For the last few weeks I’ve been wearing a lovely watch: a Tudor Oyster Prince from 1961 with the coveted large rose on the dial. I haven’t worn a watch since my veterinary days ended 15 or so years ago. Back then a watch was a required implement for measuring beats, drips, breaths and most importantly when I could bolt the door, run to my car and escape the circus for the day. When I shed that career, I also shed the watch, maybe symbolically but more likely because I just took it off one day and realised I had no need to put it on again.

My father bought this watch in 1961 as a young man in his hometown of Rockhampton, Queensland. He wore it through his courtship and marriage of the local ABC newsreader the next year, their move to Brisbane, birth of two sons and matriculation as adult students into Queensland University (where he won the University Medal). He wore it at the start of his career in the early 70s as one of the founding lecturers at Griffith University and through his numerous field trips into North Queensland where he conducted his seminal anthropological » Continue Reading.