Ranald David Alan Cameron

Ranald Cameron was born in Brisbane on 30 August 1938 into the family of Buff and Carrie along with his brother Malcolm and sister Glen. He grew up with a lasting passion for the sun and the sea. His formal education commenced at Ascot State School and then aged 14 he moved to Gatton to study at the then Queensland Agricultural College. During college, at 15, he was diagnosed with a very serious gastrointestinal condition which would have a lifelong impact on his health. He returned to Brisbane for treatment and completed his secondary schooling at Brisbane Boys Grammar. He then attended the University of Queensland at St Lucia, graduating with a BVSc in 1963 and commencing his veterinary career the following year at the veterinary school clinic. Taking a break in 1965 he took a boat, as many young Australians did, to the United Kingdom. He worked in the United Kingdom, travelled through Europe and then went onto Africa for work as a veterinary locum in Kenya and Zambia. It was on that boat over, the SS Orchades that he met Mary Hayward from Melbourne, the start of a lifelong partnership. When Ranald returned in 1967, he joined the staff of the University of Queensland, taking up a position working in pastoral animal health at the Goondiwindi Rural Veterinary Centre. The long-distance relationship with Mary, stretching between Goondiwindi and Melbourne, blossomed into marriage on 30 September 1967. Ranald and Mary moved to Kenya in 1969, when he took up a position as a Lecturer in Animal Production at the University of East Africa. While there they welcomed the birth of their first child, and Ranald undertook research into the impacts on cattle production of Maasai communities that had ceased a nomadic lifestyle. Upon returning to Australia, and after an initial period at the University of Melbourne vet school in Werribee, he cemented an interest in pigs as the first and only full time, tenured Lecturer in Pig Medicine and Production at the University of Queensland in 1972. From a base at the Large Animal Medicine team at Pinjarra Hills, he developed a strong pig health programme teaching veterinary students at both the large animal clinical centre and Veterinary Science Farm piggery at Pinjarra Hills as well as delivering a well-organised lecture course from St Lucia. His energetic and engaging pig health course featuring hands-on practical training including boar vasectomies, rectal pregnancy testing and caesarean sections in sows were much appreciated by the students, with pig vasectomies under general anaesthesia probably the first survival surgeries undertaken by that generation of Queensland University Veterinary Science students. Complementing the on-campus work, the large animal medicine team including Lyle Daniel, Malcolm McClennan and Ranald led groups of students out onto farms for practical experience. For Ranald this extended to client piggeries in SE Qld, in the Brisbane Valley, the Sunshine Coast, the Darling Downs and the South Burnett with small groups of students joining him for regular herd health visits. Recognising his expertise in swine medicine, pig production clients further afield engaged him in pig herd health practice, with a string of long-term clients including in Mary River valley, the NSW Northern Rivers and the NSW Central Tablelands. He also worked closely with other pig producers and production vets, leaving a lasting legacy due to his enthusiastic teaching style and ongoing mentoring of not only of Queensland University graduates, but pig veterinarians across Australia. Ranald's research programme was diverse and productive, including the successful supervision of a number of doctorate and masters students. He was himself awarded a Masters in Veterinary Science from the University of Queensland in 1970 (Studies on ram spermatozoa) and a doctorate from the University of QLD in 1982 (Factors influencing semen production and quality in boars reared in a subtropical environment). This interest in problem solving through research and publications extended to 50 years, publishing papers from his time in Kenya, the United Kingdom and Australia writing for a broad audience in both scientific journals and in industry producer publications. The work was based on numerous collaborations with leading Australian and international researchers. From a solid foundation in reproductive physiology and clinically focused reproductive disease in male and female pigs, he also developed a significant body of work on major and emerging pig diseases, all of which was highly relevant to the Australian pig industry. Ranald developed a lasting interest in skin diseases of pigs, writing a veterinary review Porcine Dermatoses for the University of Sydney Post-Graduate Foundation in Veterinary Science in 1975. After expanding and updating that to produce Skin Diseases of the Pig in 1984, he went on to author or co-author the skin disease chapter in four editions of the major international text Diseases of Swine published from 1999 through to the current 11th edition in 2019. In August 1997, he retired from clinical teaching and renewed his research focus on improving outcomes with cryopreservation and embryo transfer in pigs. The team, including Luke Beebe, Alan Blackshaw and Helen Keates, published in 2006 on significant success with this work. His pig husbandry and surgical expertise led to connections with Paul Colditz's team at the Herston Perinatal Research Centre, supporting a research programme using models based on caesarean derived piglets. Ranald became a member of the Australian Veterinary Association in 1963, remaining a member until his death. He was an active member of the Association and of the Australian Pig Veterinarians special interest group, generally presenting papers at annual conferences to the group on both diseases and consultancy. When he was not presenting, he took up the role of leading questions from the audience. In 1986, he served as President of the Queensland Division of the AVA, and in 1988, his commitments were recognised in the awarding of a Meritorious Service Award by the Association. Well liked and esteemed by his colleagues, he once enthralled the younger attendees at a pig veterinary conference with his career-long experiences as a pig vet. A memorable and instructive example included dealing with tetanus cases in pigs. These he said were not infrequent, often associated with surgical castration techniques—a condition and practice not seen in modern Australian pig production. Ranald lived a very active life. Both he and Mary enjoyed time split between Brisbane and the NSW north coast, pursuing passions for fishing, gardening and scuba diving. Ranald's professional roles and interest in scuba diving each also presented many opportunities for overseas travel. They were devoted to their children Ranald (Tom), James and Cate and their growing families. Through volunteering roles supporting the refugee community, they also welcomed into the family Abdul Ibrahimi, a young refugee from Afghanistan, who become a third son in the family. Ranald suffered a series of falls over the last 12 months of his life which led to deteriorating health and to his death on 31 December 2023. He has left Mary, his wife of 56 years; his children Tom, James, Kate and Abdul; and grandchildren as well as his many friends and colleagues who will long remember him very fondly.