Matthias, Ian Geoffrey   (1940 - )

Born on 16 April 1940, NSW;

Spent his childhood moving around, with his father attached to the Air Force as a specialist blacksmith during the war and afterwards, to Victoria, NSW and South Australia.

After leaving school he became a Primary School Teacher at various placements around NSW. It was at this time that he started collecting orchids.

He returned as mature-aged tertiary student in 1964 to undertake BSc, Honours, and a scholarship PhD at University of New England (UNE), specialising in geology.

From there he got a lecturing position at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (CCAE) - the precursor to the University of Canberra - and started collecting rock and mineral samples from across the globe, for teaching purposes in the 1970s. He undertook collection field trips with students to some of the biggest mines in Australia, including those at Broken Hill.

In July 2021, the University of Canberra extended the 'Matthias Economic Geological Collection' on a long term loan basis to Geoscience Australia, making the significant mineral collection more accessible to researchers across the country.
Comprising over 4,000 specimens worth over A$580,000, the scientific collection is named after its founder, Professor Ian Matthias.

After leaving CCAE at the end of 1976 he returned to a family property growing bananas in northern NSW.

After some time in the labour-intensive banana farming industry he was enticed back to geology and the mining industry, first with a small company but later with Rio Tinto.

Later he had another spell at teaching, this time at high-school, including geology, before retiring back to the farm.

Herbarium Collections

In 1975-76 Ian Matthias had been Geology lecturer to Mark Clements when he was a student at Canberra College of Advanced Education.

In conversation Mark discovered that Matthias had been a keen orchid collector in his previous life and had ammassed a sizeable private herbarium.

When Matthias resigned from CCAE at the end of 1976 and moved to Potsville in northern NSW, Mark visited him there where he handed over his orchid collection for incorporation into the Canberra Botanic Gardens Herbarium (CBG) which was later amalgamated with the Australian National Herbarium (CANB).

Some earlier herbarium collections, presumably from Matthias's student days in the 1960s are held by the University of New England Herbarium (NE).

A chance encounter with an Angiopteris fern (then thought to be extinct in NSW) on their farm resulted in involement with fern specialist Mary Tindale and a subsequent donation of fern specimens to the National Herbarium of NSW in Sydney (SYD).

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/media/newsroom/2021/july/ucs-economic-mineral-geological-collection-on-loan-to-geoscience-australia
Pers.Comm. Mark Clements (email 2024)
Pers.Comm. Ian Matthias (phone 2024).
Portrait Photo: 1965, extracted from wedding photo, supplied by Ian Matthais.

Plant collecting localities for 'Matthias, I.G.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 439 specimens