The very best of Australia’s nature, culture, people and places
AUSTRALIANGEOGRAPHIC.COM.AU
Little Aussie diggersEchidnas on the march
landmark witness statement for
our planet
Sir David Attenborough’s
Ray Martin’s amazing outback discovery
Fight for the Kimberley
The last wildernessIndigenous knowledge
reducing bushfire risk
Walking with fireTownsville’s new marine museum
Underwater art
9 >
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CONTENTSAustralian Geographic November • December 2020
November . December 7
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SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGHHis landmark witness statement on
the state of planet Earth.
UNEARTHING CLIMATE HISTORYWhat old handwritten weather
records reveal about the future.
40
MASTERS OF DISGUISELeafy and weedy seadragons beguile
underwater photographer Scott Portelli.
46
THE LAST WILDERNESSScientists, Indigenous groups and
landholders join forces to save the Kimberley.
54
ULTIMATE SURVIVORUnlocking the enigma of the echidna.
66
WALKING WITH FIREIs traditional Indigenous burning practice
key to preventing a repeat of the Black
Summer bushfi res?
76
F E AT U R E S
86 A BAY OF PLENTYMoreton Bay, the marine wildlife
hotspot within cooee of Brisbane.
86 A bay of plenty
66 Ultimate survivor
46 Masters of disguise
76 Walking with fi re
WA
SA
NT
QLD
NSW
VIC
TAS
18
96 Running Man Rock
p54
p116
p106
p86
p76
p96
96 RUNNING MAN ROCKRay Martin’s amazing
outback discovery.
p16
8 Australian Geographic
CONTENTS
O N T H E C OV E RPriscilla Kasidis captured this little
one marching along the turf on an
echidna mission on a Melbourne
golf course. “There were holes in
the fencing from local kangaroos,
so I slipped through and photo-
graphed it marching towards me!”
Subscribe to AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC for
12 issues and save more than $49.
Plus, receive our just-released photographic book, Urban Wild, valued at $59.95.
Australian Geographic November • December 2020
The very best of Australia’s nature, culture, people and places
200 years of Antarctic exploration
Life onthe ice
Our alpine regions under pressure
Snow fall
Australia’s adored avian ambassadors
Hello, budgie
A thrilling new era in space
Back to the moon
Fold-out map of Antarctica included with this issue
The very best of Australia’s nature, culture, people and places
Best nature photos of the year
Indigenous food industry scales up
Bush tucker boom
The canines defendingour wildlife
Dogs on the frontline
What really happened on NZ’s White Island?
Volcano tragedy
★Anniversar yEnd of W W275th
Gippslandresilience
A community fights back
The very best of Australia’s nature, culture, people and places
Little Aussie diggersEchidnas on the march
landmark witness statement for
our planet
Sir David Attenborough’s
Ray Martin’s amazing outback discovery
Fight for the Kimberley
The last wildernessIndigenous knowledge
reducing bushfire risk
Walking with fireTownsville’s new marine museum
Underwater art
S U B S C R I B E A N D S AV E
G E O B U Z Z A N D R E G U L A R S
11 From the Editor
14 Your Say
16 Big Picture
24 Snapshot: Qantas turns 100
27 Book Club
28 Defi ning moments: Slavery
29 Tim the Yowie Man: Our vanishing lake
30 Bird Nerd: The eyes have it
33 Dr Karl: What were pterodactyls?
35 Space: Mystery in a ring of light
36 Wild Australia
39 Your Society
Special note: Members of Aboriginal
communities are warned that this edition of
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC contains images and
names of deceased people.
T R AV E L W I T H U S
106 Submerged art Townsville’s new underwater
art museum
116 Glittering pride Alice Springs honours Priscilla,
Queen of the Desert, with a new event.
Your Society
Find out where your donations
are going in 2020 and get the latest
news. p39
116 FabAlice
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S E E PAG E 5 2 F O R M O R E D E TA I L S
106 Museum of Underwater Art
Give a Gift that keeps on growing
Growing parks and saving species.www.fnpw.org.au
Donate Now
Last summer’s fires were the largest environmental disaster in Australian history.
Over 12 million hectares of trees … gone.*
We want to replace every tree that was lost, and we want you to join in.
Donate one tree, a family of trees and if you’re a company, a forest.
Every dollar you donate will go towards becoming a tree.
We are the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife.
One tree $10. Ten trees $100. Fifty trees $500.
*ScienceDirect Trends in Ecology & Evolution, September 2020, Vol. 35, No. 9757.
DISCOVERHINCHINBROOK ISLANDHead to north Queensland... this tropical, World Heritage paradise is the perfect place to restore mind, body and spirit.
Hinchinbrook Island, the world’s
most accessible wilderness,
has it all. From pristine coastline
and walking tracks to secluded
waterholes, tropical reefs and
a riot of marine life, the island
invites you to dive in.
THORSBORNE WALKING TRAILFringed by beautiful beaches, the
island is famed for its varied terrain.
The 32km Thorsborne Trail, one of
Australia’s most coveted, winds its
way north to south through tropical
forests, golden beaches, rocky
headlands and bubbling creeks.
With a maximum of just 40 walkers
at a time, you’ll explore it in peace.
SWEET CREATURESSwim in the aquamarine waters
of Hinchinbrook and be charmed
by loggerhead, flatback and green
turtles as well as the enchanting
cows of the sea, dugongs. The
island supports 273 different types
Go as fast or as slow as your heart
desires on Hinchinbrook Island.
Discover more: hinchinbrookway.com.au
of wildlife, including
66 bird and 22 butterfly
species, and countless
colourful reef fishes.
WATER WONDERLAND One of Australia’s largest island
national parks, Hinchinbrook is
fringed by the World Heritage-
listed Great Barrier Reef, and is
a Mecca for water-sport lovers.
From snorkelling and scuba diving
to stand-up paddleboarding and
deep-sea fishing, there’s fun to
be had at every turn. And if a
freshwater frolic is calling you,
visit the island’s interior to relax at
Zoe Falls, complete with a natural
infinity pool, or in Mulligan Falls’
deep waterhole, which sits high
above the sparkling beach.
Go as fast or as slow as your heart desires on Hinchinbrook Island.
Dive in. Explore. Relax.
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@hinchinbrookway #hinchinbrookway
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC ADVERTORIAL
November . December 11
IT’S PROBABLY too early to think of what benefits
COVID-19 might bring, while the pandemic continues to take its deadly toll. But it’s one of the best aspects of human
nature that we try to find good in the face of adversity.
A quick flick through this issue of Australian Geographic reveals a theme that recurs time and again in our conservation and science reporting, the involvement of ordinary private citizens in essential research projects run by academic institutions. Once the preserve of the qualified research community, essential long-term field observations are now being carried out by members of the public, thanks in part to a combination of special smartphone apps, data-gathering websites and a fast-growing artificial intelligence capability that can quickly analyse vast amounts of data and imagery.
In this issue we discover the invaluable public contribution being made to: understanding past extreme weather events (page 40), protecting seadragons (page 46), and unlocking the mysteries of our beloved, quirky echidnas (page 66).
The pandemic has severely limited professional fieldwork opportunities as well as keeping most of us confined to homes and backyards – slowing us all down and gifting us time to get to know our neighbourhoods better, perhaps also seeking out pockets of natural bushland where we could legally exercise.
During these past months we must certainly have become more aware of and familiar with the native species that surround us. Hopefully, we have learnt to appreciate our wild neighbours – birds, butterflies, frogs, possums, lizards and more. As our human footprint eats away at natural habitats, we urgently need to make room in our modern world for native wildlife. The future of our species depends on it, according to Sir David Attenborough, who has released his impor-tant witness statement for the planet in a new book and cinema documentary film (page 18).
It’s a powerful call to action from the man who, more than any other, has entranced generations with the wonder of the natural world during
Silver linings
From the Editor-in-chief
six decades of documentary filmmaking. David reveals how a childhood fascina-tion with his local amphibian wildlife in the UK, such as newts and frogs, set him off on his life’s mission.
So do heed Sir David’s impassioned call and find ways to get involved and make a difference. Look at contributing to the rich raft of citizen science projects available. Or be inspired, grab a camera and capture the beauty of nature all around you, just like Priscilla Kasidis does. A dental assistant and amateur shutterbug, Priscilla took our stunning
cover photograph of a short-beaked echidna. Who knows? Perhaps you could also get your photo on the cover of Australian Geographic! Congratulations, Priscilla.
All the best for the rest of the massively challenging year that is 2020 and, of course, much joy for the approaching Christmas and holiday season.
IF YOU ARE a subscriber to AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC
you are automatically a member and supporter
of the Australian Geographic Society. A portion
of each subscription goes towards supporting
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Benefits include:
Priscilla Kasidis enjoying a close
encounter with
a local rainbow
lorikeet.
12 Australian Geographic
Award-winning underwater photogra-pher Scott Portelli (pictured above)
has dedicated the past five years to
photographing the life cycles of weedy
and leafy seadragons. “As I spent more
and more time with these endemic
Australian creatures, I developed an
understanding of their ecology and why
their habitat was so important to their
survival,” says Scott, whose first-ever
story for AG, Masters of disguise,
begins on page 46.
Spending hundreds of hours
documenting the two seadragon
species has allowed Scott to capture all
stages of their development, from egg
and embryo to when they hatch as tiny
versions of adult seadragons. He has
witnessed pairs of adults displaying a
whole range of courting behaviours and
borne witness to the many intricacies of
the daily lives of these mesmerising
creatures. Scott is particularly proud of
the way in which his dedication to
photographing seadragons is supporting
the efforts of citizen science programs
that rely on firsthand observations and
data from people who are able to
regularly encounter wild seadragons.
Another first-time AG contributor,
Anna Kantilaftas, turned her COVID-
cancelled red-dust road trip into gold
when news of a new community event
in Alice Springs caught her attention.
“When I first found out about FABalice,
it threw quite the spanner in my
carefully curated adventure,” Anna says.
“I was due to leave Adelaide in early
March and drive my way over the vast,
southern, red-dust Aussie outback
before stepping aboard the iconic Ghan
in Alice Springs. But then I received
details about FABalice – a spectacular,
glittering drag festival, inspired by an
icon of Aussie cinema, Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert. The pandemic turned my
itinerary to dust, so I booked a flight to
Alice, landing just in time to see the
kaleidoscopic filter settle in [Glittering pride, page 116]. It was fitting that I’d
be leaving Alice in the shiny silver Ghan
that sparks some resemblance to
Priscilla the bus before she was painted
lilac. More intriguing is just how clearly
FABalice highlighted the diversity of
Alice Springs. And yes, I’m still trying
to wash the red dirt and glitter out of
my clothes.”
Features editors: Elizabeth Ginis, Joanna Hartmann, Karen McGhee
Regular columnists: Linda Brainwood, Glenn Dawes, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki AM, John Pickrell,
Fred Watson AM, Kel Richards, Tim the Yowie Man, Peter Rowland
More contributors: Anthony Calvert, Simon Cherriman, Quentin Chester, Ken Duncan, Cathy Finch,
Justin Gilligan, Caitlin Howlett, Priscilla Kasidis, Ray Martin AM, Andrew Mayo, Charlie Price,
Ben Quinton, Nick Ruff ord, Jason Stephens, Clare Watson, Lida Xing
Notes from the field
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under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC, journal of the Australian Geographic Society, is published six times a year (cover dates Jan–Feb, Mar–Apr, May–Jun, Jul–Aug,
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material © 2020. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written consent of the editor-in-chief.
This issue went to press 16.10.2020
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MANAGING DIRECTOR Jo Runciman
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Chrissie Goldrick
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mike Ellott
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SUB-EDITOR Elizabeth Ginis
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PROOFREADER Susan McCreery
ART DIRECTOR Harmony Southern
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DIGITAL PRODUCER Angela Heathcote
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In search of dragons
A s dawn breaks on Banrock Station, in South Australia’s riverland, feathered
flashes of gold zip in and out of hollows in stately river red gums, while ’roos graze on native grass nearby. These agile aviators are what the station’s wetland manager, Tim Field, has been waiting patiently for. “September/October is eastern regent parrot survey time,” Tim says, “so we’re up well before dawn to make sure we can
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC ADVERTORIAL
track the breeding population. So far, this year, it’s doing really well.” Listed as vulnerable, the bird relies on two habitat types for its survival – nesting in mature river red gums within 20m of water and feeding in nearby mallee ountry.
Banrock Station’s Ramsar-listed wetland is dotted with river red gums, so is the ideal breeding ground.
As well as providing vital habitat to the parrot, the wetland, which is located on
the floodplain of the River Murray about 2.5 hours north-east of Adelaide, also hosts 190 other bird species, including the black swan, grey teal, whistling kite, red-backed kingfisher and blue-faced honeyeater.There’s an 8km walkway around the wetland, and five bird hides.
“Since 1994, we have been restoring the wetlands through a number of activities, including reintro-
Toast Banrock Station’s Ramsar wetland, a safehaven for
Left: Spend the day on Banrock
Station discovering the wealth of
native plants and animals, including
’roos in the vineyards (below), along its 8km walkway.
Bottom: Wetland manager Tim Field.
ducing natural wetting and drying cycles in the wetland, planting thousands of native trees and shrubs, and creating a haven for native wildlife,” Tim says.
In 2002, the wetland was listed under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, recognising its international significance as habitat for threatened species and migratory birds. The natural habitat zones on the property exist side-by-side with Banrock Station vineyards, which comply with the highest environmental standards.
For more information head to Banrock
Station, where every drop matters.
banrockstationbanrockstation.com.au
Every drop matters
banrockstation.com.au
Discover our journey and help protect our beautiful planet
14 Australian Geographic
ANTARCTIC HEROI wish to thank you for a wonderful article about arguably the least known continent, Antarctica (AG 157). From the fantastic images it’s easy to understand why it draws the most determined of adventurers. May I point out an error on the timeline of events in the Modern Era; the conflict between Great Britain and Argentina actually took place during 1982, not 1988 as published. I am aware of this detail because I have a special interest in what is considered the first offen-sive action of the [Falklands] war. When the Argentine flag was raised at South Georgia, HMS Endurance, a Class 1 icebreaker, was dispatched in
YOUR SAY November . December 2020
I’ve just read the article on the tragic
White Island eruption (AG 158).
I’d like to congratulate the magazine
and author on a factual, non-
emotive, scientifically correct
coverage of this event and, unlike
some media and other outlets,
not having any insinuations of blame
for the tragedy. It was gripping!
I particularly found it so, because I
have been to Whakaari/White Island
on six occasions; for five I organised
geological tour groups there. It is a
fascinating, active (perhaps unfortu-
nately so) scientific laboratory, not
only for geologists, but for anybody
interested in experiencing how this
facet of Earth’s processes work.
Given the event on 9 December last
year and the unseen event in April
2016, I count myself and the groups
I took very fortunate. I must admit
that on each occasion I visited I had
an underlying feeling of unease, and
a feeling that I was pleased to leave,
in what is an awesome place (and
unlikely that the public will be
able to visit for the
forseeable future).
I attach a few
pictures. The picture
(top right) of our group
on the edge of the
active crater, filled with
a liquid of pH 0.6, is
typical of where groups were
taken (this was 2005). On a visit
in early 2017, we went to more
or less the same place, but the
active crater was empty, except
for noisy (high-temperature)
fumaroles, and I suspected that
things had heated up (but of
course, this was after the April
2016 event).
The perennial sulphuric acid
stream (pictured bottom right)
running out of the crater must
have been responsible for carrying
the bodies of the two unfortunate
casualties out to sea following the
heavy rain after last year’s eruption.
Associate Professor Paul Ashley,
Armidale, NSW
Featured Letter
response. My uncle, Colour Sgt Peter James Leach, DSM P031491S of the Royal Marines, was aboard the Endurance and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his contribution to the events at Grytviken, South Georgia. He was one of 22 marines captured by the
Send letters, including an address
and phone number, to [email protected] or to Australian
Geographic, GPO Box 4088,
Sydney NSW 2001. Letters will be
edited for length and clarity.
MAILBAG WELCOMES FEEDBACK
Argentine Navy that day. His DSM was the only medal of its kind awarded during the Falklands War. This picture (left) was taken prior to the Argentine engagement from the jetty of the research station at Grytviken. The abandoned whaling station can be seen in the background. My uncle is positioned second row, fourth from the right. Your article has galvanised my determination to visit this bleak but beautiful wilderness.
RICHARD KAY,
MELBOURNE, VIC
Ed: We apologise to our readers and writer Alasdair McGregor for our incorrect placement of text about the 1982 conflict.
WRITE TO US!Send us a great letter about AG or a relevant topic for the chance to be our featured letter and win an AG T-shirt.
TRAGIC MEMORY
LOUSY EXPERIENCEThe article about Point Nepean Quarantine Station (Traces, AG 157) stirred my memory of the first time I set foot on Australian soil, on 20 June 1952. I was travelling to Melbourne on the Lloyd Triestino ship Neptunia, when, to our surprise, we stopped at Point Nepean and the passengers were taken ashore to be deloused! We had to strip and take a shower while our clothes were being fumigated. It seemed a pointless exercise because we then returned to the ship and all our otherpossessions, which were untreated. It was an unsettling experience on arrival in our new country!
JOHN KAHSNITZ,
EAGLE POINT, VIC
NATURE’S POWERI received my latest Australian Geographic and have read the White Island article and thought it was a wonderfully written piece with great insight into a what nature can throw at us.
