John Kay Clegg

Throughout his tenure at Sydney University John Clegg inspired and trained a new generation of rock art scholars on how to look at—and how to think about—Aboriginal rock art. John Clegg’s life was international from the start. He was conceived in Sri Lanka where his father (also John Kay Clegg) was a surveyor for the British Colonial Office. John Clegg followed in both his parents’ footsteps and read Geography at Magdelene College, Cambridge, where he was greatly influenced by Charles McBurney with whom he excavated. In 1961 John Clegg emigrated to Australia to take up a tutoring position at the University of Queensland, followed by a tutorship at Sydney University, where he remained as an academic until his retirement.