to Pitcairn Island and was the first ever geologist to map that remote 

terrain. Rumor has it that he also acted as part-time cook on the island. That’s Bob 

Carter! 

Over the years Bob has mentored hundreds of students, has been honoured with 

many awards and, judging by the avalanche of tributes that have come in following 

his death, he is renowned, respected and loved across the globe. 

Helen and I accompanied Bob and Anne to three International Climate Conferences 

in recent years where we witnessed first-hand Bob’s extraordinary reputation 

amongst his peers. At the Heartland Climate Conference in Washington DC in June 

2015 he received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. That was quite an 

emotional evening for us all. 

To sum up, Bob has had a distinguished and very productive academic career, 

supported by Anne and family, and as our brother-in-law and long time friend and the 

uncle to our children, he has always been a stimulating companion and mentor. Our 

eight year old grandson likes to call Bob “Uncle Fossil”. 

His family, relatives and friends will all hugely miss Bob’s quick wit, the twinkle in his 

eye, his mischievous grin, his infectious laugh, his generosity and gentle nature, his 

sense of fairness and, above all, the sheer pleasure of his company. 

#2 - A supreme field geology mentor 

Steve Abbott 

Geoscience Australia 

GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia 

steve.abbott@ga.gov.au 

My involvement with Bob began in 1987 at James Cook University (JCU) when I was 

a newly arrived student in search of a PhD project. I recall meeting a welcoming, 

although slightly officious, individual whose appearance (walk shorts, long socks and 

immaculately groomed beard) contrasted with the colourful tee shirt and jandals 


world of the tropical JCU campus. On a number of occasions I was summonsed to 

Bob’s office with its distinctive décor (masonry block with a hint of Cambridge). There 

he could be found tapping away on his new 286 personal computer as if playing a 

piano accompaniment to the classical music playing in the background, replete with 

punctuational flourishes. 

I settled on my PhD project when Bob showed me cross-sections of the coastal 

Castlecliff section in Charles Fleming’s Bulletin 52 on the Whanganui Subdivision. At 

that point he sent me away with his copy of Bulletin 52, a copy of Menard’s Science: 

Growth and Change, and touch typing tutorial software. He more or less told me not 

to come back until I had mastered the latter! I arrived at JCU as Bob was developing 

a research programme on the sequence stratigraphy of the New Zealand Plio- 

Pleistocene and resuming his passion for New Zealand field geology. 

By the mid-1980s Bob recognised that the Plio-Pleistocene basins of New Zealand 

presented an opportunity to contribute to the rapidly developing sub-discipline of 

sequence stratigraphy. A prominent school of thought controversially asserted, in the 

absence of compelling evidence, that eustasy was the main control on sequence 

development. Bob would gleefully point out at every opportunity that Plio-Pleistocene 

strata provided a true test of sequence stratigraphic principles because, rather than 

assumed, the glacioeustatic control on strata of this age had been established 

independently from oxygen isotope studies of deep-sea cores. 

The research programme ran for about a decade and a half and was initially based 

around PhD projects in the Hawke’s Bay (Doug Haywick), Whanganui (Gordon Saul 

and I), and Wairarapa (Paul Gammon) basins. Bob enjoyed renewing his interaction 

with the New Zealand Geoscience community including Brad Pillans (stratigraphy), 

Alan Beu (molluscs and stratigraphy), Norcott Hornibrook (forams), and Ian Graham 

(Be isotope stratigraphy). Along the way there were numerous journal articles 

published as well as a Geological Society of NZ conference field trip, field 

workshops, a visit to JCU by ESSO Distinguished Lecturer Peter Vail (a co-inventor 

of sequence stratigraphy), Bob’s AAPG Distinguished Lecturer tour, and poster 

presentations at the 1996 AGU meeting in San Francisco. In the late 1990s Tim 

Naish (then a JCU Post-Doctoral Fellow), led the synthesis of the Whanganui Basin 

work that culminated in a series of papers that presented an integrated 

cyclostratigraphy for the basin. The New Zealand outcrop work conceived and 

overseen by Bob continues to be well cited in the sequence stratigraphic and 

Quaternary science literature. 

Some of my fond memories of Bob derive from my orientation tour of the Whanganui 

Basin. Our road trip around the Whanganui hinterland and Castlecliff coast included 

key geological sites from Bulletin 52 and a visit to Bob’s Honours field area in the 

Pohangina Valley. During our travels I received instruction on everything from 

terraces and lahars to the features of Maori Pa sites, all to the soundtrack of 

classical music from the car stereo. Book shops, bakeries, antique shops and corner 

shops called dairies, and a special type of sandwich called a “jammie”, rounded out 

my introduction to the New Zealand fieldwork experience. 


Fig. 4. Bob (white cap at top), while precariously perched, professing the 

paleoecological and sequence stratigraphic significance of the Tainui Shellbed, 

Castlecliff coast section, Whanganui, on a Geological Society of NZ field trip, 

November 1991. Photo source: Steve Abbott. 

Fig. 5. Bob pointing to the rootlet bed and erosion surface (NC11 sequence 

boundary) between the Middle Maxwell Formation and Mangahou Siltstone, 

Nukumaru coast section, Whanganui, 2003. Photo source: Steve Abbott. 


During that orientation trip and subsequent fieldwork Bob’s endless enthusiasm for 

stratigraphy and fossils was always on display. He could hardly contain the 

excitement of scrutinising the ecosystem of a shellbed (Fig. 4), documenting a 

sequence bounding unconformity (Fig. 5), liberating a delicate Poirieria with all of its 

spines intact, or diagnosing a beach environment of deposition from a bed of 

Paphies to the refrain of “because that is where it lives today on the beach behind 

you!” 

Bob’s formal university persona melted away in the field to reveal his warm soul and 

(at times disconcertingly wicked) sense of humour. He was a generous mentor who 

not only guided his students through the various stages of their studies, but taught us 

by example the powers of observation and critical thought (including in his role as a 

peerless devil’s advocate). It is satisfying to reflect on how we produced such an 

important contribution to sequence stratigraphy based on careful field observations 

recorded with a pencil, notebook, and camera (actually two 35 mm SLR cameras, 

one for colour slides and the other for black and white prints). 

#3 - Molluscan fossil collectors together 

Alan Beu 

GNS Science 

PO Box 30368, Lower Hutt, New Zealand 5040 

a.beu@gns.cri.nz 

My first memory of Bob was a long time ago – in January 1963. While starting a 

degree at Victoria University, Wellington, I worked as Professor Bob Clark’s “lab boy” 

in the Geology Department, with the grand salary of £300 per year, and felt flush 

enough to buy a little Morris Minor. Over the Christmas holidays Graeme Wilson and 

I set off to collect fossils around much of the North Island. At Te Piki – with very 

diverse Haweran molluscs in a cutting on the road between Waihau Bay and Hicks 

Bay, East Cape – I was happily collecting molluscs and Graeme was collecting the 

dinoflagellate samples that allowed him to become an early expert in the group. Up 

rattled a tiny Morris 8, and out got a chap who introduced himself as Bob Carter. He 

was working for Charles Fleming in Paleontology, NZ Geological Survey, over the 

university recess, and decided to visit the remote Te Piki locality while he was up in 

the North Island. He was dismayed to see us there before him, assumed all the 

useful fossils had been collected, shared a beer or two, and then drove on. It was the 

beginning of a long but very friendly philosophical tussle between Bob and me about 

the interpretation of fossils, whether we need New Zealand stages, how stages 

should be defined, and so on, throughout the rest of our careers. 

Much later Bob introduced us all in GNS Science to the power of sequence 

stratigraphy and the poverty of the “global sea-level curve”, in a course he held (with 

the aid of some of his students such as Steve Abbott) in a rough little motel near the 

beach at the north end of Castlecliff, Whanganui, handy to real examples. Bob was 

one of the most accomplished lecturers I ever met, with flair and skill, and impressed 

me with little “extras” such as leaving an obvious question out of the talk, and then 


having an extra slide ready to answer the question when someone in the audience 

raised it. The course was as enjoyable as it was illuminating. Ironically, Bob later 

recalled to me an event when he was at Cambridge carrying out his PhD in 

paleontology on bivalve form and function under Martin Rudwick during 1965–1967. 

He was invited to a party held in the flat of a student who he later realised was Nick 

Shackleton. A long graph on endless A4 sheets of paper had been pinned up around 

the tops of the walls of the flat. This was the original data for Shackleton’s paradigmchanging 

paper on Milankovitch cycles in core V28-238 (Shackleton & Opdyke 

1973). The party was to celebrate the completion of the lab work for the fundamental 

rewriting of all our concepts of climate and sea-level cyclicity, the timescale of the 

Pleistocene and the development of sequence stratigraphy, although its significance 

was completely lost on Bob at the time! 

More recent reminiscences are of the Chatham Islands, where we both took part in 

Hamish Campbell’s CHEARS expeditions for several years. One year, Bob and I 

walked along the north coast of Chatham Island westwards from Cape Young so I 

could show him the Tioriori Paleocene succession, with its dinosaur remains and 

other interesting fossils. While walking along the cliff edge, we encountered a lone 

crested penguin chick sitting by itself in the sun. It was nearly fully fledged, with 

brilliant yellow crests well developed on its temples, but still with grey down around 

its neck. Bob got up really close to photograph it, but it gave out such a sudden, 

immensely loud braying noise that we both nearly fell over! It is the only such large 

penguin we ever encountered in the Chathams. We went on and examined the 

Tioriori section, where it was interesting to see Bob struggle to fit the stratigraphy 

into his preconceived ideas of sequences in the early Cenozoic succession in the 

eastern South Island – he assured me he had managed it. 

The outlying islands are some of the most interesting Chathams localities to visit. 

Bob became quite an ornithologist in later life, and his main interest was to see the 

rare birds. On Mangere Island he spent a lot of time photographing the red-crowned 

parakeets that are so abundant there, but nowhere else. He was also very solicitous 

about a Chatham Islands snipe that was nesting not far behind the hut, right on the 

edge of the track, where it was passed several times each day by all seven members 

of our party. The snipe was obviously put out by all the attention, and seemed as if it 

might leave its nest, but in the end it stayed, because Bob pointed out that we should 

be quiet near it. Bob and I both struggled with the climb up to the summit plateau of 

Mangere (287 m straight up! – or so it seemed) but lying about in the flax on the 

plateau, with that incredible view to Pitt Island and all the southern islets, made it all 

worthwhile. As we were a little low on food there, Bob excelled himself with his 

culinary flare, concocting a curious mixture of soups and “dehi” one evening from the 

DOC emergency supplies, to everyone’s enjoyment. We even found some useful 

fossils! – including scallops in blocks of Onoua Limestone that had come up through 

the Mangere Island volcano and lay around on the beach. We always had a hilarious 

time with Bob along, with endless semi-serious discussions – about almost any 

subject you can think of, not only geology – with Bob acting as devil’s advocate and 

pointing out why what we suggested was complete nonsense. His excellent 

knowledge of molluscs meant that he and I always had a similar interest in 

Chathams stratigraphy and fossils, such as collecting molluscs together from 

Titirangi Sand at Lake Te Wapu, near Kaingaroa, at an outcrop discovered by Kat 

Holt and Deb Crowley in 2009 (Fig. 6). But Bob always thought about the wider 


scientific context, and would be trying to extract a story about Pleistocene sea-levels 

out of vague slope changes behind the outcrop, etc., as well as studying the obvious 

lithostratigraphy. We always had richly enjoyable times when Bob was along, and I 

will remember them always as fondly as I will Bob. 

Fig. 6. Bob examining a molluscan shellbed in the Pleistocene Titirangi Shellbed 

Formation, NE Chatham Island, SW Pacific, 2011. Photo source: Bill Lindqvist. 

#4 – Temporarily being a petrophysicist 

Greg Browne 1 , Martin Crundwell 1 , Craig Fulthorpe 2 , Kathie Marsaglia 3 

1 

GNS Science 

2 

Instit. Geophysics 

3 

Geol Sciences 

Lower Hutt, New Zealand Univ Texas, USA Calif State Univ, USA 

g.browne@gns.cri.nz, m.crundwell@gns.cri.nz, craig@ig.utexas.edu, kathie.marsaglia@scun.edu 

Expedition 317 in late 2009 and early 2010 to the Canterbury margin was Bob’s last 

voyage on the JOIDES Resolution and his last formal involvement with IODP 

operations. He had of course been involved with previous deep water drilling 

expeditions, especially ODP 181. But unlike that voyage Bob’s involvement on 

Expedition 317 was not as a Co-Chief Scientist. However, Expedition 317 derived 

from research led by Bob many years before and he wrote the earliest version of the 

IODP proposal. Bob did not sail as a sedimentologist, or paleontologist, as might be 

expected, but rather as a scientist working on physical properties (Fig. 7). 

Petrophysics was a new area for Bob but such was his interest in learning new 

things in science. Bob contributed hugely to this expedition with his tireless energy, 

experience and expertise, his probing questions at the daily science meetings, and 


his generosity in helping others out. How could you forget the light-coloured shorts, 

his grey or white coloured long socks, and the hand-lens around the neck! He had an 

incredible ability to recall facts and publication details. He performed many roles in 

addition to undertaking the petrophysical measurements while on board (e.g. Fig. 2), 

most notably his identification of macrofossils when such material was recovered in 

the cores, his advice to younger scientists, and involvement with media 

engagements. Bob would commonly predict what we were going to drill into next, 

coming up with the first interpretation of the well logs, relating the sediment on the 

description table to the seismic, and using his knowledge of Whanganui stratigraphy 

to predict the next cycle boundary! 

Following Expedition 317 Bob continued to remain in contact, and performed a major 

role in helping to organise the post-cruise workshop field trip to Canterbury and 

Oamaru, enjoying visiting locations in South Canterbury such as Otaio River which 

he had not frequented for many years. He will be remembered for his wit and 

humour, his thought provoking thinking, even if not always accepted by all, his ability 

to consider issues outside-the-box, his respect for others, and his energy and drive 

in science. It was a huge surprise therefore that we learned of Bob’s passing, and he 

will be remembered with fond memories by all of us on Expedition 317. 

Fig. 7. Bob analysing the physical properties of a sediment core on IODP Expedition 

317 of the JOIDES Resolution off eastern South Island in late 2009. Photo source: 

William Crawford, IODP. 


#5 - A trilogy (A-C) of Bob Carter remembrances 

Hamish Campbell 

GNS Science 


h.campbell@gns.cri.nz 

(A) Robert Merlin Carter: Strong on ‘Getting a grip’ 

That middle name is so apt. He was a highly energised trick, just such fun to be with, 

full of surprises and always generous in thought, spirit and kind. Here is one of my 

early memories of Bob. 

There is probably a law concerning defacement of railway property but on 31 May 

1962, Bob did it big time. He would have researched the matter to the nth degree, 

have organised a team of willing fully-briefed fellow student associates and then 

executed the project with split-second precision (probably with musical 

accompaniment), commencing operations within a minute of the Bluff to Lyttleton 

Express arriving at Dunedin Station. Our family was on its way to England for a 

sabbatical year by ship (Rangitiki) from Wellington. Pretty much the entire Otago 

University Geology Department was on the platform to see us off. There were 

speeches. Bob gave a farewell speech on behalf of the students and presented my 

father JD (Doug) Campbell, with a magnificent parting gift: an expensive new watch. 

It was then time to board the train and find our seats. I was just 9 and my brother 

Neil 7, Joanna just 5 and Rosemary almost 3. Imagine our astonishment when we 

discovered head and shoulder portrait photographs of our father neatly sellotaped to 

every single window in every carriage on the train! Furthermore, there were two 

photos back to back so Dad’s smiling face beamed both inward and outward of the 

glass. Every photo was perfectly aligned and the sellotape was the strongest 

industrial-strength adhesive on the market. Bob was always fastidious with 

presentation. There was little prospect of removing these photos. My father would 

have been mortified on the one hand, tickled pink on the other. He knew Bob better 

than Bob new himself, but the platform antics were so powerful that Dad’s vigilance 

must have been compromised. 

I say this because within 5 minutes of the express departing, my parents established 

that one piece of luggage, the ‘pig skin grip’, was missing. It contained essentials 

such as shaving gear, medicines and contraceptives. This was serious. Dad was 

coerced by my mother (…of course, and rightly so; she was a chronic asthmatic with 

no need of further children*...) into pulling the emergency stop. The express came to 

a halt near St Leonards. The ever so slightly irritated Guard decided that a message 

could be sent from Port Chalmers station. Who to? Bob. Who else? It was ringleader 

Bob and associates who had failed to load the grip on the train. Besides, Bob 

was a natural leader of men and totally reliable. The message eventually got 

through. The bag was found in the Lost Property office and extricated. The next 

problem was how to get it to Lyttleton and the interisland ferry prior to its over-night 

sailing that evening? Whatever transpired, it failed. So, the next challenge was to 

transport the grip to Wellington from Lyttleton over-night so as to connect in time with 

the Rangitiki prior to its departure at 10:30 am on 1 June. A small plane was 


involved. But my father had to go to Wellington Airport to collect the grip and, as a 

consequence, he was the last person to run up the gangway moments prior to 

departure. Some of us never recovered from this emotional trauma. On discussing it 

with Bob he was always dismissive, as if it was of no great consequence. He would 

say: ‘So what? That is what life is about surely! And besides, it all ended happily.’ 

[*We left England bound for New Zealand on the Himalaya, departing 7 May 1963, 

with new baby Fergus aged 2 months.] 

(B) Being on time with Bob 

As a child, I remember going on my first one-day field trip with Bob and my father 

(Doug Campbell) to Oamaru. I was about 11, so it probably was in 1964. Specifically, 

we went to search and collect a shell-bed at Target Gully. As I recall it was a 

disappointment. The famous locality had been highly modified by farming practice 

and there was little outcrop available for fossil collecting. There was much animated 

discussion about the significance of this predicament because it is (or was) an 

important type locality. We travelled in Bob’s Morris 8. He would have been dressed 

for the part, closely resembling Toad of Toad Hall. I recall being anxious on our way 

home because I had a 5:30 pm swimming lesson at the Dunedin Municipal Pool in 

Moray Place. Bob assured me we would make it in plenty of time. However, we only 

just made it. The road had been washed out at the ‘big dip’ between the top of the 

‘new’ motorway over Mount Cargill and Pigeon Flat. It seemed to take us ages to 

inch our way through. Bob delivered me with panache at precisely 5:30 with the 

exclamation: “There you are! I told you we would be on time.” That may be so but I 

still received the full wrath of the swimming instructor for not being in the water at 

exactly 5:30! Timing is everything. 

