1. John Geoffrey Tracey was an Australian ecologist and botanist whose pioneering research work in partnership with Dr Leonard Webb within the Rainforest Ecology Unit of the CSIRO in the 1950s led to the publication of the first systematic classification of Australian rainforest vegetation in the Journal of Ecology in 1959.
Geoff Tracey was raised, along with his younger brother, by his mother after his father died from Tuberculosis when he was two years old.
Geoff Tracey's mother had been concerned about the possible threat of a Japanese invasion of Cairns and felt the remote location would offer relative safety for her family.
Geoff Tracey spent much of his time around the Laura Station exploring the biologically rich natural landscape of the area as well as fishing with an indigenous stockman who was known only to Geoff Tracey by his English name 'Bob Ross'.
Geoff Tracey was to later cite his time at Laura Station as a formative influence upon his subsequent ecological work.
Geoff Tracey's family moved to Brisbane in the mid-40's where he boarded at a Marist Brother's college before enrolling to study agriculture at Gatton Agricultural College from 1947 to 1948.
Geoff Tracey resigned from the position not long after starting on account of his dissatisfaction with the nature of the work which involved monitoring the fulfilment of soldier settlement land clearing conditions after the Second World War.
In 1980, near the end of his tenure at the CSIRO Long Pocket Laboratories, Geoff Tracey completed work on the first major ecological survey of the Wet Tropics of Queensland which was later published by CSIRO in 1982.
Geoff Tracey's publication adapted the same typological system used for the preceding mapping project whilst providing more detailed descriptions of the different vegetation types and their various ecological relationships.
The study identified 24 broad types of vegetation within the region including 12 major types of rainforest vegetation which Geoff Tracey then broke down into 17 distinct sub-types based upon a variety of geological, climactic, floristic and topographic variables.