Vale: Paul Bishop

Abstract

Paul Bishop commenced his life in universities at Macquarie University in the School of Earth Sciences. He graduated with First Class Honours in Physical Geography and then went on to complete a PhD in 1984. When I joined the Department of Geography at University of Sydney in 1985, it was a pleasure to meet Paul. He had an adjoining office with another tutor, Peter Cowell, and it was obvious that they both brought intellectual vigour and enthusiasm to physical geography. Together they had what Peter called self-indulgent fun engaging in philosophical questioning of many topics besides sharing a love for classical music. Sadly Paul recently died (age 72) and the lights that he shone on those he worked with have gone out; but he cannot be forgotten. Our deepest condolences to his partner, Geraldine Perriam. His fertile brain and immense curiosity saw him pursue an array of intellectual endeavours that are quite stunning in both scope and impact. We jointly ran the lower Hunter field excursion for Geography 2 students before he left Sydney and it was then that I got to know him and appreciate his methodical and enthusiastic approach to organising work. He is someone you always learnt from, generously giving time to stimulate your thinking. This is evident in the way former students recognised his passion for landscape especially on field trips. The establishment of computer and GIS lab facilities at Sydney in the late 1980s owed much to Paul’s capacity to innovate. Peter Cowell recalls his somewhat unorthodox application of GIS in the way he digitised orientations of the long axes of pebbles extracted from ancient stream deposits to estimate palaeostream flow directions. This is one example of his many skills which were readily transposed into teaching. Paul Bishop moved from Sydney to Monash in 1989 before settling in Glasgow in 1998 where he became Professor of Physical Geography. However, he maintained his deep connections to geomorphic studies in Australia. Paul’s field studies in the eastern highlands of NSW built on the work of others in association with colleagues such as GeoffGoldrick. This work focused on aspects of longevity of the landscape, the role of lithology in the evolution of rivers, and centrally the importance of denudation isostatic rebound within intraplate highlands. This passion for knowledge commenced during his PhD study. At the time of the International Geographical Congress in 1988, as editor of a special volume in Progress in Physical Geography (vol.12, no.2), I invited Paul to publish what he knew at the time. It was the lead paper and gave international readers a clear summary of the evolution of an intraplate highland belt. What is impressive is that over the next three decades he elaborated, modified, and developed the analysis based on new evidence from the field, an increased understanding of tectonic processes, and the application of new earth surface dating techniques. A more recent version of this work is summarised in a chapter in the book he co-edited with his good friend Brad Pillans on “Australian Landscapes” (Bishop and Goldrick, “Lithology