 The south coast of New South Wales has areas of great beauty and fascination, where nature is both the lesson and the teacher. At Kiola, students visiting the Australian National University's Field Station can experience the variety and complexity of nature as they develop techniques for scientific field study and research. Stretching from the Tasman Sea to the Maramarang Hills, the 384 hectare property includes a variety of ecological patterns and vegetation types. Sand dunes and salt marsh, a lagoon and a saltwater creek, open farmland and forest. Joy London lives in the main homestead, which has been her home since 1929. As I said, Dad was in Kamassie, West Africa, which is now Gama. And he died in 1920. Well, Mum bought the mother, her mother and father, and a sister out back to Australia. Mum was looking around for a properties and in the bank one day in Bradwood, the manager happened to mention to Mum that there was a property down on the coast. She had had a look around other parts, down Eumerala and all around different areas like that and came down here. And that was in March and flood rains. I don't know why she bought it. Anyway, she liked it. And from that, we've been here ever since. It was built originally in that four rooms in 1910. 1910 lived somewhere around about that time. The cottages were all built at that time. They were all occupied when we came here, different people there. And when the war started or the mills had been closed, they gradually drifted. Came round, our holiday makers came, so we used to let them for holiday times. Of course, not up to date like they are now, although they are still original. They've only been repaired, those cottages. This has been added on the homestead here. The trees have been planted. It was all bare then. The bedroom on the front here on the right as the windows on that came off the northern firth. It was wrecked on Brush Island, the northern point of Brush Island. I was in 35, I think there was. We saw the boat go by. It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Reasonably calm. Well, my brother was here. My uncle was here as well. We used to work the property. You know, the cattle and growing our own crops. We had horses then in those days too. And a blacksmith. And eventually we went into like a small dairy and supplied the camping ground and bully point. The people ran. We made the road up the back for 12 miles. We did ourselves up through the forest. We used most of the Jinka roads where we could widen them. And that way we took them out. This was the forest area for the mill. The original school was on the right-hand side. But that was not used while we were here. But then my uncle had trucks. And his drivers, the family. You know, there'd be families of them and a few kitties around. So Mum supplied the timber and the rest of us built the schoolhouse which is now in the avenue. They threw it over. They pulled it over. Pat Walker was here when she used to come over sometimes for vegetables and milk. I have a clear memory of coming up for vegetables. Or really I was primarily coming for your company. The interest of your company and so on. Mum used to do the flowers and I'd do the vegetables. Then she'd come along and I'd put this in there. And I'd make her cabbages. You said to me, Pat, do you think the university would be interested in this place? I thought, oops, absolutely brilliant. Wonderful. What an amazing thought for a person to have. Yes. When there were all those real estate agents out there who'd only be too keen to go gobble, gobble. Gobble in there. Yes. That's how it came about really. They came my way, that's one thing about them. It's what I'd set out to. I wanted them, I agreed to. Well, I came into it I suppose when my wife came back from gathering vegetables with Joy and told me that Joy was interested in giving the property to the university for some purpose or another. So when we got back to Canberra I went directly to our administrators. In those days in Anya we were very lucky. We had a very small highly intelligent and responsive administration. I put it to the council fairly soon as I recall after Donald's interview and it was discussed on council as to whether this was a wise thing to do. It stands to reason if somebody offers you a mile of lovely Pacific Ocean coastline with a hinterland of varying types of agriculture and forest country you'd be a lunatic not to go for it, wouldn't you? Now certainly this was not an easy decision for me to take it to the council because it had the riders as you probably know that in accepting a gift we're accepting a responsibility favour. And that's a very unusual thing. I think only a university or maybe a church could undertake such a responsible deal or give such a pledge. Joy had this property which she received from her mother and she didn't want to see it broken up into small seaside dwellings and fishing houses and so forth. So she made it a condition that we should agree to use it forever in simple state, keep it in simple state and use it for university purposes in simple farming and not to be subdivided other than for university's own purposes consistent with the use for biological studies both teaching students and research. Joy was not... Joy wasn't giving away something useless she wasn't giving away something which had even become useless to her she was giving away her major asset and in a sense her only... well certainly her only major asset and it was one into which she and her family had put an enormous amount they put half of their lives and this was half of the lives of an