Reading — 2026 May–Aug Recall Set 14

A chance finding by a Swiss research team explains an event that happened centuries ago around Lake Geneva. In the sixth century Gregory of Tours, a chronicler of the Germanic people known as the Franks, told of an extraordinary event in what is now Switzerland, where the Rhone River spills into Lake Geneva. He wrote of a big rockfall in the year 563 AD in the vicinity of a place called Tauredunum. The debris plunged into the river, and a great mass of water 'overwhelmed with a sudden and violent flood all that was on the banks as far as the city of Geneva,' more than 64 kilometres across the lake. The Geneva bridge was demolished, and several people inside the city walls of Geneva were killed. Historians and scientists have long believed that Gregory and another chronicler, Marius of Avenches, who told a similar tale, were describing a tsunami that raced across the lake. But there has not been any direct evidence of it until now. Researchers at the University of Geneva now say they have found that evidence, in the form of a large deposit of sediment in the middle of the lake. In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, they also propose the sequence of events that caused the deadly surge. The researchers think that large boulders crashed down onto soft sediments which had accumulated at the river mouth because of the slowing of the river's flow when it enters the lake. These sediments formed an underwater delta that had several canyon-like channels. When the falling rocks hit the delta they destabilised the sediments and caused the canyons to collapse. It was this collapse that created the tsunami. The sediments from this collapse would have been propelled towards the lake's centre. Guy Simpson, a lecturer in the University of Geneva's Department of Geology and Paleontology, says the thick layer of sediment, which has the same curved shape as a lens, lies more than 305 metres down in the deepest part of the lake, and was found largely by chance. Katrina Kremer, a University of Geneva doctoral student and the study's lead author, had been conducting seismic soundings, searching for thin sediment layers that might be evidence of major floods that had taken place in pre-historic times, long before the event described by Gregory of Tours. 'But we came across this enormous deposit,' Simpson says. 'We didn't know straight away that it was the deposit that caused the [sixth-century] tsunami. But it was a jumbled mess of sediment. It was quite obvious that it was deposited rapidly.' The researchers then took samples of the sediments and used carbon-dating techniques on remains of leaves and other organic matter they found to determine when the deposit formed. This narrowed the range to a period between the late fourth century and the early seventh century. Other than the rockfall, there is no record of any special event during that period, Simpson says. The researchers estimated that the deposit, which is at least 9.6 kilometres long by 4.8 kilometres wide, and averages about five metres thick, contains more than 248 million cubic metres of material. They ran multiple computer simulations showing that the collapse of that much sediment at the mouth of the Rhone would have caused a tsunami with an estimated height of 7.9 metres at Geneva - where it would have arrived in about 70 minutes. The rockfall itself may have been set off by a major earthquake, as some scientists have speculated. Lake tsunamis, although unusual, are not unknown, says Richard Schweickert, an Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Nevada in Reno, in the United States. He cites evidence that the collapse of part of the shoreline of Lake Tahoe in northern California within the past 20,000 years caused a tsunami with wave heights of about 30 metres. There are two faults under the lake that could have caused an earthquake, he says and that the collapse of the Rhone delta sediments, as calculated by the Swiss researchers, 'would certainly be capable of moving a large amount of material into the lake.' He suggests that the findings could be corroborated by careful mapping of the shoreline to look for unusual deposits or erosion left behind by the giant waves. Simpson says the Rhone delta sediments might collapse again, perhaps from an earthquake or even their own weight. In the sixth century, Geneva was a small community, mostly behind walls on a hill, whereas today it is home to international organisations and about 200,000 people, many living in low-lying areas near the water. Testing the stability of nearby slopes, and creating more detailed models of how a tsunami could affect Geneva today, would provide a more accurate assessment of whether or not this is something the lakeside city should be concerned about. Most tsunamis occur in oceans and are generated by earthquakes. However, the study is a reminder that even a landlocked nation like Switzerland is not immune to catastrophic waves.