I commenced my BSc (Hons) in geology at Otago University (OU) in 1971, and Bob 

was one of my lecturers, spanning five years (I took a ‘gap’ year in 1974). At the 

beginning of my 3 rd year, in early 1973, I was a field assistant to Chris Badger, doing 

a 4 th year honours project in the head of Edwardson Sound, Fiordland. It so 

happened that Bob was the master-mind of a multi-faceted project in SW Fiordland 

that summer using the OU research vessel Munida. Some others involved were John 

Begg as a field assistant to another 4 th year, Gary Post. After a false start on board 

the Munida from Dunedin (the alternator packed up off the coast of Brighton…), 

Chris and I were flown in to Fiordland by float-plane from Te Anau. We did so on a 

superb summer’s day. Our only one! It started raining the next day and stayed that 

way forever after. About 10 days later, now with a dead radio and virtually no food, a 

naked Bob Carter suddenly appeared at our tent door. By way of explanation he said 

that ‘clothes are pointless in this rain’ (he was always best-dressed). Our great 

mentor and leader, and the Munida, had miraculously found us! They were only a 

week late. 

Chris abandoned that project. After all, we had only found one rock (float) in 12 days. 

He was given another project area on Chalky. Meanwhile I spent some days on the 

Munida helping Bob and John Coggon with a magnetic survey chasing the Last 

Cove Fault. It took us a long time to figure out that the crazy data we were collecting 

was entirely due to Bob’s pragmatism: he had carefully screwed on a metal handle to 

the fibre-glass ‘torpedo’ housing for the magnetometer so as to make life easy 


deploying it. Not much came out of this Fiordland campaign. It was bad timing and 

bad luck. 

At the beginning of 1975, I was now field assisting for Bruce Houghton in the 

Takitimus. He and I were delivered to the Wairaki Hut by Bob on one of his many 

field trips exploring the Waiau Basin. After a very long demanding drive from 

Dunedin in the OU Geology Department short-wheel-base Landrover, Bob reached 

the end of his tether and declared that he was ‘taking us no further’. He leapt out and 

opened the back door thus releasing all three dozen eggs that had been perched as 

fragile items on top of all else. The whole lot was smashed. Hence that low hill to the 

immediate west of the Tin Hut Fault Zone and Wairaki River is affectionately known 

as ‘Carter’s Egg’. 

Bob ran a lecture course on ‘integrated’ stratigraphy in my 4 th year called ‘4i’.There 

were just two of us in the class: Tom Loutit and myself. We critically analysed the 

latest publications on ‘new-fangled’ stratigraphic approaches to the rock record, 

namely magnetostratigraphy, oxygen isotope stratigraphy and chronostratigraphy. It 

was an exercise in first principles. Every statement would be examined and all 

assumptions and error ranges explored and every reference checked. It was 

exacting, revealing and damning. We shredded paper after paper on that course! To 

me Bob was a terrific teacher and he came across as very well read, an outstanding 

critical thinker and a sucker for innovative new ways of doing things. I enjoyed his 

style and approach immensely. His lectures were about ideas rather than facts, and 

hence always difficult to construct notes from. He was just so stimulating and made 

you think. However, he often played the devil’s advocate, much to the annoyance of 

many students, and it was never easy determining what he really thought. But that 

was his point: what he thought was irrelevant. To him, what was important was your 

ability (as a student) to make sense of observations using rational thought and logic. 

Did I mention showman?! Very few of us come close to Bob’s amazing ability to hold 

an audience. I think that I am right in saying that Bob is the only Hochstetter Lecturer 

to use recorded orchestral accompaniment. He always had something profound to 

say and his talks were always well-rehearsed and to time. 

(C) Bob in the Chatham Islands 

Bob visited the Chatham Islands with me and my many and varied field companions 

on six occasions: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011. Bob would come for 5 to 

10 days at a time. He participated entirely on his own free will and expense. This 

was some commitment…coming especially all the way from Townsville. He greatly 

enjoyed the Chatham Islands and came for four main reasons: to escape the 

summer heat of northern Queensland, to indulge in two of his many enthusiasms of 

bird watching and photography, to apply his considerable geological knowledge and 

experience in a remote part of New Zealand, and to relax in congenial and 

stimulating intellectual company (fellow geologists, biologists and research students 

in their element: the field….but not necessarily like-minded note) within a ready 

back-drop of real people (i.e. Chatham Islanders) who, like him, lived off their wits 

and lived well off the land and sea (red wine and fine cuisine dominated by blue 

cod). 


To some extent, the Chathams offered respite for an embattled Bob, so intensely 

committed and embroiled in keeping climate change science honest. Where better to 

hide for a few days and recharge the batteries but at the very end of the weather 

forecast?! Needless to say, it fell on us his erstwhile companions to try and keep him 

honest. A constant battle in itself but boldly addressed by the likes of Chuck Landis, 

John Begg, Alan Beu and everyone else when needs be. On two of these trips Bob 

was accompanied by his brother-in-law and close friend Bill Lindqvist, a Californiabased 

consulting geologist, married to Anne’s sister Helen. 

Every moment with Bob was memorable and he contributed greatly to our 

experiences in the Chathams and our geological understanding. On his first trip (25- 

30 Jan, 2005), he joined us on a one-day trip to the Forty Fours (27 Jan), an 

albatross colony far to the east of Chatham Island, but sadly Bob chose not to 

attempt to land claiming that his ‘upper body strength was not up to it’. We had to 

negotiate a near-vertical 60 m cliff aided with ropes. I am quite sure that he would 

have managed just fine. The party included: Chris Adams, Bill Carter, Steve Trewick, 

John Begg, Rowan Emberson, David Given, Paul Scofield, Mark Bellingham, Peter 

Johnston and myself. 

Bob’s second visit (27 Jan-3 Feb, 2006) involved an ambitious 4-day trip to The 

Horns at the SW tip of Chatham Island with John Begg, Chuck Landis, Alan Beu, 

Jeremy Titjen and Chris Consoli. This letter from Bob just prior to the trip says it all: 

24/1/06 

Hamish, honeybun 

I did not realise that you had dobbed me in for the doubtless magnificent experience 

of sleeping under canvas on tussock again. 

As I am now in transit (passing through Brisbane airport) I can't grab a sleeping bag 

(which is probably a good thing, given the amount of clobber that I'm already 

carrying). 

I'm staying with Lionel [Carter] tomorrow and Thursday nights, and will see if I can 

borrow one from him. Failing that, you may get a phone call asking if you can throw 

in an extra. 

Torch? Persons of my age have specially well-developed sixth senses which enable 

them to avoid pissing on others when they creep out for their nightly visit. Besides, 

we don't want to scare the petrels. 

See you soon. Bob 

It demonstrates classic Bob: his natural collegiality, charming his way around 

authority, following instructions in a timely fashion and revealing the main reason for 

his visit: bird watching! 

The third trip (31 Jan-9 Feb, 2007) involved another very memorable visit this time to 

Southeast Island (6-7 Feb), home to millions of seabirds not to mention the Black 


Robin, Chatham Snipe and Shore Plover. The party included Alan Beu, Alex 

Malahoff, Nigel Miller, Phil Sirvid and myself. 

The fourth visit (29 Jan-6 Feb, 2008) involved two nights on Pitt Island staying at The 

Bluff (James & Annette Moffett) with Bill Lindqvist, Alex Malahoff, Alan Beu, Nigel 

Miller and his son Oliver, Peter Cook and myself (e.g. Figs 3, Front cover). 

The fifth visit (26 Jan-4 Feb, 2009) was another very memorable visit, this time to 

Mangere Island (2-3 Feb) with Alan Beu, Nigel Miller, Kat Holt, Deborah Crowley and 

myself. Bob made a spectacular landing on his hands and stomach, as he misjudged 

the leap from the boat. His flesh wounds required the combined services of both 

doctor (Nigel) and nurse (Deborah). A lasting memory I have of this trip is assisting 

Bob with DOC’s demands to rid his field clothing and gear of undesirable seeds. It 

took many hours for the whole team to de-seed Bob to an acceptable standard! 

Bob’s last visit was in 2011 (26 Jan-2 Feb), again with Bill Lindqvist. The party 

included Alan Beu, Alex Malahoff, David Johnston and his wife Carol Stewart and 

their son Joshua, Deborah Crowley, Alexa van Eaton and myself. We visited Pitt 

Island (Fig. 8), staying at The Bluff with the Moffetts again (27-30 Jan), but this time 

we had our very own French cook, Nathalie Robert-Peillard. 

Fig. 8. Hamish Campbell and Bob Carter aboard the Chatham Express vessel on a 

trip from Chatham Island to Pitt Island in 2011. Photo source: Bill Lindqvist. 


#6 - All at sea with Bob Carter 

Lionel Carter 

Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington 

PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand 6012 

lionel.carter@vuw.ac.nz 

As the research ship Tangaroa I sailed south from Wellington Harbour on a wintery 

day 4 August 1977, little did we know that this was the start of a research 

collaboration between Bob Carter and myself that lasted over 25 years. And let me 

set the record straight from the start, Bob Carter and Lionel Carter were neither 

brothers nor father and son; we were the cliché….”just good friends”! 

In the halcyon days of the 1970s, the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute (NZOI) 

allocated ship time for the universities and in 1977 it was Otago University's turn with 

Bob as the cruise leader. We both had a deep interest in the research, which was to 

establish the dispersal of sediment along and across the Otago continental margin 

into the Bounty Trough. But my main role was to represent the Oceanographic 

Institute to ensure the voyage ran smoothly. This became a life lesson, namely that 

sailing with Bob was anything but dull. On this voyage an altercation broke out 

amongst two crew members. This required Tangaroa I to return to Port Chalmers 

where the police met the ship and retained the crew members. The cook was also 

taken away in an ambulance due to burns sustained in the galley following a 

particularly severe roll of the ship. The unscheduled port call was prolonged by a 

search for replacement crew who eventually arrived from Auckland. The follow-up 

voyage in 1979 was accompanied by the loss of a Klein side-scan sonar - a towed 

seabed mapping system, which in those days was worth a year's salary. When the 

ship returned to Wellington, the Oceanographic Institute truck was waiting for us, 

complete with a hangman's gibbet and noose. This subtle hint indicated whose 

salary was in peril - mine. However, Bob came to the rescue with a NZ$5,000 

contribution that assuaged the NZOI administration and ensured his presence on 

future voyages. Yet again, the Carter curse struck, this time in 1990 on the Rapuhia - 

Tangaroa's successor. The main winch broke down while coring in 4000 m of water. 

For the next 31 hours, Rapuhia drifted in moderate seas with 4 km of heavy wire 

attached to a one ton corer hanging over the side. Positioning was also a problem 

because it was the time of the Gulf War and the satellites that formed the nascent 

global positioning system were realigned to cover the Middle East. 

While it is fun to reminisce over a beer, these events were in reality a mild distraction 

from the science. Between 1977 and 1998, five voyages off the eastern South Island 

revealed the evolution of a remarkable sedimentary system from its inception in the 

Cretaceous through the Quaternary climatic cycles to the present day. It was the first 

Source-to-Sink analysis that traced the passage of river sediment from the coast, 

across the continental shelf, down the continental slope via submarine canyons and 

into the Bounty Channel system where turbidity currents transferred South Island 

debris over 1000 km eastward to feed the vast submarine Bounty Fan. Sediment did 

not stop there. The Pacific deep western boundary current entrained fan sediment 

and carried it another 3000 km to accumulate in the Kermadec subduction zone. 


Thanks to Bob's expertise and great enthusiasm, plus help from his friends, we were 

beginning to learn how undersea New Zealand functioned. Over 20 papers appeared 

under the co-authorship of Carter and Carter (and many colleagues). One wit 

compared C and C to Thomson and Thompson in the Tintin chronicles, but hopefully 

the publications of the former were a little more factual than the comic books. 

As the eastern South Island marine geology became clearer, Bob noted that it would 

be a suitable topic for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). That was in 1993. Five 

years later, ODP Leg 181 came to fruition with the drilling of 7 sites off eastern New 

Zealand. This furthered our knowledge of paleoceanography and marine geological 

evolution of the key region of the SW Pacific Ocean where tectonic plates and major 

ocean currents collide. That research continues today using the cores archived from 

Leg 181 and other ocean drilling legs. Leg 181 would not have happened without 

Bob's energy and persuasive skills. At the time, New Zealand was not a member of 

ODP and thus could not develop and lead voyages. However, Australia was a 

member and Bob, who was then domiciled in Queensland, could begin the long 

proposal process. The proposal received a major boost when Nick McCave 

(Cambridge University, UK) joined. This brought the UK membership to bear. Bob's 

"people skills" were much needed in light of the political and competitive elements of 

large multinational programmes. My contribution was to keep the proposed drilling 

site data and science components on cue. This called for reflex responses to phone 

calls along the lines "Hello. Bob here. I'm in College Station, Texas. An ODP 

scientist has just noted that waves on the Chatham Rise are too large for safe 

drilling. Can you run an analysis of the wave climate and get back to me within the 

hour?" Such was life with RMC. 

Following the undeniable success of Leg 181, Bob expanded his interest in 

sequence stratigraphy, the marine geology of the Great Barrier Reef and of course 

climate change. While our views differed regarding the last topic, the friendship 

endured. Without doubt, Robert Merlin Carter was a major contributor to New 

Zealand marine geology through his research, enthusiasm and ability to make things 

work (apart from ship's winches). It is a fine legacy. 

#7 - Livening up geological discussions 

Penny Cooke 

Brookes Bell Group (Marine Consultants & Surveyors) 

Walker House, Exchange Flags, Liverpool, UK L2 3YL 

cooke.penelope@gmail.com 

My memories of Bob are somewhat intermittent as they focus around the annual 

conference of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand (GSNZ). I recall him being 

very friendly and inclusive, and louder than many. I recall annual conference dinners 

being improved by his contributions to discussions, even after several bottles of wine 

had been consumed by all involved (Fig. 9). In addition, he was the external 

overseas examiner for my PhD thesis on Neogene paleoceanography in the Tasman 

Sea, about which he was very complimentary, and he only required minor changes 

for which I was most grateful. 


Fig. 9. Participants engrossed in ‘deep stimulating conversation’ with Bob (and wine 

drinking) at the BBQ at GSNZ annual conference in Kaikoura, 2005. People 

recognised are (left to right) Alan Orpin, Cam Nelson, Penny Cooke, unknown, Bob 

Carter, David Smale and Anne Carter. Photo source: Unknown. 

I became aware some years later that Bob was being described as a 'humaninduced 

climate change skeptic' and had been presenting his views on this matter to 

government committees. I have to say I was a little surprised as he had been 

involved over the years in research dealing with marine sediment records and the 

climate records they contain. I understand and commend the independence of 

scientists to interpret the data they see in the way they deem appropriate, and Bob 

certainly did this over his long and distinguished career. The news released in May 

2016 by NASA that April was the seventh month in a row that broke global 

temperature records would have made for interesting discussions with Bob I suspect. 

I can only hope that all those still employed in climate science are able to include a 

little skepticism into their research as it is only by questioning the accepted views 

that we can progress. Having read many of Bob's articles on climate change, I 

personally still remain convinced that humans are influencing our global climate, but 

to what extent remains debatable. I shall be enjoying my glass of wine in the warm 

spring 2016 sunshine in the UK and will be thinking very fondly of Bob and his major 

contributions to New Zealand geosciences over many decades. 


#8 - A family of young academics 

Alan Cooper 

Geology Department, University of Otago 

PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand 9054 

alan.cooper@otago.ac.nz 

In the late 1960s to early 1980s, during the Carter’s stay in Dunedin, the Geology 

Department at Otago was a dynamic and enjoyable place to work. It included a 

group of other young families (Reay, Landis, Norris, Henley, Bishop and Cooper) 

busy bringing up young children and building careers. Despite that, there was time 

for socialising and, regardless of the heavy teaching loads for the guys, even time for 

the occasional Wednesday afternoon round of golf! Bob and I worked at opposite 

ends of the geological spectrum, but we were mates and took an interest in what the 

other was doing (Fig. 10). Bob even spent time with me in an appropriately named 

Roaring Swine tributary of the Haast River during my PhD. For a week we huddled 

under a three-sided, plastic-sheeted shelter while the heavens opened and the valley 

filled with water and the creek lived up to its name. The upper echelons of the 

Department were somewhat taken aback when RMC’s princely field allowance of $2 

per day was subsequently claimed for ‘field supervision’ (in metamorphic petrology!). 

Bob was one of our leading lights, energetic, innovative, inspirational and an 

excellent communicator. We missed the Carters when they moved to Townsville and 

we will miss him now. 

Fig. 10. Bob, interested in ‘all 

things geological, including 

metamorphic rocks’, examining a 

sample of Alpine Fault mylonite. 

Photo source: Alan Cooper. 


#9 – He sure made you think critically 

Dave Craw 



dave.craw@otago.ac.nz 

Bob was one of the most inspiring lecturers I had as a student at Otago in the 1970s. 

He even managed to make paleontology interesting to this physical scientist, by 

bringing in a wide range of ideas and different threads to his accounts of how the 

biological world works. He made me THINK, which was quite an achievement. His 

enthusiasm and energy were boundless around the Geology Department, and he 

was innovative in everything he did. I was sorry to see him leave, and that was 

definitely James Cook University's gain. I kept in touch with him over the years as I 

evolved into an economic geologist, and always admired his enthusiasm and 

foresight in setting up the Economic Geology Research Unit in Townsville. This was 

the right move at the right time, a very astute step that did a great deal to help the 

Townsville department expand and appear on the international radar of an important 

industry to Australia. Bob was still making me think in his later years when he 

entered the controversial world of climate change, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to 

him about these things, even if I didn't always agree with him. He brought some 

serious science to that debate, especially with regard to sea levels, and I found his 

research and ideas fascinating in that general area. I last saw Bob when he visited 

Otago recently to talk about climate change, and he was in excellent form then, still 

enthusiastic, stimulating, a great lateral thinker, and an excellent public speaker. 

That's the Bob Carter that I will always remember. 

#10 - So influential on my career development 

Barry Douglas 

Douglas Geological Consultants 

14 Jubilee Street, Belleknowes, Dunedin, New Zealand 9011 

barrydouglas@xtra.co.nz 

Fresh from his PhD research at Cambridge, Bob Carter returned in 1968 to the 

Otago Geology Department as a lecturer in Cenozoic paleontology and stratigraphy. 

I was fortunate to be among the first group of students to attend Bob’s lectures. 

Bob made an immediate impact in his teaching at Otago. His lectures on functional 

morphology, taxonomy, paleoecology, stratigraphy, Recent and ancient sedimentary 

environments and paleoclimate change with relevance to New Zealand strata were 

the conceptual roots from which I and many of his students formulated their 

approach to postgraduate research. Bob was an inspiring lecturer and he involved 


his students in his research interest. In those early years Bob also forged the link 

between the Geology Department and the University’s Portobello Marine Biological 

Station through his close association with the then Director Dr Betty Batham. He took 

his research students to sea, out over the Otago shelf on the University research 

vessel Munida, to observe at first hand the sediment-fauna relationships of modern 

communities as retrieved from sea-floor grab samples. Under heavy swell, Bob was 

a better sailor than I was! 

