MEMOIR 
*5 
he was an ardent member of the Field Naturalists’ Club from 
1887 onwards. In that year he had visited King Island with 
a party of its members. It lies between Victoria and Tas¬ 
mania, and the problem before the expedition was to decide 
in the light of the fauna and flora whether it belonged to the 
Continent or, as indeed it turned out, rather to Tasmania. 
‘It was a new and valuable experience’, he writes. Next year 
he set forth with four companions to visit Croajingolong, in 
Eastern Gippsland, one of the wildest parts of Victoria. This 
was done at the suggestion of the eminent botanist, Baron 
Sir F. Muller, F.R.S.; and it may here in passing be noted 
that the commemorative medal struck after the Baron’s death 
in 1896, representing him with an acacia spray in his hand 
and with a waratah on the obverse, was designed by Spencer, 
who naively admits, ‘I am rather proud of it’. A very 
spirited account of this ‘trip’ was penned by Spencer for the 
Victorian Naturalist (vol. vi, 1889), and the accompanying 
sketches of the remarkable plant life are likewise his. Again, 
in 1890, he formed one of the exploring party that visited 
the almost unknown country extending from Marysville and 
Woods Point to the Yarra Falls. Already, then, the Wander- 
lust had taken possession of him. But greater things were to 
come. 
In May 1894 Spencer joined the scientific expedition 
organized by Mr. W. A. Horn of Adelaide to explore the 
Central region, and spent over three months in traversing 
some 2,000 miles of the interior, mostly on camel-back. His 
special concern was with the zoological and photographic 
part of the work, while Dr. E. C. Stirling undertook the 
anthropology. But in July at Alice Springs in the very 
heart of the Continent Spencer became acquainted with 
F. J. Gillen, henceforth to be a faithful ally whose intimate 
knowledge of the natives would most fruitfully combine 
with his own scientific acumen and training in method. And 
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