wanted vets running the country.) Fact: In 1922 the Commonwealth Department of Health assumed responsibility for the Quarantine Act 1908. However, until WAN Robertson was appointed Director of the Division of Veterinary Hygiene in 1926, the department had no veterinary staff! Bubberman said... The release of the Bubberman report was another spur to improve government vet services in the 1920s. The Director of the State Veterinary Laboratory in Java, Dr Bubberman, visited Australia in 1923 to report on the suitability of Australian dairy cattle and beef for feeding the Dutch military forces in Java (now known as Indonesia). Rather unkindly, he described the Western Australian veterinary service as 'primitive' and commented: It is to be hoped that the Rinderpest which broke out in November, 1923, in the State in question will have opened the eyes of the authorities and will bring about an extremely necessary reorganization of it. The veterinary staff there was indeed enlarged, and a veterinary pathologist, HW Bennetts, appointed. Bubberman also strongly criticised the appointment of laymen (rather than vets) to manage the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, the Experimental Station at Yerongapilly and the Dairy Branch of the Public Health Department in New South Wales. As a final blow, he recommended that dairy cattle from South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland be excluded from export to Java. In response to this report and the rinderpest events, at the Conference of Chief Quarantine Officers held in 1925, quarantine regulations were comprehensively revised. The next comprehensive revision of quarantine law