Bob’s dedication to facilitate excellence in research was exemplified by the energy 

and enthusiasm he exuded in his self-driven task of updating and further developing 

the molluscan collection in the Geology Department Museum at Otago. He worked 

tirelessly in the evenings and weekends in the museum or in the adjoining curator’s 

room under the watchful portraits of Marwick, Finlay, Hutton and Fleming, as he 

catalogued specimens and developed a formidable illustrated reference card system 

(pre-computers). His new specimens were foraged from field collections from both 

North and South Island (NZ) and elsewhere. Bob never missed an opportunity to 

improve the collection. I recall, in 1971, when he dispatched me to collect type 

section specimens from the bed of the Waiau River at Clifden during a temporary 

controlled low river level. It was a case of one eye on the task and one eye on the 

rising water level! Long after his departure from Otago the curatorship and welfare of 

the molluscan fossil collection was of foremost concern to Bob. Our last conversation 

specifically related to this matter. 

Bob often invited his students to accompany him in the field and this was also 

generally the case when he was in the company of a visiting distinguished 

researcher. He generously offered his students every opportunity. He introduced his 

students to the key field sections of the regional Cretaceous-Cenozoic sequence. 

Bob’s observations were acute, his commentary informative and his questions 

thought provoking. I have had the opportunity to revisit many of those sections over 

the years and without exception I am reminded of the occasion of my first visit to 

those sites with Bob. Such was the influence of Bob and his teaching, that in the 

years gone by, there is hardly a day when logging a cored bore or measuring a 

stratigraphic section in southern New Zealand that I have not thought of Bob Carter 

and been grateful for the skills of observation and detailed recording I developed 

from his teaching. 

Bob supervised my MSc investigation of the South Canterbury Tengawai River 

section. In 1973, on a day trip to Lauder to collect oncolites he introduced me to the 

non-marine sediments of Central Otago. That same year we co-authored a report on 

the Otago lignite deposits for ICI (NZ) Ltd. in collaboration with associated work 

carried out at the Otago School of Mines. The thrust of my future research and 

employment specialisation was nurtured in those early discussions with Bob on 

Otago-Southland non-marine sedimentary environments. 

Bob was one to quip a cheeky remark. I vividly recall the occasion around 1977 on 

the isolated Doolans Saddle track between the Gibbston Coalpit Saddle and the 

Lower Nevis Valley where we bogged the Land Rover to the axle and were almost 

immediately accosted by an enraged high country station owner. Infuriated with 

Bob’s quip in defence of the situation the frustrated landowner swung at Bob. Bob 


dodged the blow, but the fist made contact with Bob’s tartan cap which was sent 

flying through the air. 

Bob stood tall in defence of good science practice and honesty. I was grateful for his 

support in1977 during my challenges to aspects of the Upper Clutha hydro scheme 

and again in the late 1970s when I was embroiled in argument with the Mines 

Department over the Central Otago coal drilling fiasco. Bob’s departure from Otago 

was a huge loss. His book Climate: The Counter Consensus champions the pile of 

books on the top of the piano in my lounge. Bob’s legacy will live on with this 

geologist! 

#11 – An influential Australasian ODP/IODP proponent 

Neville Exon 

Australian and New Zealand IODP Program Scientist, Australian National University 

Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia 

neville.exon@anu.edu.au 

Bob Carter, an influential geologist and marine geologist, remained an important 

supporter of ocean drilling throughout his long and distinguished career. In fact, Bob, 

then at James Cook University (JCU), was one of the leaders in getting Australia 

established as a member in the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) in 1988. A number of 

us played a part in that wonderful step forward for Australian geoscience and marine 

geoscience, but Bob was a personable, enthusiastic, lucid and effective advocate. 

He hosted the ODP Secretariat for a time at JCU, and was lead proponent and then 

Co‐Chief Scientist of the highly successful Southwest Pacific Gateways ODP Leg 

181 in 1998. That leg drilled seven sites in deep water east of New Zealand, 

investigating the effects of changing current patterns over time. It was especially 

notable for investigating the Eocene‐Oligocene unconformity that represents the start 

of a fast, cold current around at least a part of Antarctica, and the production of 

increased volumes of cold bottom water. 

In late 2009, Bob joined IODP Expedition 317 in the Canterbury Basin east of New 

Zealand, which was investigating sea-level fluctuations as represented by prograding 

wedges of carbonate sediments laid down mostly in the last 20 million years (Figs 2, 

7). I remember a press conference about the expedition in Townsville before the 

expedition, when the reporters immediately asked him questions about his climate 

skepticism. He said simply that the past sea-level fluctuations being investigated on 

this expedition were clearly driven by climate change, that his skepticism of modern 

global warming had nothing to do with the expedition, and referred the press to the 

expedition leaders for more information. Later he asked me with an amused smile 

“Did I handle that OK?” 

Bob was a paleontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental 

scientist, who started his geological career in New Zealand and earned degrees from 

the University of Otago and the University of Cambridge. He was Professor and 

Head of School at James Cook University from 1981 to 1999, and there developed a 


strong marine geology group. During that time, he continued to carry out research in 

New Zealand, particularly in the Whanganui Basin (Fig. 11), where he recognised 

the opportunity to test sequence‐stratigraphic models in Plio‐Pleistocene sediments 

that were deposited during a period of known glacial‐interglacial sea‐level changes. 

Talking to various geological friends of his, they all say that his skills as a 

sedimentologist, teacher and advocate of geology, plus his open and warm style, 

made him an outstanding colleague and human being. We will miss you Bob. 

Fig. 11. Bob Carter, speaking as leader of a field trip to the Whanganui Basin in New 

Zealand, in about 1994. Steve Abbott, his then PhD student (now at Geoscience 

Australia) is holding the umbrella, as any good student would do for his esteemed 

supervisor. Photo source: Brad Pillans. 

#12 - An insightful and inspirational geologist 

Ewan Fordyce 



ewan.fordyce@otago.ac.nz 

From the outside perspective (I knew Bob not very well when I took over his office), 

Bob appeared an energetic, insightful and often inspirational geologist who was 

unafraid to challenge conventional wisdoms. He could ignore or sideline troublesome 

facts in the promotion of an interesting idea, which is important in science. I heard 

Bob’s GSNZ Hochstetter Lecture in 1975 when I was a student at University of 


Canterbury, and remember that there was some tooth-sucking from older geologists 

at the deluge of information, the mix of ideas, and flamboyant rapid fire and use of 

two projectors! - the vivid image is still in mind. At Otago, Bob ranged widely through 

basin studies in the broad sense, and made enduring contributions. It’s interesting 

that he didn't write much in paleontology, in spite of being appointed to work on that 

field, but his early paper on borings in bivalves is still cited, and he made really 

important fossil collections of marine invertebrates that are now in the Geology 

Museum at University of Otago. The work that Bob did with Richard Norris on 

southern basins and plate tectonics seemed ground-breaking to me, especially when 

we consider that was in the days when others in New Zealand geology were 

reluctant to accept rapid and major Neogene movement on the Alpine Fault. The 

Norris and Carter report on the Waiau Basin didn't get the recognition it deserved, 

but it inspired and/or contributed to other studies. Bob recognised the Marshall 

unconformity (Fig. Back cover), still a contentious feature (Marshall didn’t believe in 

it, and it is not a paraconformity as proposed). He made original contributions in 

stratigraphy, including recognition of New Zealand stages as Oppelzones, although 

the latter didn’t stick; after Bob left Otago, JD Campbell was quick to remove the 

oppelzone appelation from our Museum displays. Bob’s concept of the Kaikoura 

Synthem was much ahead of its time (building on ideas from another inspired 

geologist, Harold Wellman, who conceived the big cycles in 1953), and it was good 

to see that Mortimer et al. acknowledged Bob’s contributions in their big review of 

New Zealand stratigraphy in NZJGG in 2014. Bob worked very effectively with Lionel 

Carter, too, on shelf-slope settings. He was one of the lead writers on the big ODP 

Leg 181 Initial Report on work off the eastern South Island. Another major 

contribution was the work with Tim Naish on Whanganui Basin - really important on a 

global scale as one of few onshore localities that preserves most of the Pleistocene 

glacioeustatic cycles. All in all, Bob did some memorably impressive science. Many 

will acknowledge his stimulation. I owe him not only for the intellectual stimulation, 

but also because he got tired of the wait for promotion – in the days before one could 

apply for it - and went to a professorship at James Cook University, leading to my 

appointment at Otago where this tribute was written in the former Carter office. 

#13 – ‘Go-to’ person for A Continent on the Move 

Ian Graham 

GNS Science 


i.graham@gns.cri.nz 

Our paths crossed first when I was a raw first-year student at Otago University in 

1974. There Bob's inspirational lecturing, dazzling intellect and enthusiasm for his 

subject were instrumental in my decision to pursue geoscience as a career. One 

memory that sticks from that time was his (surprising, but gratifying) use of my 

father's series of Royal Society papers on the North Otago shelf fauna in his lectures 

- my father was a commercial fisherman, self-taught as a marine biologist. It was a 

great privilege to be able to collaborate with and co-author several papers with Bob 

in subsequent years. Bob was one of the 'go-to' people for the original 2008 A 

Continent on the Move – New Zealand Geoscience into the 21st Century [GSNZ 


Misc. Publ. 124, 388 pp.]. His contribution as a sub-editor was outstanding, as were 

his original articles. His four-page piece on Charles Fleming, in particular, is not only 

most elegantly written, but is an important tribute to New Zealand's most-celebrated 

geoscientist. Despite expressing misgivings about one article in Chapter 11, Bob 

described the revised 2015 Second Edition [A Continent on the Move – New Zealand 

Geoscience Revealed; GSNZ Misc. Publ. 141, 408 pp.] as 'a triumph'. He was 

undoubtedly one of the finest scientists I ever had the privilege to work with - his 

meticulous gathering and analysis of data, and his insightful interpretation of their 

meaning, were rare commodities, and his contribution to scientific debate on 

important issues will be missed. 

#14 – Two Bob Carter field stories 

Bruce Hayward 

Geomarine Research 

19 Debron Avenue, Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand 1050 

b.hayward@geomarine.org.nz 

It was relatively late in Bob’s career that we became research colleagues and good 

friends, so I will leave it to the many others who have known him a lot longer to write 

about his research career and always friendly gentleman-like character. Instead I 

recount two events that still today bring a smile to my face as I remember the Bob I 

knew. 

(A) Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 181 

My involvement with Bob started on ODP Leg 181 where Bob was Co-Chief Scientist 

and I was a first-time micropaleontologist on board. The first site we cored was in 

relatively shallow water in Canterbury Bight (Hole 1119) and it was the site he 

personally had wanted drilled. The prime role of the micropaleontologists on board 

was to provide rapid age assessments of the cored sediment within hours of it being 

hauled on board, so that the chief scientists can monitor where we are in the 

sequence and make decisions if needed on what kind of coring is required and when 

to stop. 

On my first 12-hour shift, 9 m-long cores were arriving on deck every 45 min and it 

was our job to go up and collect sediment from each core catcher, take it back to the 

lab to wash out the mud, dry it and then examine for age diagnostic foraminifera. 

This was frenetic and there was no way I could keep up. In hindsight I probably 

should have only processed every third core catcher, but this was the first hole and 

we were all learning the ropes. After lunch Bob sauntered in to see how we were 

going and to get the latest age determinations (which later we started writing up on 

the blackboard for all visitors to see). He saw my predicament with samples all 

around me and with very little encouragement and a smile on his face he assisted in 

the lab washing of samples – quite unheard of for a Co-Chief Scientist to be doing 

(Fig. 12). As a paleontologist early in his career, Bob always recognised the value of 


the fossil record in helping date the sedimentary record and unravel the paleoclimate 

and paleoceanographic history of the region we were studying. 

Fig. 12. Bob Carter, the Co- 

Chief, pitching in and washing 

foraminifera samples with 

Agata di Stephano 

(nannofossils, Sicily) and 

Julianne Fenner (diatoms, 

Germany) on ODP Leg 181, 

1998 off eastern South Island. 

Photo source: Bruce Hayward. 

Later in the trip the tasks of the Co-Chiefs became more demanding as they had to 

read, edit and synthesise the preliminary results and reports of all the scientists on 

each hole soon after it was drilled and while the next hole was going down. I 

sometimes wandered past their joint office and one day snapped both of them fast 

asleep in their swivel chairs in front of their computer screens (Fig. 13) – not at all 

surprising considering the very long hours they were working. 

Fig. 13. Nick McCave and Bob 

Carter (right), Co-Chief 

Scientists on ODP Leg 181, 

napping in their ship-board 

office during the long hours of 

writing up preliminary reports 

of the expedition, 1998 (see 

also Fig. 20). Photo source: 

Bruce Hayward. 

(B) The Whangarei field trip saga, 2002 

In 2002 I was convenor of the Whangarei GSNZ Conference. We had midconference 

field trips one day for everyone. All trips were arranged to share the first 

stop at the limestone-allochthon contact in Hikurangi Quarry and we had arranged 

minivans and drivers and buses to take all 250 participants there from Forum North 

in Whangarei. At the quarry, Mike Isaac was to lead the observations and 

discussion, but he had not turned up. Someone got a call from Chris Hollis that the 

minivan he was driving (with Mike Isaac on board) had broken down back in 

Whangarei. Apparently there was a loud alarm going off inside the vehicle. They 


were unable to turn it off nor diagnose what was causing it, but presumed it to be an 

engine fault. With no warning Cam Nelson was asked to talk about the limestone and 

paleokarst and I had to invent some words about how the allochthon had come in 

over the top. Meanwhile Chris Hollis had rung the hire company office in Auckland 

and the Hiace van service garage in Whangarei. When they joined up with us 45 min 

late at the quarry, Chris explained that the service man put his head inside the van 

and removed one of the participant’s coats that had been neatly hung on the 

emergency door release lever thereby depressing it and setting off the alarm. 

Bob Carter, in his usual unflappable manner, took all this in his stride. It was clearly 

not his fault that a coat hook in the van should also double as an emergency escape 

lever. His actions certainly caused me many anxious minutes while I tried to resolve 

how we could get all the trips back on track. Later in the day at one of our last brief 

stops (as we were still running behind schedule) I snapped Bob dozing on the grass 

on the side of the road (Fig. 14)....perhaps the events of the day had caught up with 

him! 

Fig. 14. Bob Carter (identified only by the name tag!) taking a short nap on the side 

of the road, Taurikura Bay, GSNZ Whangarei Conference field trip, 2002. Photo 

source: Bruce Hayward. 

Two days earlier, Bob had been on another field trip that I was leading. At the top of 

the Brynderwyns we got out to discuss the geology of the spectacular view and use 

the toilets. As we went to move off it was noted that Bob was missing and after a 

frantic search we found him seated in the cafe above admiring the view and enjoying 

his coffee. 


#15 - An inspirational teacher and research mentor 

Doug Haywick 

Department of Earth Sciences, University of South Alabama 

Mobile, Alabama, USA 36688 

dhaywick@southalabama.edu 

Excuse this lengthy background, but it provides context for what follows. The first 

time I ever talked to Bob Carter was as a student in Canada. I had applied for a 

Commonwealth Fellowship to study in Australia after I finished my BS degree at 

McMaster. I had received advice about ‘quality’ universities in Australia from my 

Honours mentor as well as others at McMaster. Each had their personal 

recommendations about good sedimentology universities, but most agreed that 

James Cook University (JCU) was one of them and that Bob Carter was the person 

to work with Down Under. So I selected JCU, but only as my second choice. I think 

Roger Walker (my research mentor) preferred ANU. I eventually got a letter from 

Canberra stating that I won one of the fellowships, but the decision was so slow in 

coming that I had instead accepted an offer to do a Masters project at Memorial 

University. That's how I came to work with Noel James. Anyway, how does Bob fit 

into this? Well I had taken a summer job with a petroleum company in Calgary and 

one very early morning I got a knock on the door to the dormitory room that I was 

staying in from another sleepy-eyed dorm resident saying that there was a phone 

call for me on the hall floor telephone from Australia. I thought it was a joke, but 

when I picked up the receiver, there was Bob! The first thing that he said to me over 

the phone was "Why did you choose JCU second on your application for the 

Commonwealth Fellowship?" Then he asked me "What time is it over there 

anyway?" The funny thing is that at no time did Bob's question strike me as being 

arrogant. He just said it as a matter of fact and that stuck with me. After I explained 

that I had already accepted another offer, Bob told me that the next time I applied for 

the fellowship (there was apparently no doubt in his mind that I would apply again 

after the end of my MS degree) to choose JCU first because it was the best 

university in Australia for the type of research that I was interested in doing. Then he 

went on to talk to me for about half an hour about how best to prepare myself for the 

transition into graduate school and what a joy it was going to be for me to work with 

Noel James. To a recent graduate like me, this meant a LOT. Here was a total 

stranger volunteering advice/support and doing it from the other side of the planet. I 

had already decided to reapply for the Commonwealth Fellowship, but after I hung 

up the phone there was no doubt in my mind which university was going to be first 

on the list the next time around. I never regretted my decision to go to JCU. It ended 

up being the smartest move in my career and I owe it all to that poorly timed phone 

call from Bob. 

Bob was an excellent teacher, particularly in the field (Fig. 15), and a very caring 

individual. He was both patient and very supportive of me throughout the study (see 

below). His office door was always open to me whenever I ran into difficulties in my 

study or had a personal problem. I don't want to think about the number of times he 

had to help me with sequence stratigraphic interpretations. But the one event that 

really demonstrated how far he supported me was the time he took on the Federal 

Government over funding. The Commonwealth Fellowship was supposed to provide 


Fig. 15. Bob at the Miocene Pareora River section in Canterbury, one of his New 

Zealand favourites, explaining the sedimentological significance of the deposits to 

Cecilia McHugh of Queens College, New York. Photo source: Greg Browne. 

additional support for students to purchase supplies during their stay in Australia, but 

because my study was focused on a New Zealand research site (Tangoio, Hawke’s 

Bay), the Australian agency that provided funding balked on any additional support 

for me. "It's a New Zealand study!" they argued. "Get the money from the Kiwis!" Bob 

disagreed. Moreover, he felt that he should do something about their attitude. So 

while on a trip to Canberra, he visited the Minister of Education's office. From what I 

recall Bob telling me, he (Bob) requested a face to face meeting with someone in the 

Ministry. I am not absolutely sure if it was The Minister himself or just a lackey, but I 

do remember Bob saying that he "provided a very convincing argument in favour of 

getting me my fair share of the support." Unfortunately the Minister/lackey refused to 

budge on his decision. Bob responded that "He was not leaving until the Ministry 

changed their mind" at which point the person he was talking to got up, turned off the 

light and left the room. Bob sat there in the dark for a few more minutes before he 

too departed. He didn't win his/my case, but he damned near did everything possible 

to try! 

I have been trying to remember if Bob and I ever got into an argument. I don't think 

we did. We occasionally disagreed about some interpretations as far as data were 

concerned, but to his credit he always treated me as an equal participant in our 

research project. I learned after the conclusion of my PhD that he did not agree with 

my systems tracts interpretation of the Tangoio study area in Hawke’s Bay, New 

Zealand, at least not at first. It wasn't until a year after the completion of my PhD 

when we (that would be me, Bob and I believe Tim Naish) travelled back to New 

Zealand to re-visit the study area that he finally "saw what I saw" in the strata. I took 

him to a spot where you could see a large area of the study site and where you could 


visually trace out bedding surfaces. He sat down on the grass and told us to "bugger 

off for a bit while he thought about things". After about 30 minutes he got up and said 

"Right….I believe you" and walked off back to the car. Later that night while we were 

asleep, he wrote a first draft of a new paper. When he set his mind to it, Bob got 

things done. Bob was an amazing geologist and an excellent teacher/mentor to his 

students. He also ended up being a good friend to me. I miss him. 

