Robert Whyte

Robert Whyte (born 1955, in Melbourne) is an Australian author, editor and journalist. His works include modernist fiction,political satire, science journalism and books. He is a founding co-owner and director of the Brisbane-based multimedia firm ToadShow. After 2012 he participated in the Australian Government's new species exploration program Bush Blitz. His works include the novel Manacles (1985), influenced by Irish authors James Joyce and Flann O'Brien,a practical guide to creek restoration, The Creek in Our Back Yard (2011) and A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia for CSIRO Publishing 2017.

Robert Whyte was born in Melbourne in 1955. His family moved to Brisbane in 1957. He attended Ironside State Primary School and Brisbane Boys Grammar School. He attended James Cook University in 1974 but did not complete a degree.

In 1976 he was awarded a One Year Young Writer's Fellowship by the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. In 1978 Planet Press, Brisbane, published the 64-page Negative Thinking, a book ofshort prose pieces and drawings with additional poems by co-author Peter Anderson.

In 1980, under the name Robot Wireless, he produced From Inside the Asylum (500 copies), Life and works of Robert Wireless (100 copies) and A 3D Glimpse of the Hearing Process (with Cheryl Adamson and Hugh Ramage).

In 1981 he completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Art Studies at Alexander Mackie CAE (now University of Western Sydney), and was a contributor to Sydney art magazine Art Network. He participated in that year’s Open Artist Studio project. He lived in Melbourne from 1982-1985 at which time his novel Manacles was published.

In 1985 he undertook the production of Environment Victoria, the magazine of the Conservation Council of Victoria, now Environment Victoria. In 1987 he was founding co-editor of contemporary art magazine Eyeline with Sarah Follent and Graham Coulter-Smith.

Robert Whyte is a co-owner of ToadShow,a multimedia firm in Brisbane, Queensland. He has taught new media and writing at Griffith University, University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology.During the 1980s and 90s he was a lecturer at the Australian School of Journalism, teaching the freelance journalism component.

As a web designer he was responsible for Brisbane Stories a collection of web sites revealing stories of hidden Brisbane featuring art, environment and history.

Robert Whyte was an editor of The Cane Toad Times from 1985 to 1990. Since 2002 he has been an active environmentalist. In 2010 he was appointed to the position of Director, Save Our Waterways Now, a community environmental organisation restoring habitat in Brisbane's west. Between 2010 and 2013 he undertook habitat restorations projects in South East Queensland. In 2011 his book The creek in our backyard: A practical guide for landholders was published, an expanded second edition appearing in 2013 A field guide to the spiders of Australia for CSIRO Publishing was released 1 June 2017.

In 2017 Robert Whyte was coopted to serve on the Wikimedia Australia committee.

In 2018 Robert Whyte revived the website and newsletter of the Australasian Arachnological society which was originally formed in November 1979 by Robert Raven. He took on the responsibilities for the website and the Society’s administration and, with co-editor Helen Smith from the Australian Museum, the Society Newsletter. The society has a membership database with profiles of arachnologists, a section on arachnid identification and back issues of the newsletter going back to 1979.

Robert Whyte has participated in the Australian Government's new species exploration program Bush Blitz since 2012's Fish River Bush Blitz, as a scientist specialising in spiders and as a scientific photographer. In 2017 he attended his fifth Bush Blitz, in Quinkan Country inland from Cooktown on Cape York Peninsula, where he photographed and filmed live many of the more than 50 new species of spidersdiscovered on the trip. In 2013 he attended the Henbury Station Bush Blitz in the Northern Territory where297 species were added to those known on the property including 12 species new to science. In 2014 Robert Whyte participated as scientist and photographer in the Home Valley Bush Blitz in The Kimberly, Western Australia and in 2015 participated in the Kiwirrkurra IPA Bush Blitz in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia.

In September 2018 Robert Whyte’s attendance at the Cooloola BioBlitz was reported on ABC News, ABC online and Yahoo, after the BioBlitz released the news that he had discovered 37 new spider species leading the spider team as part of the fauna, flora and fungi stocktake led by John Sinclair of the Fraser Island Defenders Organisation in conjunction with Cooloola Coast Care.

Media around the publication of A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia by CSIRO Publishing (with co-author Greg Anderson and a Foreword by Tim Low) included interviews on national television. Channel 7 Weekend Sunrise featured a newsreader with arachnophobia experiencing a Huntsman Spider on her arm. ABC News Breakfast on Monday 12 June discussed Australian spiders generally, with Whyte pointing out that only the Funnelweb and Mouse Spiders had potentially deadly venom, that no-one In Australia had died from spider bite since 1979 and the stories of dangerous White-tailed Spiders and Daddy Long-legs were bogus. Brisbane ABC radio featured an hour long segment with an ABC staffer being successfully desensitised to spider fear by handling a Golden Orb-weaver in the studio. The News Network news.com.au report on Five reasons why you shouldn't be afraid of spiders, based on the content of the book. On 17 November 2017 Robert Whyte and Eddie Ayers co-hosted a session at Brisbane bookshop Avid Reader featuring A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia by Robert Whyte and Danger Music by Eddie Ayres, both of which appeared in Australia’s Summer Reading Guide’s highly recommended list. On 4 May 2018 Robert Whyte appeared on Gardening Australia as a “My Garden Path” presenter, explaining the link between spider diversity and healthy gardens.

• Negative thinking, Brisbane, Planet Press, 1976, [64]p., Limited edition of 500 copies, ISBN 0908193025
• Manacles, Melbourne, Melbourne Paragraph of the Senate of Pataphysical Representatives, 1985
• From inside the asylum, South Sydney, Brou Ha Ha Books, 1980, [18] p., ISBN 0959321306
• The creek in our backyard: a practical guide for habitat restoration, Second edition revised and expanded June 2013.Save Our Waterways Now Inc, 2013 59 pages, colour illustrations, colour map, colour portraits ISBN 9780646902142
• A field guide to spiders of Australia, by Whyte, Robert, 1955, and Anderson, Greg Clayton, Vic., CSIRO Publishing, 2017 ISBN 9780643107076

• Australian jumping spiders of the genus Hypoblemum (Araneae: Salticidae: Euophryini) Peckhamia 180.1
• A new peacock spider from the Cape York Peninsula (Araneae: Salticidae: Euophryini: Maratus Karsch 1878). Peckhamia 177.1: 1-6.
• Revision of eastern Australian ant-mimicking spiders of the genus Myrmarachne (Araneae, Salticidae) reveals a complex of species and forms
• The first described male Tube-web Spider for mainland Australia: Ariadna kiwirrkurra sp. Nov. (Araneae: Segestriidae)
• The Peacock Spiders (Araneae: Salticidae: Maratus) of the Queensland Museum, including six new species
• Biodiversity discovery program Bush Blitz yields a new species of goblin spider, Cavisternum attenboroughi (Araneae: Oonopidae), from the Northern Territory
• Biodiversity discovery program bush blitz supplies missing ant spider females (araneae: Zodariidae) from Victoria

• The Mysterious: How the History of Philosophy Strangely Coincides With the Space Race, 1957-1969, Borderless Philosophy 2 (2019) 281-372.