GLENDA MAES
BALLARAT EAST, VIC
UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHSI always read Australian Geographic with great interest since my mother bought me a subscription more than 10 years ago. As an Aussie, I want to become more aware of our shared history with our First Australians. This means uncomfortable truth-telling before we can step
forward and be reconciled with our past. Last year I saw a documentary called The Warrigal Creek Massacre, which outlined the violent history of East Gippsland that came with European settlement. Scottish explorer Angus McMillan has been described as a pioneer pastoralist, mass murderer and butcher of Gippsland due to his interaction and murder of the Gurnaikurnai people. Upon reading Bruce Elder’s Lakes Entrance timeline in AG 158 (Aussie Towns), I saw it featured a photo of Angus McMillan and Bruce described him as the first European to reach Lake Victoria, in 1840. This is true and Bruce also stated that the Gurnaikurnai people have been recognised as the traditional owners of the area. However, so much truth has been left unsaid and if we keep telling our history without mention of these conflicts and the virtual wiping out of the traditional owners of this land, how can we reconcile with our past?
SUE CLISBY,
THE PATCH, VIC
WHO’S A CHEEKY LITTLE BIRD THEN?Long before Errol Flynn or Paul Hogan were known overseas, the budgerigar (AG 157) was our most famous export. From statesmen to royalty and even Hollywood heart-throbs, this lovable Australian has captured the hearts of bird lovers everywhere.
MICHAEL WOUTERS,
BUNDABERG, QLD
In September, we reported on a new
scientifi c paper that found the
Gympie-Gympie stinging tree
contains the same toxins as those of
spiders and scorpions.
JANET CROWE
Thirty-fi ve years on, I still remember
my fi rst agonising sting! I can easily
believe the toxins are similar.
GARY O’DONNELL
I’ve been stung twice. You will never
forget it and it can last a few weeks
or more.
LAURIE BIMSON
My dog backed up on one to do her
business. She was scraping her bum
for a while.
JOMA MACK
The leaves may look perfect for bush
toilet paper. DO NOT be fooled.
JOY BROOKS
Dreadful pain! Never forgotten.
Talkb@ck
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November . December 15
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A feature article in AG 157
celebrated our lovable budgie
and its role as an Aussie icon
on the world stage.
GEOBUZZNOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2020
16 Australian Geographic
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November . December 17
B IG P ICTURE
DURING THE breeding season, these wedge-tailed eagles continuously line their huge eyrie, built in the canopy
of a tall eucalypt in Western Australia, with freshgum leaves. This provides a ‘disinfected’ plat-form for their growing eaglets. While their mother was off accepting prey from her mate, AGS-sponsored ornithologist and PhD student Simon Cherriman, who was the 2010 AGS Young Conservationist of the Year, scaled the tree to inspect and photograph the nest’s contents. Simon climbed high above the eyrie to tempo-rarily fi x on a horizontal bough a GoPro camera set to record time-lapse images, which captured this high-angle view.
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW By Simon Cherriman
FOR MORE INFORMATION on Simon’s
wedge-tailed eagle research in WA, visit:
simoncherriman.com.au/research
Follow Simon on Instagram: aquila84wa
18 Australian Geographic
STORY BY NICK RUFFORD
Sir David Attenborough has released
his witness statement on the plight
of the planet through a landmark new
book and documentary film.
In this special interview that took place in May, the legendary broadcaster and naturalist shared his hopes
and fears for Earth’s future.
S I R D AV I D AT T E N B O R O U G H
A L I F E O N O U R P L A N E T
November . December 19
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AS HE LOOKED FORWARD to his 94th birth-day in May, Sir David Attenborough solemnly reflected on a very different planet from the one on which he grew up. “We need to reconnect with nature, for our own health – as well as the
Earth’s,” he said.After a lifetime of bringing nature into our living rooms,
Sir David wants us to get out of our armchairs and help save the natural world we’ve enjoyed watching on TV. Decades of relentless industrialisation, urbanisation and intensive farming have driven a wedge between us and our animal ancestors, he warns, and the disconnection between modern families and nature is getting worse.
“I think it’s terrible that children should grow up without knowing what a tadpole is – just awful,” he says. “I can’t criticise other people on how they bring up their children, but in my time I could, and did, get on a bicycle and cycle 15 miles [24km] to a quarry and spend the day looking for dragonflies, grass snakes and newts, as well as fossils.”
Losing touch with nature not only affects the way we treat the planet, but also affects us on a primal level.
“We are now recognising clinically that it is important to have contact with the natural world, for people’s sanity,” he says. “Anybody will recognise that in moments of both exultation and deep sorrow that’s where you go. That’s where you grieve and that’s where you contemplate real things, the natural world. Psychologists recognise this, and I think it’s the case for everybody. If you lose contact – emotional contact – with the natural world, you’re badly deprived.”
As a youngster before World War II, Sir David pedalled his Raleigh junior bike up hill and down dale, at a time when, he admits, there was less traffic on the roads and less to distract children from the wonders of the natural world (including TV documentaries). As he looks around him now, he sees a very different world. Swathes of rainforest in Borneo where he made his early films have been burnt and bulldozed to make way for palm oil plantations. Arctic sea ice has shrunk by a third. Some of the reefs where he dived for his first underwater series are now lifeless.
This, he explains, is why he’s still campaigning when he could be putting up his feet. Against stereotype, he’s grown more outspoken as he’s grown older. “I belong to the generation that really created all this stuff. We had no concept that we were ruining the world, none. I suppose you can say, well, you were very insensitive, you should have realised, but I don’t think many people did.”
His latest film, and its namesake book, A Life on Our Planet, produced in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature, borrows the cadence of Life on Earth, his land-mark 1979 TV series, but shows the world in a different light. Instead of the pristine habitats and unspoilt wildernesses of that era, this production aims to show the monumental scale of humanity’s impact on nature. It is his most political film
GEOBUZZ
to date. Not only is the Earth gaining humans and losing animal and plant species at a pace it can’t sustain, Sir David says, but it is also heating up at a rate that could tip it into sudden, catastrophic disaster.
At the beginning of the film, we see him stepping gin-gerly through the ruins of the Ukrainian town devastated in 1986 by the Chernobyl nuclear power station meltdown (see book extract on page 22). The message that unfolds during the next 83 minutes is just how destructive humankind can be, as we see rainforests torn down, slabs of polar ice collapsing and lifeless coral. At the end he returns to the long-abandoned town to show how nature has reclaimed it. If we are intent on destroying our own species, it will eventually happen. Nature will find a way to carry on, even though humans may no longer be around.
The theme is that such destruction is a modern phenom-enon, brought about by the baby boomer generation and its excesses, and it is generation Z that is paying the price for their sins. Sir David endorses this view, declaring that he and his generation have “done terrible things” and that the future is in the hands of young people who understand “science and our dependence upon the natural world”.
Probably no-one else alive has seen as much of the Earth’s surface over such a long period of time as Sir David has. To make just that one series of Life on Earth he travelled more than 2.4 million kilometres to 30 countries and filmed more than 600 species. Audiences have voted him the greatest broadcaster of all time, cooler than footballing superstar David Beckham in a poll of coolest men and, most recently, the person they trust most on environmental matters, more so than 17-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
People listen when he sounds the alarm, but he also has an upbeat message about how we can help save the planet. A first step is to eat less meat. “The big demand that we’ve imposed on the planet is to get meat,” he explains. “That’s what’s taken over so much of our countryside. That’s what’s causing the Brazilian rainforest to be knocked down, to turn it into grazing – for more hamburgers. We can’t afford to do that anymore and sustain the number of people we’ve got.”
IS HE VEGETARIAN? “I don’t eat meat. That’s not entirely true, I eat fish. It wasn’t a great sort of decision and I can’t pretend that it was motivated by any ecological
conscience, but I now avoid red flesh.”The other thing we can all do is live modestly. Even
small changes make a difference. If we avoided food waste, we could feed five instead of four.
“I try to recycle,” Sir David says. “It’s more like a religious practice, a kind of ritualised thing.”
Does he drive an electric car? “I don’t drive. I’ve never driven. Well, that’s not true, I can drive, but I’ve never driven. Never had a reason, never had a car.
“My daughter drives and we’re getting an electric car. We haven’t yet got it. We’ve got a little – I don’t know P
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20 Australian Geographic
whether I ought to mention it or not – a little German job. A [fossil-fuel powered] VW.”
None of the current concerns about the planet occurred to him when he first crisscrossed the world in jetliners that were flying gas-guzzlers, complete with ashtrays in the armrests. “Yes, 40 years ago we didn’t realise there was a problem of climate change. Forty years ago we were concerned about disappearing species and how we could save them. Arabian oryxes and so on; gorillas. Nobody said to me, and I didn’t say to myself, you are wrecking the climate with the amount of carbon that jet airliners emit. You’re complicit in that. It didn’t occur to me.”
Sir David’s lifelong love affair with nature, creatures, unspoilt habitats and the wilderness began when his father gave him his first pet, an amphibian called a fire salamander, for his eighth birthday. He beams as he recalls the occasion. “They’re absolutely magical things. If you’ve never seen one before, it’s jet black with sulphur spots on it,” he says. “They are quite innocuous and they’re quite slow-moving so you can handle them no problem at all. I had an aquarium that I turned into a vivarium with moss and stones and so on, and a little pool at the bottom on one side.”
His first foray into natural history collecting came a year later when he began supplying newts to the University of Leicester zoology department, where his father was principal, for threepence each. Showing an early flair for enterprise, he didn’t reveal that the newts were from a pond only yards from the department.
SIR DAVID JOINED THE BBC Television Service in 1952 having previously graduated from the University of Cambridge where he had studied geology and zool-
ogy. If you can’t remember a time when there wasn’t an Attenborough wildlife documentary on TV, it’s because there wasn’t one really. In those days, the service was a fledgling arm of the BBC, broadcasting to only a few thousand people. Sir David’s brief as a producer included “politics, gardening, even knitting”.
Already married, with an infant son, he had no plans to travel the world until a zookeeper who was to have presented a new program about animal collecting fell ill. In 1954 a 28-year-old Attenborough was dispatched with a cameraman to find a rare jungle bird.
“When I started making natural history films – I’m almost ashamed of it now, but there’s no point in denying it – I was making a film about London Zoo, which was collecting animals. Rare animals? Oh, good, let’s go and scrag it and take it back to London, he recalls. “You wouldn’t dream of doing that now.”
Zoo Quest was a success. More collecting programs were commissioned. Colour TV arrived. Film photography evolved to show animals in close-up, in slow motion, in high- definition and in a spectacular window into the natural world
of the African plains, polar icecaps, rainforests and coral reefs, always with David Attenborough as the guide.
On early trips he brought home animals to keep as pets – a practice he admits would be unthinkable today – including “lemurs, parrots and hummingbirds”. The most unusual spec-imens were two lungfish, living relics of prehistoric times. His favourites were a pair of bush babies – small nocturnal primates – that ran loose in the house and had a fondness for marking their territory with urine. He recalls that dinner guests would sniff the air as they entered the house, wonder-ing whether their hosts were cooking strong-smelling soup.
These days he has firm views on which animals should be kept in zoos: “There are lots of things that live perfectly well in captivity and you can give them all they need. Equally, there are things that should not, under any circumstances, be kept in captivity. You should not keep raptors; you shouldn’t keep eagles in captivity. Dreadful. I don’t think that you should keep lions in captivity, unless you can provide them with an enormous area.”
He has been urinated on by bats, dive-bombed by gulls, and he has swum with hungry grey reef sharks. To capture one vital shot he put his head in a lion’s mouth – for real. In 1961 he was filming a program about Elsa the lioness. Sleeping in his Land Rover in the Kenyan bush, he was awoken “by a stench of bad breath and opened my eyes to find her jaw dripping saliva inches above my head”.
For years he travelled with only a battered leather suitcase. His wife, Jane, would pack it and see him off at the airport, never knowing quite when he would return. Then, in 1997, when he was filming a series about birdlife in New Zealand, Jane, then 70, suffered a brain haemorrhage. He flew to her bedside at a London hospital just in time for her to squeeze his hand before she died. They had been married for 47 years. Afterwards, he threw himself deeper into his work. Life is very different without her, he says, still missing her terribly.
20 Australian Geographic
GEOBUZZ
Georgie the sulphur-crested cockatoo with
Sir David and three-year-old daughter Susan
in the garden of their Richmond home in 1957.
He collected the parrot in New Guinea.
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November . December 21
EVERYONE HAS THEIR favourite Attenborough TV moment. If you watched Life on Earth in the 1980s, it may be the time he rolled around with silverback
mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Or it may be more recently, on the BBC’s Africa series, when he got down on all fours to chat to Nicky the baby rhinoceros.
His own favourite moments are not when animals are reacting to him, but when he’s observing: “The most moving times, as far as I am concerned, are when the natural world is unaware of your presence. A swamp in northern Australia, for example, I can remember very well sitting in a hide in the darkness, waiting for the sun to come up. You can hear that there’s a big community of water birds – and the sun comes up and you see egrets and there are crocodiles and you see a whole complex ecosystem just throbbing with life and beauty. You watch it for a bit, and you do something silly and alarm them, then the whole lot disappears. But you have that moment of revelation.”
He is still making documentaries, writing books and presenting BBC Radio 4’s Tweet of the Day (about birdsong, not Twitter). He still wears his trademark blue shirt and khaki chinos on screen, though he has shifted to satellite and streaming, making films for Sky and Netflix as well as the BBC, drawing in bigger audiences than ever.
One thing that may slow him down is if he runs out of film titles containing the word ‘planet’. Attenborough’s Our Planet was shown on Netflix last year, and his Seven Worlds, One Planet on the BBC. He is working on a BBC series about
plants, Green Planet. Previously he has made Planet Earth, Planet Earth II, Blue Planet and Blue Planet II, Frozen Planet and Our Fragile Planet.
These days he’s less often in a hide or behind the camera, and more often in a recording studio providing the voiceover. He stresses that it’s film crews who spend months capturing footage and that they, not he, should take the credit. “People think I’ve shot the film and I get the credit,” he says. “People say, what was it like when you got really close up with those narwhals, you know, under water? I say, I wasn’t there, and they say, what? I say, no [raising his voice for emphasis], I wasn’t there!”
Money has never been his motivator, though he earned more than £1m in 2017–18 from his private company, David Attenborough Productions. He still lives in the same Victorian townhouse in south-west London he shared with his wife. He was renowned for travelling economy class and never taking upgrades unless the whole crew was upgraded, until he reached 75, when the BBC insisted he travelled business class.
Despite his fame, he remains engagingly modest. For years the joke in the Attenborough family was that he only got a knighthood because a palace official confused him with his older brother, Sir Richard, the actor and director (who died in 2014). And he’s a paragon of honesty. He has never done an advert, he says, because “my job is telling the truth, and if I say margarine is butter, people will think, ‘He’ll say anything.’”
HIS OWN FAVOURITE MOMENTS ARE WHEN
HE’S OBSERVING.
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Sir David gets close to
a wandering albatross
chick on the island of
South Georgia during
filming for Life in the
Freezer in 1992.
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PRIPYAT WAS built by the Soviet Union, in one
busy period of construction in the 1970s.
It was the designed, perfect home for almost
50,000 people, a modernist utopia to suit the
very best engineers and scientists in the Eastern
Bloc, together with their young families. Amateur
film footage from the early 1980s shows them
smiling, mingling and pushing prams on the wide
boulevards, taking ballet classes, swimming in the
Olympic-size pool and boating on the river. Yet no
one lives in Pripyat today. The walls are crumbling.
Its windows are broken. Its lintels are collapsing. I
have to watch my step as I explore its dark, empty
buildings. Chairs lie on their backs in the hairdress-
ing salons, surrounded by dusty curlers and broken
mirrors. Fluorescent tubes hang down from the
supermarket ceiling. The parquet floor of the town
hall is ripped up and scattered down the length
of a grand, marble staircase. Exercise books litter
the floors of school rooms, neat Cyrillic handwrit-
ing scoring their pages in blue ink. I find the pools
emptied. The seats of sofas in the apartments have
dropped to the floor. The beds are rotten. Almost
everything is motionless – paused. If something is
stirred by a gust of wind, it startles me. With each
new doorway you enter, the lack of people becomes
more and more preoccupying. Their absence is
the truth that is most present. I’ve visited other
post-human towns – Pompei, Angkor Wat and
Machu Picchu – but here, the normality of the
place forces your attention on the abnormality
of its abandonment. Its structures and accoutre-
ments are so familiar that you know their disuse
cannot simply be due to the passing of ages.
Pripyat is a place of utter despair because every-
thing here, from the noticeboards that are no
longer looked at, to the discarded slide rules in the
science classroom, to the shattered piano in the
cafe, is a monument to the capacity of humankind
to lose everything it needs, and everything it treas-
ures. We humans, alone on Earth, are powerful
enough to create worlds, and then to destroy them.
So, although we yawn when self-interested politicians warn about climate change, when Sir David talks we listen – even when his message is stark.
In the 60-plus years he has been making documenta-ries, he points out, the world’s population has more than doubled: 7.8 billion people today, heading to 11 billion by the end of the century. Many of the habitats and species he filmed in those early days have vanished or are in retreat. If we don’t mend our ways – rein in population growth and live less wastefully – we’ll wipe out life as we know it, including ourselves.
So is he right to blame himself and his generation for the planet’s problems? His 1961 film, Zoo Quest to Madagascar, was ahead of its time, revealing the damage caused by climate change and deforestation. At one point Sir David walks along the vast bed of a dried-up river commenting that the lack of water is “a clear indication of the drastic changes in climate that have overtaken this part of Madagascar. It’s likely that, only a few hundred years ago, when the gigantic birds [Aepyornis sp.] were alive, this was not a desert, but a great area of swamp.”
Climate change was already happening in 1961 but the scale of our impact on nature has grown, as has the amount of money at stake. Climate change is now a global industry on which livelihoods, careers, reputations, marketing budgets and sales forecasts depend. It pays for academics, research groups, lobbyists, publishers and filmmakers, among others, and gen-erates profits for thousands of companies involved in green technologies. Clean-energy company Tesla has ballooned into the world’s second biggest car company by value. BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, is sinking a sizeable chunk of its $7 trillion funds into “sustainable” investments. To sceptics, it sounds like opportunism. They take the view that there are
always doomsayers warning of disaster – a hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, nuclear accidents. Sir David thinks this time it is genuinely different, citing extreme weather events such as the Aussie bushfires, and he argues that the sceptics may never be convinced until it’s too late. For him, the message is simple. Be considerate. Live modestly. The future is at stake, he says, not for him but for the next generation, for his two granddaughters, at university in the UK. “You know, we’ve overtaken the world,” he warns. “We are representatives of a very powerful, damaging species. Don’t waste. Don’t waste electricity. Don’t waste food. Don’t waste time.”
His own time is running out, he says: “I’m 93. How long have I got? I haven’t got 10 years, I don’t think.” Will he ever retire? “Well, when people want me to do things, I do things,” he says. “If they don’t want me to do it, I’ve retired.
“I have the greatest job in the world, you know. What a privileged time I’ve had. People provide me with wonderful pictures of things we’ve never seen before and ask me to write a sentence on it. Better than sitting in the corner knitting.”
AG
22 Australian Geographic
GEOBUZZ
“ I HAVE THE GREATESTJOB IN THE WORLD, YOU KNOW.”
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough,
published by Ebury Press. Special AG and QBD
price $29.99 (RRP $39.99)
Order now at australiangeographic.com/books
or turn to p29 for your chance to win a signed copy.
In his new book, Sir David reflects on his extraordinary life and the devastating changes he has witnessed. In this exclusive extract, he ponders the destructive power of the human race.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET will be
available to watch in cinemas and globally via Netflix later this
year. For more info and to register for updates:
au.attenborough.film or follow on Twitter @ourplanet
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC ADVERTORIAL
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maxwellandwilliams.com.au A share of the profi ts from the purchase of the Marini Ferlazzo collection goes to the protection of wildlife around the world.
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Family inspiration with Marini Ferlazzo A long-time love of the outdoors and animals, and a deep
and abiding belief in one another, set Nathan Ferlazzo and his family on a course for success – illustrating the wonder of the natural world that surrounds us here in Australia. Why did you choose to go into business
with your family?
I was inspired by my Nonno, my mum’s
dad. He has always had family businesses.
Our family has always been close, and I
wanted to get them involved so we could
all work together. My Nonno’s surname
was Marini, so our company name is
actually two surnames.
Any advice for people who are looking to
start a family business?
Choose the right family members to work
with! You need to get along with them in a
professional format. I work with my mum
and sister; we all have a similar thought
process and outlook about where we
want to take the business. It can be quite
intense working together on something
that requires so much passion. Make sure
you allow everyone to use their skills for
the diff erent parts of the business – don’t
try to do everything yourself. I have found
making use of everyone's skills has been
crucial to successful relationships and in
turn, the success of our business.
How has your family life led you to have
such a connection to animals?
My parents have always loved animals,
so I think I was always interested in them
because of that. Our love for animals and
nature is what inspired our business and
is defi nitely shown in the collections.
Plus, we're outdoorsy, always being in
nature makes you more connected.
24 Australian Geographic
WITH ITS WINGS severely clipped by the current pandemic, the aviation industry is enduring a turbulent time, making 16 November 2020 particularly poignant. It’s the 100th anniversary
of Qantas, which, as one of the most iconic Australian businesses, has helped define our domestic and international identity.
Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd (QANTAS at first, then later rebranded as Qantas) was reg-istered on 16 November 1920 in Winton, central western Queensland, by two Gallipoli veterans – Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh. With financial backing from grazier Fergus McMaster and with engineer Arthur Baird on board, the company took off. Air travel appealed to the Australian imagination, and, being a pragmatic response to the country’s vast landscape, it was adopted enthusiastically. The company began operations in 1921 with two open-cabin biplanes fly-ing mail and, from 1922, passengers between small outback towns. By 1930 Qantas had 11 planes, six of which were made locally in their own workshops, and had flown more than 10,400 passengers around the country. By 1950 one in six Aussies were already taking at least one flight a year, making us among the planet’s most air-travelling peoples.
Overseas passenger flights began in 1935, with a DH-86 Brisbane–Singapore service that took three and a half days. The first Australia to Great Britain service began in 1938. Flying boats flew from Sydney’s Rose Bay, via Brisbane, to Singapore, where Imperial Airways would take over for the rest of the flight. In the same year, Qantas began using flight crew who were all male. Women would not start welcoming passengers on board Qantas planes as ‘air hostesses’ until 1947.
By 1943 Catalina flying boats were travelling non-stop from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to Perth, on the only regular air service across the Indian Ocean. Passengers on this route were in the air non-stop for more than 24 hours, recognised by a membership certificate to the Rare and Secret Order of the Double Sunrise. The 1944 introduction of Liberator aircraft brought the travel time down to 17 hours on what
AVIATION CENTENARY
From a runway in outback Queensland, our national carrier first took to the skies a century ago and has been helping
overcome Australia’s tyranny of distance ever since.
Linda is a picture researcher and the editor of the
Dictionary of Sydney website at the State Library of NSW. PH
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was branded the Kangaroo Service and passengers were inducted to the Elevated Order of the Longest Hop.
These Liberators were the first aircraft to carry a Qantas emblem depicting a kangaroo, a circular design based on the reverse-side image of the Australian penny coin. This was revamped by influential designer and artist Gert Sellheim to promote the airline’s new Kangaroo Service to London, and appeared on the airline’s new Lockheed Constellations in January 1947. The elegant flying kangaroo he designed has been reinterpreted over the years but remains the basis of the company’s distinctive insignia today.
LINDA BRAINWOOD
Qantas’ female staff have always been decked out in fashionable
outfits. The summer uniform pictured here is from the late 1940s
when Qantas employed its first ‘air hostesses’.
November . December 25
GEOBUZZSmart frocks and accessories
were essential for the glamour and
excitement of early air travel.
Brisbane department store
McWhirters designed an exclusive
range for “ladies who flew”, modelled
here in 1936 with a Qantas Empire
Airways DH-86 at Brisbane’s
Archerfield airfield, where Qantas
officially opened an office in 1935.
I
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GEOBUZZ
FROM SNOW TO ASH
By Anthony Sharwood
From Snow to Ash is an adven-
ture memoir littered with hu-
mour that pays homage to the
glorious Snowy Mountains of
the Australian Alps. This book
inspires as the gruelling nature
of the Australian Alps Walking
Track permeates through.
It’s a joyous read with person-
ality in spades, is honest and
provides a few history lessons.
You can almost smell the gums,
hear the cicadas and feel the
tension of impending bushfi res
as the smoke rolls in. A book
for the adventurer in us all and
THE 99TH KOALABy Kailas Wild
DURING THE BlackSummer bushfi res, a
desperate text from a wildlife carer prompted Sydney arborist Kailas Wild to throw his climbing gear into his ute and drive 1500km to Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Almost half the island had been razed by fl ames and thousands of koalas were left stranded and starving in smoking, blackened trees. The 99th Koala details the life-changing seven weeks Kailas spent saving more than 100 koalas. Climbing fi re-weakened trees and rescuing fright-ened koalas is exhausting, risky work, and Kailas is forthcoming about the crushing guilt he experi-enced every time a rescue went badly. But in such a dark time it’s the moments of elation, joy and hope that shine through in this extraordinary book.
THE AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC BOOK CLUB
anyone interested in
Australia’s fragile natural
environment. This will appeal
to fans of Touching the Void,
Between a Rock and a Hard
Place and Into the Wild.
AVAILABLE NOW
RRP $32.99
AVAILABLE 5 NOVEMBER RRP $32.99
THE QUOKKA’S GUIDE TO HAPPINESS
By Alex Cearns
Quokkas
are cute,
unique
and very
photoge-
nic. With
cheeky
‘grins’
and
lovable personalities, it’s no
wonder they were named
“happiest animal in the world”
by The Huffi ngton Post in 2013.
When the opportunity
presented itself for award-
winning animal photographer
Alex Cearns to shoot quokka
images for this book, she
jumped at the chance. As she
captured images over the
course of several visits to
Rottnest Island, the quokkas
(mostly) ate, played, and
interacted with each other.
The result – The Quokka’s
Guide to Happiness – is
a stunning collection
of photos paired
with uplift ing
inspirational
quotes, the
perfect tribute to
an Australian
marsupial celebrity.
“Some were very
friendly and would run
towards me at full speed,
as if we were long-lost friends,”
Alex said. “Others were more
cautious in their approach, but
as soon as I sat still, their
curious natures would get the
better of them and they would
slowly come closer and then
act like I wasn’t even there –
which generally meant they
got on with eating.”
AVAILABLE 2 DECEMBER
RRP $24.99
LOVING COUNTRY
By Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou
Loving
Country is
a powerful
guidebook
off ering a
new way
to discover
Australia
through
an Indigenous narrative. In this
beautifully designed and
photographed edition,
co-authors Bruce Pascoe and
Vicky Shukuroglou show
travellers how to see and fall
in love with the country by
knowing its ancient story.
Featuring 18 places in detail,
from Brewarrina’s ingenious fi sh
traps and the rivers feeding the
Great Barrier Reef, to the love
story of Wiluna and Margaret
River’s whales, there is much to
celebrate. This book covers
history, Dreaming stories,
traditional practices,
Indigenous tours
and the impor-
tance of
recognition and
protection of
place. It off ers a
key to unlocking
the heart of this
country for those who
want to enrich their
understanding of it, and for
travellers looking for more than
a whistle-stop tour of Australia.
In Loving Country, Bruce and
Vicky hope that all communi-
ties will be heard when they
tell their stories, and that
these narratives and the
country from which they
have grown will be honoured.
AVAILABLE 2 DECEMBER
RRP $45
ALL THESE BRAND NEW TITLES are available to order from our online
Australian Geographic store
australiangeographic.com.au/books
or call 1300 555 176
or visit any QBD bookshop.
The famed quokka ‘grin’.
RECOMMEN
DEDR
EADING
THE AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC BOOK CLUB THE AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC BOOK CLUB
RECOMMEN
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November . December 27
DURING FOUR DECADES from 1863 more than 62,000 South Sea Islander men, women and children were brought as labourers to Australia. Many were kid-
napped in a practice known as blackbirding.After Queensland became a distinct colony in 1859, its
government was eager for income and encouraged trade. Australia’s first viable sugar cane harvest was taken in 1862 near Brisbane. The first commercial sugar mill began pro-duction soon after, and, recognising the industry’s potential, the federal government encouraged the establishment of large plantations. In the early 1800s labour in Australia’s colonies had been cheap and plentiful due to a surplus of convicts, ticket-of-leave holders, emancipists and indentured servants, but this changed with the abolition by 1868 of all convict transportation. Because sugar production required a large workforce, Queensland plantation owners proposed using ‘coloured’ labour. This was in response to both the white labour shortage and the belief white people could not endure hard physical work in a tropical climate. For the first time, in 1863, a group of 67 South Sea Island labourers was brought to Brisbane to work, initially on a cotton plantation. But cotton soon proved unviable, and, when sugar showed promise, most were sent to work in the cane fields instead.
South Sea Islanders had been recruited, mostly by white men contracted by plantation owners, since the 1840s for labour-intensive industries across the Pacific. The labourers, known as Kanakas, came from 80 different island nations, including Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, and had little legal protection from exploitation. Even more controversial were the trade’s ‘recruitment’ techniques. Many workers were taken forcibly by labour agents; others were deceived about what to expect in Australia. From 1863 to 1904 more than 62,000 people were brought to work in Queensland’s sugar, pastoral and maritime industries. In 1868 the state govern-ment introduced the Polynesian Labourers Act, hoping to limit their exploitation while on transport ships and in the fields. But unscrupulous operators found ways to circumvent the legislation’s aim to prevent blackbirding, and forced recruitment continued. In 1880 the legislation’s first major revision came with the Pacific Labourers Act (Queensland), which made forced recruitment techniques illegal and imposed minimum living standards on ships, which were to be enforced by government inspectors. But they weren’t always conscientious and some took bribes from crew.
The White Australia movement was gaining strength by the 1880s and the importation of ‘coloured’ labour was broadly opposed by Australian unions wanting to protect their members’ jobs. Yet plantation owners continued lob-bying for cheap imported labour. In 1891 the Queensland government imposed a ban on recruiting indentured South Sea Islander workers, but it was postponed for 10 years when the sugar industry was badly affected by a global economic depression. On 17 December 1901 the governor- general assented to the Pacif ic Island Labourers Act (Australia), which provided for “the Regulation, Restriction and Prohibition of the Introduction of Labourers from the Pacific Islands and for other purposes”. It was part of a legis-lation package the new federal government enacted in its first year that constituted the White Australia policy and required deportation of most South Sea Islander labourers from 1906.
About 10,000 islanders living in Australia when the Act was passed mounted a campaign to oppose it. Letters of protest were sent to the prime minister, governor-general and the king, but no major changes were made to the Act.
The deportations began in late 1906 and continued until 1908, returning more than 7500 South Sea Islanders to their countries of origin, even though many had arrived here so young they had no memory of the places they’d left. About 2500 remained in Australia.
In 2000 the Queensland government recognised South Sea Islanders as a distinct ethnic and cultural Australian group and acknowledged the discrimination and injustice they had experienced throughout their history in Australia. P
HO
TO C
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IT: C
OU
RTESY
NA
TIO
NA
L M
USE
UM
OF
AU
STR
ALI
A
AUSTRALIA’S SLAVE TRADE
Part of the Defining Moments in Australian History project
To find out more: nma.gov.au/definingmoments
These South Sea Islander women on a sugar cane
plantation near Cairns in about 1895 were among thousands
brought to Australia in the 19th century as rural labourers.
28 Australian Geographic
1863: First South Sea Islanders brought to work in labour-intensive Queensland industries.
GEOBUZZ
I’D LOVE TO HAVE a dollar for each
time someone has asked me, “Isn’t
Lake George connected to a lake in
China, or is it Siberia?”
According to this far-fetched,
yet surprisingly oft -touted, theory,
the water levels in Lake George,
an ephemeral body of water located
between Goulburn and Canberra,
“go up as the water levels in [insert
random name of another lake in China
or Siberia] go down, and vice versa”.
Of course, any suggestion freshwater
lakes in diff erent hemispheres are linked
is fanciful rubbish. So just what does
cause the lake’s fl uctuating levels,
which have mystifi ed many travellers
since ex-convict-come-explorer Joseph
Wild fi rst set eyes on this “inland sea” on
19 August 1820, to fl uctuate so wildly?
In the 200 years since Wild’s visit,
the lake, which, when full, has 60km
of shoreline, making it the largest
freshwater natural lake in inland
New South Wales, has completely fi lled
and emptied on numerous occasions.
Despite the proliferation of theories
to the contrary, various studies have
proven that the shallow lake – 6m at
its deepest and with an average depth
of 2.5m when full – fi lls and empties
purely as a result of rainfall
and evaporation.
It can take several years of above-
average rain for the lake to be fi lled by
fi ve small creeks that empty into it, but,
resembling a large shallow saucer, and
with no outlets, the lake can dry out
quickly during a hot, dry summer.
While the myth that Lake George’s
water levels are connected via a
network of subterranean funnels to
other lakes around the world is, dare I
say, blown out of the water. Explaining
just how the lake’s water levels can
also appear to vary on the same day
is a little more tricky.
William Glover, a meteorologist
based at the lake in the 1890s,
recorded the water level temporarily
falling almost 500mm in one day.
This sudden variation, which
continues to mystify modern-day
travellers, is explained by the prevailing
winds. By day, the wind usually blows
from the west, and, because the lake is
shallow, a strong wind can blow the
water towards the eastern side of the
lake. At night, the wind is oft en an
easterly, which simply blows the water
back to the other side. This phenome-
non, which occurs in some other lakes
around the world, including Lake
Geneva, between Switzerald and
France, is called a seiche.
Governor Macquarie named the
“noble expanse of water” aft er the
reigning monarch King George IV.
There is now a move to refer to the
lake by its Indigenous name of
Weereewaa, which, according to
Ngambri elder Shane Mortimer, means
“place of many migratory birds”.
Recent rains have fi lled the lake
to its highest level in years. If this
continues, one thing is certain: it will
be due to a wetter-than-average
summer, and not water mysteriously
gushing down some subterranean
funnel from Siberia.
OUR VANISHING LAKETIM THE YOWIE MAN
AS A NATURALIST, author, broadcaster and tour
guide, Tim has dedicated the past 25 years to
documenting Australia’s unusual natural
phenomena. He’s written several books,
including Haunted and Mysterious Australia
(New Holland, 2018). Follow him on Facebook
and Twitter: @TimYowie
Wet and dry views,
from the same
vantage point,
across Lake George.
PH
OTO
CR
ED
ITS: TIM
TH
E Y
OW
IE M
AN
For your chance to win a
hardcover copy of Sir David
Attenborough’s new book,
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness
Statement and Vision for the
Future, personally signed by
the legendary broadcaster and
naturalist himself, visit the
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC website.
Enter at australiangeographic.
com.au/159
A LIFE ON OUR PLANETWIN A SIGNED COPY
During the fi rst weekend in
December, ABC TV will broadcast
live from the Great Barrier Reef
as the annual spectacle of coral
spawning unfolds. Experience the
anticipation and wonder as you’re
taken live to where corals across
the outer reef synchronise the
release of eggs and sperm in an
extraordinary natural phenom-
enon. You’ll also witness the
accompanying annual feeding
bonanza by fi sh, birds and turtles.
REEF LIVE will be a celebration
of our greatest natural treasure
as we meet scientists, Indigenous
rangers, conservationists and
reef ambassadors, all working to
preserve the natural and cultural
heritage of the reef for the future.
REEF LIVE
is a special
two-part
event airing
live on Friday
4 December
and Sunday
6 December
at 8.30pm on
ABC TV. Also
available via
ABC iview.
REEF LIVEWATCH
November . December 29
Lucas Handley, Scientist
Occasionally an
all-white zebra
fi nch is seen
in nature.
B I RD NE RD with Peter Rowland
THE EYES HAVE IT
FOLLOW Peter on Twitter: @_peterrowland and Instagram: _peterrowland
YOU MIGHT KNOW of British
mathematician Alan Turing, who
invented the fi rst programmable
computer to crack the German’s secret
Enigma code during World War II. But
he was also responsible for publishing
a mathematical concept in 1952 that
explained the hidden order underlying
how patterns form in nature, including
spots and stripes on animals.
Most birds, in particular, exhibit
some degree of patterns and colours.
Australia’s diminutive zebra fi nch,
for example, was so named because of
the zebra-like black and white bars on
its rump and tail. But it also has many
other colours and patterns, from a
bright orange bill and cheek patches to
fi ne white spotting along its reddish-
brown sides.
The zebra fi nch is Australia’s most
abundant and widely distributed grass-
fi nch species, occurring throughout
most of mainland Australia. It’s a com-
mon and familiar bird in the drier parts
of the country, where large numbers
congregate around watercourses, their
chorus of nasal ‘tiah’ and ‘teh-teh’ calls
fi lling the air.
When we see such a highly pat-
terned bird we assume all individuals
of that species have their spots, stripes
and blotches in the same places. But
look closer and you’ll see that the quan-
tity and design of these patterns varies
between individuals. And every now
and then a bird exhibits a more obvious
plumage variation. Occasionally, we
see one that has larger than usual pale
areas of plumage or, more rarely, has
lost its normal patterning altogether.
Colouration and patterning in
all animals is caused by a range of
pigments. Melanin is responsible for
blacks and browns,
and a lack of this
pigment can cause
a partial or total loss
of an individual’s dark
patterning. The two main terms that
describe these anomalies are albinism
and leucism. Both conditions are ge-
netic and inherited and both can lead
to a very similar physical appearance.
Leucism, however, causes a lack
of the pigment cells that produce
melanin. But albinism causes the
production of melanin pigment to be
reduced or absent. Can we distinguish
between the two conditions without
the help of a cellular biologist? Yes,
and the trick to telling them apart is
all in the eyes.
Albino animals have fully unpig-
mented red eyes. Leucistic animals,
on the other hand, never completely
lose pigment from the eye, although
they can have blue eyes (heterochro-
mia) due to a partial loss of pigment.
Heterochromia is most common in
animals that are fully leucistic.
Why don’t we see more albino or
leucistic birds? Because the lack of
melanin reduces the strength and
durability of the aff ected bird’s
feathers, making them more prone to
breakage. Additionally, the bird’s vision
and hearing is negatively aff ected,
making it less able to hunt. The brighter
plumage and lack of patterning also
makes them easier for predators to see.
Birds can also produce an excess
of melanin. This results in the aff ected
bird being darker than usual.
GEOBUZZ
30 Australian Geographic
EVENTS
PH
OTO
CR
ED
ITS , F
RO
M L
EFT:
PETER R
OW
LA
ND
; C
OU
RTESY
OF
RO
LEX
SC
IEN
TIF
IC N
AM
E: Ta
en
iopyg
ia g
utt
ata
Sylvia Earle This esteemed
marine scientist has been a
lifelong advocate for the protec-
tion of the world’s oceans and
creation of marine protected
areas. In this episode she talks
of the journey that led to
her becoming one of
the most respected
voices for ocean
conservation and
how she hopes
to inspire a new
generation of
young female
ocean scientists
and conservationists.
Bradley MoggridgeA Murri man from the Kamilaroi
Nation (in NSW) and water sci-
entist, Bradley has dedicated his
life to fi nding ways, imbued with
Aboriginal knowledge, to better
manage Australia’s water in the
age of climate change.
Angie Scarth-JohnsonAt age seven, Australian
rock-climbing sensation Angie
was already climbing grades
that other rock climbers spent
years fi guring out. Today, the
16-year-old is in a league of her
own and keen to represent
Australia at the Tokyo Olympics.
Joe BoningtonThis master adventurer fi tness
trainer has a gift for helping
ordinary people unlock their full
potential to achieve things they
never thought possible.
Other inspiring podcast guests
include Valerie Taylor, Dr Glenn
Singleman and Terri Irwin.
For a full list and how to
subscribe for free to the
AG podcast, see:
australiangeographic.com.au/
series/talking_australia
Talking Australia
Subscribe and never miss an episode of our enter-
taining podcast.
REACH FOR THE REMOTEMount Hagen Cultural Show
EXPLORE THE HIGHLANDSAs the world starts to slowly reopen, and as travellers make more conscious decisions about where they want to travel to next, we pose the following question – how about travelling to Australia’s closest neighbour, a mere 150km to the north of Cape York?
Remote natural beauty and rich diverse culture abounds right on your doorstep. Have you added Papua New Guinea to your 2021 bucket list yet?
Find your remote at www.papuanewguinea.travel
With nature right at your doorstep, a Holiday Haven park
is the perfect place to escape from it all. Located in the
Shoalhaven South Coast, just two hours from Sydney
and under three hours from Canberra.
Visit holidyahaven.com.au to book your next break today.
Escape and unwind with Holiday Haven
holidayhaven.com.auCamping | Caravan & RV | Safari Tents | Cabins
ILLU
STR
ATIO
N C
RED
IT: JA
MES K
UETH
ER
/SC
IEN
CE P
HO
TO
LIB
RA
RY
I USED TO THINK pterodactyls were
two-legged fl ying dinosaurs. Yes,
they could fl y, but they were not
dinosaurs and they had four legs.
Pterodactyls were part of a
larger group called pterosaurs –
literally “fl ying reptiles”. Although
they existed at the same time as
dinosaurs, about 200–66 million
years ago (mya), pterosaurs were
a completely diff erent group.
They were widespread across Earth,
with at least 110 known species in
more than 85 genera.
Pterosaurs did not have feathers.
Instead, their wings were fl exible
membranes of muscle, skin and
related tissues. This membrane
stretched from the ankles, up along
the sides of the rather short ptero-
saur body and out to the wing tips.
Some of them – notably
Quetzalcoatlus spp. – were the larg-
est creatures ever to fl y, with wing-
spans of 10m and more – bigger
than a modern-day F-16 fi ghter
aircraft . That’s three times bigger
than today’s largest fl ying
animals – the wandering albatross
and the Andean condor.
Some pterosaur species had a
torso that made up only one-
quarter of their body length.
The remainder was a very long
neck and even longer head.
To potential prey, they were
the fl ying jaws of death.
Some of the pterosaurs weighed
250kg, making them the heaviest
creatures ever to fl y. There’s always,
of course, been one big mystery:
how did they take off or launch into
fl ight, when they were that heavy?
And we have fi nally worked it out.
First, they had a very strong, but
very light, skeleton. Second, their
membrane wings gave more lift than
wings with feathers.
And fi nally, they had lots of
haunch, or launch, power. Having
four limbs – two short, powerful hind
legs and two long front legs that un-
folded into wings – gave them more
than double the power of a two-
legged animal trying to launch.
They would crouch, bending their
hind legs, which they’d straighten to
vault upwards, then continue with
their front legs to add a catapult
action, before fi nally lift ing off –
all 250kg of them.
Anyway, in the Great Extinction
66mya, why did all the pterosaurs
die out, when the birds did not?
Nobody knows – yet.
This expression is now known
worldwide, as the COVID-19
pandemic continues. But it’s our
expression…coined here in Australia.
The earliest recorded mention of contact
tracing comes from the October 1910
edition of the Australasian Medical
Gazette in an article about school
epidemics. It talks of the importance of
the school nurse in “swab-taking,
contact tracing, and similar necessary
details”. The dictionary definition is “the
action or process of identifying individ-
uals who have been in the proximity of
a person diagnosed with an infectious
disease”. Whether or not Australia gives
the world a vaccine, we’ve already
provided the name for tracking down
those who have met a COVID carrier,
because we’ve coined (and shared with
the world) the term contact tracing.
Got a question for Kel? Go to: ozwords.com.au
By Kel Richards
CONTACT TRACING
DR KARL is a prolifi c broadcaster, author
and Julius Sumner Miller fellow in the School of
Physics at the University of Sydney. His latest
book, Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip Through
Science, comes with pop-up holograms and is
published by HarperCollins Publishers
Australia. Follow him on Twitter at @DoctorKarl
GEOBUZZ
WHAT WERE PTERODACTYLS?
NEED TO K N OWwith Dr Kar l Kruszelnicki
November . December 33
Quetzalcoatlus species such
as this were pterosaurs with
wingspans of up to 11m.
B r i d g e c r o s s i n g s , s u n s e t s w i t h
c o l o u r s s o r i c h i t d r i p s f r o m t h e
s k y , d i n n e r w i t h w i l d l i f e . T h e l i t t l e
t h i n g s . T h e E x o s / E j a f e a t u r e s
u n c o m p r o m i s e d d u r a b i l i t y i n a n
u l t r a l i g h t p a c k a g e t h a t d e f i e s b e l i e f .
T h e o n l y w a y t o d i s c o v e r w o n d r o u s
m o m e n t s i s t o g e t o u t t h e r e a n d f i n d
t h e m . S o g r a b y o u r f r i e n d s , p a c k
y o u r g e a r a n d m a k e i t h a p p e n .
E X O S | E J A
IMA
GE C
RED
IT: EU
RO
PEA
N S
OU
TH
ER
N O
BSER
VA
TO
RY
LOOKING UP
Naked eyeThe brilliant planet
Jupiter is in the early western
evening sky. Only Mars (in the
north) and the brightest star,
Sirius (rising in the east), come
close to its brightness.
Although not as luminous, its
fellow gas giant, Saturn, trails
Jupiter by a few degrees and
also stands out.
x1
with Glenn Dawes
x100Small telescopeThe drawing closer of
Jupiter and Saturn reaches a
spectacular climax in
December. The Moon looks
impressive next to them on the
17th, the start of a seven-day
period when these planets will
be visible together through your
telescope. Enjoy! This won’t
happen again for 20 years.
x10 BinocularsTwo smaller compan-
ion galaxies to the Milky Way
– the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds – lie high in
the southern evening sky and
are visible to the naked eye.
Binoculars reveal the LMC has
an obvious central bar with
many bright star clusters and
nebulae, notably the Tarantula
Nebula at the eastern end.
Glenn Dawes is a co-author of the yearbook Astronomy 2020 Australia (Quasar Publishing).
quasarastronomy.com.au
Back in 1936, Albert Einstein remarked on a phenomenon he himself predicted was so
unlikely to occur that we would never see it. It’s a consequence of his General Theory of Relativity, which says that any massive object distorts the space around it, bending passing light rays and producing something we call a gravitational lens. This effect has been validated many times during the past century.
But Einstein’s 1936 prediction concerns a particular gravitational lens scenario – when the massive object sits directly between ourselves and a much more distant light source, such as a star or galaxy.
Intuitively, you would imagine that the intervening massive object would block our view of the distant source, but it does the reverse by virtue of the gravitational lens. It magnifies the light, making the distant source much brighter than the nearer object. When the align-ment is exact, it turns our view of the distant object into a perfect ring. Not surprisingly, this is called an Einstein ring, and the first complete specimen was discovered in 1998.
Fast-forward to today. We now have an extraordinary example of how the study of Einstein rings has progressed. A very remote galaxy with the unmemorable name of SPT0418-47 has been observed, not in visible light but in microwave radiation, by the Atacama Large
Millimeter-Submillimeter Array (ALMA), operated in northern Chile by the European Southern Observatory in partnership with other agencies. SPT0418-47 appears as a bright ring due to the gravita-tional lens of an invisible intervening galaxy, but with structure that lets us tease out what it would look like if we could see it directly in close-up.
Using the fine details of its blotchy appearance, the ring has been deconstructed into an accurate image of SPT0418-47 by a team of German and Dutch astronomers. They have revealed something that looks remarkably like a galaxy in today’s Universe, with a rotating disc and central bulge. That’s surprising, since the distance of this galaxy means we see it as it was more than 12 billion years ago, when the Universe was just 1.4 billion years old.
Most galaxies we can observe from this early epoch are unstruc-tured and chaotic, compared with those in the modern Universe. Why is this one so neat and tidy? And are there others like it? Those questions are now the subject of further study.
FRED WATSON is Australia’s
Astronomer-at-Large. Hear
him on the weekly Space Nuts
podcast. Follow him on
Twitter: @StargazerFred.
His latest book is Cosmic
Chronicles: A User’s Guide to
the Universe.
MYSTERY IN A RING OF LIGHT
SPACE★
Reconstructing the appearance of galaxy
SPT0418-47, from ALMA
data using computer
modelling, revealed a
disc like those of spiral
galaxies seen today.
GEOBUZZ
November . December 35
This year, populations of our most internationally recognisable animal were decimated. Will new conservation measures in NSW be able to keep koalas from extinction?
36 Australian Geographic
FOR THE KOALA, this has been a shocking year. But with luck the disaster the species has faced will be
the turning point that fi nally persuades Australians to truly value this national icon and do everything possible to bring it back from the brink of extinction.
Since our cover feature on the belovedmarsupial early this year (see Unbearable loss, AG 155), it hasbecome clear that the impact of the bushfi re crisis was worse than any of us dared think. The results of WWF Australiasurveys released in July showed that up to 71 per cent of koalas died in six populations in northern New South Wales. These are some of the only detailed post-fi re surveys done so far, and they hint at what to expect in other fi re-hit habitat.
Also in July, a NSW government inquiry released fi nd-ings that as many as 5000 koalas – perhaps a third of the state’s population – had been killed and that, without drastic conservation action, the species was heading towards extinc-tion in NSW by 2050. On Kangaroo Island, where intro-duced koalas had rampantly over-populated in the island’s blue gum plantations, these marsupials were hit worst of all. South Australia’s Wildlife and Habitat Bushfi re Recovery Taskforce estimated that less than 20 per cent of the previ-ous population of 50,000 remained, after fi res swept across more than 40 per cent of the island, destroying 85 per cent of koala habitat.
Part of the problem of knowing how bad the impact of the fi res has been on the species is we’ve never had good estimates of koala numbers to begin with. They are shy, cryptic and well camoufl aged in the trees where they live. Even skilled human spotters routinely miss them.
The last detailed national koala census, in 2016, put num-bers at 144,000–605,000. Regardless, the species had clearly been declining in NSW, Queensland and the ACT, due to land clearing, urban development, dog attacks, car strikes and the disease chlamydia. This meant that federally it was listed
as vulnerable in these areas in 2012. The federal environ-ment minister, Sussan Ley, is considering a proposal to have the species’ conservation status in these jurisdictions upgraded to endangered. But a decision on that is not expected until after this issue goes to press.
Unfortunately, being listed as vulnerable or endangered under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act doesn’t always off er a species as much protection as it might need. A WWF report in April, for example, showed land clearing in koala habitat had increased since the 2012 listing. Compared with 2004–12, destruction of koala habitat in Queensland and NSW in 2012–18 was up by 7 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.
Post-fi res, the NSW government has taken steps to improvethe species’ prospects. In response to the fi ndings and dire pre-diction of its own inquiry, it announced an $84 million plan to protect koalas. It included the planting of huge numbersof trees, strong new land-clearing rules and the creation of new protected areas, including Guula Ngurra National Park in the Southern Highlands (declared in August this year). The move around land clearing was so contentious it led to friction within the NSW government’s Liberal-National coalition.
“I don’t want to see the koala extinct by 2050, I want to see their population doubled,” NSW energy and envi-ronment minister Matt Kean told reporters. “Koalas are the most iconic example of our mismanagement of the environment and we’ve got to say ‘enough is enough’.”
Because climate change increases the chance of more frequent and intense bushfi res, droughts and heatwaves, these measures alone are not going to be enough to save the koala, but they are a good start.
HELPING KOALAS CLING ON
JOHN PICKRELL is the author of Flames of Extinction,
a book about the eff ect of the bushfi re crisis on Australian
wildlife, out next February (NewSouth Publishing).
Follow him on Twitter: @john_pickrell
WI LD AUSTR ALIA
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GEOBUZZ
WAWalk wildfl ower trails, Rottnest Island
November is the ideal time to enjoy
Rottnest Island’s wildfl owers, includ-
ing carpets of purple-blue Rottnest
daisies and coastal pigface. One way
to enjoy the island’s 1500 wildfl ower
species, many of which are adapted
to windy and salty conditions, is along
the 45km Wadjemup Bidi walking trail.
The daisies are particularly abundant
in the dunes behind Henrietta Rocks
and Parker Point. For more info: Call the
Rottnest Island Authority on 08 9432
9300 or visit rottnestisland.com
Nitmiluk NP, Katherine Gorge and a
spot about 50km north of Katherine on
Edith Falls Road are all sites to poten-
tially spot the endangered Gouldian
fi nch. Early morning at waterholes and
pools is the best time to see
these gorgeous birds
fl uttering in to drink,
with your chances
enhanced on a
specialist birding
tour. For more info: Call Katherine
Visitor Informa-
tion Centre on
08 8972 2650 or
visit visitkatherine.
com.au
NTFind a Gouldian fi nch, Katherine region
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QLDSee wild koalas, Magnetic Island
Although koalas in many places fared
terribly this year, the population of
up to 800 on Magnetic Island, a
25-minute ferry ride from Townsville in
northern Queensland, remains relatively
healthy. This is one of the best places
to spot wild koalas up close. Look
out for them dozing in trees on the
4km-return Forts Walk, which starts
at Horseshoe Bay Road at the turn-off
to Radical Bay. For more info: Call the
Townsville North Queensland visitor
centre on 07 4721 3660 or visit
townsvillenorthqueensland.com.au
DIARY ENTRIES
Coastal pigface.
LITTLE MORE THAN a year
ago our landmark 2016
coff ee-table book A Portrait
of Australia was transformed into a
stunning touring photographic exhi-
bition by our talented colleagues at
the National Museum of Australia
(NMA) in Canberra. And it’s been
pulling in crowds wherever it has
been on display.
So far, there have been exhibi-
tions at Toowoomba, Bribie Island,
Capalaba, Warwick and Winton
in Queensland and at Manjimup in
Western Australia. The exhibition
proved extraordinarily popular at
these regional centres. And being
fortunate enough to travel to the
fi rst couple of shows, pre-COVID,
AG’s editor-in-chief, Chrissie Goldrick,
was overwhelmed to see fi rsthand
the hugely positive reactions of
visitors to the images on display.
During the next couple of years,
these images, which represent the
very peak of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC’svisual storytelling for more than
30 years, are set to be displayed in
venues right around the country.
The exhibition can be on show in
more than one venue at a time,
so there’s every chance it will be
coming to a centre near you.
It opens next month, on
3 December, at its home venue,
the NMA, which is renowned for
the visitor experience it provides.
With travel and event restrictions
now easing, it’s the perfect time
to explore all that this stunning
cultural gem has to off er and that
includes, of course, AG’s wonderful
A Portrait of Australia exhibition.
We hope to run a series of events
during the exhibition at which you
will be able to hear from the talented
photographers whose work appears
regularly in AG. Chrissie Goldrick
will also be hosting an illustrated talk
and guided walk through the exhi-
bition, sharing stories behind some
of the photographs and insights into
AG’s approach to creating these
enduring visual narratives.
See A Portrait of Australia at the
NMA from 3 December 2020 to
7 March 2021.
For more info: nma.gov.au
PORTRAIT OF AUSTRALIA Stories through the lens of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC.
EXHIBITION NEWS
The Bribie Island Seaside
Museum exhibition, with
Chrissie Goldrick presenting.
Your SocietyAustralian Geographic Society news and events
November . December 2020
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EVERY SUBSCRIBER to this journal
automatically becomes a
member of the not-for-profit
AG Society. Your subscription
helps us fund Australia’s
scientists, conservationists,
adventurers and explorers.
Your subscription is essential to the
Australian Geographic Society
To subscribe, call1300 555 176
Patron: Dick Smith AC
Chair: David Haslingden
Secretary: Adrian Goss/
Page Henty
Directors: Kerry Morrow,
Jo Runciman
Advisory Council: Chrissie
Goldrick, John Leece AM,
Tim Jarvis AM, Anna Rose,
Todd Tai
THE SOCIETY runs sponsorship
rounds in April and November,
during which it considers
applications and disburses
grants that are funded by the
Australian Geographic business.
The Society also awards the
Nancy-Bird Walton sponsorship
for female adventurers, and hosts
annual awards for conservation
and adventure.
Each year it gives in excess of
$100,000 to worthy projects.
Who are the Australian Geographic Society?
MAKING ROOM FOR TASSIE DEVILS
MAKE A DIFFERENCE. PLEASE DONATE TODAYFunds raised will help us learn more about how to conserve our unique Tasmanian devil.
Visit australiangeographic.com.au/fundraising
The success of Aussie Ark’s Tasmanian
devil breeding program continues with
captive-bred animals being released into
large tracts of feral-free bushland in the
Barrington Tops region of NSW. It’s hoped
they will display normal devil behaviour
and feed and breed their way to a healthy
wild population that will help provide a
bright future for this marvellous but
endangered marsupial. The AG Society is
raising funds for the
purchase of individual
trackers so young
devils can be monitored
after they disappear into the
landscape. Already more than 300
devils born in captivity have been raised
in this way to foster natural behaviour,
helping ensure they maintain the skills
needed to survive in the wild.
AG SOCIETY FUNDRAISER
At the beginning of the
nightmare 2019–20
bushfire season, in early
November last year, the Society
pledged $50,000 towards
bushfire relief. At that stage we
could have had little idea of the
devastation that lay ahead. So
far, we have disbursed funds to
the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital in
Queensland, and the Founda-
tion for National Parks and
Wildlife to fund its wildlife
carers program. Our next
recipient will be the Forktree
Project, led by Tim Jarvis.
Tim was the first person to be
awarded the Society’s gold
medallions for both adventure
and conservation, for his work
as a polar explorer and in
bringing attention to climate
change by trekking to the
world’s equatorial glaciers to
show the extent that ice had
retreated in recent decades.
The Forktree Project aims to
rehabilitate a degraded
53ha former pastoral property
on South Australia’s Fleurieu
Peninsula, returning it to nature.
Presently, the charity is
involved in re-establishing tens
of thousands of native trees
and shrubs on the property.
These will, in turn, bring back
native mammals, reptiles, frogs,
birds and insects and also
sequester thousands of
tonnes of carbon. Forktree
has now been included in a
Conservation Volunteers
Australia grant application
to the federal government to
establish 8ha of glossy
black-cockatoo casuarina
woodland habitat. This will be
on a section of the Forktree
site and is part of an initiative
to aid the species’ recovery
following last summer’s
bushfire disaster. If successful,
Forktree will be the northern-
most habitat for glossy
black-cockatoos on the SA
mainland, providing a lifeline
for these threatened birds.
November . December 39
Sowing the seed
Funding supportApplications are now open for round two of our sponsorship grants. Australian scientists, community organisations and individuals developing suitable projects in Australia or overseas are welcome to apply. Applications close 30 November. For more information and full criteria go to the Society page at the AG website:
australiangeographic.com.au/society
Tim Jarvis at work
on Forktree, rewilding
former farmland with
native species.
Rediscovering historic meteorological documents offers vital insight to our increasingly erratic modern weather patterns.
STORY BY CAITLIN HOWLETT
40 Australian Geographic
Unearthing Australia’s climate history
“A most beautiful, and as far as South Australia is concerned, a rare phenomenon, was witnessed here last Thursday morning. At day break, and until after noon. Mount Lofty and the neighbouring mountains were seen
covered with snow. The effect was most striking. It would seem as though we had exchanged, during the night, our own mountains for those of Switzerland.”
– Adelaide Independent and Cabinet of Amusement, 12 August 1841.
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November . December 41
By looking at early weather data and documented records,
climate researchers have revealed that snow was a regular feature
of the southern Australian climate in the 1800s, and heatwaves
weren’t nearly as frequent as they are today. The main painting
here, by J. Hitchen, depicts a heavy snowfall on the Adelaide Hills
in 1841, which was reported in a local newspaper. The photo below
shows a snowball fi ght in front of Mount Loft y House on Mount
Loft y Summit Road in Crafers, 13km from Adelaide, in 1905.
FEW PEOPLE REALISE that snow was once a common occurrence for southern Australia’s climate.
Historical records help document impacts of past weather extremes such as heatwaves, fl oods, droughts and even snow. Now scientists are using these fas-
cinating resources to uncover more about Australia’s climate history and also shed light on modern severe weather events. A clearer understanding of Australia’s climatic past lies buried in colonial-era records and documents such as weather journals and ships’ logs, as well as photographs, old newspapers, sketches and paintings. And yet it’s estimated that only half of all the old weather diaries available globally have been analysed. Even once a record is rediscovered, there’s still the matter of transferring all the handwritten data into digital format, which makes it easier to access for research purposes. Computers have trouble reading cursive numbers and words, especially in tabulated formats like those used for meteorological observations, so this research relies on people. And that’s where citizen scientists can really help – by transcribing centuries-old handwriting in the pages of historical weather diaries.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DR JOËLLE GERGIS, senior lecturerin climate science and director of Climate History Australia at the Australian National University, Canberra,
is using historical records to reconstruct the country’s climate variability and extremes.
climate once experienced snow regularly and that heatwaves are now occurring more often. Climate History Australia is currently rolling out citizen science projects across Australia to help piece together more of Australia’s old weather records. Recent efforts have focused on closing an eight-year gap in Adelaide’s daily weather record from 1848 to 1856. Volunteers have digitised more than 4000 days’ worth of data from weather diaries kept at the Adelaide Surveyor General’s Office, which researchers have now begun to analyse.
It was a combination of 15 years of dedicated research and pure luck that led to the discovery of the weather journals in Adelaide. Professor Rob Allan, head of the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative and an Australian based at the UK Met Office, was the first to locate them through an online search of the National Archives of Australia. Rob immediately understood the immense value and significance of these records, and asked the citizen science unit of the Australian Meteorological Association to photograph them. Researchers then uploaded pages of the weather journals online, in the hope they’d attract volunteers to help transcribe them. P
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To help build a picture of 19th-century
weather events and patterns,
Dr Joëlle Gergis consults old Australian
newspapers in the State Library of
Victoria, Melbourne, in search of past
weather reports and news items.
“Australia is no stranger to extreme weather and climate – from drought to bushfires, heatwaves and floods. We need to look at the past to better understand the future,” Joëlle explains. “Climate change is making extreme weather events worse than they were in the past because they are now occurring in the background of a climate that is 1°C warmer than it was in the past. The question is, how will a hotter climate impact the extremes we will face in the future?”
Early weather records provide scientists with much detail about Australia’s climate before the Bureau of Meteorology’s official records began in the early 1900s. “While about 100 years of data is pretty good, given that Australia’s climate is prone to large swings in things like temperature and rainfall, hav-ing a longer daily record is really helpful for understanding long-term changes in our weather,” says Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climate history researcher at the University of Melbourne. “Information from natural data sources like tree rings and ice cores tells us about year-to-year and decade-to-decade changes in our climate. But with daily weather records, we can start to understand the specific conditions that occurred.
“This means we can learn more about individual extreme events like heatwaves and storms – events that cause a lot of damage and that are changing as the planet continues to warm.”
Most information about the world’s climate before the 1900s currently comes from Northern Hemisphere sources. Having historical weather data for Australia would allow scientists to better understand changes specific to the Southern Hemisphere.
Research published in June by the Climate History Australia team presented the longest daily temperature record for Australia back to 1838. It revealed the southern Australian
“We need to look at
the past to better
understand the future.”
42 Australian Geographic
“WE TEND TO think science was inex-
act 175 years ago. In mete-orology, that’s not always the case,” says Mac Benoy, the Australian Meteoro-logical Association’s citizen science project manager. “Some of the fi rst formal weather observations in British colonies were carried out by the Royal Engineers who were central to the functioning of many British outposts. For example, the Adelaide Survey Department, under the guidance of Royal Engineer Colonel Edward Charles Frome, began formal recordings in 1839 – most likely acting on a memoran-dum from the UK Colonial Secretary. The responsi-bility for Adelaide’s daily weather observations was then passed on to Arthur Henry Freeling from 1849. Trained as surveyors, Frome and Freeling understood
the need for accuracy, with trained observers using standard instruments and taking exact readings at specifi ed times. This explains why these old weather records are oft en so consistent and metic-ulous.” Dr Linden Ashcroft adds that while observa-tions in these old records are useful, it’s important to note they weren’t taken using the standard method now used by the Bureau of Meteorology. “So we have to be careful before doing detailed scientifi c analysis,” she says. “For example, the thermometers and barometers used were oft en big, elaborate instru-ments prone to accuracy issues over time as the wood they were made from expanded. The World Mete-orological Organization has very clear guidelines now on how and where weather stations should be set up, but these guidelines didn’t exist in the 1800s. This can also have a big impact on the accuracy of historical weather data, but we can account for all of those fac-tors when we’re analysing it in the present day.”
The test of timeHistoric science can be just as
meticulous as its modern counterpart.
AUSTRALIA’S CLIMATE CITIZEN SCIENCE projects are a regional eff ort within the ongoing global program of ACRE. Data rescue projects are underway around the
globe, but most are only able to secure funding for a few years at a time. Many have chosen to use the popular citizen science platform Zooniverse.
Earlier this year, Rainfall Rescue in the UK collated 65,000 pages by 16,000 volunteers, producing 5.25 million measure-ments covering the years 1677–1960. Southern Weather Discov-ery is working with both volunteers and Microsoft AI for Earth to build a library to help teach computers how to transcribe weather records from New Zealand, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
“It’s hard to know for sure, but probably only half of the known historical weather observations have been digitised so far, and the world loses about 500,000 old records each day,” Rob says. “While most people tend to think of weather observations as being land-based, it’s important to note that a lot of this historical data coming from the colonial period comes from marine-based ship logs. This kind of data can
The Adelaide Surveyor General’s weather folios, which begin in
1843, have been transcribed this year by a citizen science project
in which volunteers digitise detailed handwritten daily records
and observations into searchable online historical weather data.
Adelaide’s two mid-19th-century Surveyors
General (L–R) Colonel Edward Charles Frome
and Sir Arthur Freeling.
Weather monitoring equipment in the Adelaide
Observatory grounds
in 1880.
November . December 43
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44 Australian Geographic
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be considered really valuable given that 71 per cent of our planet is oceans.” The ACRE-led international effort has made a small dent in this, but, Rob says, there is much more to do.
“We are working to streamline the flow of the data we have rescued from its recovery to digitisation to analysis and mod-elling,” he explains. “And we, of course, share the data with anyone who wants it.”
He says citizen science is the area that has the most potential for further growth in historical climatology and he’s optimistic this will be boosted in the near future by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Of the two citizen science projects that Climate History Australia is presently working on, one is exploring documents from the Adelaide Surveyor General’s Office from 1843 to 1856. The other is investigating Perth Observatory records from 1880 to 1900.
Wendy Howe has been volunteering on both. “One of the most enjoyable aspects is reading about the very florid, formal and evocative weather descriptions,” she says.
Wendy became so fascinated by the work that she has also helped the researchers collate further information. In the State Library of Western Australia’s catalogue, she found a photo of Government Astronomers Cooke and Curlewis, who made the Perth records she’s helping to transcribe.
“I can easily imagine these proud, professional men diligently recording weather data in their very formal writing style,” she says, pointing to the photo. “See how important they look!”
Joëlle says the location of the Perth records is particularly important because south-western WA is one of the most sen-sitive regions to climate change.
“It is located in the path of the southern storm track, which is starting to shift south towards Antarctica. This has reduced rainfall in the region, which has led to the need for desali-nation plants to secure the city’s water supply during periods of drought,” she says. “What is amazing about the Perth Observatory journals is that our initial inventory suggests it is a complete daily record, which is quite a rare find. It’s phenomenal that in 20 years, only one day is missing.”
A note at the bottom of the journal explains that an observer was sick on that particular day, so no observations were made. The note went on to record that “this is no excuse and other arrangements will be made in future”.
“One of things I appreciate most about working with his-torical weather data is just how dedicated the observers were to their task,” Linden says. “Most historical weather observations don’t come from trained scientists. They are from farmers, engineers, astronomers, telegraph operators or ministers – people who were interested in the weather and climate of their new place. “This kind of dedication to the task inspires me to make the most of their efforts and ensure we can use this past information to prepare us for the future.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION or to find out how to become involved
in these citizen science projects, visit: climatehistory.com.au
AG
“Our initial inventory suggests
it is a complete daily record,
which is quite a rare find.”
Sydney-based citizen science volunteer Wendy
Howe has gone beyond the
initial transcribing of old
records to engage in further
research work.
Chas Yeates, W. Earnest
Cooke, Harold B. Curlewis,
H.M. Joslun and R.B. Aclaud
(L–R), pictured in 1900,
took observations at the
Old Observatory, Perth,
between 1880 and 1900.
© A
Ishe
Bes
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STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT PORTELLI
Underwater photography is helping shed light on Australia’s mysterious seadragons.
MASTERS OF DISGUISE
46 Australian Geographic
With its plant-like appendages,
a leafy seadragon cleverly
blends in with vegetation in shallow
water along the SA coastline.
November . December 47
BECAUSE I GREW UP IN SYDNEY, the ocean was always an intrinsic part of my life. But it wasn’t until I learnt to scuba dive in my late teens that I really began to appreciate how Australia’s ocean waters are home to so many creatures found nowhere else
in the world. Among the most spectacular are the seadragons, a group of remarkable fish that have fascinated me since I first heard of them about 25 years ago. Now I’m committed to learning as much as I can about these intriguing animals and I’m using my images to help protect them.
SEADRAGONS BELONG TO the family Syngnathidae. There are just three species of seadragon and they only occur in the temperate waters of the Great Southern Reef (GSR), which
spans Australia’s southern coasts (see AG 139), covering some 71,000sq.km along roughly half of the continent’s land mass from New South Wales to Western Australia. A biodiversity hotspot largely dependent on kelp forests and other large seaweeds, the GSR supports diverse endemic species in nutrient-rich waters.
The three seadragon species are visually distinct. The weedy (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) and leafy (Phycodurus eques) seadragons are better known than the third, the ruby seadragon (Phyllopteryx dewysea), which was only recently discovered and can be identified by its bright red colour. The weedy, also known as the common, is easily distinguished from the leafy by its small, less-ornate fins – a long dorsal one low on its back and a pectoral fin located up on its neck – that oscillate rapidly to provide propulsion through the water. Situated close to its tail, the dorsal fin provides forward movement. The pectoral fin allows the fish to steer and change direction.
All seadragons feed on small, shrimp-like crustaceans, their favourites being the mysids, or sea lice, which swim in swarms. Because they lack a true stomach, seadragons have no capacity for food storage and so need to eat continuously. Their eyes move independently of each other, allowing them to focus on objects located just beyond their pipe-like snouts. This means they can target tiny crustaceans in close proximity. Mysids are fast-moving, so the nearer a seadragon can get, the better its chance of catching one.
Adult leafy seadragons have an average length of 35cm, while the weedy grows up to about 45cm. It’s not known how long these fish live in the wild but in captivity they have survived for as long as nine years, almost twice as long as seahorses.
Weedy seadragons breed during the warmer months, from October to late February. But they have more than one breeding period because they’ve been seen with eggs at other times of the year. Leafy seadragons begin pairing up in September and a first brood of eggs is seen by October or November. A second brood is common and can occur in late December or January.
A brood takes up to eight weeks to hatch, and, as for seahorses, incubation is the sole responsibility of the male: the eggs are
fertilised as they’re transferred from the female to the male. Each brood consists of about 250 eggs, which the male carries along a spongy patch on the underside of his tail. Until it’s ready to hatch, each egg is housed in an individual cup-like indentation in this pulpy area, which has increased blood flow to enrich the eggs during incubation.
The eggs are brightly coloured and vary in weedy seadragons from pink to dark purple – they’re pinkish-orange in the leafy. Their hatching is staggered and assisted by the male who shakes his tail or rubs it over seaweed and seagrass to encourage the hatchlings, each just 4–7mm, to emerge.
The tiny seadragons are then independent and on their own, relying on camouflage for protection until fully grown. Newly hatched seadragons live at first off the last of their yolk sacs, which initially remain attached to them. Then they hunt tiny zooplankton until their snouts become large enough to take juvenile mysids.
Adult seadragons have few known predators. Most are success- fully duped by the seadragons’ sophisticated camouflage, and any would-be predators are usually deterred by the tough bony plates under a seadragon’s skin.
48 Australian Geographic
A leafy seadragon (above) has eyes that move independently of
each other, which allows them to focus up close on fast-moving prey.
This weedy seadragon (below) hovers above a Posidonia seagrass
meadow at Rapid Bay, SA.
Weedy and leafy seadragons inhabit shallow water, 5–25m deep, where their habitat varies from seagrass meadows to under- water forests of kelp and other seaweed. They often occur in vegetation near long jetties teeming with other marine life.
As well as having those leaf-like appendages that enable them to blend in among seaweed and seagrasses, they can also grad-ually change colour to match their surroundings. To complete their clever subterfuge, they mimic the swaying movements of the marine vegetation around them.
IN 1996 A COALITION of researchers and community organis- ations established DragonSearch to collect data on wild sea- dragon populations across Australia. The work and long-term
commitment of the program’s South Australia project manager, Tony Flaherty, several project officers, and marine scientist Janine Baker, together with the efforts of the diving community across the country, has led to better understanding of where seadragons occur and more accurate estimates of their population numbers. It has also revealed key insights into the biology (such as breeding times), habitat and behaviour of these remarkable fish.
During the late 1990s, before seadragons and their relatives became formally protected under SA government legislation in 2006, a code of conduct for diving with the fish was devel-oped in conjunction with community groups. This was recently updated to recognise the increasing numbers of interactions between the fragile creatures and divers.
A seven-year monitoring program by DragonSearch divers and SA project managers identified and tracked individual seadragons at one of the popular diving locations in SA, but other research is ongoing. Using the online citizen science platform iNaturalist, curated by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, contributors are now also being encouraged to submit seadragon photos. Researchers are using these to collect data about seadragons’ geographic locations, frequency and relative population sizes.
“The aim of the long-term research is to identify site- association of seadragons, including the identification and monitoring of individuals, and to highlight sites suitable for increased protection and management of potential impacts,” Janine explains.
November . December 49
A male weedy seadragon
carries and incubates a brood
of up to 250 eggs along a spongy
patch on the underside of his tail.
The eggs are fertilised as
they’re transferred from
the female to the male.
“Our long-term work in SA aims to also create a sense of engagement and ownership in the community.”
Recognising seadragon individuals is not easy. Researchers closely examine the animals’ faces, snouts, heads and bodies to identify them. Variations in facial and body patterns, unique markings and distinctive features such as missing tails or append-ages also help. Seadragon identification work has been underway in SA since 1999, and the results have been enormously benefi-cial in increasing knowledge about seadragon biology and those population dynamics.
Advances in image-matching technologies are now also being used for seadragon identification, including a new program called SeadragonSearch, which uses software from Wild Me, a US-based not-for-profit company that supports citizen science. Its Wildbook software allows seadragon researchers to automate the matching process by using artificial intelligence to increase the speed and accuracy with which they can analyse images sub-mitted by divers. This allows for more effective monitoring of seadragon populations.
THE LEAFY SEADRAGON is SA’s state marine emblem and a must-see for anyone diving in the state. It has also become a powerful symbol for the need for conservation
of SA coastal habitats and for Australia’s ocean environments in general. The flipside of this high exposure is that poaching has become a major issue in some areas, despite the seadragons’ protected status. As with many other marine species, seadragons are also facing the triple threat of climate change, pollution and habitat destruction, the latter being a particular problem. Their success as a species has relied heavily on the availability of special- ised habitats that enable them to blend in, such as forests of kelp and other seaweeds, and seagrass beds. But these are now under pressure from coastal development and climate change, and the consequences for seadragons are potentially catastrophic.
Marine ecologist John Turnbull is a research officer with the Underwater Research Group of NSW, a scuba diving club and
community organisation dedicated to furthering underwater exploration and sharing information about Australia’s marine ecosystems through citizen science. A key project is weedy sea- dragon monitoring run in collaboration with researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Sydney Institute of Marine Science. The project relies on images taken by citizen scientists at dive sites in NSW, Victoria, SA and Tasmania.
John and his team encourage divers and underwater photog-raphers to return to the same sites regularly and photograph the same individuals over several years. They also educate divers on how to shoot photos in ways that are most useful for comparing data. Each new seadragon photograph is analysed and added to an image database. “This information becomes invaluable and allows scientists to extend the reach of their research,” John says.
For Dr David Booth, a UTS marine ecology professor, the weedy seadragon program is critical in helping researchers better understand the species, its behaviours, and habitats. He says that building this knowledge will help ensure the conservation of these marine animals: “Research is looking at genetics and envir- onmental effects around southern Australia, but the fragility of the species and their retreating habitat is what concerns many scientists.” With a suspected decline in population sizes, David says it’s vital to gather as much information as possible now.
Despite these indications of a potential reduction in sea- dragon numbers, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species changed the status of weedy seadragons from near threatened to least concern in their most recent assessment. David believes the IUCN assessment needs urgent updating. And that, he adds, makes the current suite of citizen science projects vital.
“This research and the distribution of accurate information is important to convince governments and local councils to support efforts to ensure the survival of the species and look at habitat protection plans.”
50 Australian Geographic
TO SEE more of Scott’s stunning seadragon images, go to:
australiangeographic.com.au/159
A diver observes a leafy seadragon in
its natural habitat. In one citizen science
project, participants dive the same sites
regularly to record seadragon sightings.
Poaching has
become a major
issue in some areas,
despite their
protected status.
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Exhibition open now !Don’t miss the chance to see these amazing images on display.
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52 Australian Geographic
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STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY QUENTIN CHESTER
Indigenous rangers, scientists, conservationists and pastoralists are working together to ensure the Kimberley
remains one of the world’s great wildlife havens.
54 Australian Geographic
THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS
November . December 55
Danggu Geikie Gorge appears placid late in
the Dry. But the abrupt colour change on its
limestone flanks betrays the high-water mark
of the mighty Fitzroy River at peak flow.
Protecting the river’s natural and cultural vigour is
among the region’s most pressing challenges.
Widespread across the Kimberley,
the region’s totemic boab tree is at
its most statuesque amid the rugged
limestone ridges of the Oscar Range.
Dawn light is cast across
spinifex-clad Fitzroy Bluff in the heart of the
Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges. With summits
nudging 1000m, this prodigious sandstone
arc spans more than 550km, effectively
cradling the entire Kimberley plateau.
58 Australian Geographic
WE’RE BARELY A METRE off the ground when our helicopter lurches and drops from a cliff top into the valley below. Bluff s of ochre sandstone whoosh by the open passenger door. Ahead, a sweep of savan-
nah grassland reaches to the horizon. We’re aloft on the edge of Bunuba country, whirring along the Fitzroy River as it twists down gorges and tree-fl anked channels through the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges (formerly the King Leopold Ranges).
This is the famously huge Kimberley plateau, in north-western Australia. There’s no simple way to gauge the breadth of a landscape of this scale. But taking to the skies is a good start. From a chopper, the plateau’s epic, fortress-like character is laid bare. Exposed is a potent mix of habitats, and it’s plain to see how this frontier is refuge for so many distinctive plants and animals. From up here another prospect looms – the daunting task of managing a place six times the size of Tasmania and in many parts just as rugged.
No surprise then that helicopters play a starring role. “They’re our workhorses,” says fi eld ecologist Jamie Dunlop in a proper English accent through the chopper’s headset. “We use them to access survey sites that would be otherwise impossible to reach. They’re also essential to everything from fi re management to our annual croc census.” Right on cue Jamie, a suburban Londoner who embraced the wilds of Australia to pursue a life in science, points out two freshwater crocodiles basking on the banks of the Fitzroy below. Jamie’s plied his trade as an ecologist across the country, but for him the Kimberley’s outsized charms have been hard to match.
It might look like these upper reaches of the Fitzroy on the conservation property Mornington Sanctuary are a timeless scene of primeval splendour. Yet they are among the most carefully curated landscapes in the Kimberley. Since 2001 Jamie’s employer, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), has recast the fate of this former cattle property (see Held in Reserve, AG 94). Together with the lateraddition of neighbouring Marion Downs, it’s a 6000sq.km expanse now overseen with a single-mindedgoal: restoring the naturalorder to bolster the survivalof native wildlife. Many of the beneficiaries are
pocket-sized marsupials and native rodents, plus small birds such as the endangered Gouldian fi nch and purple-crowned fairy-wren – not the kind of creatures you spot from a chopper. Yet one of the AWC’s biggest initiatives to help them thrive is writ large across the landscape.
FROM ABOVE, MORNINGTON appears as a mix of russet-brown burnt areas inter-spersed with swathes of unburnt woodland
and spinifex. This mottling is a legacy of the AWC’s EcoFire program, which aims to mimic a traditional Aboriginal approach to caring for country by using a patchwork of small burns early in the dry season. This helps secure areas of old-growth vegetation that are crucial for wildlife, as well as curbing the spread of large, devastating bushfi res late in the season.
The gains from this strategy, for both con-servation and pastoralism, have prompted Mornington’s neighbours to join the fray. EcoFire is now used across 11 properties span-ning 30,000sq.km, making it the nation’s largest
privately operated fi re management program. As well as deploying fi re crews on the
Jamie Dunlop checks
a camera at Roses
Pool in Mornington
Sanctuary, a monitoring
site for the endangered
northern quoll.
The Gouldian fi nch
benefi ts from AWC fi re
management practices
that help safeguard its
feeding habitat.
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November . December 59
ground, the annual scheme sees more than 50,000 incendiaries dropped by helicopters to initiate targeted burns. Since 2007 this eff ort has more than halved the number of highly destructive hot, late-season bushfi res on the AWC’s Kimberley properties.
Ongoing ecological checks help shape the pattern and sched-ule of these prescribed burns. Ecologists conduct a range of detailed fauna and plant surveys across more than 50 sites, to keep a fi nger on the biodiversity pulse. “The idea is to main-tain our standard monitoring to watch the trends and detect any changes,” explains Dr Karen Young, one of Mornington’s wildlife ecologists.
It’s not just raging late-season fi res that pose a conservation risk. Other core threats are the damage caused by large, intro-duced herbivores such as cattle, donkeys and horses, plus the toll on native animals captured by feral cats. Research reveals, Karen notes, that these stresses can interact to compound the damage. Cats, for example, can exploit high-intensity fi re scars to maximise their hunting success. There are other challenges too – feral pigs, invasive weeds, cane toads and the upheavals of climate change are all fraying the region’s natural resilience.
Against this backdrop, Karen’s four-year stint at Mornington has been more than just a commitment to science: “Living and working in a remote place, you respond to the landscape and seasons – you know it on a personal level.” As reports continueto disclose a rising tally of environmental loss throughout
northern Australia, the Kimberley’s status as a wildlife bastion grows stronger by the year. “When it comes to conservation in Australia, it’s the jewel in the crown,” Karen says. “The north-west is one of the last refuges for species like the golden bandicoot and northern quoll. This is the only part of mainland Australia that hasn’t had any mammal extinctions. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe; the region faces the same pressures that have caused species to decline elsewhere.”
As well as Mornington showcasing the AWC’s stewardship fl air, the skills honed here are being shared across the region. The AWC collaborates with Indigenous groups, pastoralists and government agencies to help tend to a staggering 43,000sq.km of the Kimberley. And they’re not alone.
Environs Kimberley, Bush Heritage Australia, World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy are among other not-for-profi t organisations supporting environmental eff orts throughout the region. Yet research, generous benefaction and well-worded policy only go so far. To get the job done you need people on the ground and communities out bush. In this supremely
Many of the benefi ciaries are pocket-sized marsupials and native
rodents, plus small birds.
The Fitzroy River carves its way through
the Wunaamin Miliwundi
Ranges before breaking
free of the high country
and swinging westward
to King Sound.
Helicopters are indispensable for
conservation in the
region – for wildlife
surveys, fi re management,
and accessing the
stone country in the
north-west.
60 Australian Geographic
remote corner of the continent, the future ultimately rests with the power of locals who know their country best.
Downstream of Mornington Sanctuary, the Fitzroy River breaks free from the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges. Before swinging westward to King Sound, it traverses a landscape of open plains and ancient limestone ranges, including the dra-matic Danggu Geikie Gorge. In late 2015 the Bunuba people’s 15-year fight ended when they finally secured Native Title over 6500sq.km of this expanse.
Conservation gains aside, the most profound change wrought across the Kimberley during the past two decades has been the granting of Native Title claims over large tracts of traditional country. Working with government, the Kimberley Land Council and its partners have also helped many claimant groups secure Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs). Together, at least seven major IPAs encompass 60 per cent of the entire region, including the outstanding biodiversity strongholds in the far north-west.
The formal recognition of Indigenous rights to manage country has renewed a push to work in the landscape, as a way to uphold tradition and build a future for communities. Among the Bunuba people, as with other groups, that momentum drove a long process of coming together to map out priorities. The Jalangurru Muwayi Bunuba Healthy Country Plan details tasks such as managing fire and wildlife, as well as responsibil-ities for protecting important cultural areas and values.
FOR YOUNG BUNUBA RANGERS based at Fitzroy Crossing, including Jonil Marr and Danielle Brooking, the work strengthens ties to landscape and also with elders and tra-
ditions. “I like going out on country, looking after country, protecting our sacred sites and our paintings and all that,” Jonil says. More than 100 Indigenous rangers – both men and women – now work across the Kimberley to restore traditional burning practices, safeguard culturally significant wildlife and manage threats such as weeds and feral species. Jobs with these programs are highly prized. “Lots of schoolkids really look up to being a ranger in the future,” Danielle says.
Conservation organisation Bush Heritage Australia and the Broome-based advocacy group Environs Kimberley (EK) have a long association working with this community and continue to help facilitate the Healthy Country Plan, which guides rangers in making decisions on country. As well as the township of Fitzroy Crossing, a busy stretch of the Great Northern Highway, major pastoral businesses nearby and some of the busiest parks in the region, the Bunuba people have a lot on their doorstep. Of major importance is maintaining the natural and cultural integrity of the Fitzroy River itself.
In big wet-season years this river is Australia’s most potent, with estimated flows of about 30,000 cubic metres per second, but in drought years it can barely flow. During recent decades a range of proposals to dam the river and exploit its flows have been mooted. The latest involves a large-scale irrigation scheme
The rugged north-
west is home to a range
of compact macropods,
including this species,
the usually elusive
monjon, Australia’s
smallest rock-wallaby.
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November . December 61
to grow fodder crops for cattle on Fossil Downs, Liveringa and Nerrima, all pastoral properties owned by mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
EK was established in 1996 to support Bunuba and other traditional owners in their quest for permanent protections for the river. It claims a buff er zone is needed and that by securing 9 per cent of the catchment almost 90 per cent of the river’s channels and wet-lands could be protected from the impacts of irrigation, dams and mining. Parallel with this campaign history, EK has been engaged in on-ground practical projects with Indigenous ranger groups for more than a decade. Program manager Dr Malcolm Lindsay stresses these are collaborative eff orts from beginning to end. “We are research partners and also play a bit of a brokering role,” he says.
“We keep an eye on funding and if a government grant comes up that f its with the needs of a ranger group then we can help with the application. In the end, though, they’re the ones making the decisions. The important thing is recognising the power of the established governance system.”
EK maintains strong ties to the Bunuba rangers and, closer to Broome, with the Yawuru commu-nity. To the south they work alongside rangers from the Karajarri Traditional Lands Association whose country extends from the upper reaches of Eighty Mile Beach inland into the Great Sandy Desert.
Since 2011 EK has also partnered with the Bardi Jawi and Nyul Nyul rangers to care for the endangered monsoon vine thickets dotting the coastal dunes of the Dampier Peninsula. Local communities share an intimate understanding of these rainforest pockets as nurturing spaces, off ering food, water, timber and medicine, as well as being places of ceremony and law. Right across the Kimberley, opportunities to respect and sustain this kind of inheritance are at least as important as any ecological reckoning. “Here, cultural knowl-edge is integral to conservation,” Malcolm says.
Head east from the Dampier Peninsula and these opportunities multiply spectacularly.
Although scarcely known to the out-side world, the rugged north-west coast
and hinterlands are among Australia’s most robust wildlife realms. Since 2011 Bush Heri-tage has maintained a pioneering partnership with the Wunambal Gaambera
Although scarcely known to the outside world, the rugged north-west coast and hinterlands are
among Australia’s most robust wildlife realms.
The black-fronted dotterel is a wader found
Australia-wide that
forages for insects and
molluscs on the edges of
freshwater lagoons and
waterways, including
those of the Kimberley.
As waterholes in Windjana Gorge shrink
during the dry season,
dozens of freshwater
crocodiles congregate
on prime basking spots
at the water’s edge.