#16 – Evolution of JCU Marine Geophysics Laboratory 

Mal Heron 

37 Manersley Place, Townsville 

Queensland, Australia 4814 

mal.heron@ieee.org 

When Bob Carter came to James Cook University (JCU) as Professor of Earth 

Sciences, I was a Reader in the Department of Physics. Geology, Physics and 

Mathematics shared a 3-storey building that was beginning to stretch at the seams 

even though it was only seven years old. Mathematics were appropriately occupying 

the top floor, but Bob found himself in confrontation with Professor Jim Ward 

(Physics) about the lower two floors and the workshops. Geology was developing a 

very successful postgraduate programme and had students sitting in broom 

cupboards. Physics had a remarkably well fitted-out precision engineering workshop 

to support undergrad laboratories and research. Eventually, with some 

encouragement from above, Bob came up with the concept of combining the 

Geology and Physics workshops into a shared space, and creating the Marine 

Geophysics Laboratory (MGL) as a shared facility. 

Initially the sediment laboratory with Bob at the helm dominated the MGL. Bob was 

running ODP legs on the JOIDES Resolution from the MGL; John Hughes-Clarke 

was doing deep-water side scan sonar with a GLORIA Towfish around the 

continental shelf breaks; and Piers Larcombe and Peter Ridd were leading the 

sedimentation programme on sediment dynamics on the coasts and in the estuaries. 

The collaboration with Physics was sustained by Peter Ridd’s development of 

nephelometer instrumentation and my development of High Frequency (HF) surface 

radar for currents and waves. This was a golden era with many graduates and many 

more research papers coming out of the MGL. There are a few times in one’s life (if 

you are lucky) when your spirit is lifted to a high level. This is when your team wins 

the grand final; or your daughter wins the national aria competition. The MGL 

through the 80s and 90s had this euphoria. It was a good place to work and 

individuals were having successes in all directions. 

James Cook University was not able to take the MGL jewel and polish it as part of its 

treasure chest for the future. During the 90s Bob was challenged by the science of 

climate and he progressed on to a world stage. If JCU could not handle the 

blossoming MGL, it certainly could not handle the brilliance of Bob Carter. This, 

coupled with the coming and going meant that the MGL began to look more like a 

normal university unit, and continues on as one of the most financially self-sufficient 

units on the campus. 


#17 – Tough field experiences 

Fiona Hyden 

12 Abbey Court, Cerne Abbas, 

Dorchester DT2 7JH, England 

f.m.hyden@open.ac.uk 

Bob was one of two supervisors in the 1970s for my PhD project on temperate-water 

carbonates in southern New Zealand. He was always encouraging and supportive, 

and his enthusiasm was infectious. He introduced me to the delights of fieldwork, 

such as camping in freezing conditions, wading through water (Fig. 16) and driving 

across snow at speed – all new experiences for a postgrad used to less frontier-like 

conditions in the UK. 

Fig. 16. “Follow me, the 

outcrop is this way” (says 

Bob). Photo source: Bill 

Lindqvist. 

#18 – What a stimulating colleague 

Chuck Landis 

284 Coast Road, Warrington 

Dunedin, New Zealand 9471 

landis@clear.net.nz 

Bob and I met in October 1963, my first week in New Zealand. Bob was a young ball 

of energy with a good sense of humour, the life-of-the-party but also a very switchedon 

young geologist. He was heading for a paleontological career and was particularly 

interested in 'form and function' as well as paleoenvironmental reconstructions. He 

was very gregarious, chatty and enquiring. We quickly became good friends. 

Shortly after arriving, I was planning a trip to the Key Summit-Hollyford region, 

checking out potential projects for my intended PhD research. I asked Bob if he and 

Anne would like to join us. So they joined my wife Carolyn, baby Allison and me 


heading into the wilds of Fiordland. We had a wonderful trip and Bob was a great 

person to discuss matters ranging from Atomodesma limestones to Fiordland 

tectonics to beech forest distribution, and even the proposed flooding of Lake 

Manapouri. Carolyn couldn't believe Bob could talk geology non-stop for 12 hours! 

Bob returned to Otago after completing his PhD in Cambridge. Full of ideas and 

energy, he became a vital member of the Otago department, stimulating both staff 

and students. I found him always a good listening-post with a well-informed 

approach to many problems. Bob often courted controversy and I sometimes had 

trouble telling whether he was serious or just pulling my leg to check the response. 

Looking back, my best times with Bob were in the field ('on the sea' became an 

integral part of 'in the field'). He mainly focused on studies of mid- and late-Cenozoic 

stratigraphy and paleoenvironments as well as marine/estuarine processes and 

evolution of the sea floor around South Island. Although he retained his original 

interest in paleontology, he gradually leaned more towards sedimentology, physical 

aspects of Quaternary stratigraphy (particularly sequence stratigraphy where he 

made important contributions) and later, modern climate change. My last trip with 

Bob was to the Chatham Islands with Hamish Campbell in 2006, studying 

submergence and later emergence of this fascinating landmass. What a fertile mind! 

What a great friend! 

#19 – Spruce up your attire Piers! 

Piers Larcombe 

School of Earth & Environment, University of Western Australia, RPS MetOcean 

31 Bishop Street, Jolimont, Western Australia, Australia 6014 

piers.larcombe@uwa.edu.au 

Just before Xmas 1989 a fresh-faced Englishman arrived from a cold UK autumn 

into the heat and humidity of a Townsville spring. He was met at the airport by an 

energetic and welcoming man, Bob, who took the tired traveller to his house to meet 

his wife Anne, daughter Susan, son Jeremy and dog, whose name I’ve forgotten, but 

memory was never my strong point. Strong though was Bob’s hospitality, and his 

enthusiasm for immediately educating me about things Great Barrier Reef (GBR) 

and geological whilst walking the dog. These factors remained a constant for the 

next 25 years or so. I had been lucky enough to walk into what was to become the 

leading marine geological group in Australia at the time. Opportunities abounded, 

most furnished by Bob. Upon finding himself double-booked, he nominated me and a 

youthful Helen Neil (from New Zealand) to co-lead a CSIRO cruise aboard RV 

Franklin, taking piston cores in the Queensland Trough – an unexpected and 

fantastic experience, which might have been daunting if it weren’t for Bob’s calmly 

expressed utter confidence in us. 


Fig. 17. Bob impeccably 

attired in smart shirt and 

bowtie at the lecture podium. 

Photo source: Wikipedia 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 

Robert_M._Carter). 

As many of you will know, Bob had a penchant for sartorial elegance (Fig. 17). I 

remember his always elegant dress, especially the waistcoats, smart shirts and 

cravats for evenings, his trusty flat cap for windy field conditions, and his famous 

Panama hat for almost everywhere else. One sun-repelling wrap-around hat I was 

foolish enough to wear on a family photo I sent him, gained the reply “Ingrid and the 

kids look lovely. But your hat is simply execrable”. He was right of course. His 

evident enjoyment at teaching me the finer points of describing and analysing core 

material from the GBR shelf faded markedly when he realised my likely level of dress 

sense (low to zero) and lack of decent shoes (or indeed any shoes) for a day’s 

workshop he and I were giving to the Queensland Government in Brisbane on the 

sedimentology of Trinity Bay, Cairns, then a hot topic. With evident (and justified) 

horror at my suggested attire, he and Anne drove me to shops in Townsville I never 

knew existed, whereupon they liberally spent my money on their choices of trousers, 

belt, shirt, tie and shiny black shoes. I still have the shirt, tie and shoes, in near 

pristine condition, the latter two of which have probably only ever been worn twice - 

but we did look good that day - even though the then increasingly venerable 

Queensland Chief Scientist slept through most of the afternoon. 

Bob was indeed a great man. He was the most complete marine geologist I have 

ever known and can imagine I will know. I remember us walking along beaches or 

talking over an evening beer on the RV James Kirby and having thoughts that maybe 

no-one had ever had before. More importantly, he was an outstanding human being 

with a respect for those with genuine questions and an ability to explain the key 

concepts without talking down to anyone. Much has been written in other places 

about his science and his human qualities. Those qualities are undeniable. Anne, we 

loved him. 


#20 – Bold ideas about New Zealand geology 

Daphne Lee 



daphne.lee@otago.ac.nz 

I can still recall Bob’s very first lectures on paleoecology – these opened up a whole 

new world of ideas for me, and led in due course to my present research career. Bob 

took our classes out to Portobello to the Marine Laboratory to spend time looking at 

the ecology of modern marine ecosystems with Betty Batham – we went out on the 

Munida and collected living material, and then related it to fossil assemblages in the 

Oamaru and Winton limestones. Fossils came to life again (Fig. 18). 

Bob was my 3 rd and 4 th year project supervisor. As the only two female students at 

300-level, Glenys and I wanted two adjacent field areas so Bob recommended 

Swinburn on the edge of the Maniototo which I later suggested as a great place to 

hold the Otago Geology Department 300-level field school (and it is still held there 

today). In a small area were beautifully exposed schist basement rocks, a wide 

range of terrestrial and marine sediments, a complex set of volcanic units of the 

Waipiata Volcanic Field, and the best exposure of a major fault I had ever seen. Bob 

borrowed some of my field photos, including one of the Waihemo Fault, for his 1977 

GSNZ Queenstown Conference post-conference field guide. I enjoyed this taste of 

field mapping and have worked ever since on fossils like those in the field area and 

more recently on maars in the Waipiata Volcanics. 

One of the most important pieces of advice I recall from Bob was that it is very 

important to have two strings to your bow – meaning, I think, that brachiopods alone 

(for me) were not enough. Very true, and advice I took. Bob and Anne were very 

hospitable to students, and Bill and I appreciated this very much as rather diffident 

postgrads. Bob was indirectly responsible for our most enjoyable 18-month stint in 

Cambridge in the 1980s - we found a house to rent, and when the landlady asked for 

a reference, we discovered she knew Bob - no reference needed! 

What we enjoyed most about Bob was his bold ideas-approach to science. He asked 

big questions about New Zealand geology and used a range of quantitative methods. 

For us he showed how research in New Zealand could contribute internationally to 

emerging ideas. 


Fig. 18. The appearance of 

fossils in outcrop (here 

Tertiary age, coastal San 

Francisco) always brought a 

twinkle to Bob’s eye as he 

quickly suggested some 

paleoenvironmental or 

sequence stratigraphic 

interpretation for the deposits. 

Photo source: Bill Lindqvist. 

#21 – Unstoppable, generous and legendary 

Keith Lewis 

12 Ventnor Drive 

Paraparaumu, New Zealand 5032 

keithlewis247@icloud.com 

[Bob] "Heh! You’ve got to bring this story to Dunedin". 

Who is this guy? I’d been looking forward to a moment of calm after my 20 min talk 

at an early 1970s Geological Society of New Zealand Conference. 

[Keith] "Sorry, I don’t have any travel funds for that." 

[Bob] "We’ll find some." 


[Keith] "I can’t fly down with my rotating blackboard". I needed it to show how 

continental shelves develop from offshore/onshore migrations of wave erosion and 

depositional lenses during the glacial/interglacial cycles. 

[Bob] "We’ll make one". 

There was no stopping this bloke. 

[Bob] "Hi, I’m Bob Carter". 

There never would be any stopping him. 

After the Dunedin talks, Bob and Anne invited me up to their laird’s castle 

overlooking the scarfie city. Its ballroom-sized bathroom seems designed to show off 

a huge, mainly maroon, map of The Empire c.1901 frowning down over the clawfoot 

bath. After a welcome wallow in the suds, Bob found us a pint bottle of Speights and 

we discussed whether 'shelf' was a useful concept pre-Pleistocene. We talked of 

family then and sporadically for the next four decades. Meetings were always 

marked for me by Bob’s great generosity. I cherish books on early expeditions that 

he found in second-hand book shops - havens of calm and lost treasures for him. He 

was generous also with his time, showing me the spectacular geology and scenery 

of Otago, and later of Queensland where he also knew the best places to see 

cassowary, platypus, pythons and miniature wallabies. A generous friend indeed. 

On one early trip, we stopped to observe the dam beginning to tower above 

Cromwell. After explaining the project, and possible administrative and geological 

faults, he offered to bet a bottle of 45 South whisky that the new road, being cut into 

strata dipping down towards the soon-to-be-drowned apricot terraces, would cost 

more than what was then the original budget for the whole "think big" project. 

Fortunately I hesitated. He was never afraid to back his interpretations. 

Bob’s interest in erosion, deposition, and active geology generally, didn’t stop at the 

shoreline. As half of the Carter (Bob) and Carter (Lionel) duo (one enthusiastic 

American reader asked me once if the authors were married!), he helped explore the 

canyon system that heads a thousand kilometres eastward from its 'headwaters' off 

Otago; it was the ultimate sink for Otago’s eroded sediments. He was a prime mover 

in getting Deep Sea Drilling to New Zealand waters. In 2002, he joined a cruise 

looking at the sinks for the flood of sediment from the eroding North Island East 

Coast (Fig. 19). He photographed the uplifted marine terraces and helped plot the 

lenses of sediment that were building up the continental shelf, thereby bringing his 

interest in New Zealand’s offshore Pleistocene cycles full circle. He also collected 

mainly comic shots of participants. The one forming Fig. 19 shows him helping to 

launch a corer - the self-deprecating caption is totally his, part of his post-cruise slide 

show celebrating science and Tolkien 

Bob’s incredible breadth of knowledge is legendary. So is his loyalty to old mates, 

although in later years, it became a matter of, as Basil Fawlty might have said and 

my partner Robyn did say, "Don’t mention the weather"! 

We will miss him. 


Fig. 19. Bob helping launch a 

corer from RV Tangaroa on a 

Source to Sink research cruise 

off Ruatoria, eastern North 

Island in 2002. The selfdeprecating 

caption is totally 

his, part of his post-cruise 

slide show celebrating science 

and Tolkien. Photo source: 

Keith Lewis. 

#22 – The wilds of Westland and Fiordland 

Jon Lindqvist 

Consultant, 76 Passmore Crescent 

Maori Hill, Dunedin, New Zealand 9010 

jonlind@ihug.co.nz 

I met Bob when I was a 1 st year student at Otago in 1969. He impressed me during a 

fieldtrip through the Dunedin succession, striding fast up to an outcrop in the Fairfield 

coal mine, perhaps 50 m along the track from the bus before most of the students 

gathered their wits and followed. 

I have fond memories of a 3 rd year extramural trip Bob led during the 1971 May 

vacation across the North Island from the Whanganui coast to Cape Kidnappers. 


The next year Bob supervised my 4 th year student project in the Inangahua Basin, 

north Westland. My developing interests in things sedimentary were strongly 

influenced by his process-orientated approach. Part of my Inangahua work Bob later 

incorporated into a paper on the Marshall surface [Jl Roy Soc NZ (1982) 12: 11-46]. 

At the same time fellow student Ian Crooks worked on the Matiri Valley section in 

Murchison Basin [Jl Roy Soc NZ (1976) 6: 459-487]. I recall Bob giving up a family 

Easter to accompany both of us in the field. This early experience installed a taste 

for fieldwork in remote parts of New Zealand. 

During the next two years Bob supervised my MSc work on Mid-Cretaceous, 

Eocene, and Oligocene sediments on the Fiordland coast east of Puysegur Point 

and in Preservation Inlet. While he was on sabbatical at Oxford he read and mailed 

back instalments of my hand-written thesis draft in good time, complete with copious 

comments in red ink. Part of the initial bout of fieldwork in Fiordland starting in 

February 1973 was supported by Otago University’s research vessel Munida. Other 

department staff and students working with Munida assistance around the southern 

sounds and tops included John Coggon, Dick Henley, Graeme Oliver, Gary Post, 

Chris Badger, and John Begg. Bob and I also spent a fruitful five days on Chalky 

Island looking over a remarkable Oligocene retrogradational succession of boulder 

breccia, turbidite sands, and coccolith limestone. I suspect the work on Chalky 

Island, coupled with Deep Sea Drilling Project reports that were then appearing, 

boosted Bob’s interest in offshore sedimentation. He worked at an alarming pace, 

developing two manuscripts in his field notebook in neat tiny script [Sedimentology 

(1975) 22: 465-483; Pacific Geology (1977) 12: 1-46]. I remember during our steam 

back to the Puysegur Point Lighthouse landing in Preservation Inlet, the Munida 

crew chuckling over Bob’s very correct use of two-way radio etiquette, with copious 

‘rogers’ and ‘overs’, inciting a dour fisherman to chip in and ask if we had a Roger on 

board. 

#23 – A masterful writer and editor 

David Lowe 



d.lowe@waikato.ac.nz 

Bob Carter I recall seemed a somewhat intimidating figure during my early graduate 

days, clearly very knowledgeable and a powerful speaker (his memorable 

Hochstetter Lecture in 1975 being a terrific and daunting introduction to graduate 

study). In later years I was very impressed with the synthesis he wrote on New 

Zealand climate since 3.9 Ma, based around findings from ODP Site 1119, that 

encompassed both a broad perspective and many layers of detail from terrestrial and 

marine environments [Jl Roy Soc NZ (2005) 35: 9-42]. It was only in my working as 

(sub)editor of Chapter 11 Climate Swings and Roundabouts in the second edition of 

A Continent on the Move [COTM; GSNZ Misc Publ 141 (2015), 408 pp.] that I 

engaged more directly with Bob and discovered his very supportive character, 

helpfulness, and willingness to go the extra mile to get things right, along with his 


wide and deep knowledge and strong writing ability. Bob had been the subeditor of 

Chapter 11 for the first edition of COTM (published in 2008) and had prepared an 

overview of the chapter, including a masterly diagrammatic synthesis of New 

Zealand’s history since 65 Ma. In beginning the revision process of Chapter 11, I 

read Bob’s overview very closely. Apart from a few editorial changes dealing with 

updates on new articles and so on in the revised chapter, I could not improve on it, 

and so it stands virtually unchanged as an exemplary introduction. As well as 

penning the overview, Bob also expertly wrote or co-wrote four other articles in 

COTM: Plumbing the Depths, Core Beliefs, Fleming’s Legacy, and Kaleidoscope. 

During my editing process, Bob additionally provided me with a lot of support by 

reading in detail all the revised or new articles, suggesting editorial improvements 

and ideas for additions (including figures) to enhance the texts. He also provided 

possible new text or captions (rather than simply comments such as ‘needs 

improving’ or similar). It was Bob’s (good) idea to add the seminal work of Brad 

Pillans on Whanganui Basin uplift to the article “Fleming’s legacy”, which I think 

remains as one of the best and most readable articles in the entire volume. His 

expertise and selfless help were greatly appreciated. 

