Colin’s interest in the Australian flora stems from a more general interest in natural history going back to his childhood.

In the 1980s he became especially interested in Australian native terrestrial orchids and began photographing them throughout southern Australia in his spare time. By the late 1980s he was studying their pollination, thus combining his scientific training in entomology with his interest in orchids.

In the 1990s, with financial assistance from the Australian Orchid Foundation, he undertook a large study to identify the pollinators of sexually deceptive orchids in the subtribes Drakaeinae and Caladeniinae in eastern Australia.

This study over eight years resulted in the identification of pollinators for 34 species of orchids and demonstrated a number of general characteristics of pollination by sexual deception. The most important was to show conclusively that each sexually deceptive orchid species has only a single thynnine wasp species as its pollinator. This in turn led to the discovery of several cryptic species of orchids that differ from their nearest relatives only in the wasp species they attract for pollination.

Colin is now recognised as one of Australia’s leading experts on orchid pollination and his work is currently being extended by a group led by Associate Professor Rod Peakall at the Australian National University.

Simultaneously, as a member of the Orange Field Naturalist and Conservation Society, Colin developed skills in identification of plants generally, through co-leading the group’s surveys of the local flora.

Recognition as a local flora expert led, in collaboration with other society members, to Colin’s first commercial surveys in the 1990s, the proceeds of which went to the society. This experience ultimately led to the establishment of FloraSearch.