A The 17th-century English scholar and botanist John Ray was well aware that he lived through, and participated in, a profound revolution in the way people interacted with nature. In the preface to his Synopsis of British Plants, published in 1690, he gave thanks that he had been born at a time when traditional dependence on the teaching of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) had given way to a new philosophy, based on experiment and observation of the real world, that we now call science. B Ray was born in 1627. His father was a village blacksmith, and his mother was also a respected member of the community, a healer who was an expert in folk medicine and the use of herbs to treat ailments. Ray must have stood out as an unusually bright boy among his schoolmates, and his talents were recognised by a church official, Samuel Covell, who had graduated from Cambridge University in 1600, and maintained his links with his university. Through his influence, Ray was admitted to Cambridge University in 1644 at the age of seventeen - a huge step for a village blacksmith's son. There he made a solid start, and quickly gained a reputation as a brilliant student. He studied the classics (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and mathematics, but there was nothing yet we would now call science in the curriculum. After graduating in 1648, he became a minor member of staff at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1651, Lecturer in Mathematics in 1653, and Lecturer in Humanities in 1655. C Almost immediately after graduating, Ray also seems to have developed the interest to which he would devote the rest of his life: the study of the natural world. He explains this conversion into a naturalist - in particular into a botanist - in the preface to his first book, the Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. Here Ray tells us that he suffered an illness in his early twenties, and was advised to take long walks and ride in the fresh air while recovering. While doing this, he became interested in the local flora, and finding nobody able to teach him, Ray investigated it for himself. He then went on to pass on the knowledge he acquired to others. D By the mid-1650s, even the first-year students at Trinity College were able to identify the plants and flowers around Cambridge, as they were being taught (unofficially - none of this was part of their formal education) by Ray. Many of them were the sons of landowners, and so had a natural, if amateurish, interest in country matters. But a few of them took his efforts to understand the natural world much more seriously. One of these, Francis Willughby, later played an important part in Ray's life. E Having himself had no authority on the subject of plants on which to draw, Ray also started work on what would become his Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. The work was not published until 1660 because, as Ray explained in the preface, he had to start from scratch: "I had first to become familiar with the literature, to compare the plants that I found with the pictures, and when there seemed to be a resemblance, to go fully into any unknown descriptions. Gaining skill by experience, I acquired at last the ability to recognise to what tribe and family similars or could be assigned; this taught me to search for similarities and saved a vast deal of labour, which others would have spent in their difficulties. I was eager to make the most of this and was fortunate to share my enthusiasm with my friends..." F Ray's Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants was much more than a simple list of species. It gave the names of plants found in the area around Cambridge and included information about where they grew and how common they were. In doing this, Ray was producing something that would be of practical use to students and other readers interested in the local natural world. At the same time, the book showed his determination to describe plants accurately, on the basis of direct examination rather than reliance on old authorities. In this respect, it reflected the spirit of the new learning that Ray admired. G Ray's studies of plants were only the beginning of a much larger ambition. With the support of Francis Willughby, he began to imagine a more comprehensive investigation of nature, one that would attempt to classify living things according to careful observation of their shared characteristics. This was an ambitious undertaking, especially at a time when many aspects of the natural world remained poorly described. Yet Ray believed that by collecting evidence systematically and comparing related forms, it would be possible to build a more reliable understanding of nature than scholars had possessed before.

Mark Strizic, who passed away in December last year, was the last representative of a remarkable generation of European émigré photographers who settled in Australia after the Second World War. Alongside Wolfgang Sievers and Henry Talbot, Strizic contributed significantly to the visual culture of his adopted country. Yet, unlike many of his contemporaries, whose reputations were largely based on industrial or commercial photography, Strizic developed a career that was unusually complex. Over a span of five decades, he explored multiple photographic styles, experimented with new printing processes, engaged in book design, produced large-scale murals, and participated actively in teaching the next generation of photographers. After his arrival in Melbourne from Zagreb in 1950, Strizic initially studied science, but soon turned to photography. From the mid-1950s he began to establish himself, not only through individual works but also through collaborations. One of his most enduring achievements was his partnership with the critic and historian David Saunders, with whom he produced Melbourne: A Portrait in 1960. The book was distinctive for its use of offset printing, a relatively new process at the time, which allowed photographs and text to be