From this time forward I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.
With those words English-born Dr Ian Whittington became Australia's newest citizen on January 23 in an idyllic late-afternoon Heron Island beachside setting.
After 11 years in Australia, the past two as director of the University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station, Dr Whittington joined thousands of migrants around Australia pledging allegiance to their adopted country.
While many sweltered in suits and ties at formal ceremonies, Dr Whittington donned tropical shorts and shirt, and a straw hat replete with corks for the five-minute ceremony on the white, coralline beach section known by University staff as 'Sunset Boulevard'.
Witnessing were 14 research station colleagues, including Kent-born Station Operations Manager and one-time Victorian policeman Ted Upton, whose Australian citizenship was invoked in a similarly unlikely setting- Antarctica - in 1985.
Overhead, a nesting white reef egret watched, oblivious to the knowledge that early island visitors mistook his predecessors for herons. The misnomer stuck, leading one to ponder if 'Dive Reef Egret Island' would have had the impact of 'Dive Heron Island' on the proliferating tourist caps, visors and T-shirts.
Dr Whittington submitted his application for citizenship last year after first visiting Heron Island in 1987, the year he left England to take a University of Queensland postdoctoral fellowship in the Parasitology Department. He has since been a regular island vistor to study monogenean (flatworm) parasites of the almost 1000 fish species around Heron and Wistari reefs.
Expecting to attend a Brisbane ceremony, Dr Whittington was surprised the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs came to Heron Island instead.
The naturalisation ceremony was performed by Helen Diatloff, officer-in-charge of citizenship at the department's Brisbane office, who was already visiting the island for her daughter's wedding.
Members of the Heron Island Research Station garden club have ensured Dr Whittington will have a permanent reminder of his Australian citizenship.
On Australia Day, they planted 200 seedlings of pisonias, casuarinas, pandanus and agusia (a low growing shrub) to re-vegetate Sunset Boulevard and nearby dunes and block out lights from the Research Station to avoid disorienting turtle hatchlings.
Seeds were collected by station staff, sent to a Department of Environment nursery at Stradbroke Island to grow out, and returned to Heron Island for the arbor ceremony.
For further information, contact Dr Whittington, telephone 07 49781 399/07 3365 3302.
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