Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 25—Science and innovation 869
causing problems with rising salt. The Executive
Committee believed that several of the problems
affecting rural production could be overcome or
at least ameliorated by scientific investigation and
application of up-to-date scientific knowledge.
European practices were often ineffective for
improving productivity in many regions of
Australia.
The research of CSIR in the first decade was
devoted almost entirely to the rural industries. An
exception was financial support, with the Post
Office and the Defence Department, for a Radio
Research Board that would award grants mainly
to university scientists for research on radio
transmission. The priority areas of research for
CSIR agreed by the Council were animal pests
and diseases, plant pests and diseases, forests
products, food (especially cold storage) and
liquid fuels. The proposed investigations on
liquid fuels from coal and shale were not started,
but animal nutrition and soils were added. Some
of the State Departments of Agriculture showed
hostility to CSIR, but an agreement was reached
which preserved the role of the States:
investigations of a more or less fundamental
character and which were national in scope
should be conducted by CSIR, while problems of
a more or less local character and which involve
the applications of existing knowledge should be
undertaken by the State Departments of
Agriculture. It was agreed that research on wheat
and sugar would remain with the States.
CSIR decided that it needed to establish its own
laboratories to perform its role, but it saw
advantages in close cooperation with the
universities. Of the six divisions established by
CSIR in 1928–30 three were located on the
grounds of universities. The laboratory for the
Division of Animal Health (named the McMaster
Laboratory) was erected at Sydney University with
the support of a generous gift of £20,000 from a
grazier, F. D. McMaster. The Animal Nutrition
Division was located at the University of Adelaide
and the Soils Division at the site of the Waite
Agricultural Research Institute. Laboratories for
the Divisions of Economic Botany and Economic
Entomology were erected at a site in Canberra,
but Forests Products research was located in
Melbourne rather than near the Forestry School
in Canberra. CSIR was successful in appointing
well-qualified and experienced researchers to
lead the divisions, but the severe economic
depression of 1929 and the early 1930s resulted
in cuts in CSIR appropriation and a severe
curtailment in the build-up of staff.
Relations between CSIR and the universities
were excellent in the pre-war period.
CSIR established a studentship scheme for
overseas research training. The studentships,
which were funded from a trust fund
provided by the Government, were highly
sought by graduates. The scheme was small
but it was later expanded and many future
leaders of science in Australia were
studentship holders.
A significant discovery of CSIR in the years
between its establishment and the war was
the cure for ‘coast disease‘ of sheep and
cattle. Coast disease was prevalent along the
coast from Cape Otway in Victoria to the
west of South Australia. Sheep grazed on
pastures in the zone lost their appetite and
their wool became steely. If the animals were
not moved they became anaemic and died. A
similar disease, Denmark disease, was
observed in cattle in Western Australia where
it was under study by the Western
Department of Agriculture. Dick Thomas, a
chemist with a background in geology,
recognised that the areas in South Australia
had calcareous soils that he believed would
be short of heavy metal trace elements.
Experiments with penned sheep at the
Animal Nutrition Division of CSIR showed
that the disease could be cured by
supplementing a coast diet with cobalt
nitrate. Further experiments in Western
Australia confirmed that the addition of
cobalt cured Denmark disease.
Unfortunately, the addition of cobalt to
fertilisers applied to the pastures did not
work, but CSIR research was successful in
developing a cobalt pellet that was
administered to animals and resulted in the
slow release of cobalt in the stomach of
sheep and cattle. A decade later
investigations in the United States and Britain
showed that vitamin B12, which is essential
for animals but not plants, contains cobalt.
A successful treatment for bovine
pleuropneumonia and its eradication in New
South Wales was another achievement for
CSIR research in the period before the war.
The scientists at the Division of Animal
Health isolated a less virulent strain of the
bovine pleuropneumonia and developed a
method for its mass production for use as a
vaccine. A reliable diagnostic test for bovine