#24 - ODP Leg 181 Co-Chiefs 

Nick McCave 

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge 

Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK 

mccave@esc.cam.ac.uk 

In 1993 Bob and I found ourselves sequestered in the science lab of a rusting 

Russian research ship, the Akademic Lavrentyev, indulging in a little coring and 

seismic work east of New Zealand. We were stuck in the science lab because we 

had a toaster oven there and a supply of TV dinners, necessary to sustain us for the 

next three weeks. The food was pretty awful, as we had been informed by members 

of the staff at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research 

(NIWA) who had been on the ship on its first leg. The former New Zealand 

Oceanographic Institute (having been incorporated with other research groups to 

form NIWA) was the beneficiary of the first action of the Board to sell their ship 

Rapuhia and hire something cheaper. This ‘something’ came down from Vladivostok 

complete with a couple of women in the galley, ostensibly the cooks, who having 

entered into a knife fight were separated by working on alternate shifts. Whether the 

food would have been half or twice as bad were both to have worked simultaneously 

remains a moot point. Anyway meal times were announced over the Tannoy with a 

phrase concluding 'enjoy your meal' that was pronounced in such a way that it 

sounded rather like the name of a person, N.J. Yormil. So we, that is Bob, Lionel 

Carter, Phil Weaver and I, plus technical staff, became the 'Yormil gang'. Lionel and I 

had previously conducted a study of much of the existing seismic work on the 

sediment drifts east of New Zealand and so talk down in the science lab turned to 

what should we do about finding out something of the history recorded by the 

sediments displayed in our seismic profiles. 


This naturally led to the suggestion that we should write a proposal to bring the ODP 

drill ship JOIDES Resolution down to this part of the world in order to conduct a 

lengthy drilling campaign. Originally we conceived of a two leg (that is to say four 

months) strategy, one leg to be devoted to drilling the sediment drifts under the deep 

western boundary current (DWBC) and the other to be devoted to examination of the 

great deep sea fan and turbidite systems which end up under the DWBC. We all had 

various suggestions and wrote bits at sea, but I think it's fair to say that Bob did the 

majority of the work in writing and assembling these pieces into a coherent proposal. 

As he was the Australian representative on one of the ODP committees he was able 

to steer and chart the progress of our proposals through the ODP committee 

structure. The first thing that had to happen was the merging of the two legs into one. 

This proposal went through more than one iteration until it was approved for drilling. 

There was then the problem that although 'approved' the ship may be at the other 

end of the Earth, and being ‘approved’ is not the same as being ‘scheduled’ for 

drilling. Eventually the JOIDES Resolution came down to the Southwest Pacific and 

drilled Leg 180 in the Woodlark Basin, continuing on to Sydney. There we did 

various PR exercises to promote the Australian geological community's involvement 

in the Ocean Drilling Program and were marshalled by Bob into demonstrating the 

great scientific and economic benefit that would accrue to Australian science from 

the country's continued participation in the ODP. Eventually in August 1998, 5 years 

after the first rough draft, we set sail with Bob and I as Co-Chief Scientists straight 

into inclement weather in the Tasman Sea (as usual) to work our way across to the 

first drill site (ODP 1119) in Bob's happy hunting ground just off Canterbury. The leg 

was most successful in acquiring some very long sediment records; in particular we 

recovered a 20 million year record under the DWBC at a site (ODP 1123) on the 

North Chatham drift. 

Bob, Lionel and I assembled a range of papers published in 2004 as a special issue 

of Marine Geology (vol. 205) recording our drilling activities and their contribution to 

understanding the Paleoceanographic Evolution of the Southwest Pacific Gateway. 

This remains an absolutely key area for research on the history of the deep ocean 

circulation as it is the entry point of deep water to the largest of all the oceans, 

containing about 50% of the water on Earth. 

There was one final thing we had to do and that was to write an introductory 

synthesis chapter for the Scientific Reports volume of the ODP (Fig. 20). I don't think 

any of us accorded the highest priority to this because although they may be useful 

works of synthesis, the Scientific Reports are not particularly highly cited (e.g. not 

listed in the ISI database) so we agreed that we would all write a few thousand 

words on different aspects of the drilling and stick it together as a chapter that might 

come in with a dozen figures at under 10,000 words. Lionel and I duly wrote about 

3000 words each and sent them off to Bob. It is a testimony to Bob's phenomenal 

energy that a couple of months later we were presented with a hefty manuscript 

containing 32,000 words, 26 figures and 362 references that printed out at 111 

pages as the record of our ODP Leg 181 research cruise [Proc. Ocean Drilling 

Program, Scientific Results (2004) 181, 111 pp.]. This was one of Bob's great 

strengths – an ability to synthesise a wide range of geological, paleontological, 

geophysical, and geochemical data to produce a coherent geological history. We are 

all in his debt for the origin, conduct and records of ODP Leg 181, a major 

contribution to offshore New Zealand geology. 


Fig. 20. The often onerous nature of long hours and write ups for the Co-Chief 

Scientists could take its toll. Here Bob and Nick were caught resting/napping (left) by 

the ship's photographer who wished to record the activities of the Co-Chiefs, but the 

whirring shutter was heard and a few seconds later (right) they were wide-eyed and 

alert as ever. Photo source: ODP Leg 181 Ship Photographer. 

#25 – Partners in crime in Whanganui Basin 

Tim Naish 

Antarctic Research Unit, Victoria University of Wellington 

PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand 6012 

timothy.naish@vuw.ac.nz 

I was in a tent in Antarctica when I received a radio message, relayed from Gavin 

Dunbar in New Zealand, that Bob Carter had passed away. It was a shock that this 

vibrant, outspoken, and sometimes controversial personality, who had been a huge 

influence in my life, was no longer with us. As I spent time in that tent, I reflected on 

wonderful memories of Townsville during my post-doc, and working with Bob for 

many years after as a partner in crime in Whanganui Basin, New Zealand (Fig. 21). 

Bob and I had seen less and less of each other over the years. Partly because our 

paths crossed less as I became immersed in Antarctic research, and if I’m honest, 

partly because our views on climate change science began to diverge. 

That is not to say that Bob wasn’t, and didn’t remain, very important to me as a 

friend, mentor and highly respected colleague. I will always be grateful for the day 

that Bob and Anne came to our flat in Auckland, and convinced me to go to James 

Cook University for a post-doctoral research fellowship. It was a fantastic time, and 

one of the most stimulating and creative periods of my career. Back then Bob was at 

the peak of his powers in the field of sequence stratigraphy and sea-level change. 

He provided me with free reign and funding to continue researching in Whanganui 

Basin and writing up papers from my PhD. We travelled to the USA, Japan and Italy 

looking at classical Plio-Pleistocene marine sequences, and together with Brad 

Pillans, Alan Beu, Brent Alloway and Steve Abbott we brought the detailed evidence 

of Quaternary global sea-level change recorded in Whanganui Basin to the attention 

of the world. 


Many memorable moments were shared with Bob. One particular dinner hosted by 

Bill Lindqvist (his brother-in-law) in San Francisco during an AGU conference comes 

to mind. Bob had also invited over for dinner Sir Nicholas Shackleton, the 

grandfather of deep-marine oxygen isotope stratigraphy. Bob and his archaeologist 

brother, Patrick, had been friends with Nick in Cambridge. It was a slightly surreal 

experience, as Steve Abbott, Bob, Sir Nick and I made the trip across the Golden 

Gate Bridge to the Lindqvist’s place in a stretched limo. As a naive and slightly 

intimidated early career scientist I asked Shackleton why he thought our Whanganui 

work was so important. He responded, “Dear boy, because it proves that I was right!” 

He was referring to the fact we had documented the physical evidence of water 

depth and shoreline changes corresponding to the numerous glacial-interglacial 

cycles of global sea-level implied by his oxygen isotope records. 

Fig. 21. Bob in 

jet boat 

traversing the 

Whanganui 

River Plio- 

Pleistocene 

section. Photo 

source: Steve 

Abbott. 

During the Townsville days, and following my move back to New Zealand to join 

GNS Science, Bob and I co-authored 16 papers on Whanganui Basin stratigraphy 

and sea-level change. Never one to accept the status quo, Bob would continually 

challenge orthodox views, and our days and evenings doing fieldwork were filled with 

good-humoured debate, and many discussions that soon wandered a long way from 

the original point at issue. Those who knew Bob well, knew he loved playing the 

devil’s advocate, and he taught me one of the most important qualities of a scientist; 

never stop questioning and don’t be lulled into following the status quo. Bob’s many 

and varied scientific contributions always advanced the field and the thinking, and 

although not everyone agreed with his views, he challenged us all to dig a bit 

deeper. 

He had a strong sense of history and often talked fondly, and with sense of 

reverence, about the contributions of the great New Zealand geologists and 

paleontologists (e.g. Fleming, Suggate, Wellman, Finlay, Marwick and Hector) that 

had gone before. I have no doubt that the contribution that Professor Robert Merlin 

Carter has made to New Zealand geoscience will be remembered with a similar 

feeling of significance and appreciation. 


Below (Fig. 22) is a photo from the last time I saw Bob, at the Brisbane International 

Geological Congress in 2012. It was a fun dinner with some of the great characters 

of the New Zealand geosciences community together. Bob never forgot his friends, 

and I will be forever grateful for knowing him as well as I did. 

Fig. 22. Four of Bob’s close geoscience colleagues snapped at a Bob Carter 

organised dinner gathering in Brisbane during the Brisbane International 

Geological Congress (IGC) in 2012. From left to right: Brad Pillans, Lionel Carter, 

Bob Carter, Cam Nelson and Bruce Hayward. Photo source: Tim Naish. 

#26 – Sailing with Bob 

Helen Neil 

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) 

Private Bag 14901, Kilbirnie, Wellington, New Zealand 6241 

helen.neil@niwa.co.nz 

Bob was a great mentor to many students and colleagues over the years and I was 

fortunate to encounter Bob’s energy early in my career. As an undergraduate I had 

the opportunity to join a New Zealand Oceanographic Institute (now NIWA) voyage, 

led by Lionel Carter, with Cam Nelson, Nick McCave, and Bob Carter. This was to be 

the first of a number of voyages where I was privileged to sail with Bob. My enduring 

memory of those times is the many evenings in the coring lab or container 

processing mud, often cold and a little unstable on the running swells. Bob would 

pop by each evening, arriving by stealth in his plaid ‘house shoes’, bearing a few 

squares of chocolate for me and a wee tipple of sherry for him – different times to 

today. Each evening started with a discussion of the mud, but frequently veered off 

onto any topic or thought that grabbed Bob’s interest. Bob remained totally dedicated 


and engaged with science conversations throughout his life. Over the years my 

conversations with Bob continued to range, and regardless of the side of the 

conversation we positioned ourselves, at times disagreeing for the sake of it, it is 

Bob’s passion for science in its widest guise that remains with me. 

#27 – An exceptional sedimentary/marine geologist 

Cam Nelson 



c.nelson@waikato.ac.nz 

As a young Lecturer in Geology (University of Auckland) then Earth Sciences 

(University of Waikato) in the early to mid-1970s I quickly became aware of several 

important New Zealand (NZ) sedimentary geology-related papers coming out of the 

Geology Department at the University of Otago involving especially an R.M. Carter 

(and at times co-authors R.J. Norris and/or C.A. Landis, and sometimes others). The 

papers covered three themes: (1) Relating the Cenozoic sedimentary record of 

southern NZ to the developing concept of plate tectonics [e.g. Earth & Plan. Sci. Lett. 

31 (1976), 85-94; Jl Geol. Soc. London 135 (1978), 191-205]; (2) The significance of 

Oligocene unconformities in Australasia [e.g. Nature 237 (1972), 12-13]; and (3) 

Possible new nomenclature for NZ’s Tertiary time-scale and rocks [e.g. NZJGG 

(1970) 13, 350-363; Jl Roy. Soc. NZ (1974) 4, 5-18]. The graduate students in my 

MSc Sedimentary Geology courses at the time were required to read, understand 

and critically assess these papers, and to consider their relevance in relation to our 

North Island Tertiary successions. We kind of got to know and admire the work of 

this Bob Carter ‘remotely’, before ever meeting him. 

And then in 1975 I met Bob for the first time when he became the GSNZ Hochstetter 

Lecturer and travelled NZ giving talks on various aspects of the above topics. At 

Waikato we publicised the occasion widely and captured a crowd of >100 people 

crammed into our large 1 st year laboratory. Bob required dual 35 mm slide projectors 

and accompanying orchestral audio for his Hochstetter Lecture, delivering with 

theatrical enthusiasm a superb talk that greatly impressed the audience. I was 

‘captured’ by Bob from that time and we remained firm friends ever since. 

Bob appreciated that my interests in sedimentary geology spanned very much into 

the marine waters around NZ, having been involved in a Tangaroa 1 research cruise 

to Marlborough Sounds in 1974 and was to be Co-Chief of a University of Waikatorelated 

cruise to the Three Kings platform in 1978 to study the sea-floor carbonate 

sediments. In 1978 Bob had some association with a planned Joint US/NZ 

Workshop on Ocean Exploration and he twisted my arm to present an overview of 

the state of marine geology in NZ at that time [Univ Auckland Proc Report P1 (1978), 

A45-91]. That summary, I think, was partly responsible for Bob following a strong 

research interest in ‘all things marine geological in NZ’ in subsequent years. In my 

talk the first slide showed two cartoon characters fishing from a wharf, one saying 

“Ocean floor below the ground, Tell us something real profound”. Undeniably, Bob 


Carter and colleagues have gone on to do this for NZ, with dozens of relevant 

publications covering large areas of the sea floor off eastern NZ in particluar. 

Following my participation in 1982/83 as sole NZer aboard Glomar Challenger on 

DSDP Leg 90 investigating the Neogene paleoceanography of Tasman Sea and 

Southwest Pacific, I became the GSNZ Hochstetter Lecturer in1984 to present the 

exciting preliminary results of that expedition. Almost immediately after the 

Hochstetter appointment I received a phone call from Bob offering an all-expenses 

paid trip to James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville to deliver my Hochstetter 

Lecture talks there. Naturally I accepted and I wonder if this might be the only 

Hochstetter presentation associated with the trip circuit that ventured outside NZ? 

The whole scientific experience proved highly stimulating and was, of course, 

supplemented by the unforgettable hospitality at the Carter residence. Although I do 

recall one frightening bedroom experience when I awoke for a pee about 3 am to see 

a very large (>5 cm size) hairy spider (?a Tarantula or a Huntsman Spider) on the 

wall above my head. I was too wary to go back to sleep and left the culprit for Bob to 

nonchalantly remove and dispose of before breakfast…”no problems” he said! 

A decade later our daughter Miranda who had recently graduated BSc (Waikato) 

was hosted by Bob and Anne during her travels in Queensland. She stayed a short 

while, was given an air-conditioned bedroom, use of a car, went to the beach with 

their children Susan and Jeremy, and recalls Bob giving her a long lesson on how to 

use the remote to run their TV, video player and stereo (novel back then!). All in all 

treated like ‘royalty’. Bob did introduce Miranda to JCU and tried to convince her to 

come over and join them to do an MSc, but eventually other plans won out for her. 

The congenial and stimulating company of Bob (and Anne) was a hallmark of the 

Carters. Over the past couple of decades I mainly saw and chatted with Bob at 

various annual geoscience conferences (Fig. 23). He quickly attracted people around 

him and encouraged lively discussions, indeed debates, about all kinds of 

geoscience issues (e.g. Figs 9, 22, 23). While our current generation of NZ 

geoscientists often look back and marvel at the contributions made to the discipline 

by early pioneers, I would unquestionably add Bob Carter to this mix of greats for the 

future. We will really miss him. 

Fig. 23. Cam Nelson and 

Bob discussing ‘all things 

geological’ on the steps of 

the Nelson Cathedral 

during a lunch break at the 

GSNZ conference in 

Nelson, 2011. Richard 

Norris and Alan Cooper 

(University of Otago) to the 

right. Photo source: Bruce 

Hayward. 


#28 – What a stimulating collaborator 

Richard Norris* 

[*It is with sadness to report that Richard passed away 29 June 2016] 



richard.norris@otago.ac.nz 

When I arrived in New Zealand to take up my appointment as Lecturer in structural 

geology at Otago University in 1970, most of the staff were quite young and recently 

appointed. This led to a vibrant atmosphere where established views were 

challenged. Leading the charge was Robert M Carter, Lecturer in paleontology, but 

with wide interests and a penchant for tilting at the windmills of the status quo! He 

and I saw eye to eye on many things. In February 1971, I was taking 3 rd year Field 

School at Mararoa Station in western Southland. Bob came out just before the end in 

a rental minivan to help me lead the last field day measuring sections through the 

sequence. At about 6:30 am that morning we were woken by Jack Squires, the camp 

manager, bearing plates of bacon and eggs and telling us to get them down before 

the students woke up and wanted some! He was followed shortly by the farmer who 

asked which of us was Richard. When I indicated, he told me to “get my arse into 

gear as my wife had gone into labour”! Bob immediately told me to take his car and 

he would sort out the rest of the trip. So I did and just made it back to Dunedin in 

time for the birth of my daughter. 

The next year, Bob came out to Field School earlier in order to run a day trip down 

the Waiau valley to Clifden. No sealed roads there, in fact in places the road was 

little more than a gravelled cart track. It was a chapter of disasters. The rental car 

stopped at the farm gate with a blown alternator, we had at least two flat tyres and 

one of the landrovers broke down. We finally limped back to camp with the students 

crammed into three landrovers. However, Bob and I had seen some superb sections 

of sediments around Blackmount, which looked a lot like some at Field School and in 

which case were very different from the existing maps. Bob suggested we put some 

3 rd year students down there for their projects, and then he and I come down after 

exams in November to “finish off the mapping”. Four students were duly allocated 

projects; one did a superb job, one a very good job, one a skin-of-his-teeth job, and 

one dropped out. And in November, the Carter and Norris families set sail with two 

caravans for Blackmount where, over the next two weeks, Bob and I started to 

unravel a Pandoras Box of delights that opened our eyes to the whole Cenozoic 

evolution of New Zealand. Our collaboration had begun! 

Bob was a most stimulating collaborator who had a penchant for throwing out the 

most outrageous ideas, some of which had elements of truth. I learnt quickly to 

disagree with him at all times! Make him argue his case and put his evidence on the 

table. Otherwise he would do a u-turn and leave you lamely trying to defend his 

proposition against him! Bob was a great companion to stir up a new and fairly naive 

young geologist from the other side of the world whose DPhil had been on 

metamorphic rocks. He taught me about New Zealand geology as only Bob could, 

and together we made waves! 


#29 – Architect of JCU’s Marine Geophysics Laboratory 

Alan Orpin 

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) 

Private Bag 14901, Kilbirnie, Wellington, New Zealand 6241 

alan.orpin@niwa.co.nz 

The “legend” of Bob Carter (RMC) preceded actually meeting him by some years. As 

an undergraduate at Otago University there were fables of the young and dynamic 

sedimentolgist who mapped much of the Southland basin sequences during the 

school holidays. More frightening were the anecdotes of third-year field camps where 

students mapped until dark, and then by car headlight. As the years passed since his 

departure from Otago I’m sure the legend grew. 

