Barton, Allan Francis Murray

Summary

Allan Barton had a key role in the establishment of the Oil Mallee Company, following his research into the properties of eucalyptus oil, particularly cineole, in the early 1980s. He has been teaching at Murdoch University, Western Australia, including resources recycling and forensic science, inorganic chemistry, and physical and industrial chemistry.

Details

In the early 1990s, Professor Alan Barton approached the Western Australia Department of Conservation and Land management to examine the potential of planting oil mallees across the Western Australian wheat belt to assist in overcoming the serious presence of high salinity. With the cooperation of local farmers, the Oil Mallee Association was formed and in 1998 it received a $2.2 million grant from the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust to propagate and maintain mallees for planting in the Western Australian wheat belt. The Association now has over 900 growers throughout the region. Today, the Oil Mallee Project has target plantings of 500 million mallees, to be planted over 1 million hectares, by the year 2025.While high-quality eucalyptus oil production is one of the expected outcomes from the project, other by-products are likely to be of equal or even greater benefit.

Chronology

2001

Award - Member of the Order of Australia (AM) - For service to the environment through the development of industrial uses for eucalyptus oil and recognition of the role of large-scale eucalyptus plantings in the rehabilitation of saline affected soils.

Related entries

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Wrigley, J.; and Fagg, M., Eucalypts: a Celebration (Crows Nest Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 344 pp. Details

Journal Articles

• Barton, Allan, 'The Oil Mallee Project: A Multifaceted Industrial Ecology Case Study', Journal of Industrial Ecology, 3 (2-3) (1999), 161-176. Details

Reports

• Barton, Allan, Industrial Uses of Eucalyptus Oil (Division of Science and Engineering, Murdoch University, WA, 1998). http://www.oilmallee.org.au/images/uploads/Documents/industrial_use_of_eucalyptuc_oil_prof_by_allan_barton_murdoch_university.pdf. Details

Resources

• 'Barton, Allan Francis Murray', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1514398. Details