Suzanne
Fife: If I had to use one word to describe my former honours and PhD supervisor,
Toni O'Neill it would probably be 'strong'. This was not always a good thing,
and it did lead to personal conflict with at least one of her postgraduates,
but she certainly demanded respect from students and colleagues alike. I was
very impressed as an honours student during my first remote sensing conference.
Toni was well-known, liked and respected by researchers from all over the
world. I learned quite a bit about networking in those days. Photo: Sue
Fife and Toni at Sue's graduation.
Not only did Toni demand respect, she treated her students with respect. She recognised a student's abilities and weaknesses, spending quite a lot of her time with those who asked for help or obviously needed it. But it was also OK if you happened to be a student like me who tended to keep their progress and written work to themselves until the last rush at the end. She wouldn't hassle you unnecessarily if she was sure you were clear on your questions and ultimate aims. To me this shows a great deal of trust in the ability and dedication of the student .
Toni O'Neill did have her bad moods and on those days people would scatter because she wasn't afraid of anyone. Most of the time she was a warm, happy, friendly, encouraging person who was truly interested in others. Her interest and encouragement were partly the reason she attracted relatively high numbers of honours and postgraduate students, especially mature age women who need that extra bit of confidence boosting. For example, she didn't seem to consider that my having a baby in the first year of a PhD would cause any great problems!
- Suzanne Fyfe, former PhD student of Toni
John Marthick: I knew Toni for about 13 years. She was a lecturer, mentor, colleague and friend to me. My supervisor for both my Honours and Masters theses, she was responsible for my interest in remote sensing and later in geographical information systems. Toni was a pleasure to work with – informative, helpful and willing to spend time explaining procedures and techniques. She was also willing to learn from her colleagues and her students. We worked on many projects together including fire mapping in the Kimberley region, a South China Seas Maritime Project, coastal monitoring using airborne scanner data and habitat modelling.
Toni taught many hundreds of students during her time at the University of Wollongong. Her teaching included courses in Remote Sensing of the Environment, Biogeography and Field Studies in Physical Geography. Her Remote Sensing course always attracted a large number of students many of whom went on to do Honours. She was always willing to discuss aspects of her courses with her students.
Toni was responsible for the establishment of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory in the Department of Geography. This computer laboratory is used extensively for postgraduate and staff research using remote sensing, spatial and statistical techniques. Together we were responsible for the establishment of a second computer laboratory. The Spatial Teaching Laboratory is used for the undergraduate teaching of remote sensing, geographical information systems and other Geoscience subjects.
In her time at the University of Wollongong, Toni carried out research with many people both in Australia and overseas. Her research interests involved the spectral reflectance characteristics of vegetation, soils and soil crusts in the semi-arid region of western NSW; the relationships between the biochemical makeup of land-cover types and reflectance; and absorption features as measured on remote sensing instruments. In the last few years her vegetation studies at Lake Mungo in western NSW had recently included AIRSAR (radar) data collected as part of the Pacific Rim NASA project. Toni had started to investigate the interaction of radar wavelengths with the structure of vegetation and the application of the results of these detailed studies to land management issues and environmental change monitoring. She had also started doing research in marine environments– an area she was involved in before coming to Wollongong. The maritime research included mapping the extent and types of macro-algae off rocky shores by using aerial photographic techniques and airborne scanners.
Her research was wide-ranging , spanning the Australian continent and extending as far as the South China Sea and Botswana. The research her honours and postgraduate students were involved in included discrimination of pasture weeds using spectral analysis; developing laboratory, field and airborne hyperspectral techniques to distinguish a number of sea grass and macro-algae species; determining the location of palaeochannels using satellite data; and predictive modelling of the habitats of rare species.
Toni was well known within the remote sensing community. Her colleagues remember her for her "cheerful practical interest" and her "refreshing and unpretentious manner". Toni was regarded "as a special person who was much admired for her unhurried energy, enthusiasm and cheerfulness even under adversity". She is sincerely missed by her friends and colleagues in the remote sensing community.
John Marthick, former student and colleague of Toni
Mark Malady: In January 1996, having decided to undertake Honours in Remote Sensing and GIS, I approached Toni O’Neill and I asked her straight out,
"Hi, I was wondering if you would be my honours supervisor this year?"
I think she was reluctant at first because she already had two other honours students and two PhD students as well. But luckily, she accepted.
About one or two months later, Toni asked me to attend a Remote Sensing conference in Canberra. I didn’t know what to expect but the conference was awesome. I remember being really impressed with the hardware and the research on display and I was fascinated by a prototype of a satellite component on display. From that day on I became much more interested in my own honours project.
The honours year went very quickly. I virtually lived at University that year and I spent at least four nights in the old Spatial Analysis Lab in building 19. Apparently this was kind of a tradition. The day finally came when I had three finished copies of my Honours thesis sitting on the table before me. I distinctly remember Toni’s comment.
"Wonderful, that’s just wonderful, Mark. Good on you."
About one month later, Toni rang up and asked me if I would like to work in the lab for a few months. I accepted because I wanted to work and I was happy to continue doing the kind of practical work I was doing during Honours but without doing another degree. I started late January helping out with some of Toni’s projects and then on a project for the NSW Department of Fisheries. This project involved mapping about sixty seagrass communities at various sites along the New South Wales coastline on a computer. When the NSW Fisheries project ended, I worked for Toni on a casual basis until the end of 1998.
In 1998 I did my Graduate Diploma in Education to become a high school teacher, teaching Geography of course. I was really surprised at first when I learned that Toni had been a school teacher once. She told me that she had taught at schools around Australia and also in London.
Naturally, everyone who worked with Toni, her students, her staff and colleagues were shocked when we all learned that Toni had cancer. It was a sombre day in Geosciences. I tried not to think of it and so I got on with my work. It seemed to me that Toni would recover. Toni sometimes came into work just to catch up with everybody. She asked me to document everything I did and the location of every file so that she could carry on with the research in 1999. She seemed so positive and enthusiastic at the time. I remember one time when Toni and I discussed some aspect of the research I was working on over the telephone while she was in hospital.
I began teaching full time in 1999 and I was very sad when Toni died. It seemed so unfortunate because Toni had so much to offer and so much to accomplish with her career and her life in general. I feel privileged to have had Toni as an honours supervisor and as an employer for two years. I learned so much. I found Toni to be extremely helpful no matter how busy she was and so understanding whenever I messed something up.
Mark Malady, former student and research assistant of Toni