At the 1991 Geological Society of New Zealand conference held in Palmerston North 

Doug Campbell announced that “You must see Bob’s talk – he always has 

something to say”. Bob remains one the finest science communicators I have 

experienced. But for me, his marine geology legacy was a life-changer; Carter, 

Carter, Williams & Landis [1985; NZ Oceanographic Memoir 93, 43 pp.] remained 

top of the pile of reprints throughout my MSc study on the Otago shelf. No surprise 

then that I applied for a PhD at James Cook University in Townsville, where Bob was 

the Head of School. At its peak the department had 50+ PhD students, many of 

whom were “soft rockers”, with a vibrant culture of research and publication. No 

mean feat given that JCU was long renowned for its strength in economic geology. 

Over the 1980s and early 90s Bob had fostered a fully-fledged marine geology 

programme. In that regard, Otago and JCU were the only two universities in 

Australasia with their own suite of geophysical equipment to operate off their 

respective ships; another RMC legacy. The formation of the Marine Geophysics 

Laboratory (MGL) was visionary. Bob and his staff had brought together 

sedimentologists, stratigraphers, physicists, paleontologists, technology specialists 

and a consultancy under one roof. The MGL became something much bigger than 

the sum of its parts: organic, vibrant, ambitious, youthful, and on occasion perhaps a 

little impetuous. As students we rubbed shoulders with some extraordinary visiting 

scientists and research fellows, including: Nick McCave, Tim Naish, Keith Crook, 

Steve Abbott, Chris Fielding, James Shulmeister, Phil Weavers, and Brad Pillans 

(and Craig Fulthorpe and John Hughes-Clark in earlier years) to name just a few. 

The MGL at its zenith was special and Bob was an architect of its success. 

Within a short time we all had a working knowledge of the seismic stratigraphy of the 

Great Barrier Reef lagoon, sediment hydrodynamics, carbonate production and the 

Whanganui Basin sequence. Between Bob, Peter Ridd, Piers Larcombe, Jerry 

Dickens and Ken Woolfe we learnt so much about process-based, marine-sediment 

research. “Reflector A” and mid-cycle shell beds soon became the chatter over 

morning coffee, along with RMC’s latest software. Bob loved his laptops and was 

forever upgrading, and had no patience for Windows, Microsoft or Macs – “Mankind 

realised that an icon-based language was flawed with the demise of the Egyptian 

empire... two thousand years ago”. 


A culture of lubricating research ideas was optimised by Anne and Bob regularly 

hosting Sedimentary Suppers on a Friday evening, which also affirmed their 

incredible generosity. Anne was an integral part of the Carter legacy, and her interest 

in art and oriental carpets was an engaging counterpoint — the rugs in my home are 

an ongoing reward of that connection. On occasion, a bit like a raucous family, 

research discussions were vigorous, but the chance to share ideas in an informal 

atmosphere was usually invigorating. Bob revelled in debate (Fig. 24) and 

encouraged us to develop our arguments and delivery. He versed us in the vices of 

“chart junk” and clarity but we couldn’t rise to his passion for yellow overheads. Wow, 

OHP’s, now that’s a blast from the past! 

It might be all too easy to just remember RMC as the Head of School, a visionary or 

as a vigorous debater for science, but that wouldn’t fully acknowledge Bob’s colour, 

generosity and engaging personality. He enriched our lives and I will forever be 

thankful for his support of my scientific endeavours. 

Fig. 24. Bob explains to 

Alan Orpin how ‘it really 

happened’, but Alan 

remains unconvinced! 

GSNZ annual conference 

social event, Kaikoura, 

2005. Photo source: 

Unknown. 

#30 – A quiet beer or two 

Brad Pillans 

Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University 

Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia 

brad.pillans@anu.edu.au 

I recall a memorable day in the field with Bob, and his then PhD student, Steve 

Abbott (Fig. 11). It was a hot day and we had lunch, in the shade, literally right on the 

roadside, up the Turakina Valley, east of Whanganui. Sandwiches were produced 

and Bob disparagingly referred to the grain-rich bread as ‘bread with rat droppings’. 

Bob was clearly trying to goad us into an argument, as he often did for the fun of it, 

but neither of us took the bait. In that respect he reminded me of Harold Wellman 


who often made claims, on little apparent evidence, that were intended to provoke 

lively debate. 

At the end of a long, hot day we headed back to Whanganui. Bob was driving (and 

thirsty), so he made a bee-line for the nearest bottle shop. Bob downed a cold can of 

beer between the bottle shop and the motor camp, where we were staying, just a few 

minutes up the road. After a quick shower and a change of clothes, we headed off 

for dinner. By the time we reached the restaurant he had drunk most of another can. 

As we waited to be seated at the restaurant (they weren’t quite ready for us, despite 

our booking), Bob finished his beer, and, with the look (and intention) of a naughty 

child, he wondered where to dispose of his empty can. With no obvious rubbish bin 

in sight, he stuffed the can into a large pot plant in the corner. The waitress 

reappeared, Bob looked angelic and we were taken to our table. I don’t recall the 

details of our dinner conversation that night, but, as on other occasions, Bob’s quick 

mind would have led us in many interesting directions and lost us a few more friendly 

arguments. 

#31 – The global warming issue 

Ian Plimer 

PO Box 985, Kensington Gardens 

South Australia 5068, Australia 

ianplimer@internode.on.net 

I first met Bob as the newly appointed Professor and Head of Earth Sciences at 

James Cook University of North Queensland (JCU). He was appointed from the 

University of Otago (New Zealand) as an international expert in sedimentology, 

marine geology and paleontology. His academic career started as an Assistant 

Lecturer and, after his Cambridge PhD, Senior Lecturer at Otago. 

During his time as Head of Department (1981-1999) at JCU, he led from the front, 

mentored hundreds of young people, grew the Earth Sciences department from an 

ore deposit specialist department to one with numerous disciplines of international 

repute, published scores of leading edge “soft rock” geological papers, opened up 

new institutes and put JCU on the map internationally. This was not without many 

internal battles within his Department, Faculty and University which Bob handled with 

great guile. The university bureaucrats feared him because he was always wellprepared, 

used knowledge, common sense and logic. 

Bob received many honours such as the New Zealand Geological Society’s 

Hochstetter Lectureship (1975), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New 

Zealand (1997), and the Heartland Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2015). 

He served in various editorial roles in his discipline where he was known as a 

pedantic editor with a careful attention to detail and the scientific method and, among 

many other positions (e.g. Table 1), he was appointed Chair of the Marine Science 

and Technology Commission, Director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling 

Program (ODP), Co-Chief Scientist on ODP Leg 181 (Southwest Pacific Gateways) 

and Emeritus Fellow (Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne). 


In 1987 Bob was appointed to the Australian Research Grants Committee (ARC) and 

I spent 5 years closely working with him as a fellow member of the ARC earth 

sciences group. Here I saw a polymath who was insightful, could rationally 

objectively analyse and had the ability to instinctively see the weakness in a 

research project proposal, logic and scientific methodology. As Chair of this ARC 

committee, he would mentor new university and museum appointees that we 

interviewed, offer partial funding to vice-chancellors on the condition that they topped 

up research funds of new and young appointees and guided many young people. He 

would always insist on funding for young researchers starting careers, would use 

some of the budget to fund curiosity-based research that commonly did not get the 

support of referees and was a fearless supporter of the discipline of Earth sciences. 

He spent many hours each year in Canberra trying to get a bigger slice of the cake 

for geology, geophysics, meteorology and climatology research. Ironically, some of 

the more prominent names in current Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) circles 

in Australia who were then just commencing their careers received great support 

from Bob in his capacity as Chair of this ARC committee. This shows the character 

of the man. After travelling the continent, the final ARC budget sessions were always 

held on the Great Barrier Reef followed by wonderful hospitality on the mainland 

from Anne and Bob Carter. 

In international geological circles, Bob was well known for work on paleoclimatology 

(especially with the ODP), the Great Barrier Reef, sea-level change and Cenozoic 

stratigraphy. This prepared him well for the next phase of his life. He published more 

than 125 papers during his scientific career. After retirement, he was appointed 

adjunct professor at JCU. It was then he became known to the public for his critical 

analyses of the idea of human-induced climate change. He was always friendly and 

cheerful, a captivating public speaker and during debates when he had a tirade of ad 

hominem attacks heaped on him, he just kept to the script and devastated 

opponents with facts, logic, the scientific method and his intellect. By his principled, 

polite and persistent espousing of the truth, he was able to silence opponents, most 

of whom were the antithesis of Bob, a true scientist of integrity and a gentleman. He 

didn’t suffer fools but was always polite and courteous. 

Bob was an expert witness in court on climate matters and was interrogated by 

parliamentary select committees in many countries. He gave private briefings to 

politicians of all persuasions and was a witness to the US Senate Committee of 

Environment and Public Works. Bob became one of the most influential voices in the 

world on human-induced global warming, was always willing to help those grappling 

and understanding the issue and was very free with his time. He was a great 

communicator, always the educator, and had the ability in speech and writing to 

make important points succinct and understandable to the non-scientist. He had a 

keen wit and a good sense of humour. Bob was sole author of Climate: The Counter 

Consensus (2010) and lead author of Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies about Climate 

Change (2013), a co-author of the three volume Climate Change Reconsidered 

(2011, 2013, 2014) produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on 

Climate Change (NIPCC), and a co-author of Why Scientists Disagree about Global 

Warming (2015). 


He will appear in CFACT’s film “Climate Hustle” (Fig. 25). Bob was active in the 

Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Heartland Institute, both of which 

provided platforms for his promotion of science. He received no funding from special 

interest organisations such as energy companies, environmental organisations or 

government departments. This is no surprise because Bob was a fly in the ointment 

for funding groups who supported bespoke politically correct science. All Bob wanted 

in climate debates was common sense, repeatable validated evidence and scientific 

Fig. 25. Bob Carter (third from right) at the premiere of the film “Climate Hustle” in 

Paris, 2015. Photo source: James Delingpole via Heartland website 

(www.heartland.org/robert-m-carter). 

reasoning. He was not prepared to accept a popular concept, poor reasoning or 

concocted statistics and valued validated evidence over models. He was fearless 

and suffered because of it. In response to several crank calls, political pressure and 

complaints from those with vested interests, JCU withdrew his office facilities, his 

unpaid adjunct professorship, his email address and his library access. They found it 

easier to blackball the person who had built up the discipline of Earth sciences at 

JCU. It was not that Bob had his facts wrong but he was politically incorrect and his 

“views on climate change did not fit well with the School’s own teaching and 

research activities”. They dismissed the person who put them on the map. 

Bob was a gentleman of passion, a fighter and died with his boots on. We all owe 

him a great debt of gratitude and it was a privilege to know such a good man. We will 

miss him terribly. 


#32 – An incomparable teacher and communicator 

John Rhodes 

54 Kempton Street 

Greytown, New Zealand 5712 

rhodesja@xtra.co.nz 

Bob Carter had the knack of making his listeners feel that they were on the same 

intellectual plane as himself (although few were); and that they could have 

discovered for themselves what he was sharing had they bent their energies in its 

direction. Energy, of the mental kind, Bob had in spades. With it came an 

unsurpassed ability to communicate (Fig. 26), always in perfectly constructed 

sentences - his cerebral word-processor was never idle - and to demolish the 

arguments of those he called ‘alarmists’. This is not the place to debate the issue 

that became central to the last decade of Bob’s life, but if I had to I’d come down on 

his side, having found his books and lectures utterly persuasive. 

Being in a despised minority served only to make Bob work harder, to become even 

more articulate, and to focus even more relentlessly on flaws in opposing arguments. 

To adopt the popular view was not in his nature. If the contrary tide of opinion 

depressed or discouraged him, I never saw it. There’s no man to whom I’d rather 

listen, on any subject. In a court of law he’d have been superb, and it is no stretch to 

imagine him as a QC defending and winning impossible cases. 

But Bob took his silk in Earth science, in which other contributors to this Supplement 

can better gauge his achievements. I got to know him when I took up a visiting 

teaching fellowship at the University of Otago and became its highest-paid and most 

innocent student of 1978. In second year classes, and especially on field trips, Bob 

taught us much about stratigraphy and paleoenvironments that later informed my 

own teaching. We were the same age, but his knowledge, ability and insight soared 

so far above mine that a master-student relationship was perfectly natural. He 

introduced me to the power of the 35 millimetre slide as a teaching tool, and - this 

has always puzzled me - welcomed me into a friendship to which I could offer little. 

Thus we kept in touch with Christmas letters, occasional visits, emails and invitations 

to speak, an activity in which (thanks to YouTube) Bob lives on. 

That Dunedin year was half a lifetime ago for both of us; now I’m left but Bob Carter 

isn’t. His work has ended, and the world and Earth science are the worse for it. 

Fig. 26. Bob explaining the Plio- 

Pleistocene Whanganui 

cyclothemic sequences to 

attentive listeners at the AGU 

conference in San Francisco in 

1997. Photo source: Steve Abbott. 


#33 – Advancing Great Barrier Reef shelf sedimentology 

Peter Ridd 

Marine Geophysics Laboratory, College of Science, Technology and Engineering 

James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia 

peter.ridd@jcu.edu.au 

I rejoined James Cook University in 1989 at the newly opened Marine Geophysics 

Laboratory which had been cooked up by Bob Carter as Head of the Geology 

Department and Prof Mal Heron of Physics, who coincidentally is also a New 

Zealander. These two decided that much could be done with collaboration between 

the disciplines which essentially shared the same building. Geology in particular was 

growing rapidly and trench warfare could have easily broken out between the 

disciplines over precious space and workshop facilities. However, Carter and Heron 

decided to do what often does not happen in academia – they’d share the space and 

put all the young marine geologists and physicists in the same area and see what 

happens. Some workshops were rebuilt, a nice blue carpet was put on the floor and 

Bob put up a great big map of the world’s ocean covering 20 square meters of one 

wall. 

Four post-docs were hired – I was one. Of course you don’t realise these things at 

the time, but it was a phenomenally energetic environment to work. There was 

seabed mapping using the old GLORIA system, analysis of deep seismic data, work 

on the sea-level history of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and sediment dynamics. I 

knew a bit about oceanography and was working on new methods of measuring 

sediment deposition and erosion. In no time I ended up working in a mangrove creek 

with Piers Larcombe who was an expert on sediment megaripples. The collaboration 

just happened because we were close together. The Marine Geophysics Laboratory 

was a model of how to collaborate across disciplines. 

Then came the Carter-inspired New Zealand invasion. Dozens, it seemed, of Kiwi 

PhD and MSc students appeared in the 1990s. There must have been some sort of 

visa scam happening at the time but JCU was the beneficiary. It seems that half of 

our knowledge of the sedimentology of the GBR shelf and the sediment transport 

into the deeper ocean has been done by Kiwi geologists – some of which, such as 

Gavin Dunbar and Alan Orpin, still hold more than a passing interest. 

The Marine Geophysics Laboratory pushed ahead with the understanding of the 

Great Barrier Reef shelf and contributed immensely to the early debates about 

threats to the reef itself. As a physicist I found it illuminating to see the totally 

different view of the world that they have to other scientists. They see change as 

inevitable whereas a marine biologist will see any change as unnatural, probably 

bad, and most likely caused by humans. I remember Bob Carter mischievously 

asking some biologists “How many of the thousands of reefs of the GBR do you think 

die naturally each century”. You’d have thought he had said a very rude word judging 

by the disgusted response. They could not conceive that it could be natural for some 

reefs to be killed off. The GBR to them was an unchanging constant and any future 

changes must be caused by humans. Carter and his geology group taught me that 

this was far from the truth. 


Even before Bob entered the debate on anthropogenic climate change, he and other 

geologists in the Marine Geophysics Laboratory, such as Piers Larcombe and Ken 

Woolfe, weighed into another very controversial topic – the fate of the GBR and 

especially the influence of agricultural runoff in river plumes upon the GBR. The 

biologists would simply state that all that extra soil erosion from agriculture must be 

destroying the reef. The geologists pointed out that there were naturally far larger 

sediment movements due to wave resuspension. They would back this up with 

evidence from sediment cores showing that some of the inshore environments had 

been highly turbid for almost as long as the Holocene GBR has been around. During 

the 1990s there was a healthy tension between the marine biologists and the marine 

geologists which eventually became lopsided as the biologists became dominant in 

numbers and could set the agenda and, in my view, ignore the inconvenient. This is 

presently an unhealthy situation and we need more Bob Carters to use that 

geological perspective to see things a little differently. 

Bob’s contribution to JCU and our understanding of the GBR was enormous, his 

leadership inspired the rest of us, and his cheerfulness and hospitality meant he was 

also such fun to be around. He is sorely missed. 

#34 – ’Climate skeptics’ together 

Gerrit van der Lingen 

24 Somerset Terrace 

Stoke, Nelson, New Zealand 7010 

gerritvdl@xtra.co.nz 

I have known Bob Carter for a long time, since he was a Senior Lecturer in the 

Geology Department of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. We knew 

each other as colleagues. At that time, Bob had written about a mid-Oligocene 

unconformity, which he named the ‘Marshall Paraconformity’ (Fig. Back cover). This 

concept evoked some scientific controversy, in which I was involved [Geol. Soc. NZ 

Newsletter 72, 1986: 26-33]. However, it also generated much new research. 

We lost contact after Bob became Professor of Earth Sciences at the James Cook 

University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, in 1981. The only scientific 

connection was through the Deep Sea Drilling Project. I took part in two early 

expeditions on the drilling ship Glomar Challenger (Legs 21, 1971, and 30, 1973). 

Bob became involved later on, when the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) had 

morphed into the Ocean Drilling Project (ODP), with a new scientific drilling ship, the 

JOIDES Resolution. He spearheaded Australia’s involvement in the Ocean Drilling 

Program and became the Director of the Australian Office. He planned several of its 

expeditions in our part of the world, and was Co-Chief Scientist of Leg 181, which 

drilled to the east of New Zealand. 

After many years, my wife Marianne and I met Bob unexpectedly at the 1996 

Townsville International Chamber Music Festival, discovering our shared love of 

classical music. We remember that he arrived late at one of the concerts. He felt a 


it queasy. While walking to his car in the dark, something hit him in the leg. He 

could not see what it was, but it seemed likely that it was a snake. Luckily, no major 

damage was done. 

Our climate change association happened by chance. When passing through 

Christchurch on 26 February 2003, Bob picked up a copy of The Press newspaper in 

the airport. In it was an article I wrote, titled “Global warming doctrine latest 

environmental scare”. Realising that I was a fellow “climate skeptic”, he contacted 

me and we stayed in regular contact ever since. 

In 2006 we were in Noosa, Australia, where Bob debated Professor Ian Lowe on 

climate change, as part of the “Noosa Long Weekend” programme. Bob won the 

debate hands down. This was not difficult, as Professor Lowe refused to address any 

of the points raised by Bob. He was more interested in promoting his 2005 book 

Living in the Hothouse: How Global Warming Affects Australia. I was able to support 

Bob during discussion time. We had dinner together in the Sails restaurant in Noosa 

(Fig. 27). A few years later we met Bob and Anne again in Christchurch, where they 

were visiting with Anne’s sister and geology husband, Bill Lindqvist, from California. 

