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Biography Dr B. J. Duffield
Born on
Thursday Island, raised and educated in Townville, Dr B.J. (Bea) Duffield has an
honours degree in science, a PhD in microbiology and various management
qualifications. She has worked as a molecular research scientist, a science
policy strategist, a technology manager for the government, an IT business
professional and as a consultant in Australia, Indonesia, United States, UK and
China. Dr Duffield has published
numerous scientific papers and has an expert working knowledge of science, which
gives her novels accuracy and credibility. Dr Duffield now lives in Brisbane with
her husband Gavin Blakey OAM, a sustainable water engineer and Past President of
Toastmasters International, the first Australian to hold this position.
Dr Duffield and Mr Blakey have helped develop community based
communication and leadership capacity in Australia, USA, Canada, Oman, Bahrain,
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand,
Indonesia, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Taiwan. Dr
Duffield’s particular interest is science futuring – exploring the possible
impacts of present and future technologies on the environment, societies, life
styles and culture. Acknowledgements I read a lot of books and always
read the acknowledgements, and I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the help and
support given to the authors. I often wondered if people would be kind and
gentle to me if I ever wrote a book, and with this, my first novel, I was
delighted to find that so many were truly extraordinarily magnanimous. Most of
my readers will never know them, but the following people mean a lot to me, and
I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. For reading and providing
feedback on numerous drafts: Meredith Hoffmann (especially for ploughing through
half-printed pages), Roz Glazbrook (for her continued encouragement and belief
in me), my sister and greatest critic Margaret Duffield, Karyn Nina Olson, Peter
Browning and Kerry Nieper. For technical help and ideas: Dr
Arnold Wissemann (an extraordinary and generous person), Dr Russell Rogers
(DPI&F), Professor Linda Blackall (University of Queensland), Dr Denis
Hoffmann (international consultant, animal production and health), Dr Roly
Nieper (Animal Health Australia) and Dr Pat Blackall (ARI). And by no means last, my
wonderful husband Gavin Blakey for being my guide and Betty, for being my light. Chapter
1 (Part sample)
Monday 12:00 pm People often remember the strangest things when extraordinary events
touch their lives. Some people remember what they were doing when inspirational
events happen like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon or the Berlin Wall
falling. Others recall what they were doing when icons die like Kennedy’s
assassination and Princess Di’s fatal accident. The events triggering those
‘what-I-was-doing-moments’ for me are tragedies, such as New York’s Twin
Towers exploding and the Bali bombings. I also remember the day when Linda Olsen
was killed. As Linda Olsen died, I was eating my Monday breakfast. At the time I was
not aware Linda was being killed, as my focus was on strong black coffee and
bran flakes with soymilk. I was thinking trivial thoughts like how soymilk had
become an essential part of my breakfast ritual now I had reached an age when
oestrogens were important. Looking back, I often wonder what Linda thought at
that same moment in time. Did she know she was going to be killed? I wonder if
she died instantly or felt agonising pain? Was she angry, or just simply
disappointed? But most of all I wonder if she felt betrayed, like I did when I
discovered the truth. Linda Olsen’s death and the secrets it exposed ended what I later
thought of as my time of innocence. A time when I believed people were basically
good and the leaders we elected to govern us truly did value humanity and
justice. But all those thoughts were ahead of me. My Monday morning routine was
uneventful. I finished my breakfast, bathed, tamed my hair, dressed in my
designer black pantsuit and headed for work. It was now about midday. I gazed at the lunch crowd who poured out of
office blocks to scurry into the cafés and snack bars lining the corner of Ann
and George Streets. Most of the people were typical of the Government and office
workers seen at this end of the Brisbane CBD. Dressed in conservative summer
suits, nothing too flashy, looking straight ahead not making eye contact as they
focused on the business at hand, to get food and then hurry back to work.
