Maisie Carr (née Fawcett; 1912–1988) was an innovative Australian ecologist and botanist who contributed much to the understanding of the uniqueness of Australian plants and their environmental systems.
Foundation years
Maisie Carr was born Stella Grace Maisie Fawcett in Footscray, Melbourne. Neither of her parents had a science background but her love of plants was likely fostered by visits to nearby salt-marshes, her grandmother's garden and in nature study classes.
Carr attended Footscray's Hyde Street State School where she was first in her class and Dux in 1924 and then attended Melbourne High School. Her diligence was evident at an early age; in 1920 she won £2 in a competition for finding the largest number (87) of Australian postal towns within the letters of AUSTRALBA TOOTH PASTE (the sponsor of the competition).
After graduation she returned to her old primary school as a junior teacher while at night studying zoology and geology at Austral Coaching College. Carr attended University of Melbourne (on a Teachers' College secondary studentship) being awarded B.Sc.,1935 and M.Sc. in Botany, 1936.
Carr's academic abilities won her a number of scholarships. In March 1935, she was awarded the Howitt natural history scholarship, established from a bequest of entomologist Godfrey Howitt.
In December 1936, Carr was awarded the Wyselaskie Scholarship, established by John Dickson Wyselaskie in 1883.
In April 1937, Carr was awarded the Caroline Kay scholarship in Botany; the scholarship was established by the Reverend David Kay in memory of his daughter Caroline.
Major research interests
Ecology of Australian Alps
Although her initial research activities focused on coral fungi, she studied fungal and nematode diseases of plants as well. As a student, attending field-trips with the McCoy Society for Field Investigation and Research proved to be a harbinger for decades of her subsequent professional life. In 1936, Carr participated in one of the society's expeditions to Sir Joseph Banks Islands in the Spencer Gulf of South Australia to undertake a full scientific survey of the islands.
In 1940, Carr was appointed the secretary of the committee to award the Isabella D. Marshall scholarship to enable a female student to live away from home in order to study at the University of Melbourne. Marshall was the mistress of method of English in the School of Education at the University of Melbourne until her death in 1938. Marshalls friends raised £500 to fund the scholarship.
From 1941 onward, Carr conducted extensive innovative ecology research in the Australian alpine environment where extensive over-grazing by cattle and sheep was causing soil erosion and degradation of a delicate ecosystem. Permits to graze these high plains commenced in the late 1880s and the changes wrought by the hooved animals facilitated the arrival (in 1920s) of rabbits which caused further change.
Additional motivation for the studies was prompted by the soil siltation threat to the soon to be constructed Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme. Carr was the first research officer of the Soil Conservation Board and was responsible for establishing exclusion fencing on reference plots in Bogong High Plains. Having excluded grazing from select high-plains plots (and not from adjacent plots), Carr and team members recorded changes in regrowth vegetation (both type and density) over decades.
In the early years, Carr surveyed these plots via horseback on her own but over subsequent years with teams of participants (from department of botany, University of Melbourne), these plots have become the longest continuous series of ecological data-sites in Australia. In 2022 "Maisie's plots" were added to the Victorian Heritage Register.
Chronology of alpine ecology events
The sequence of significant events in alpine ecology and Maisie Carr's role is detailed below: