David Spencer Hallmark
Soon after qualifying as a lawyer in the UK in 1970 David drove overland to Thailand assuring his parents he would compete the round trip in about nine months – some 60 months later he returned home. The intermediate travels took him into Burma and Laos and Borneo and Cambodia and remote parts of Indonesia including the Baliem Valley of the central highlands of Irian Jaya. The eventual return journey started on a 42 foot yacht with him and two others sailing from Hong Kong through the South China Seas and via the waters between Sumatra and Java on out and across the Indian Ocean, calling at the Cocos Keeling Islands and Diego Garcia before landing at the Seychelles. Thence after a stay he continued homewards by way of a prolonged trip around Sri Lanka .
His law work has brought him appointments on international human rights missions for the International Commission of Jurists as consultants to the United Nations to investigate abuses during internal conflicts and which experiences have enabled him to write and opine about possible solutions to the causes and effects of such events and associated devastation to lives and to the environment. His dealings with the issues of military dictatorship and the suspension of the rule of law in Thailand and the interference with the independence of the judiciary in Malaysia and the impact of civil war in Beirut and in Sri Lanka have given him an awareness of the social history of these places from which the future must be evolved. He is currently Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Oxford University on international human rights laws.
His travel interests have continued with trekking ventures, often with Paul Sochaczewski, through the NW Frontier Province of Pakistan amidst the Karakorams and the Hindu Kush and another trip to Ternate – a traditional spice island in the Malukus of Indonesia in search of the residence of Alfred Russel Wallace who wrote his famous Letter to Darwin in 1858 and posted it from Ternate and which letter prompted Darwin to publish the Origin of Species in 1859. Family trips with children to Cambodia and particularly Angkor Wat were in sharp contrast to his previous visit as a witness to the B52 bombing and the sound of gunfire whilst feeling the bomb-blasts on the edge of the capital a few months before it fell. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.
This interest in Wallace initially inspired by Paul has developed into a serious study of the man and of his travels in Indonesia and the importance of the bio-diversity of the region there now known as Wallacea. He is a founder member of the Wallacea Foundation of Indonesia which has strategic alliances with education institutions around the world whilst based at the Hasanuddin University of Makassar in Sulawesi. The Wallacea Foundation will develop research and practical programmes for the benefit of Wallacea and its environment. Former President of Indonesia B.J.Habibie is a Patron.
In the interests of the pursuit of his golfing inheritance it has not been possible to emulate his late father who achieved a handicap of 2 and whose lifetime best eclectic score on his home course was 35. But chasing the dream has meant missing out on devoted practice and instead taking golfing holidays in France and Ireland and Tunisia as well as England, Wales and Scotland and exotic courses of local history such as Peshawar and Omaha Beach. He is a director of the Worcester Golf and Country Club.
He resides in an historic Georgian vintage house in the village of Whittington on the edge of the cathedral city of Worcester ( where lies the body of King John who sealed Magna Carta – arguably the most important document in human rights history). The property was once the home of the Victorian landscape painter Benjamin Williams Leader where Worcester born composer Edward Elgar would have been a guest. His wife Margret was one of Europe’s foremost batik artists after her studies at Newcastle University and in Indonesia and it was she who introduced the technique of batik on Thai silk whilst living in Bangkok after the journey overland with David. They have three children – Nina a science doctor with Exxon-Mobil, Emmeline an art historian with Sothebys and Robert a newly qualified lawyer and the fourth in direct descent – offering some insight into skills evolution genes.