As usual everyone looked bored or stressed or both, except one twenty-something couple having a jolly time laughing and giggling holding hands and gazing fondly at each other as they walked amongst the lunch crowd. The girl was blonde and had on a tiny little top and low cut white jeans revealing a largish stomach with an indescribable tattoo near her belly button. The man wore a black t-shirt stating the world was fucked and he did not give a shit. Looking at them made me momentarily apprehensive. Was Australia’s future in such untroubled hands? I turned from the window and in one move, popped and swigged from a can of diet Pepsi, my usual lunch on the go. It was early October, which meant it was hot. Queensland has two seasons, hot and very hot. We used to have hot and wet, but El Nino, and farmers clearing trees stuffed up the river systems, put an end to that. The last holiday of the year, Exhibition Wednesday, had come and gone, and now it was a straight holiday-free run until Christmas. Exhibition Wednesday, or the Ekka as we locals affectionately call it, a quaint holiday unique to Brisbane, the capital of this great State. It allowed us to have the day off work to go along to what remains of the Royal National Agricultural Exhibition. Originally it was a day for farmers to put on their Sunday best and bring their cattle, families and other assorted livestock to Brisbane to show off to us city folk. Now, all that’s left are some ringside events featuring hotted up cars, overly expensive show bags and a sideshow alley. No one I know ever goes to it, but hey, it’s a day off work so we support it in spirit. I, Dr Jayne Veness by name, ex-scientist, now Government pen pusher by
profession, was sitting in my allocated office, at my Government issued desk, in
my matching Government issued swivel chair with shallow thoughts running through
my mind. I was just idly looking out the window watching the world go by and by
habit sucking on my diet Pepsi. I remembered reading somewhere the problem with
doing nothing is not knowing when you have finished. This applied to me right
now. It was only Monday and I was already bored.
My office is on a lower floor of a four-storey building, in fact on the ground floor. The only floor lower is the basement. Once upon a time office location for a Government person like me was a fair indicator of your status. As with real estate it was all about location, location, location. The top boss was on the top floor and lesser bosses were on successively lower floors. The mailroom was located in the basement. The mailroom is still in the basement, but after paying a management consultant forty thousand dollars for two seconds’ work, the top boss is now on the ground floor. According to the consultant, it was a more client friendly location. Not too many clients actually come in our door. If they do, they are greeted by a perky assistant and taken into a really perky waiting area, all smoked glass, chrome, black leather and assorted artificial greenery whose sole purpose in life is to collect dust; the artificial greenery that is, not the perky assistant, although sometimes it is hard to tell. I’m not the top boss but I work for him so this gives me some status in the eyes of the many minions who surround him. My boss is the Chief Scientist and I work in a Commonwealth Government building located in Brisbane called the Office of the Chief Scientist. It has always seemed a bit showy to me that a whole building was called the ‘Office of the Chief Scientist’ but these are pretty pretentious times with everyone wanting to get onto the science gig. Australia is even promoting itself as the ‘Smart Country’. It doesn’t seem smart to me that we have to tell the rest of the world we are smart. It means we assume they think we are the ‘Dumb Country’, so we have to scream to them we are the ‘Smart Country’. And how do you benchmark ‘smart’? This is the ex-scientist coming out in me so it’s best left alone. Anyway what this means for the average person on the street is that anything remotely to do with science takes the front seat. Even reality TV is about watching scientists work in laboratories to see who can build the biggest bomb or the most grotesque living creature in a test tube and all that kind of stuff. This was a real ratings puller on Saturday nights, the only competition being reality shows featuring wannabe pop stars, renovators, urban gladiators and marriages made in TV hell. Public toilets around the city have even got in on the ‘Smart Country’ bandwagon with condom vending machines being labelled ‘Smart Sex’. In my opinion, this was a service to humanity considering some of the yobbos who get their thrills out of watching reality TV shows; the sort who turn down friends for Friends. About this time of the day things get pretty quiet in the office as everyone is either out getting lunch or at their computers checking on their share portfolios. So when I turned away from the window I was surprised to see a man standing in my office by the door staring at me. I said, ‘Can I help you?’ He came towards me. ‘Oh…hey. Sorry I didn’t see you there. I was expecting to meet with a Dr Veness.’ ‘Have a seat. I’m Dr Veness.’ I finished my diet Pepsi, burped as delicately as I could and threw the can into the bin. Whoever-he-was sauntered towards me and plopped his butt on the only other chair in the room. He placed what could have been a smallish briefcase or a largish lunchbox on my desk. I silently prayed it wasn’t a largish lunch box as he could be settled in for the afternoon. He was wearing a badly fitting navy blue jacket, tan cotton slacks and a white shirt with a red polyester tie. My ex-husband had a tie fetish so I can instantly recognise a quality tie. This wasn’t one. ‘Can I do something for you Mr eh…?’ ‘Sorry. I’m David Fischer, Agent David Fischer. I should have introduced myself.’ He leaned across my desk to shake my hand at the same time as holding out some type of fancy identification badge. He sat back in his chair again. Gazing upwards, he contemplated a point in space about a metre above my head. I directed my attention to the door hoping the perky assistant would finally realise she had directed Agent Fischer to the wrong door and redirect him accordingly. He didn’t get straight down to business so instead of waiting it out I said, ‘And tell me Agent Fischer, what are you an agent for?’ He lowered his gaze and looked at me as if he was trying to decide if I was trying to make polite conversation or just being a smart arse. I could have told him it was the latter. He smiled,
but then got contemplative again. He was a tall man, about my age, which is to
say early forties, wavy blonde hair, slightly ruddy skin and blue eyes. He was a
bit geek looking but I supposed women might find him attractive if he was
unattached and heterosexual. I wasn’t about to find out. Just as I was
contemplating my next strategy for scintillating conversation, my boss walked
in. I should say at this point, I am an investigative analyst working for
the Australian Government’s Chief Scientist, Dr John Walting. What this means
is I make sure the Chief Scientist stays on top of things so he looks good to
the media, politicians and the capitalists who run the country. Whenever a
crisis occurs or things start getting out of hand, I fix it and he gets the
glory. I read somewhere a crisis occurs whenever there is political meddling in
situations previously regarded as tolerable and made intolerable by
personalities. Let’s just say there are a lot of personalities connected with
my boss, so I’m kept busy. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great job – classy office,
weekends off, a salary that just covers the electricity and phone bill, and I
genuinely like the Chief. He likes being called the Chief as it sets him apart
from all the other Doctors, Professors and assorted windbags jockeying for what
he thinks is the world’s greatest scientist position. The Chief’s background was something to do with mechanical engineering. He worked on weapons research with the Defence Department for a long time before becoming a techno-politician. He has a lot of gongs after his name – AM, ME, PhD, BEcon, FAAS, FTSE, FIEA, and so forth so I guess that means he couldn’t be doing anything but a good job. I met him about ten years ago when he was heading a committee aiming to save the world from environmental pollution. I was at the University of Queensland at the time looking at ways to manufacture plastic-eating super bacteria. He thought this was a terrific idea, as it would save the world from the biggest pollution threat known to mankind - the supermarket plastic shopping bag. My work was based on fact; ninety percent of what we householders purchased each week went to the rubbish tip of which about forty percent was plastic shopping bags. One of his research committees funded my project to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand dollars and he basked in my glory for a while when it looked like I’d actually cracked it. In those days, I was passionate, personable, good-looking, smart, and the media milked the story for all it was worth. Regrettably for me, my work was shelved when the Government forced supermarkets to introduce shopping bags made of biodegradable starch-based plastics. This was great for the environment and especially for our marine friends who apparently ate plastic shopping bags thinking they were jellyfish. It was unfortunate for me. My funding and reputation dried up faster than a creek bed after a flash flood. Amongst the science community, you were only as good as your last funding grant. No money meant I was no longer the next big thing. So I didn’t develop the super bug and the Chief wasn’t credited with saving the world, but we got on famously. A few years ago he asked me to be an investigative analyst with his Office. I jumped at the chance, even though I didn’t know what the hell I would be doing, but at that stage of my life anything was better than looking down a microscope and living off three-year below-the-poverty-line research grants. After completing a twelve-month crash course on law, funded by the taxpayer of course, I became a fully-fledged investigative analyst with the Office of the Chief Scientist. Although the job description sounds important, all it actually meant was that I was the Chief Scientist’s odd jobs person.
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