Joan Vaccaro BSc PhD FInstP MAIP
Overview
This is my personal home page where I outline my professional career and interests, as well as explain some more personal topics.
I grew up in the 1960's in El Arish, a small town in north Queensland with a population of about 650 at the time. The town lies in a farming community that is dominated by sugar cane growing and includes banana and tea plantations, and even some cattle properties. My parents were both born in the surrounding region from Italian and Maltese migrants. They had attended school up to grade 5 (mother) and 7 (father), and naturally favoured the familiar, practical things in life. I learnt many skills from both of them, largely just by observing, but also with their guidance. My mother had taught herself to sew. She had oodles of reels of threads of different kinds, colours and gauges, and different fabrics of various weaves—some stretch—and various threads—some cotton, others a mix of natural and synthetic thread, and some patterned, others plain, and so on. Her second sewing machine (a Bernina) was an intricate mechanical device with internal rotating cams that controlled the shape of stitches. It called for investigation and drew me in. I learnt to sew by trial and lots of error on scrap pieces of fabric. Occasionally, she did her own woodwork and painting when my father "took too long to get around to it". She was inspirational, saying to herself "if they, or he, can do it, so can I". She showed me that ability was not limited to circumstance and privilege, it was available for development simply by desire. I also listened to my father talk about his work as a motor mechanic, and learnt about mechanical things, and how he solved mechanical problems step by step, narrowing down the possibilities. I watched him use tools and automatically used them in the same way (such as clasping pliers between thumb and forefinger and using the little finger to separate the jaws). Keenly watching was as important as listening. He once owned a mechanical repair business in partnership with his brother. When that folded due to cash flow problems associated with farmers being able to pay only when their crops came in, much of the equipment was moved into a workshop at home. I had full access to hand saws (wood and metal), power drills (drill press and hand drill), a 3-phase grinder, hammers, assortments of screwdrivers and pliers, an assortment of spanners (open and ring) and sockets for SAE and Whitworth threads, paints and solvents, sand papers, files and rasps, wood chisels and planes (Jack plane and spokeshave), cold chisels, metal fixings (bolts, screws, and nails), a set of taps and dies, a big wooden bench with an engineers vice fitted to it, measuring instruments (rules, a micrometer, vernier gauge), a stock of timber, and so on. It was another of my playgrounds, although at times, a somewhat dangerous one.
I recall growing up in an atmosphere of technological progress and scientific achievements. I viewed the moon landing of 1969 as pointing towards ever-more intriguing developments in the future. I loved learning about science. I received a microscope for a birthday when I was around 10 years old. Biology of the miniature was just fascinating. I was thrilled to receive a crystal radio kit as another birthday gift. Magnets, clockwork mechanisms, batteries, torches (flashlights), electrical wire, electric motors and the like were available, not only to be to be explored for their own sake, and but also to be used as elements in constructing something more complex. Wood could be sawn, chiselled, planed, nailed, screwed, and painted to make "things". I cut out and shaped wooden propellers, and made wind mills with them. I built a wooden light-box projector from a design in a book using the lens from a magnifying glass and sheet metal from empty food cans fashioned and soldered into a telescopic focusing barrel. Lighting was provided by two 60W incandescent bulbs in lamp holders—bought with pocket money—that I wired myself to take the 240VAC supply. It projected photos onto the wall, but the bulbs would make the box quite hot over time. Books in the library at Tully State High School contained many treasures about that larger world that surrounded us. They contained ideas about how things worked, what people had done, how discoveries were made. They seemed to beacon me to try to do the same, and fuelled my imagination. One book, "Secrets of Chemistry" by Robert Brent (Paul Hamlyn, 1965), explained how to set up a home laboratory. I eagerly gathered household and gardening chemicals, bottles, tins, home-made spirit lamp, home-made balance, used laboratory equipment (test tubes, rubber tubing) and some sample chemicals (magnesium ribbon, litmus paper) generously gifted by the school with the help of a science teacher, and set about discovering the world of chemistry for myself.
This was the perspective from which I viewed the world and wondered what future it held for me. In secret I dared to hope, but without any real expectation of being anything more than a spectator. There were personal challenges, cultural and religious conflicts, along with rural working-class naivety that seemed to rule out any optimism. Growing up is not easy for anyone. Nevertheless, I did survive, and looking back I think the reality panned out to better than anything I hoped for, many times over!
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