extended family. All she was asking was that the place should be kept more or less in its present state in perpetuity. Now of course to Joy that would seem a very small thing to be asking and indeed it was a very very small thing indeed but to an organisation like the university the notion of doing anything in perpetuity produced all kinds of legal problems now it was simply the practical matter of how far can a university council at this point in time set up rules which were going to be binding on their successors a hundred years hence. It's something which Australian universities really haven't had a great deal of experience of those years preparatory to the actual handover were years which led to the principle of characters in the plot learning to trust one another entirely. A large garden party was hold at Kayola on the 1st of March 1975 when Joy London officially handed over the deeds of her property to the university. Kayola is now called the Edith and Joy London Foundation in memory of Joy's mother and in gratitude for Joy's generosity and foresight. Professor Donald Walker was the first chairman of the management committee form to coordinate the activities of the foundation. Academics, students and other helpers repaired the cottages to make sleeping quarters and installed a dining and amenities block. A donation by the Frankel family enabled a laboratory to be built and the Edith and Joy London Fund to be started. In August 1992 the committee held its 100th meeting. Several of the founding members are still active in the committee. I wanted it kept reasonably in the same condition as we had it and it had to be for research and all their ins and outs and it will be. It's taken them many years to follow what we wanted but it's coming and it will improve. For some years Joy took on not just the managing the farm assisted by her long time manager Neil Evans but also the management of the place of the university's aspect of the place. It was Joy who handed out the keys to the cottages. It was Joy who answered all the queries. It was Joy that she bit people about closing gates and so on and she did that for many years and in an utterly unpaid capacity she was getting nothing out of this except an involvement in the place and she's always been very keen to have that involvement both on that personal level and by her membership of the management committee which has been very important to it. The characteristics of the agreement that were made the major characteristic of the agreement that was made between the university and Joy London was that the property should be used for certain restricted university purposes particularly the teaching and research in the field sciences and that the university would protect the general organization and layout of the property in perpetuity. Now I think we could see the academic people concerned could see that we had here the opportunity of setting up a place for teaching and research. Now teaching is fine you can bring in your students in job lots as it were and take them out and teach them field techniques which can only really be taught in the field of course and introduce them to the recognition of problems because for many subjects particularly biological subjects the problem first presents itself by observation of what is happening in the field what is really happening and you may later of course take the solution of that problem back into the laboratory and tackle it with all sorts of clever machinery and so on but you begin and you finish in the field. If you want to do any long term monitoring research then you have to have security and the security of tenure just pure security of tenure was something like a place a better place like this could offer. Most people who visit this place I mean yes most people from outside the university who visit this place and particularly in these open weeks have very little idea about what the university is about but here tucked away in the countryside with nevertheless a big holiday population arriving from Sydney, Wollongong so on and so forth the university reaches quite a different quite a different public and I think that it should we haven't really thought of that in the early days as a major feature but I think it should now be seen as a very important development. Before we forget those early days we should record not just joy's generosity in giving us the place that of course is the major the major act but the immense amount of time and energy and thought that all kinds of people put into its early establishment and I think particularly of those members of the first few years in particular of the management committee or practically all of the academics who gave so much of their time and their energy to the basic needs of the place like replacing the roofs on the cottages quite apart from designing teaching and research and so on and so forth these were labours of love. I've been a member of the management committee until recently when I resigned from it it's obviously been a great advantage to the students and to research workers based at the ANU and what is now the University of Canberra and also as a conference centre for people coming together to discuss like this but I think the main advantage of it will appear in 50 years from now maybe 100 or 200 years when it is still a simple scientific habitat that is accessible to the university accessible to all sorts of people but is a part of the history of the coastal area. I wanted it kept as they could and I thought well why not do it while you're alive see what happens I think it's beautiful as it is.