Australian Dictionary of Biography

Geoffrey Loftus Hills, c.1974

Dairy Industry Association of Australia

Geoffrey Dean Loftus-Hills (1910–1999), agricultural scientist and activist, was born on 24 July 1910 at Launceston, Tasmania, younger son of Clive Loftus-Hills, metallurgist, and his wife, Jessie Adelaide, née Dean, both Tasmanian born. After attending Launceston State High School, Geoffrey completed his secondary education (1923–26) at Xavier College, Melbourne. With a residential bursary at Newman College, he enrolled at the University of Melbourne (BAgSc, 1931), winning prizes in agricultural biochemistry and agricultural engineering. He then spent a year conducting a bacteriological survey of dairy factories, with the support of an H. G. Turner research scholarship.

Joining the Victorian Department of Agriculture in September 1931, Loftus-Hills continued his investigations into dairy manufacturing and processes. In 1934 and 1935, with the support of the Australian Dairy Council, he attended the National Institute for Research into Dairying at the University of Reading, England, and visited the Iowa State University of Science and Technology, United States of America. He also travelled extensively in Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. In 1937 he left the Department of Agriculture and was employed by New Way Butter Co. Pty Ltd in Melbourne. The following year he moved to Gippsland to assist in the modernisation of butter manufacture at the Longwarry and Maffra cooperative dairy companies.

In December 1940, following the outbreak of World War II, Loftus-Hills joined the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, later CSIRO) at Fisherman’s Bend, Melbourne. Although employed in the recently formed Division of Industrial Chemistry, he worked closely with officers in CSIR’s established dairy research section. He spent the war years devising methods to prevent the deterioration of milk products used by the armed forces. After the war he continued work on the oxidation of butter until 1947, when he was appointed officer-in-charge of the dairy research section and broadened his efforts to cover all aspects of dairy manufacturing. The section moved to new laboratories at Highett in 1955, and by 1962, when the section was reclassified as the CSIRO Division of Dairy Research, Loftus-Hills led a staff of seventy. By the time he retired at the end of 1970, he had published more than sixty scientific and technical papers.

Tall, handsome, and prematurely bald, with a slight stammer, Loftus-Hills was a larger-than-life man of deep commitment and expertise. He applied himself to his work with ‘an enthusiasm that was infectious’ and was ‘held in high esteem by his peers and his staff’ (Beeby 1999). In 1954 he was awarded the gold medal of the Australian Society of Dairy Technology for outstanding service to the industry. He was Federal president (1964–65) and journal editor (1952–68) of the ASDT, and in 1970 helped organise the 18th International Dairy Congress, the first held in Australia. In retirement he was a recipient (1972) of the gold medal of the British Society of Dairy Technology, and in 1976 the ASDT established the Loftus-Hills award of merit for a publication in the field of dairy science and technology.

On 13 August 1938 Loftus-Hills had married Alice Eileen Youngman at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne. They had a son, Geoffrey, and a daughter, Suzanne, but separated in 1956. On 3 October 1964 at Wesley Church, Melbourne, he married Lois Sidney Linton-Smith, a dietician and CSIRO colleague. A soulmate who would be always by his side as he became increasingly active in community affairs and politics, she introduced him to the artistic urban fringe community in Lower Plenty where he would spend the rest of his life.

The extensive travel undertaken as part of his work alerted Loftus-Hills to the ‘tremendous problem of malnutrition in developing countries’ (Clendinnen 1999), as well as a broad range of local and international issues that occupied his later years in what amounted to a second career. Although by nature an optimist, he viewed the world as descending into economic, environmental, and humanitarian crises, and his retirement years were devoted to mitigating them. A member of the Australian chapter of the Club of Rome, he supported campaigns for zero population growth. His involvement in the work of the United Nations Association of Australia (especially its peace campaigns) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was buttressed by extensive lecturing, letter writing, and the production of leaflets, the latter with aid of a printing company which he set up with his wife. He and Lois received the United Nations Association’s peace medal and a number of local community service awards.

In retirement Loftus-Hills also joined the Australia Party. He worked as campaign manager for the House of Representatives candidate John Siddons in 1972 and soon became the national policy coordinator. A believer in the ‘ultra-democratic method of policy making’ (Loftus-Hills 1999), he brokered the alliance between the Australia Party and the former Liberal parliamentarian Don Chipp that led to the formation of the Australian Democrats in 1977. In the new party he continued his work in policy development and as an articulate publicist. Lois edited the national journal. He twice stood unsuccessfully for parliament, as a candidate for the Federal lower house seat of Batman in 1974 and for the Victorian Legislative Council in 1982.

Loftus-Hills wrote clear succinct prose, as well as poems on a wide range of topics. He loved music and cars and was an accomplished gardener, carpenter, golfer, and tennis player. Following a fall in June 1999, when he fractured a femur, he died from cardiac failure and pneumonia on 16 July at Eltham and was cremated. He was survived by his wife, the two children of his first marriage, and twelve grandchildren.