One Researcher's Perspective: The Challenges and Rewards of Researching in The 'Real' World

I can well remember my first day spent in my first 'real' job following graduation. On a cool, early morning (4 am!) in 1972, I turned up to a dairy farm where they were milking some lovely Friesian cows near Richmond, NSW – to sample the iodine content of milk as it was affected by sanitisers used in the dairy industry. That was a relatively simple experiment: several treatments, lots of replicated cows, some chemical methods which gave highly reproducible results, and an analysis of variance that I finally managed to master (in spite of my undergraduate ignorance in such matters). 'Ah, research is for me', I said. It seemed so much simpler back then…