Fig. 27. Dinner at the Sails restaurant in Noosa, Queensland, Australia, in 2006. 

From left to right: Anne and Bob Carter, Marianne and Gerrit van der Lingen. Photo 

source: Gerrit van der Lingen. 

Bob has been a powerhouse in the man-made climate change debate. He had an 

unbridled energy and sharp intellect. His contributions to New Zealand and 

Australian geology were impressive. He has made huge contributions through 

research and teaching, recognised by many awards. Notwithstanding this record he 

has been vilified for his activities as a man-made-climate-change realist (sometimes 

called skeptic), in which he has fearlessly defended the scientific method. An 

outstanding contribution was as co-author of the impressive publications by the 


Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). He also wrote 

two books on climate change: Climate: The Counter Consensus, and Taxing Air. The 

latter was produced together with the Australian cartoonist John Spooner. 

Cartoonists often can make a point succinctly and Spooner is a master in this art. 

Bob Carter was mentioned in one of his cartoons in Taxing Air (p. 62). It shows the 

former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard berating the man-made-climate-change 

extremist, Professor Tim Flannery (Fig. 28). Tim Flannery was made a Climate 

Commissioner by Julia Gillard with a handsome salary (incidentally, he was sacked 

in this role by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the successor of Julia Gillard). 

Bob was a very generous person. Whenever I asked him for comments or 

information, he answered promptly. He did so even after he recently came back from 

the Paris COP21 conference (late 2015) when I asked him to send me some of his 

impressions of COP21. I also asked him if he was willing to write a short 

endorsement to put on the back cover of my (self-publishing) upcoming book The 

Fable of a Stable Climate. He promptly replied to both requests on 27 December 

2015. I will treasure his endorsement, which was possibly one of his last actions in 

the climate science debate. The geoscientific community owes Bob Carter so much 

and he will be truly missed. 

Fig. 28. Cartoon by John Spooner. Prime Minister Julia Gillard berating climate 

commissioner Professor Tim Flannery, referring to Bob Carter. From Taxing Air, 

2013, p. 62. John Spooner is thanked for permission to use his cartoon. 


Publications of Bob Carter 

Cam Nelson 



The following bibliography for Bob Carter shows his books and mainly peer-reviewed 

publications in reverse chronological order from 2015 to 1965. The list derives partly 

from Bob’s personal website (http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_4.htm) 

but has been updated and edited here to be as complete as possible. Not listed are 

his very large number of conference presentations/abstracts, his newspaper and 

popular articles (>266), his radio interviews (>25), and his video presentations (21), 

some of which can be accessed at https://www.heartland.org/robert-m-carter and at 

http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm. In the following listing Bob’s 

authorship appears variously as Carter, R.M., Carter, R. or Carter, B. 

The list contains 145 publications. Breaking these down into the broadest of 

categories shows that 68% relate to various aspects of New Zealand onland or 

offshore geosciences, 16% to a global warming/climate theme, 9% to Australian 

(principally Great Barrier Reef shelf) geosciences, and 7% to ‘other’ (mainly 

paleontological articles associated with his PhD research). The ‘New Zealand’ 

articles span the 50 years of Bob’s research career from 1965 to 2015, the ‘global 

warming’ ones only since 2006, the ‘Australian’ ones between 1986 and 2009, and 

the ‘other’ mainly before 1976. The overwhelming predominance of ‘New Zealandrelated’ 

publications in Bob’s bibliography clearly highlights the continuing strong 

attachment he maintained throughout his research career with ‘all things geological’ 

in and about New Zealand, despite residing in Australia since 1981. 

2015 

Idso, C.D., Carter, R.M., Singer, S.F. 2015. Why Scientists Disagree about Global 

Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus. Nongovernmental 

International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), The Heartland Institute, Chicago, 

Illinois. 106 pp. 

Carter, B. 2015a. Overview [of Chap. 11, Climate Swings and Roundabouts – 

Paleoclimate Fluctuations across Zealandia]. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on 

the Move: New Zealand Geoscience Revealed (2nd edition). Geoscience Society 

of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 141: 264-267. 

Carter, B. 2015b. Fleming’s Legacy. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on the Move: 

New Zealand Geoscience Revealed (2nd edition). Geoscience Society of New 

Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 141: 278-281. 

Graham, I., Carter, B., Thomson, J. 2015. Kaleidoscope. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A 

Continent on the Move: New Zealand Geoscience Revealed (2nd edition). 

Geoscience Society of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 141: 356-360. 

Nelson, C., Carter, B. 2015. Core Beliefs. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on the 

Move: New Zealand Geoscience Revealed (2nd edition). Geoscience Society of 

New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 141: 268-271. 


Nelson, C., Carter, R. 2015. Plumbing the Depths. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent 

on the Move: New Zealand Geoscience Revealed (2nd edition). Geoscience 

Society of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 141: 42-45. 

Yan, H, Wei, W., Soon, W., An, Z., Zhoe, W., Liu, Z., Wang, Y., Carter, R.M. 2015. 

Dynamics of the intertropical convergence zone over the western Pacific during 

the Little Ice Age. Nature Geoscience 8: 315-320. doi: 10.1038/ngeo2375. 

2014 

Carter, R.M. 2014. Global warming: the scientific context of the policy debate. In: 

Moran, A. (ed), Climate Change: The Facts. Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne, 

Chapter 5: 67-82. 

Carter, R.M., de Lange, W., Hansen, J.M., Humlum, O., Idso, C., Kear, D., Legates, 

D., Morner, N.A., Ollier, C., Singer, F., Soon, W. 2014. Commentary and analysis 

on the Whitehead & Associates 2014 NSW sea-level report. NIPCC 

(Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) Policy Brief. 44 pp. 

Idso, C.D., Idso, S.D., Carter, R.M., Singer, S.F. 2014a. Climate Change 

Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts. Report of the Nongovernmental International 

Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), The Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois. 

1000+ pp. 

Idso, C.D., Idso, S.D., Carter, R.M., Singer, S.F. 2014b. Climate Change 

Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, Summary for Policy Makers. Report of the 

Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), The Heartland 

Institute, Chicago, Illinois. 20 pp. 

Soon, W., Velasco Herrara, V.M., Selveraj, K., Traversi, R., Usoskin, I., Chen, C-T.A., 

Lou, J-Y., Kao, S-J., Carter, R.M., Pipin, V., Severi, M., Becagli, S. 2014. A review 

of Holocene-linked climatic variation on centennial to millenial time scales: 

Physical processes, interpretative frameworks and a new multiple cross-wavelet 

transform algorithm. Earth-Science Reviews 134: 1-15. 

2013 

Carter, R.M., Spooner, J., Kininmonth, W.R., Field, M., Franks, S., Leyland, B. 2013. 

Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies about Climate Change. Kelpie Press, Melbourne. 

267 pp. 

Idso, C.D., Carter, R.M., Singer, S.F. 2013a. Climate Change Reconsidered II: 

Physical Science. Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate 

Change (NIPCC), The Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois. 1000+ pp. 

Idso, C.D., Carter, R.M., Singer, S.F. 2013b. Climate Change Reconsidered II: 

Physical Science, Summary for Policymakers. Report of the Nongovernmental 

International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), The Heartland Institute, Chicago, 

Illinois. 20 pp. 

Idso, C.D., Singer, S.F., Carter, R.M., Soon, W. 2013. Scientific Critique of IPCC’s 

2013 “Summary for Policymakers”. Policy Brief (October 2013), The Heartland 

Institute, Chicago, Illinois. [Discussion at 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/19/scientific-critique-of-ipccs-2013-summaryfor-policymakers/]. 


2011 

Idso, C.D., Singer, S.F., Carter, R.M. 2011. Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 

Interim Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change 

(NIPCC). The Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois. 

Briggs, W.M., Soon, W., Legates, D., Carter, R.M. 2011. A vaccine against 

arrogance. Water, Air and Soil Pollution 220: 5-6. 

Carter, R.M. 2011. Ways to combat green totalitarianism over global warming. In: 

Brodsky, J. (ed), Today’s World and Vaclav Klaus. Nakladatelestvi FRAGMENT, 

Prague. Pp. 27-35. 

Fulthorpe, C.S. et al. (including Carter, R.M.) 2011. Proceedings of the Integrated 

Ocean Drilling Program, Canterbury Basin Sea Level. Report, Integrated Ocean 

Drilling Program Management International. 

2010 

Carter, R.M. 2010. Climate: The Counter Consensus. Stacey International, London. 

315 pp. 

Fulthorpe, C.S. et al. (including Carter, R.M.) 2010. Canterbury Basin Sea Level: 

Global and Local Controls on Continental Margin Stratigraphy. Report, Integrated 

Ocean Drilling Program Management International. 

Land, M, Wust, R.A.J., Robert, C., Carter, R.M. 2010. Plio-Pleistocene paleoclimate 

in the Southwest Pacific as reflected in clay mineralogy and particle size at ODP 

Site 1119, SE New Zealand. Marine Geology 274: 165-176. 

McLean, J.D., de Freitas, C.R., Carter, R.M. 2010. Censorship at AGU: scientists 

denied the right of reply. SPPI Original Paper (March 30, 2010). 

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/censorship_at_agu.html. 

2009 

Carter, R.M., Larcombe, P., Dye, J.E., Gagan, M.K., Johnson, D.P. 2009. Long-shelf 

sediment transport and storm-bed formation by Cyclone Winifred, central Great 

Barrier Reef, Australia. Marine Geology 267: 101-113. 

McLean, J.D., de Freitas, C.R., Carter, R.M. 2009a. Influence of the Southern 

Oscillation on tropospheric temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research 

(Atmospheres) 114 (D14104), 8 pp. doi: 10.1029/2008JD011637. 

McLean, J.D., de Freitas, C.R., Carter, R.M. 2009b. Correction to "Influence of the 

Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature". Journal of Geophysical 

Research (Atmospheres) 114 (D20101), 2 pp. doi: 10.1029/2009JD013006. 

2008 

Carter, B. 2008. Fleming’s Legacy. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on the Move: 

New Zealand Geoscience into the 21st Century (1st edition). Geoscience Society 

of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 124: 264-267. 

Carter, R.M. 2008. Knock, knock: where is the evidence for dangerous humancaused 

global warming? Economic Analysis and Policy (Journal of the Economic 

Society of Australia – Queensland) 38: 177-202. 


Graham, I., Carter, B. 2008. Kaleidoscope. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on the 

Move: New Zealand Geoscience into the 21st Century (1st edition). Geoscience 


Nelson, C., Carter, B. 2008. Core Beliefs. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent on the 

Move: New Zealand Geoscience into the 21st Century (1st edition). Geological 


Nelson, C., Carter, R. 2008. Plumbing the Depths. In: Graham, I.J. (ed), A Continent 

on the Move: New Zealand Geoscience into the 21st Century (1st edition). 

Geological Society of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication 124: 42-45. 

2007 

Carter, R.M. 2007a. Stratigraphy into the 21st Century. Stratigraphy 4: 187-193. 

Carter, R.M. 2007b The myth of dangerous human-caused climate change. 

Conference Proceedings, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 

(AusIMM), New Leaders Conference (25), Brisbane, 2-3 May 2007. Pp. 61-74. 

Carter, R.M. 2007c. The role of intermediate-depth currents in continental shelf-slope 

accretion: Canterbury Drifts, Southwest Pacific Ocean. In: Viana, A. R., Rebesco, 

M. (eds), Economic and Palaeoceanographic Significance of Contourite Deposits. 

Geological Society, London, Special Publications 276: 129–154. 

Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Holland, D., Lindzen, R.S. 2007. 

Climate change. Climate science and the Stern Review. World Economics 8: 161- 

182. 

Holland, D., Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Lindzen, R.S. 2007. 

Climate change. Response to Simmonds and Steffen. World Economics 8: 143- 

151. 

2006 

Carter, R.M. 2006. Great news for the Great Barrier Reef: Tully River water quality. 

Energy and Environment 17: 527-548. 

Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Holland, D., Lindzen, R.S. 2006. The 

Stern Review: A Dual Critique. Part I: The Science. World Economics 7: 165-198. 

James, N.P., Bone, Y., Carter, R.M., Murray-Wallace, C.V. 2006. Origin of the Late 

Neogene Roe Plains and their calcarenite veneer: implications for sedimentology 

and tectonics in the Great Australian Bight. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 

53: 407-419. 

2005 

Abbott, S.T., Naish, T.R., Carter, R.M., Pillans, B.J. 2005. Sequence stratigraphy of 

the Nukumaruan stratotype (Pliocene-Pleistocene, c. 2.08-1.63 Ma), Wanganui 

Basin, New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 35: 123-150. 

Carter, R.M. 2005a. The status of local "stages" in the New Zealand Plio-Pleistocene. 

New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 48: 623-639. 

Carter, R.M. 2005b. A New Zealand climatic template back to c. 3.9 Ma: ODP Site 

1119, Canterbury Bight, south-west Pacific Ocean, and its relationship to onland 

successions. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 35: 9-42. 


Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 2005. The Geology of the Blackmount district, Te Anau and 

Waiau Basins, western Southland. Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, 

Science Report 2004/23. 97 pp., Figs. 1-156, 1:50 000 map, CD-ROM. 

Holland, M.E., Schultheiss, P.J., Carter, R.M., Roberts, J.A., Francis, T.J.G. 2005. 

IODP's untapped wealth: multi-parameter logging of legacy core. Scientific Drilling 

1: 50-51. 

Naish, T.R., Field, B.D., Zhu, H., Melhuish, A., Carter, R.M., Abbott, S.T., Edwards, 

S., Alloway, B.V., Wilson, G.S., Niessen, F., Barker, A., Browne, G.H., Maslen, G. 

2005. Integrated outcrop, drill core, borehole and seismic stratigraphic architecture 

of a cyclothemic, shallow-marine depositional system, Wanganui Basin, New 

Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 35: 91-122. 

2004 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M., McCave, I. 2004. Evolution of the sedimentary system 

beneath the deep Pacific inflow off eastern New Zealand. Marine Geology 205: 9- 

27. 

Carter, R.M., Fulthorpe, C.S., Lu, H. 2004. Canterbury Drifts at Ocean Drilling 

Program Site 1119, New Zealand: climatic modulation of southwest Pacific 

intermediate water flows since 3.9 Ma. Geology 32: 1005-1008. 

Carter, R.M., Gammon, P. 2004. New Zealand maritime glaciation: millennial-scale 

southern climate change since 3.9 Ma. Science 304: 1659-1662. 

Carter, R.M., Gammon, P.R., Millwood, L. 2004. Glacial-interglacial (MIS 1-10) 

migrations of the Subtropical Front (STC) across ODP Site 1119, Canterbury 

Bight, Southwest Pacific Ocean. Marine Geology 205: 29-58. 

Carter, R.M., McCave, I.N., Richter, C., Carter, L. 2004. Fronts, flows, drifts, 

volcanoes, and the evolution of the southwestern gateway to the Pacific Ocean, 

eastern New Zealand. In: Richter, C., Carter, R.M., McCave, I.N., Carter, L. et al. 

Southwest Pacific Gateways, Sites 1119-1125. Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling 

Program, Scientific Reports 181: 1-111. 

Graham, I.J., Carter, R.M., Ditchburn, R.G., Zondervan, A. 2004. Chronostratigraphy 

of ODP 181, Site 1121 (foot of Campbell Plateau, Southwest Pacific Ocean) using 

10 Be/ 9 Be dating of sediment and entrapped ferromanganese nodules. Marine 

Geology 205: 227-247. 

Larcombe, P., Carter, R.M. 2004. Cyclone pumping, sediment partitioning and the 

development of the Great Barrier Reef shelf system: a review. Quaternary Science 

Reviews 23: 107-135. 

McCave, I.N., Carter, L., Carter, R.M., Hayward, B.W. (eds) 2004a. Cenozoic 

Evolution of the SW Pacific Gateway, ODP Leg 181. Marine Geology (Special 

Issue) 205: 1-262. 

McCave, I.N., Carter, L., Carter, B., Hayward, B.W. 2004b. Cenozoic oceanographic 

evolution of the SW Pacific Gateway: Introduction. Marine Geology 205: 1-7. 

Richter, C., McCave, I.N., Carter, R.M., Carter, L., et al. 2004. Southwest Pacific 

Gateways, Sites 1119-1125. Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific 

Reports 181 (plus CD-ROM). 


2002 

Carter, R.M., Abbott, S.T., Graham, I.J., Naish, T.R., Gammon, P.R. 2002. The 

middle Pleistocene Merced-2 and -3 Sequences from Ocean Beach, San 

Francisco. Sedimentary Geology 153: 23-41. 

2000 

Dunbar, G.B., Dickens, G.R., Carter, R.M. 2000. Sediment flux across the Great 

Barrier Reef shelf to the Queensland Trough over the last 300 ky. Sedimentary 

Geology 133: 49-92. 

1999 

Abbott, S.T., Carter, R.M. 1999. Stratigraphy of the Castlecliffian type section: ten 

mid-Pleistocene sequences from the Wanganui coast, New Zealand. New Zealand 

Journal of Geology and Geophysics 42: 91-111. 

Carter, R.M., Abbott, S.T., Naish, T.R. 1999. Plio-Pleistocene cyclothems from 

Wanganui Basin, New Zealand: type locality for an astrochronologic time-scale, or 

template for recognizing ancient glacio-eustasy? Philosophical Transactions of the 

Royal Society of London A357: 1861-1872. 

Carter, R.M., McCave, I.N., Richter, C., Carter, L., et al. 1999. Southwest Pacific 

Gateways, Sites 1119-1125. Proceedings of Ocean Drilling Program, Initial 

Reports 181. Pp.1-112 (plus CD-ROM). 

Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R. (eds) 1999. The high-resolution chronostratigraphic and 

sequence stratigraphic record of the Plio-Pleistocene Wanganui Basin. New 

Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, Folio 2. 

Saul, G., Naish, T.R., Abbott, S.T., Carter, R.M. 1999. Sedimentary cyclicity in the 

marine Plio-Pleistocene of Wanganui Basin (N.Z.): sequence stratigraphic motifs 

characteristic of the last 2.5 Ma. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 111: 

524-537. 

Ward, I.A.K., Larcombe, P., Brinkman, R., Carter, R.M. 1999. Sedimentary processes 

and the Pandora wreck, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Journal of Field 

Archaeology 26: 41-53. 

1998 

Carter, R.M. 1998. Two models: global sea-level change and sequence stratigraphic 

architecture. In: Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R., Ito, M., Pillans, B.J. (eds), Sequence 

Stratigraphy in the Plio-Pleistocene: an Evaluation. Sedimentary Geology 122: 23- 

36. 

Carter, R.M., Fulthorpe, C.S., Naish, T.R. 1998. Sequence concepts at seismic and 

outcrop scale: the distinction between physical and conceptual stratigraphic 

surfaces. In: Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R., Ito, M., Pillans, B.J. (eds), Sequence 

Stratigraphy in the Plio-Pleistocene: an Evaluation. Sedimentary Geology 122: 

165-179. 

Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R. 1998a. A review of Wanganui Basin, New Zealand: global 

reference section for shallow marine, Plio-Pleistocene (2.5-0 Ma) 

cyclostratigraphy. In: Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R., Ito, M., Pillans, B.J. (eds), 

Sequence Stratigraphy in the Plio-Pleistocene: an Evaluation. Sedimentary 

Geology 122: 37-52. 


Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R. 1998b. Have local Ages/Stages outlived their usefulness for 

the New Zealand Plio-Pleistocene? New Zealand Journal of Geology and 

Geophysics 41: 271-279. 

Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R., Ito, M., Pillans, B.J. (eds) 1998. Sequence Stratigraphy in 

the Plio-Pleistocene: an Evaluation. Sedimentary Geology (Special Issue) 122: 1- 

288. 

Larcombe, P., Carter, R.M. 1998. Sequence architecture during the Holocene 

transgression: an example from the Great Barrier Reef shelf, Australia. 

Sedimentary Geology 117: 97-121. 

Naish, T., Abbott, S.T., Alloway, B.V., Beu, A.G., Carter, R.M., Edwards, A.R., 

Journeaux, T.J., Kamp, P.J.J., Pillans, B. J., Saul, G.S.; Woolfe, K.J. 1998. 

Astronomical calibration of a southern hemisphere Plio-Pleistocene reference 

section, Wanganui Basin, New Zealand. Quaternary Science Reviews 17: 695- 

710. 

Orpin, A.R., Gammon, P.R., Naish, T.R., Carter, R.M. 1998. Modern and ancient 

Zygochlamys delicatula shellbeds in New Zealand, and their sequence 

stratigraphic implications. In: Carter, R.M., Naish, T.R., Ito, M., Pillans, B.J. (eds), 

Sequence Stratigraphy in the Plio-Pleistocene: an Evaluation. Sedimentary 

Geology 122: 267-284. 

1997 

Abbott, S.T., Carter, R.M. 1997. Macrofossil associations from mid-Pleistocene 

cyclothems, Castlecliff section, New Zealand: implications for sequence 

stratigraphy. Palaios 12: 182-210. 

1996 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M., McCave, I.N., Gamble, J. 1996. Regional sediment recycling 

in the abyssal Southwest Pacific Ocean. Geology 24: 735-738. 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L. 1996. The abyssal Bounty Fan and lower Bounty Channel: 

evolution of a rifted-margin sedimentary system. Marine Geology 130: 182-202. 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L., McCave I.N. 1996. Current controlled sediment deposition 

from the shelf to the deep ocean: the Cenozoic evolution of circulation through the 

SW Pacific gateway. Geologisches Rundschau 85: 438-451. 

Fulthorpe, C.S., Carter, R.M., Miller, K.G., Wilson, J. 1996. Marshall Paraconformity: 

a mid-Oligocene record of inception of the Antarctic circumpolar current and 

coeval glacio-eustatic lowstand. Marine and Petroleum Geology 13: 61-77. 

1995 

Larcombe, P., Carter, R.M., Dye, J., Gagan, M.K., Johnson, D.P. 1995. The nature of 

the post-glacial sea-level rise, central Great Barrier Reef, Australia: new evidence 

for episodic rise. Marine Geology 127, 1-44. 

1994 

Abbott, S.T., Carter, R.M. 1994. The sequence architecture of mid-Pleistocene (0.35- 

0.95 Ma) cyclothems from New Zealand: facies development during a period of 

known orbital control on sea-level cyclicity. In: de Boer, P.L., Smith, D.G. (eds), 

Orbital Forcing and Cyclic Sequences. International Association of 

Sedimentologists Special Publication 19: 367-394. 


Beaman, R.J., Larcombe, P., Carter, R.M. 1994. New evidence for the Holocene sealevel 

high from the inner shelf, central Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Journal of 

Sedimentary Research A64: 881-885. 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L., Davy, B. 1994. Geologic and stratigraphic history of the 

Bounty Trough, southwestern Pacific Ocean. Marine and Petroleum Geology 11: 

79-93. 

1993 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M. 1993. Sedimentary evolution of the Bounty Trough: a 

Cretaceous rift basin, southwestern Pacific Ocean. In: Ballance, P.F. (ed), South 

Pacific Sedimentary Basins. Sedimentary Basins of the World 2 (Series Editor, 

Hsu, K.J.), Elsevier. Pp. 51-67. 

Carter, R.M., Johnson, D.P., Hooper, K. 1993. Episodic post-glacial sea-level rise 

and the sedimentary evolution of a tropical continental embayment (Cleveland 

Bay, Great Barrier Reef shelf, Australia). Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 40: 

229-255. 

1992 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L. 1992. Seismic imaging of Pleistocene deep-sea cyclothems: 

implications for sequence stratigraphy. Terra Nova 4: 682-692. 

Haywick, D.W., Henderson, R.A., Carter, R.M. 1992. Sedimentology of 40 000 year 

Milankovitch-controlled cyclothems from central Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. 

Sedimentology 39: 675-696. 

1991 

Carter, R.M., Abbott, S.T., Fulthorpe, C.S., Haywick, D.J., Henderson, R.A. 1991. 

Application of global sea-level and sequence stratigraphic models in southern 

hemisphere Neogene strata from New Zealand. In: MacDonald, D.I.M. (ed), 

Sedimentation, Tectonics and Eustasy. International Association of 

Sedimentologists Special Publication 12: 41-65. 

Fulthorpe, C.S., Carter, R.M. 1991. Continental shelf progradation by sediment drift 

accretion. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 103, 300-309. 

Haywick, D.W., Lowe, D.A., Beu, A.G., Henderson, R.A., Carter, R.M. 1991. Plio- 

Pleistocene (Nukumaruan) lithostratigraphy of The Tangoio block, and origin of 

sedimentary cyclicity, central Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of 

Geology and Geophysics 34: 213-225. 

1990 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M. 1990. Lacustrine sediment traps and their effect on 

continental shelf sedimentation - South Island, New Zealand. Geo-Marine Letters 

10: 93-100. 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M., Nelson, C.S., Fulthorpe, C.S., Neil, H.L. 1990. Evolution of 

Pliocene to Recent abyssal sediment waves on Bounty Channel levees, New 

Zealand. Marine Geology 95: 97-109. 


1989 

Fulthorpe, C.S., Carter, R.M. 1989. Test of seismic sequence methodology on a 

southern hemisphere passive margin: the Canterbury Basin, New Zealand. Marine 

and Petroleum Geology 6: 348-359. 

1988 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M. 1988. Late Quaternary development of left-bank-dominant 

levees in the Bounty Trough, New Zealand. Marine Geology 78: 185-197. 

Carter, R.M. 1988a. The nature and evolution of deep-sea channels. Basin Research 

1: 41-54. 

Carter, R.M. 1988b. Plate boundary tectonics, global sea-level changes and the 

development of the eastern South Island continental margin, New Zealand, 

southwest Pacific. Marine and Petroleum Geology 5: 90-107. 

Carter, R.M. 1988c. Post-breakup stratigraphy of the Kaikoura Synthem (Cretaceous- 

Cenozoic), continental margin, southeastern New Zealand. New Zealand Journal 

of Geology and Geophysics 31: 405-429. 

Gagan, M., Johnson, D.P., Carter, R.M. 1988. The Cyclone Winifred storm bed, 

central Great Barrier Reef shelf, Australia. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 58: 

845-856. 

1987 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L. 1987. The Bounty Channel system: a 55-million-year-old 

sediment conduit to the deep sea, southwest Pacific. Geo-Marine Letters 7: 183- 

190. 

Johnson, D.P., Carter, R.M. 1987. Sedimentary framework of mainland fringing reef 

development, Cape Tribulation area. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 

Technical Memorandum TM-14. 37 pp. 

1986 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M. 1986. Holocene evolution of the nearshore sand wedge, 

south Otago continental shelf, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and 


Carter, R.M., Carter, L., Johnson, D.P. 1986. Submergent shorelines in the SW 

Pacific: evidence for an episodic post-glacial transgression. Sedimentology 33: 

629-649. 

Carter, R.M., Johnson, D.P. 1986. Sea-level controls on the post-glacial development 

of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland. Marine Geology 71: 137-164. 

1985 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M. 1985. Current modification of a mass failure deposit on the 

continental shelf, North Canterbury, New Zealand. Marine Geology 62: 193-211. 

Carter, R.M. 1985. The mid-Oligocene Marshall Paraconformity, New Zealand: 

coincidence with global eustatic sea-level fall or rise? Journal of Geology 93: 359- 

371. 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L. 1985. The Motunau Fault revisited. Tectonophysics 115: 164- 

166. 


Carter, R.M., Carter, L., Williams, J.J., Landis, C.A. 1985. Modern and relict 

sedimentation on the south Otago continental shelf, New Zealand. New Zealand 

Oceanographic Institute Memoir 93. 43 pp. 

1983 

Griggs, G.B., Carter, L., Kennett, J.P., Carter, R.M. 1983. Late Quaternary marine 

stratigraphy southeast of New Zealand. Bulletin of the Geological Society of 

America 94: 791-797. 

1982 

Carter, L., Carter, R.M., Griggs, G.B. 1982. Sedimentation in the Conway Trough, a 

deep near-shore basin at the junction of the Alpine transform and Hikurangi 

subduction plate boundary, New Zealand. Sedimentology 29: 475-497. 

Carter, R.M., Carter, L. 1982. The Motunau Fault and other structures at the southern 

edge of the Australian-Pacific plate boundary, offshore Marlborough. 

Tectonophysics 88: 133-159. 

Carter, R.M., Lindqvist, J.K., Norris, R.J. 1982. Oligocene unconformities and nodular 

phosphate-hardground horizons in western Southland and northern West Coast. 

Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 12: 11-46. 

Norris, R.J., Carter, R.M. 1982. Fault-bounded blocks and their role in localising 

sedimentation and deformation adjacent to the Alpine Fault, southern New 

Zealand. Tectonophysics 87: 11-23. 

1980 

Norris, R.J., Carter, R.M. 1980. Offshore sedimentary basins at the southern end of 

the Alpine Fault, New Zealand. International Association of Sedimentologists 

Special Publication 4: 237-265. 

1979 

Carter, R.M. 1979. Trench-slope channels from the New Zealand Jurassic: the 

Otekura Formation, Sandy Bay, south Otago. Sedimentology 26: 475-496. 

Goldberg, L., Carter, R.M. 1979. A Pleistocene molluscan fauna beneath the Maui-A 

gas platform. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 22: 407-409. 

1978 

Bishop, D.G., Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 1978. Lithological and paleontological content 

of the Carboniferous-Jurassic Canterbury Suite, South Island, New Zealand. New 

Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 21: 138-139. 

Carter, R.M., Hicks, M.D., Norris, R.J., Turnbull, I.M. 1978. Sedimentation patterns in 

an ancient arc-trench-ocean basin complex: Carboniferous to Jurassic Rangitata 

Orogen, New Zealand. In: Stanley, D.J., Kelling, G. (eds), Sedimentation in 

Submarine Canyons, Fans and Trenches. Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, 

Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Chapter 23: 340-361. 

Norris, R.J., Carter, R.M., Turnbull, I.M. 1978. Cainozoic sedimentation in basins 

adjacent to a major continental transform boundary in southern New Zealand. 

Journal of the Geological Society of London 135: 191-205. 


1977 

Carter, R.M., Lindqvist, J.K. 1977. Balleny Group, Chalky Island, southern New 

Zealand: an inferred Oligocene submarine canyon and fan complex. Pacific 

Geology 12: 1-46. 

Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 1977. Redeposited conglomerates in a Miocene flysch 

sequence at Blackmount, western Southland, New Zealand. Sedimentary Geology 

18: 289-319. 

Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 1977. Queenstown Conference tour guide for postconference 

excursion to Blackmount, Waiau Basin, December 5-7 th . Geological 

Society of New Zealand Miscellaneous Publication MP22C. 31 pp. 

1976 

Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 1976. Cainozoic history of southern New Zealand: an 

accord between geological observations and plate tectonic predictions. Earth and 

Planetary Science Letters 31: 85-94. 

Crooks, I., Carter, R.M. 1976. Stratigraphy of Maruia and Matiri Formations in their 

type section (Trent Stream, Matiri River, Murchison). Journal of the Royal Society 

of New Zealand 6: 459-487. 

1975 

Carter, R.M. 1975a. Mass-emplaced sand-fingers at Mararoa construction site, 

southern New Zealand. Sedimentology 22: 275-288. 

Carter, R.M. 1975b. A discussion and classification of subaqueous mass-transport 

with particular application to grain-flow, slurry-flow and fluxoturbidites. Earth- 

Science Reviews 11: 145-177. 

Carter, R.M., Lindqvist, J.K. 1975. Sealers Bay submarine fan complex, Oligocene, 

southern New Zealand. Sedimentology 22: 465-483. 

Turnbull, I.M., Barry, J.M., Carter, R.M., Norris, R.J. 1975. The Bobs Cove Beds and 

their relationship to the Moonlight Fault Zone. Journal of the Royal Society of New 

Zealand 5: 355-394. 

1974 

Carter, R.M. 1974a. A New Zealand case-study of the need for local time-scales. 

Lethaia 7: 181-202. 

Carter, R.M. 1974b. Geographies of the past – Part I. New Zealand's Nature Heritage 

1: 102-107. 

Carter, R.M. 1974c. Geographies of the past – Part II. New Zealand's Nature 

Heritage 1: 129-135. 

Carter, R.M. 1974d. The moulding of the landscape – Part I. New Zealand's Nature 

Heritage 1: 191-200. 

Carter, R.M. 1974e. The moulding of the landscape – Part II. New Zealand's Nature 

Heritage 1: 211-217. 

Carter, R.M., Landis, C.A., Norris, R.J., Bishop, D.G. 1974. Suggestions towards a 

high-level nomenclature for New Zealand rocks. Journal of the Royal Society of 

New Zealand 4: 5-18. 


Duncan, R.A., McDougall, I., Carter, R.M., Coombs, D.S. 1974. Pitcairn Island - 

another Pacific hot spot? Nature 251: 679-682. 

1972 

Carter, R.M. 1972a. Wanganui strata of Komako District, Pohangina Valley, Ruahine 

Range, Manawatu. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 2: 293-324. 

Carter, R.M. 1972b. Adaptations of British Chalk Bivalvia. Journal of Paleontology 46: 

325-340. 

Carter, R.M., Landis, C.A. 1972. Correlative Oligocene unconformities in southern 

Australasia. Nature (Physical Science) 237: 12-13. 

1971 

Carter, R.M. 1971a. Ctenodonta elongata Salter 1873 (Mollusca, Bivalvia): request 

for suppression under the plenary powers. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 28: 

102-103. 

Carter, R.M. 1971b. Revision of Arenig Bivalvia from Ramsey Island, Pembrokeshire. 

Palaeontology 14: 250-261. 

1970 

Carter, R.M. 1970. A proposal for the subdivision of Tertiary time in New Zealand. 

New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 13: 350-363. 

1968 

Carter, R.M. 1968a. On the biology and palaeontology of some predators of bivalved 

mollusca. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology and Palaeoecology 4: 29-65. 

Carter, R.M. 1968b. Functional studies on the Cretaceous oyster Arctostrea. 

Palaeontology 11: 458-485. 

1967 

Carter, R.M. 1967a. On the nature and definition of the lunule, escutcheon and 

corcelet in the Bivalvia. Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London (now 

Journal of Molluscan Studies) 37: 243-263. 

Carter, R.M. 1967b. On Lison's model of bivalve shell form, and its biological 

interpretation. Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London (now Journal of 

Molluscan Studies) 37: 265-278. 

Carter, R.M. 1967c. The shell ornament of Hysteroconcha and Hecuba (Bivalvia): a 

test case for inferential functional morphology. The Veliger 10: 59-71. 

Carter, R.M. 1967d. The geology of Pitcairn Island, south Pacific Ocean. Bulletin of 

the Bernice P. Bishop Museum 231. 38 pp. 

1965 

Wright, J.B., Carter, R.M. 1965. Observations on the geology of an area near lakes 

Thomson and Hankinson, Fiordland. New Zealand Journal of Geology and 



Acknowledgements 

First and foremost Cam Nelson (Compiler) sincerely appreciates and thanks Anne 

Carter for her encouragement and assistance throughout the production of this 

GSNZ tribute for Bob. All contributors are acknowledged for taking time to put ‘finger 

to keyboard’ in a timely fashion to meet deadline schedules. In particular I wish to 

acknowledge Bill Lindqvist, Bob’s brother-in-law, for his permission to reproduce the 

eulogy he gave at Bob’s funeral, and Neville Exon and Ian Plimer for permission to 

use and edit earlier tributes they wrote for Bob. I thank Piers Larcombe for helping to 

establish a contact list of Australian colleagues of Bob. While several people 

contributed photos for use in the Supplement, I especially thank the collections 

supplied by Anne Carter, Bill Lindqvist, Steve Abbott, Bruce Hayward, Greg Browne 

and Martin Crundwell. Considerable information about Bob is contained online at a 

Heartland Institute website (https://www.heartland.org/robert-m-carter), at a 

Wikipedia website (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter), and at Bob’s 

personal CV website (http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_3.htm), all of 

which are acknowledged for providing some of the material recorded in the 

Introduction and Publications sections of this Supplement. 

At the completion stage of compiling this GSNZ tribute my attention was drawn by 

Nick McCave to a recent newspaper article in the UK that mentions Bob Carter. It 

was written by Clive James, an internationally acclaimed Australian author, critic and 

broadcaster, now living in the UK. Below I quote, with acknowledgement, that part of 

the article referring to Bob since I believe it highlights a fundamental aspect of his 

character, namely his gentlemanly politeness. 

“People that I hoped would be there for ever have begun to vanish……..The 

Australian scientist Bob Carter died far too young. The climate change orthodoxy can 

be a tough proposition to be sceptical about if you mind being accused of betraying 

the future of the human race. Carter knew how to maintain a gentlemanly vocabulary 

even when the guardians of dogma were calling him names. It’s a hard trick to work: 

sometimes it’s just easier to join in and call your persecutors intensely dense. But 

Carter always behaved as if they might have had a point. Perhaps he was working on 

the principle that politeness is an argument in itself….….” 

Extract from an article by Clive James “Reports of my death” appearing in the 

Guardian Weekend in the UK on 6 February 2016. 

Disclaimer: Note that the views and opinions expressed in the articles in this GSNZ 

Supplement are solely those of the contributing authors and do not necessarily 

reflect those of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand. 

This Supplement appears online at the GSNZ website www.gsnz.org.nz under 

publications. Limited numbers of hard copies are available on request from Adrian 

Pittari (apittari@waikato.ac.nz) at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ. 

Reference: Nelson, C. (Compiler) 2016. Remembering Bob Carter: A GSNZ Tribute. 

Geoscience Society of New Zealand Newsletter Supplement 19A. 73 pp.

Remembering Bob Carter A GSNZ Tribute

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?