Danielle Brooking (at left ) and
Jonil Marr are among some
30 Bunuba rangers who work in
the fi eld alongside Bush Heritage’s
Lachie Clark on landscape and
cultural management projects.
Continued page 64SC
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1 Cape Leveque
2 Windjana Gorge NP
3 Danguu Geikie
Gorge NP
4 Dalmanyi (Bell Gorge)
5 Mitchell Plateau
6 Kalumburu
7 Purnululu NP
8 Lake Argyle
9 Broome Bird
Observatory
10 Wuuyuru
(Bigge Island)
EVEN FOR A CONTINENT replete with
wonders, the Kimberley is an extraor-
dinary area. It endures among the world’s
most imposing strongholds of Indigenous
culture and unbridled natural diversity.
At twice the size of Victoria, the region
is famously expansive. But size alone
can’t account for the impact of the place.
Rather, it’s a potent mix of remoteness,
antiquity, mercurial seasons and rugged,
mostly inaccessible, terrain that powers
its mystique as a land apart.
It’s home to Western Australia’s only
rainforests, the country’s most intricate
and island-rich shoreline, arguably the
world’s greatest repository of ancient
rock art and a brace of plant and
animal species found nowhere else. In
the resilience of its Indigenous communi-
ties, along with the Kimberley’s daunting
natural defences, lie the foundations of a
future like no other region.
Places of interest:
PROTECTING THE KIMBERLEY
Carved by the Lennard
River, Windjana Gorge is
among the deepest and
most accessible gorges
slicing through the
Napier Range.
FACTCovering 423,517sq.km,
the Kimberley region is
three times the size
of England.
64 Australian Geographic
Jilirr is one of dozens
of secluded bays and
beaches skirting the
Dampier Peninsula.
The shack here was used
by filmmaker Warwick
Thornton for his SBS
documentary The Beach.
With wry humour, Bundy Djalgarda guides
visitors to Cape Leveque
through the coastal
bush and local lore of
Bardi culture.
people. Their “living home” is Uunguu, a 25,000sq.km arc of country from Kalumburu to Prince Regent NP and includes Punami Uunpuu (formerly Mitchell Falls). Bush Heritage assists Uunguu rangers with a range of projects including targeted fire management to protect significant rainforest pockets.
TO THE SOUTH LIES the equally imposing sea and land country of the Dambimangari community. It’s a “gob-smackingly beautiful” property supporting “an amazing
suite of biodiversity,” says Peter McKay, the north-west regional operations manager of the AWC. In 2017 the AWC entered into a groundbreaking partnership in which the community receives a set fee plus AWC expertise in support of Dambimangari’s Healthy Country Plan. In return, the AWC is able to help shore up the future for a host of threatened species, such as the northern quoll, golden-backed tree-rat and Kimberley brush-tailed phascogale.
Based on this partnership success, the Wilinggin Aboriginal Corporation and the AWC recently agreed to a similar collabo-ration. Spanning the heartland of Kimberley plateau country, the Wilinggin IPA is one of the region’s largest and most complex. As well as supporting Wilinggin rangers with land management and wildlife projects, AWC’s assistance with ‘right way’ burning programs are pivotal for habitat health and harnessing income for Wilinggin communities from the sale of carbon credits.
Peter admits these are ambitious partnerships. Aside from logistical challenges, the AWC will need to embrace a new level of consultation with the diverse groups of Indigenous leadership who maintain authority over the plateau. But it’s a big picture
worth conjuring. If you consider the area’s national parks and other protected natural locations such as the IPAs and AWC properties, Peter says, this would be one of the world’s largest conservation areas. “When you think about it like that it’s kind of inspiring stuff,” he says.
Coming together to share access to landscape, Indigenous knowledge and practical science offers the region a future that echoes the values of traditional owners. The Native Title hold-ers here are uniquely placed to shape their own conservation economy. For that to sustain entire communities, many believe it has to broaden beyond a focus on wildlife and ecology. The goal is more jobs on country that strengthen language and culture. That means more Indigenous-led businesses, be they in agriculture, hospitality, art or tourism.
The Dampier Peninsula is like nowhere else in the Kimberley. Spanning nearly 10,000sq.km, it is a subtle sprawl of rolling savannah woodland, utterly different from the plateau’s craggy redoubts. The region’s signature is its vivid red Pindan soil, which defines the character of the place, from its unique plant
It’s a “gobsmackingly beautiful” property supporting “an amazing
suite of biodiversity”.
November . December 65
communities to the startling shoreline cliff s glowing crimson at sundown.
The Bardi-Jawi people are custodians of the peninsula’s apex. They’re saltwater people with a Healthy Country Plan buoyed by an active team of local rangers. The peninsula is also a visitor hotspot, boasting the highest density of Indigenous-owned tour-ism in Australia. With an enticing array of beaches and campsites, bush resorts, whale watching, pearl farms and cultural tours, the region attracts almost 40,000 visitors a year.
Most travellers arrive via Cape Leveque Road, the notoriously rough gutter of a track that barrels 200km north from Broome. A $65 million proj-ect to seal the remaining 90km of the road is due for completion by 2021. It is welcomed by many as a boost for tourism and securing safe, year-round access to the peninsula for locals.
Others are concerned that, if not prop-erly managed, the estimated 40 per cent increase in visitation will come at a cost to the environment and local communities.
Cape Leveque, at the tip of the peninsula, is home to Kooljaman, a popular community-owned wilderness camp.
Bardi man Bundy Djalgarda has been guid-ing cultural tours into the bush here for a decade. “It’s a good offi ce,” he says with a
smile. “And I get to help people understand more about the land and how Aboriginal people relate to it, their stories and their connection.”
Many of his relatives and family are engaged in tourism or work as rangers: “It means you got work on country and can look after signifi cant sites,”he says. “We also teach in schools – teaching songs and dance and ceremonies.”
To join Bundy on an afternoon stroll through Cape Leveque’s vine thickets is to enter a world where nature, language, family and seasons meld into one. He speaks swiftly in a quiet voice. Along the way he teases us with a sly question or two, an invitation to start reading the signs all around. A single fl ower, bird call or snake track in the sand kicks off another story, each with a link to ancestors or heralding a message out of nature’s calendar when the fi shing’s good or fruit is ready for harvest.
This session is yet another small reminder of what’s at stake in the Kimberley. Here there’s a font of knowl-edge – the gift of wisdom woven within a living ecology.
On the way back to camp, Bundy stops by a gubinge tree to show us its shrivelled fruit. This wasn’t about time-honoured lore but an omen, a warning of the present and our fal-tering climate. “If this tree could talk he’d tell us. He’d say things are diff erent,” Bundy says, with a sweep of his hand across the horizon. “He’d tell us all this is changing.” AG
Cape Leveque’s 13m-tall
lighthouse has
been aiding
vessels navigate
the Dampier
Peninsula to
enter King Sound
since 1911.
Cape Leveque’s ocean shoreline is one of
Australia’s defi nitive sundown encounters.
The fi ery pindan soil and local sandstone are Dampier
Peninsula hallmarks and the legacy of a long history
of high rainfall and deep weathering.
66 Australian Geographic
STORY BY JOHN PICKRELL
Ultimate survivor
November . December 67
The short-beaked echidna is found
from deserts to mountain peaks;
from Tasmania, across the Australian
mainland to southern New Guinea. Its
unique backwards-pointing feet give it
an advantage when digging. Echidnas
also use extended claws on the second
toes of the hind feet to scratch and
groom between the spines.
Australia’s most widespread mammal is one of our least understood. Now, pioneering research is unlocking the enigma of the echidna.
TAHLIA PERRY SHOWS me an extraordinary photograph of an echidna, which is testa-ment to the remarkable resilience of these animals in the face of bushfi res. The picture,submitted to her citizen science project EchidnaCSI, shows an animal with its spines
severed halfway along their length, giving it the appearance of having been trimmed into a fl at-top hairstyle.
“The echidna had this weird thing, where it looked like its spines had been cut, but actually it had been caught in a controlled burn,” explains Tahlia, who is based at the University of Adelaide. “It was a striking image…and our social media went pretty wild.”
Often, rather than attempt to outrun a fi re, echidnas simply burrow into the ground, or conceal themselves inside fallen logs. One of their many unique talents is that they can dig straight down on the spot, disappearing into the dirt in as little as a minute. They then enter a temporary hibernation-like state to conserve energy, and wait for the danger to pass. This ‘torpor’, which is also employed by echidnas in some cooler regions, sees them slow their heart rate, metabolism and temperature – breath-ing in and out as few as three times a minute. On rare occasions they may stay like this for weeks following a fi re, only emerging once their insect prey has returned to the environment.
But the echidna in the image, snapped by citizen scientist Geor-gina Swan following a hazard reduction burn in bush in northern Sydney, clearly hadn’t dug down far enough, and its spines were melted off . Tahlia explains that this might not have been painful for the animal, because the spines, being modifi ed hairs, are not living tissue. Although that particular image was taken in August last year, just before the catastrophic Black Summer fi re season got underway, pictures and reports emerged early this year of echidnas elsewhere with melted spines. In fact, along with wombats, which also take refuge underground, echidnas were some of the most commonly spotted mammal survivors emerging from the ashes of still-smouldering fi regrounds.
Dr Peggy Rismiller, who has studied echidnas for 30 years from her base at the Pelican Lagoon Research and Wildlife Centre on Kangaroo Island (KI), says that when the fi res blazed across the island in December and January, young echidnas were still in their nursery burrows, but during subsequent surveys she saw a number of them emerge unscathed. Adults dig in and manipulate dirt between their spines for insulation, she explains. Almost half of KI ultimately burnt, and, although some echidnas were no doubt killed, Peggy has found quite a few that bear no marks of having been through a fi re, as well as “others whose spines melted because they didn’t dig deep enough, but they have survived and are continuing their normal lives”.
Under more usual fi re conditions, right across Australia echidnas are able to survive better than other mammals. But with the Black Summer fi res “being so intense and burning such a large area, we’re unsure how many have survived”, Tahlia says. Nevertheless, given that the platypus and the echidna – both egg-laying monotremes – are creatures that have been around for tens of millions of years, Peggy isn’t surprised they are deft at navigating natural perils, such as bushfi res.
68 Australian Geographic
Monotremes are the “longest surviving” lineage of mammals, she says. “They were around with the dinosaurs and survived through greenhouse eff ects and ice ages, and if you’ve been around that long you know what you are doing.” Found from the wet rainforests of the north, through the arid centre to the alpine uplands of the south-east, the short-beaked echidna is Australia’s most widespread mammal. But perplexingly, its biology was almost completely unknown until about 30 years ago. Since then, populations on KI and Tasmania have been well studied by Peggy and University of Tasmania Associate Professor Stewart Nicol, unlocking many secrets about these enigmatic creatures. However, the echidnas on the Australian mainland have remained stubbornly elusive, something Tahlia is hoping to change.
“OF ALL THE Mammalia yet known, it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation,” English zoologist George Shaw wrote of the platypus in
1799. The echidna’s duck-billed cousin typically takes the crown as the world’s weirdest mammal, but Australia’s ‘spiny anteater’ certainly gives it a run for its money.
“Porcupine-like quills, a beak that’s a bit like a cross between a bird and an anteater, a pouch like a marsupial, legs point-ing in the direction that no other animal’s legs point: they’ve got this very odd combination of features,” says Jack Ashby, who specialises in Australian mammals and is manager of the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology in the UK.
As most people who have encountered them in the wild know, echidnas have excellent defensive measures, not least of which is rolling up into a prickly ball to present a formidable and potentially painful challenge to a hungry dingo or wedge-tailed eagle.
Tahlia Perry runs the EchidnaCSI
project, which is harnessing citizen
scientists to rapidly fi ll in the missing
pieces of the puzzle on these animals.
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November . December 69
“They were around with the dinosaurs and…if you’ve been around that long you know what you are doing.”
This echidna,
photographed halfway
through last year by
citizen scientist Georgina
Swan and uploaded to the
EchidnaCSI app, didn’t dig
down far enough during a
hazard reduction burn in
northern Sydney and had
its spines melted off.
Peggy Rismiller, on KI,
who has been tracking
echidnas in the wild for
three decades, has spent
more time observing
these monotremes than
anyone else in the world.
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CSI
Echidnas vary slightly in appearance
and biology across their huge range.
Tassie echidnas, such as this one, have
dense fur between the spines, which helps
keep them warm during cooler months.
70 Australian Geographic
When really spooked, an echidna will dig vertically “by shimmying its forelimbs in a way that clears the dirt under-neath it, allowing it to drill down into the soil, and then use its claws to lock into roots, pebbles, whatever, so it’s completely impossible to pick up”, Jack explains. “They can also move their spines individually, wedging them into cracks or between rocks, so you can’t lever them out, which is an absolutely amazing predator defence.”
Three long-beaked echidna species in New Guinea (see page 73), the short-beaked echidna, and the platypus are the only living monotremes. Long-beaked echidnas were once also present in northern Australia, but were thought to have gone extinct here 20,000 years ago. However, a long-beaked echidna pelt recently rediscovered at the Natural History Museum in London with a label noting it was collected in 1901 in Western Australia’s Kimberley, suggests they may have persisted in low numbers until much more recently (see Wild Australia, AG 122).
The monotreme lineage branched off from the ancestors of marsupials and placentals (the group to which most living mammals, including humans, belong) perhaps as long ago as 180 million years. Echidnas therefore retain some fascinating features that were present in early mammals and inherited from our reptilian ancestors. These include egg-laying and a sprawling gait, with legs held out to the sides, like lizards,
rather than directly underneath the body as they are in other mammals. That’s why platypuses and echidnas appear to waddle when on land, although this doesn’t stop echidnas trundling along at speed when they need to.
Echidnas probably evolved from platypus-like ancestors more than 20 million years ago. Today, monotremes have the lowest metabolic rate and body temperature of the mammals. An echid-nas body temperature typically sits at 31ºC to 33ºC, some 5ºC cooler than humans, although this can fluctuate by 6ºC to 8ºC in a day. In Tasmania, the Australian Alps and other colder parts of its range the species hibernates, at which time its temperature drops to as low as 4ºC.
Echidnas also have many peculiarities all their own, such as the hind feet pointing backwards, for digging, which baffled 19th-century European taxidermists. “Whenever I’m overseas, I go and see if their stuffed echidnas have got their feet pointing the right way,” Tahlia says. “When people were sending echidnas to museums, they didn’t realise the hind feet point backwards so there’s a whole bunch where the feet have been forced around to point forwards.” P
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Echidnas are found in a wider variety of habitats and climates than
any other mammal in Australia. Tasmanian echidnas, such as this one
near Cradle Mountain, enter a hibernation-like state and become
inactive during winter.
November . December 71
Echidna scats such as this hold much information. Citizen scientists
mail them from across Australia to Tahlia Perry for her EchidnaCSI
project, to be analysed for clues on diet, genetics and hormones.
supervisor, Professor Frank Grützner, devised the idea of a citizen science app to which people could upload sightings and photos. The data would help build the first detailed echidna distribution map covering all Australia. “People take photos of echidnas whenever they see them, and the app tracks the date, time and location, making everything as automated as possible,” Tahlia says.
Citizen scientists also collect and mail in echidna poo, which Tahlia is studying to build a database of DNA from various regions and to understand the diet and intestinal microbiome of the animal across its across range. Hormone traces could reveal stress levels and whether an echidna is sexually active or pregnant.
The scientists were unsure how people would react to the idea of hunting for echidna scats but “people love collecting poo”, Tahlia says. So far, the project has exceeded all expectations. In just three years, more than 10,000 sightings have been uploaded and eager participants have mailed in at least 400 poo samples – providing more data than it would have been possible for Tahlia and her colleagues to collect in decades working on their own.
“The public are really our saviours,” Tahlia adds. “People love echidnas and we see the passion for their conservation growing exponentially since the beginning of EchidnaCSI.” Frank’s group was involved in sequencing the platypus genome in 2008 and is currently working on mapping the echidna genome. Other projects are looking at monotreme sex chromosomes, sex-deter-mining genes and applications of the genetics of monotremes to understand and treat human diseases, such as cancer and diabetes.
WHEN PEGGY ARRIVED on KI from Germany in 1988, next to nothing was known of basic echidna biology. A young postdoc researcher who’d completed a PhD
on reptile physiology, she had half a grant to study tiger snakes and half a grant to study echidnas. “I thought it was interesting that I could work on an egg-laying mammal and a live-bearing reptile,” she explains, referring to the fact the young of tiger snakes hatch internally.
Echidnas lay their eggs into a temporary infolding of skin – a ‘pseudo-pouch’ – and Peggy’s first job was to find an egg so her Adelaide University supervisor, Professor Roger Seymour, could study its respiration rate. Peggy had only seen an echidna in a zoo before then. But the challenge of finding
The fact that their limbs are angled out to the sides and they have backwards-pointing feet and long, sickle-like claws, means they have another peculiar physiological trait. “They can reach backwards, around, up and over their backs, so their hind legs can scratch between their shoulders,” Jack says. “It’s very strange to watch; it looks like a complete dislocation.”
After George Shaw scientifically described the short-beaked echidna in 1792, it was another 92 years before anyone realised it was an egg-layer, like the platypus. Peggy says it’s an indication of how difficult echidnas are to study and observe in the wild.
“They are very elusive, secretive, cryptic and not attracted to anything – so basically finding them is being in the right place at the right time,” Peggy says, explaining that just to observe one echidna requires about 300 hours in the field, necessitating a level of tenacity and dedication that few other researchers have been able to muster. Since 1988 Peggy and thousands of volunteers have logged some 10,000–15,000 hours in the field, locating echidnas and attaching small radio transmitters to them to track their movements. Her decades of work have unravelled the secrets of how echidnas mate and reproduce.