integrated seamlessly on the page. Strizic, as both photographer and designer, arranged his images so that one composition flowed into the next, often leaving areas of blank space or floating lines of text to balance the spreads. The result was a visually coherent book, which also carried an ambitious cultural agenda: Saunders’ text was printed in Italian and German as well as English, suggesting an international readership. The book’s bright and cheerful cover, designed by Leonard French, contributed to its appeal. In 1961 it was awarded Book of the Year, recognition not only of the photographs themselves but of the integrated design of the whole publication. Strizic later admitted that the idea for Melbourne: A Portrait had been shaped by his father’s earlier work. His father, an architect in Zagreb, had published Light and Shade in 1955, a reflective “city book” in the European style, which contrasted sharply with the more commercial boosterism of contemporary Australian publications. Strizic deliberately sought to emulate this contemplative approach, presenting Melbourne as a modern yet cultured metropolis. During the 1960s and 70s, Strizic continued to photograph the rapid transformation of Melbourne. His distinctive technique often involved pointing the camera directly into the sunlight, creating stark contrasts in which buildings and figures were reduced to silhouettes. Many of his images juxtapose old Victorian facades with newly constructed skyscrapers, capturing a city in the midst of radical expansion. Cars, highways and office towers dominate the frame, while human figures are frequently marginalised, squeezed into the bottom corners or overshadowed by the built environment. By the late 1970s, Strizic’s vision of Melbourne had grown darker. Using experimental methods, such as printing black-and-white negatives on colour paper or duplicating them onto high-contrast lithographic film, he produced cityscapes that glowed with intense, sometimes psychedelic colours, giving Melbourne an almost hallucinatory quality. Collaboration remained central to Strizic’s career. In 1967 he worked with Sun Books, a small but ambitious publishing house, on several innovative projects. For Tim Burstall’s film 2000 Weeks he created a photo-roman, a paperback-sized publication in which his stills from the film were combined with dialogue. Although the film was produced in a European art-house style and tackled existential themes, it failed at the box office, and Strizic’s book met a similar fate. Nevertheless, the project demonstrated his willingness to experiment with new formats. A more prestigious venture was Involvement (1968), a limited-edition art book edited by Andrew Grimwade. The concept was to pair Strizic’s photographic portraits with paintings by the artist Clifton Pugh. The accompanying text, written by Geoffrey Dutton, sought to place the collaboration in a grand cultural framework. Yet the book was widely regarded as unsatisfactory, largely because of its design. Unlike Melbourne: A Portrait, Strizic did not design the volume himself, and the layout by Les Gray failed to balance the colour plates of Pugh’s paintings with the black-and-white photographs. Despite this, Strizic’s portraits attracted attention for their originality. He employed experimental methods such as “pushing” his 35mm film to increase contrast and grain, and often shot his sitters against dominant backgrounds or with objects intruding into the foreground. The effect was to highlight their individuality and resistance to their surroundings. His portrait of Sir Charles Moses, head of the ABC, shows him through a haze of cigar smoke, while Barry Humphries appears surrounded by eccentric antiques in his London flat. These images were exhibited in 1968 at the National Gallery of Victoria under the title Some Australian Personalities, marking the institution’s first solo exhibition devoted to photography. Strizic’s collaborative spirit extended into many other areas. He documented the sculptor John Davis and the furniture designer Schulim Krimper for monographs commissioned in the 1980s, but his connection with Krimper went back to 1959. He also worked with avant-garde artists such as Asher Bilu, producing the only surviving photographic record of Bilu’s interactive electronic work Sculptron (1967). This task required considerable technical skill, since Strizic had to balance the exposure for glowing cathode-ray tubes with the surrounding sculptural elements. In the field of murals, he developed large-scale photographic works for government buildings and corporate headquarters, sometimes combining his “photochromes” with paintings. A notable example was his collaboration with Stanislav Ostoja-Kotkowski in 1970 on a twelve-metre mural for the Ciba-Geigy building in Preston, which merged infrared photography with Strizic’s experimental prints. That same year, Strizic worked with the influential architect Robin Boyd on Living in Australia, a book which sought to articulate Boyd’s design philosophy. Strizic’s photography reinforced Boyd’s arguments, presenting domestic architecture through dramatic diagonal compositions and sharp contrasts. The book was recently republished, confirming its continuing relevance. In later years, Strizic combined his artistic practice with teaching in Melbourne’s new photography departments during the boom of the 1970s. In 1988 he returned to his earliest negatives of Melbourne, staging an exhibition that highlighted his long-standing interest in the city’s changing urban landscape. Since then, he has often been remembered as a nostalgic chronicler of “old Melbourne” or “disappearing Melbourne.” Yet such a label oversimplifies his contribution. His career was marked by continuous experimentation, by fruitful collaborations with artists, writers and designers, and by a willingness to engage with both traditional and avant-garde practices. In this sense, he occupies a significant though sometimes underrecognised position in the development of Australian visual culture.