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| 1961: Clarrie at Fairlight Clarrie Lawler, past President of the Underwater Research Group of NSW (URG), looks back at the early days of the group. Clarrie admits he was not a great swimmer who quite accidentally ended up as an enthusiastic URG member. He was hooked after trying out flippers and goggles in a small pool at Coogee. He was so fascinated by marine life he decided to join the URG and see what was going on. At that stage URG were very busy making their own diving equipment, the only alternative being very expensive gear from the USA and Europe.
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The URG was begun in the early 1950s by Howard Couch, a keen sailor and first President. There is an underwater plaque at Shiprock in Port Hacking as a memorial to him, placed there by his URG colleagues.
1970: Howard Couch Memorial
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| 1963: URG divers
They made their own respirator pieces so people could breathe from a tank of compressed air. By the early 1960s URG had the gear to dive further. Also in the beginning URG trained other divers but that is now done by commercial people.
Scuba is an excellent way to look at the world in the ocean. You are not actually swimming much in diving, you are sinking down and floating around and are virtually weightless. Divers could slowly glide down and land on the sea bed and be surrounded by creatures without knowing what they were. Clarrie contacted Elizabeth Pope at the Australian Museum where she curated undersea animals. She also did trips with WEA to little bays and rock pools and told people what they were looking at, which Clarrie enjoyed.
Clarrie learned so much about marine life that together with another URG diver, Walt Deas, he coauthored a book called Beneath Australian Seas illustrated with Walt’s outstanding marine photography. Photography has replaced taking samples of marine life to a great extent, although that is what URG did in its early days.
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| 1967: Clarrie and Walt Dees at Bare Island
Clarrie has seen some incredible sights. They often saw large schools of tropical fish swimming by. At Camp Cove he found a Sea Urchin which was (unusually) covered with what looked like white flowers, not the usual black spikes. He took it to Elizabeth Pope for identification. Fortunately for Clarrie, he had worn gloves because Elizabeth said it was deadly venomous.. It was so unusual that a photo of the Sea Urchin featured in the Sydney Morning Herald the next day.
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| 1967: venomous sea urchin from Camp Cove
Clarrie Lawler was interviewed by Ruby Vincent for A Question of Balance.
Images from Clarrie Lawler and Denise Lawler.
Summary text by Victor Barry, July 2017.
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