There’s a saying that if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life and that holds true for many retired academics in Canberra who continue to work well past retirement – for nothing.
These professionals don’t fit the category of “volunteering” at your local Bunnings sausage sizzle; they undertake complex scientific research, mentor PhD students, and contribute a wealth of knowledge to academia.
The late Canberra ecologist Maxwell Day, who is famous for his work on myxomatosis to eradicate rabbits, worked right up until the age of 95.
Seventy-eight-year-old entomologist, Marianne Horak, retired from the CSIRO in 2010 but still goes into “work” two or three times a week. When she gets home, she finishes off paperwork.
“Nearly all of the taxonomists work post-retirement,” Dr Horak says. “Max Day came into my office when he was 90 and he said, ‘it’s unbelievable that we still don’t know the life history of the scribbly moth; if I do the biology, will you do the taxonomy?’”
On his 90th birthday, Max found the elusive larvae of a scribbly moth when nobody else knew its whereabouts.
“Science is actually our pleasure,” Dr Horak says. “Most of us think ourselves lucky that we can do something that we enjoy, so we don’t stop – why would you?”
At the ANU’s School of Earth Sciences, 70-year-old geology professor Brad Pillans still goes to work a few days a week, despite retiring in 2018. He supervises two PhD students and carries out scientific research at Lake George.
“Academics never retire, they do it because they love doing it,” Professor Pillans says. “That’s certainly the case for me, you don’t just walk away. I’ve had a job that I thoroughly enjoyed.”
Botanist Murray Fagg worked for 42 years at the Australian National Botanic Gardens and after retiring in 2012, he’s still a regular fixture at the gardens.
There are some 265 members of the ANU’s Emeritus Faculty, where retired academics get together for meetings, monthly seminars and research projects.
“Some people might think it’s odd to keep working but for me it’s just part of the natural world,” Professor Pillans says. “When it stops being fun then I’ll think about walking away.”
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