Day in the life of a geologist at the Museum, We Are SA, 12 November 2024
The Government of South Australia is made up of more than 100,000 individuals making a difference in their roles every day. Ben McHenry, the Senior Collections Manager of Earth Sciences at the South Australian Museum, is one of them.
Ben McHenry may not hail from South Australia, but he has long been a champion of our world-class collection of minerals and meteorites in his role as Senior Collections Manager of Earth Sciences at the South Australian Museum.
After four decades of dedication, Ben will retire in December, leaving a legacy that has enriched and safeguarded the state’s precious geological heritage. To celebrate he has shared in his own words, his career journey with We Are.SA.
A fascination with the natural world from an early age
I’m originally from Melbourne and spent a lot of time in western Victoria as a small boy, where I swam and collected all sorts of things. Luckily my mother always really encouraged my fascination with the natural world.
I studied at Melbourne University and my original plan wasn’t to become a geologist, I wanted to be a marine zoologist. I had a first-year clash of subjects, and the course advisor suggested why not take geology as a ‘filler’ subject as it was popular among first-year students.
After graduating from university with an Honours degree in geology, I got a job with a company in the petroleum industry and moved to Adelaide, only for them to promptly send me back to Victoria and out into Bass Strait. After a year of constant travel, long hours and distance from loved ones I saw a position advertised for a museum assistant at the SA Museum in the Palaeontology Department. I applied and I got the job, well after a few calls at least. Eventually the HR person who interviewed me told my then boss, “Just give the job to that bloody McHenry boy” and here I still am 40 years on. (Ben is pictured left in his early years at the Museum).
SA has so many reasons to be proud
I’m very lucky as my work is incredibly interesting and intellectually stimulating. Not only do I curate and research our state’s mineralogy collections, I get to interact with the public and teach them about the wonderful mineralogy and mining history of South Australia. It’s a shame that not every South Australian knows that our state was the birthplace of the Australian mining industry – we had the nation’s first copper, gold and iron mines, and it goes on and on. We have so much to be proud of.
The nuts and bolts of my job centres around identifying minerals and incorporating them into the collection. I like to think that the mineral collection is a bit like a library of specimens that can be used not only by Museum research staff, but also by government, universities and the mining industry. We are the essential grease that oils the wheels of mineral exploration in South Australia.
In terms of the parts of the collection viewable to the public, we created the mineral gallery during renovations at the Museum about 25 years ago. We wanted to tell the story of mining history in South Australia, and so each of the cases has a separate theme. I love the case in the gallery that focuses on the copper country. I think it’s important to highlight that SA was known throughout the world in the second half of the 19th century as the copper kingdom, as SA produced a fourth of the world’s copper during that time period.
I think one of favourite parts of the gallery is the mineral rainbow which has always been popular online and in person and I was a part of making that happen which is pretty special. I love popping up to the gallery and seeing the public’s reaction to the rainbow (pictured left). It’s a special thing to observe, especially when people stop to look at the virgin rainbow stand, which is the largest known high-quality piece of opal in existence and I think it’s pretty special that it’s here for the whole world to see.
It’s also been fascinating to see how technology has evolved in my time here. The information that we can access at any time now is simply mind-blowing, I still remember getting excited about how quick a fax or an email from a colleague in the US would come through. My team had the first computer at the Museum and it’s funny to think how people would have to come to our office to learn how to use the computer and getting their head around using a mouse was always funny to watch.
What the role of a collections manager entails
I look after the Museum’s collection of earth minerals and I always tell people, “These are the South Australian people’s collection, and I just look after them for you”. I’m also available for researchers and industry when they have questions, and I also give public lectures and answer queries from the public.
Occasionally I also assist with loaning objects to other exhibitions or to local museums. In 2015 we had an exhibition at the Museum tha
t focused on opals. While we were collating pieces to feature, I wanted to include a jewellery piece that featured an Australian pearl. Unfortunately, my mother had died that year, and I went back home to Melbourne to help pack up the home with my siblings.
When we were sorting through her jewellery, I discovered this unique brooch (pictured right) that happened to have an opal in it. It’s in this beautiful box that’s dated around 1885 and has been passed down through generations of women on my mum’s side. I brought it back to Adelaide with me and when I displayed it to the curator of jewellery at the Art Gallery of South Australia, his reaction was a complete mix of awe and surprise, and he reckons it’s probably one of the oldest pieces of Australian opal jewellery as a Victorian era ladies’ brooch.
It’s kind of funny to think we were looking for a special jewellery piece and were about to go a big search around Australia for it and all I had to do was find it in my childhood home. I know my mum would have thought it was special to have something of her own, passed down through generations, on display in an exhibition that her own son put together.
The great fossil theft
In 1990, I went up into to the Ikara-Flinders Ranges on a field trip with the curator of fossils, Neville, and a volunteer to go to collect fossils from slabs that had been featured in a new publication. It was also a chance to go and have a look at this big Ediacaran slab that was registered in our data base and was on top of a ravine. 
As it would happen, the curator of fossils had injured his knee, and so he couldn’t climb up to the top, so the volunteer and I did and when we got there, we couldn’t find it which was strange because we knew it was too big to miss.
Picture this – I’m yelling down this ravine saying that we can’t find it to Neville who’s yelling back at us from behind his binoculars, “You can’t miss it – its massive” and all we could see was this big hole, so I took photos of the area and headed back down to show him, and we presumed that it had unfortunately been stolen.
We got in touch with the team at National Parks and Wildlife Service and explained how a registered slab that contained fossils had potentially been stolen. They then got in touch with the Australian Federal Police (AFP). It turned out to be pinched by a quarryman, but I still get puzzled about how they were able to get a slab of that size out of the ground and carry it to a vehicle – it’s incredibly heavy.
It became a full-scale investigation, with media attention as well (pictured above left is Ben
featured in a newspaper article) where it was discovered the person had also stolen items from a fossil site on Kangaroo Island to sell. They were then put on a customs alert list and a few months later I got a call from the AFP saying I had to drop everything and come to Perth. They were aware that they were about to take more items overseas and they seized the items with a warrant from his house. I was there as an expert witness as they went through the garage that was littered with things he had pinched from SA and around WA.
They found email correspondence between him and people from around the world, requesting special objects. At the time, the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act said that any fossil worth more than $1000 needed to have an export permit, so that’s why I was there. I had to determine through an assessment if the materials he had been exporting were worth more than the amount and they seized the items in his current possession that were above that.
It turns out that the slab my team and I were searching for was in a museum in Japan. It was seen for sale in May of 1990 at a fossil fair show expo for $750,000. It had been bought by a Japanese Museum and unfortunately, they were reluctant to let it go, even though they are signatories to United Nations act about repatriating things that have been stolen from other countries.
The Australian Foreign Minister at the time went to Japan to negotiate with the museum to have the slab returned. They did challenge it and asked how we knew that the slab was taken from the Ikara-Flinders Rangers, and we were able show pieces left behind on the site perfectly fitted the rigid outline of the slab (pictured left). It’s now back in South Australia and you can see it for yourself in the Ediacaran gallery (pictured above right).
Something you might not know!
I think the South Australian community would be surprised to learn that the largest and finest collection of precious opal anywhere in the world is housed at the South Australian Museum. I’m incredibly proud to have built the largest collection of precious opals in any collecting institution anywhere around the world and it’s my privilege to maintain it for the people of South Australia.
