00074918.2012.742175

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Margaret Easton

Hal Hill

To cite this article: Hal Hill (2012) Margaret Easton, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies,

48:3, 427-428, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2012.742175

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2012.742175

Published online: 20 Nov 2012.

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2012: 427–8

In Memoriam

MARGARET EASTON

Hal Hill

Australian National University

Margaret Easton was the late Professor Heinz Arndt’s secretary from 1951, when

Heinz became a professor in the Canberra University College – then part of the University of Melbourne, but from 1960 the ANU’s School of General Studies (SGS). In 1963, Heinz moved from SGS to become head of the new Department

of Economics in the Research School of Paciic Studies (RSPacS). Margaret moved

with him. Heinz remained in this post for 18 years, and founded the

world-renowned Indonesia Project and this journal. After he retired in 1980, Margaret stayed on to work for the ASEAN–Australia Research Project. She retired in 1983

and remained in Canberra.

Margaret worked very closely with Heinz. In modern parlance, we would refer to her as his executive assistant: she was research assistant, secretary, trouble-shooter, gate-keeper and much else. Heinz was an extraordinarily energetic and engaged academic, and it is no exaggeration to say that Margaret was

indispensa-ble to him and his work. With Heinz juggling many balls at once, and with inces

-sant deadlines, it was only Margaret who seemed to know how everything itted

together – what had to be done in the coming week, what the important meetings

were, which VIP (ambassador, minister) was on the visitor list, and so on.

I irst got to know Margaret when I was one of Heinz’s PhD students in the

mid-1970s. We all found Heinz rather intimidating, and it was Margaret who

paved the way into his ofice and helped us relax. She also had one skill that

almost nobody else was able to acquire – that of reading Heinz’s handwriting!

There was a serenity about Margaret – in a sometimes frenetic ofice she remained unlappable, always calm, measured and polite. She treated everybody

with the same courtesy – students, visitors and senior academics alike. I can never recall her losing her ‘cool’, regardless of the circumstances.

A student colleague of that era, Professor Howard Dick, puts it nicely:

What strikes me 40 years [after irst meeting Margaret] is that she never made me feel unwelcome or lowly, humble PhD scholar though I was. She was always neat, gracious, eficient, and, as I later came to discover, she had an impish sense of hu -mour. She and Heinz made an unlikely pair but, like any well-matched couple, seemed to know each other’s minds and moods, and obviously had great respect and affection for each other.

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428 Hal Hill

I had the pleasure of working with Margaret again in the mid-1980s in the

ASEANAustralia Joint Research Project, of which Heinz was chair and I was the

general dogsbody a.k.a. research director. Margaret supervised the production

of about 50 working papers, a complex task that involved liaising with authors

(from six countries), professional editors, and production, design and marketing people. Her talents came to the fore here too – her people skills, her absolute reli-ability, and her most pleasant company.

Margaret’s work for the ANU supported in a profound way the development

of the Indonesia Project and the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.