 He was trained in forestry, and became interested in plant taxonomy just before he transferred in 1964 to the National Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, New South Wales.From 1969 to 1970, he was the Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London.McGillivray specialised in the "Grevillea" genus, and in 1993 published "Grevillea – Proteaceae