THE ECHIDNA CONSERVATION Science Initiative – EchidnaCSI – began in 2017 as a way of collecting data to help understand and conserve echidnas, without having
to spend thousands of hours in the field, says Tahlia, who runs it as part of her PhD. “Echidnas are incredibly difficult to study in the wild: we have surprisingly little data about their populations across Australia,” she explains. Because few people have been prepared to put in the work on the mainland until now, there are huge knowledge gaps about echidna distribution, physiology and ecology. To remedy this, Tahlia and her Adelaide University
An echidna’s beak is formed by almost fused jaws, inside which there is
a long, mobile tongue that’s used to slurp up ants and other insects. It has
small eyes and poor vision, but excellent senses of smell and hearing.
Their limbs are angled out to the sides, they have backwards-pointing feet and long, sickle-like claws.
Continued page 74PH
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72 Australian Geographic
1 ELECTRORECEPTION:
Electroreceptive sensors
in platypus bills help them
to fi nd prey under water.
Echidnas have a less sensitive
version of this in their beaks,
which may aid locating ants
and termites in moist soil.
It’s a trait they likely inherited
from platypus-like ancestors.
2 BEAK: As adults, both the
platypus and echidna lack
teeth. Echidnas’ long, narrow
beaks can’t open like the
jaws of other mammals.
The diameter of the mouth is
only about 5mm, limiting the
size of prey they can take.
3 TONGUE: The
Tachyglossus part of
the short-beaked
echidna’s Latin
name means
‘fast tongue’ and
they can fl ick
Weird and wonderful
Two icons of the Aussie bush, the platypus and echidna, have a multitude
of monotreme-specifi c quirks that mark them out as unique among mammals.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANTHONY CALVERT
PLATYPUS
these 18cm-long append-
ages in and out up to 100
times a minute. This helps
them lick up as many as
40,000 ants or termites/day.
4 SPRAWLING GAIT: With
their limbs sticking out at
right angles to their bodies,
the lizard-style gait of the
platypus and echidna is
more akin to crocodiles
and goannas than
other mammals.
5 LEG SPURS: Male
platypuses have
venomous spurs
on their hind
feet, which can
deliver a debilitat-
ing sting. Male and
female echidnas
are also born with
spurs, which females
typically lose in ado-
lescence. Rather than
delivering venom they may
secrete chemicals used for
communication.
6 BACKWARDS FEET:
Echidnas’ hind feet are
twisted around to point
backwards, which helps
them push soil away as
they burrow.
7 NEOCORTEX: The
neocortex, which takes up
80 per cent of the brain in
humans and is linked to per-
sonality and reasoning,
fi lls about 50 per cent
of an echidna brain,
nearly twice the
size of even some of
the most intelligent
mammals. What they
use this for is a complete
mystery.
8 OLFACTORY BULB:
Echidnas have a highly
developed sense of smell,
and are the only animals
with olfactory bulbs so
enlarged in their brains
that they are highly folded.
This suggests smell is of
great importance to them,
perhaps for communication
with other echidnas.
9 STOMACH: Monotreme
stomachs are not the usual
highly acidic environments
that secrete enzymes called
pepsins to break down pro-
teins. This raises intriguing
questions as to how they
can kill viral and bacterial
pathogens in food.
10 CLOACA: Rather than
separate orifi ces for repro-
duction and excretion, the
platypus and echidna have a
single multi-purpose opening
called a cloaca. “Monotreme”is Latin for “single hole”.
1,2
4
5
4
7
ECHIDNA
2
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PLATYPUS Ornithorhynchus anatinus
IUCN: Near threatened (listed as endangered in South Australia)
DISTRIBUTION: Down Australia’s eastern seaboard from Cape York to Tasmania
SIZE: 43–50cm in length, 700g–2.4kg in weight
SHORT-BEAKED ECHIDNATachyglossus aculeatus
IUCN: Least concern (the KI subspecies is listed as endangered)
DISTRIBUTION: Found throughout Australia andin some parts of Papua New Guinea
SIZE: 30–45cm in length, 2–6kg in weight
EASTERN LONG-BEAKED ECHIDNA Zaglossus bartoni
IUCN: Vulnerable
DISTRIBUTION: Found across the central mountain ranges of New Guinea
SIZE: 60–100cm in length, up to 17kg in weight
WESTERN LONG-BEAKED ECHIDNA Zaglossus bruijni
IUCN: Critically endangered
DISTRIBUTION: Found in the Vogelkop Peninsula, in the west of Indonesia’s West Papua province
SIZE: 45–77cm in length, up to 16kg in weight
SIR DAVID’S LONG-BEAKED ECHIDNA Zaglossus attenboroughi
IUCN: Critically endangered
DISTRIBUTION: Known from one specimen collected in the Cyclops Mountains in the north of Papua Province in 1961
SIZE: 45cm in length, 5–8kg in weight
11 SEX CHROMOSOMES: All
mammals but monotremes
have two sex chromosomes
(XX in females; XY in males).
Female echidnas have 10X;
males have 5X4Y.
12 POUCH: The echidna
pseudo-pouch, created from
swollen mammary glands,
disappears when
a female is not
sexually active.
13FOUR-HEADED
PENIS: Unique
among mam-
mals, the
echidna penis
has four heads, only two
of which are used in each
mating, swelling to fi t the
female’s dual-branched
reproductive tract.
The two heads alternate
between matings.
The world’s only surviving species of monotreme,
the platypus and four echidnas, are found exclusively
in Australia and New Guinea.
Five living species of monotreme
6
2
MONOTREMES OF THE WORLD
Suborder Platypoda
Platypus
genus Ornithorhynchus
Suborder Tachyglossa
genus Tachyglossus
Short-beaked echidna Sir David’s
long-beaked echidna
Western long-beaked echidna
Eastern long-beaked echidna
November . December 73
genus Zaglossus
74 Australian Geographic
and catching one did not deter her. “I love challenges,” she says, and although ending up spending much of her life studying echidnas was an accident, it’s something she’s never regretted. “It was my karma, my good fate.”
At one point in that fi rst year, she and her now partner, Mike McKelvey, who started the Pelican Lagoon Research and Wildlife Centre in the early ’80s, were removing the transmitter from a study subject, when Peggy noticed something odd about the shape of the pseudo-pouch. “So we unrolled her, and there was a young that had just hatched,” she says. “That was sort of my light bulb going off , saying ‘Good grief, what don’t we know about this animal and how many assumptions have been made?’”
Before that, many people had assumed echidnas incubated and hatched their eggs in burrows, as platypuses do. But Peggy discovered they are laid into and hatch in the pseudo-pouch, which is formed when a female’s abdominal muscles draw in her swollen mammary glands to create an infolding of skin. At that point very few other people had observed newly hatched echidnas, so Peggy was gripped with awe and excitement.
“Unrolling that echidna and seeing the young, which looks like a little blob of jelly was the most amazing experience. The body was translucent, the lungs weren’t functioning yet, but you could see the heart,” she says. “We were able to very carefully remove it, weigh and measure it, and that started me on my way to looking at how echidnas reproduce. It’s just been a fantastic journey.”
An echidna egg is about the diameter of an Australian 5c coin, which happens to bear the image of an echidna, and hatchlings only fi ll about one-third the space inside that leathery egg. Eight newly hatched echidnas weigh as much as that coin, Peggy says.
Subsequent work showed that echidna hatchlings are almost foetal and respire through their skin for up to four days until their lungs develop. Peggy and Mike also found that on KI females carry their single egg in their pseudo-pouch for 10 days before it hatches, and then the hatchling for another 45–55 days. Once the babies, known as puggles, begin to develop sharp spines, their mothers dig a nursery burrow for them, where they
continue to suckle them for seven months. Females will go out to forage and return only to provide milk for about two hours once every fi ve days, at which time a puggle can take in an incredible 10–40 per cent of its body mass in milk. A defi ning trait of all mammals is that they produce milk. But egg-laying monotremes are unlike placental and marsupial mammals (the young of which develop in a womb and a true pouch, respec-tively), in that they have no teats or nipples.
The milk is instead suckled by the puggles from milk patches on the mother’s abdomen. Because this is a less sterile delivery mechanism than a teat, monotreme milk has remarkable anti-microbial substances, which are now being studied for human medical applications (see The puzzle of the platypus, AG 150).
July to September is the best time to see echidnas in the wild because these normally solitary animals form ‘echidna trains’, where up to 10 males will follow a female for many weeks hoping to mate with her. Peggy and Roger were the fi rst to observe and document echidnas mating, showing that females will eventually lie fl at on their stomachs while the suitors dig a circular trench or ‘mating rut’ around her. Finally, the most dominant male will shove the others out of the way, lie on his side and tuck his tail under her. The pair will then mate cloaca to cloaca.
IF YOU REALLY want to see echidnas, Peggy says, it’s better going to Tasmania than KI. She has about 40 study subjects over a 1500ha area. But in a similar sized area of Tasmania
Stewart Nicol has up to 200. Abundance is just one way in which fl uffi er-looking Tasmanian echidnas diff er to those on KI. Tassie echidnas hibernate for 4–5 months, something not seen on KI or across Australia’s arid zones. Stewart has also documented diff erences in how they mate, incubate eggs and raise young.
Tasmanian echidnas go into hibernation as early as January – which seems counterintuitive, given this is the warmest time of the year – and emerge to mate in May or June. Males emerge earlier and often seek out and mate with females even before they have fully awoken. Echidnas also hibernate in south-eastern Queensland and on Mt Kosciuszko at exactly the same time. So, rather than being entirely temperature driven, Stewart suspects hibernation is more to do with conserving energy over the periodwhen ants and other invertebrate prey are in shortest supply.
Before that, many people had assumed echidnas incubated and hatched their eggs in burrows, as platypuses do.
The tiny,
leathery
echidna egg
is only about the
diameter of a US dime or
an Australian 5c coin.
Echidnas are surprisingly accomplished swimmers. Cambridge
University’s Jack Ashby suspects they fl oat so well because their
quills are hollow, providing added buoyancy.
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OTO
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November . December 75
AG
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“We really don’t know why they do it,” he says. “It may be something that they need to do. In February–March the overall ecosystem productivity drops off , as things dry out, so I think they are getting less food for the eff ort during late summer and autumn.”
Presently, the short-beaked echidna is one species comprising fi ve diff erent subspecies. But could there be two species? Stewart’s latest work suggests there may be two broad kinds of echidna in Australia that have diff erent diets and, as a result, diff erent skull and beak shapes. The echidnas of WA, South Australia, KI and the centre of the continent are generally more arid-zone specialists, and tend to eat more ants and termites. Those of Tasmania and the east coast eat a much higher proportion of grubs, particularly cockchafer larvae, which are more abundant in those wetter regions. Tahlia’s work on the scats also suggests echid-nas take in some plant matter and fungi in addition to invertebrates.
ONE ISSUE WITH echidnas being so poorly surveyed and little known on the mainland is there is no way to tell if they are declining. Peggy’s research on the KI sub-
species – for which threats include feral cats, vehicle strikes and habitat loss – resulted in it being classifi ed as endangered in 2015.
Because mainland echidnas have been so understudied, they haven’t been seen as facing a conservation risk before, “but those are all the same threats we fi nd across the whole of Australia”, Tahlia says. She hopes EchidnaCSI will continue in the future, “and we can actually see some population trends over time, which we’ve never had the ability to do before”.
Stewart says that after such a long-running fi eld project (see AG 8), one of his favourite things about studying echidnas is
they “live so long that you can follow them for a long time and get to know a particular individual’s personality and behaviour”. Echidnas can live for 50 years or more, comparable to the life-span of an elephant, and an almost inconceivably long time for a small mammal, most of which don’t live beyond a decade.
Peggy also says it’s their sense of personality that sometimes delights her: “Echidnas I think like to have fun. We’ve watched echidnas climbing up on tree branches and then doing somersaults off , just as if they were playing. Echidnas also like to go for a swim, and we get reports about them swimming across dams when they could have just walked around.” Other stories from the Great Ocean Road tell of people attempting to ‘save’ echidnas from the surf only to watch them head straight back into the ocean again. “They are just an animal that intrigues everyone because they go their own way and do their own thing,” Peggy says.
Australians should know when they encounter an echidnathey are “seeing something very, very special”, she adds. “They have been around for so long, but are disappearing, and my biggest concern is that there isn’t enough information about echidnas on the mainland. They’re not considered threat-ened there, but there are places where they’ve gone extinct… They’re Australia’s most ubiquitous mammal, yet we have really ignored them.”
Echidnas have been bred successfully in
captivity. Babies, such as these at Taronga
Zoo in Sydney, are called puggles.
DOWNLOAD the EchidnaCSI app from the App Store or
Google Play. For more on the project: grutznerlab.weebly.com or
facebook.com/EchidnaCSI. To help understand the impact of
Black Summer, researchers are keen to hear from readers about how
echidnas fared in fi re-hit regions. Email: [email protected]
76 Australian Geographic
Black Summer showed that modern bushfire-mitigation strategies are failing.
Does the answer lie in restoring ancient Aboriginal burning practices?
November . December 77
He pauses, as if he senses movement, looks skyward, then places one hand on a scorched-black tree.
The devastation wrought by the Black Summer fires was raw and immense, especially for Aboriginal people who watched country and kin burn as never before with the deep-seated knowledge that if they’d been able to maintain cultural fire practices, developed during millennia before the arrival of Europeans, those fires would never have occurred in the way they did. This country has changed, and extreme fires fanned by climate change are a new force shaping Australian ecosystems.
Aboriginal fire practitioners such as Nook know there is another way, and seasoned firefighters are beginning to heed their call. They say that if cultural land management practices were widely reapplied, many parts of the country could be healed, even protected from future fires, with the resilience of healthy landscapes restored and the strength in communities renewed. But first, an ancient fire knowledge needs to be resurrected.
78 Australian Geographic
TRACES OF AN Australia markedly different from what we see now can be found in the ground. Glimpses are also recorded in the paintings and
journals of early British explorers. Before colonisation, smoke and fires regularly occurred – dotted across the country as far south as Tasmania – under the watchful eye of Aboriginal people actively managing the landscape, as they had done for tens of thousands of years.
Take a walk with Michael-Shawn Fletcher through the rainforests of Tasmania’s Surrey Hills today, and he’ll show you what remains. Not far from the coast, these rainforests snake along rivers and spread across high plains atop an otherwise mountainous landscape in the state’s rugged north-west. Occasionally, you might stumble into a patch of treeless grass or come across the stump of an ancient
University of Tasmania scientists
work with members of the Aboriginal
community and local landowners in
central Tasmania to return patrula (fire)
to this remnant eucalypt woodland.
As Nook Webster walks on Yuin country, he moves slowly, picking his way through the tall gum trees.
Michael-Shawn Fletcher researches
the long-term interactions between
humans, climate, disturbances such
as fire, and vegetation.
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SET:
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November . December 79
eucalypt buried among the dense, dank shrubs – a relic from another time when it had space and light to branch far and wide.
As for Aboriginal people elsewhere, the Palawa people of Tasmania used fi re to sculpt the landscape and care for country. Open grassy areas were created to attract small animals for hunting, a technique known as fi restick farm-ing. The same patches could also function as wildlife refuges during bushfi res. “Aboriginal people have dozens of words for the way they use fi re,” explains Michael-Shawn, a Wiradjuri man and University of Melbourne biogeogra-pher. “It was deliberate and they were thriving.”
As a student, he was inspired to question common-held views of Australia, particularly Tasmania, as an untouched wilderness. He wanted to see what the land had to say, believing that with understanding comes appreciation and respect. This led to a career studying records of environ-mental change and, specifi cally, the interactions between humans, climate and vegetation.
Most recently, he has reconstructed past landscapes from plant remains and pollen spores in the soils beneath modern-day rainforests in Surrey Hills. What he’s found is that moving through time from earlier, deeper soils up towards the surface, charcoal fragments that would have littered the ground with regular cultural burns all but disappear, and the native grasses and eucalypts that once grew are replaced by introduced weeds and woody rainforest trees.
“Those signatures in the landscape all converge to tell you a story of grassy landscapes with broad branch-ing trees and fi re burning underneath,” Michael-Shawn says, explaining that the same signs can be seen at other sites along Australia’s south-east coast, on the Bellarine Peninsula, in Victoria, at Potato Point, in New South Wales, and all the way to Queensland.
“Aboriginal people were profoundly infl uential in cre-ating this landscape.”
That means, he says, the way we view fi re in the Australian landscape needs to radically transform, because things have clearly changed. In the past 200 years, there have been more large, hot fi res than ever before.
The fi rst catastrophic bushfi re ever documented in Australia hit Victoria two decades after Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their land, Michael-Shawn says. Without traditional custodians applying cool, cul-tural burns to country, the trees moved in and bushfi re followed. Bushfi res became more frequent and ferocious, until last summer, under the overriding infl uence of climate change, there was possibly the largest forest fi re in recorded history, the Gospers Mountain megafi re.
After peering into the past, Michael-Shawn is more concerned about the future. He believes cultural burning could create more resilient, less fl ammable, landscapes and more resilient communities, particularly in the most densely populated part of Australia – the south-east.
80 Australian Geographic
Where he lives, in Victoria, a federation of traditional owners is leading fire and land management agencies through the state-wide cultural fire strategy. Moreover, Aboriginal rangers in the Northern Territory are world leaders in fire management, applying fire across savannah grasslands for decades now and showing countries such as Botswana, in Africa, how it’s done.
In NSW, which emerged as the worst-hit state after Black Summer, there are select recruits with Indigenous expertise within various fire and land management agencies, but the driving force is a grassroots movement led primarily by the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation, which is working with Aboriginal communities to revive cultural practices through workshops and training programs.
“There’s a lot of knowledge out there that just needs to be reawakened,” Michael-Shawn says. “Aboriginal people want to engage, they want to reconnect and they’ve said with open arms we’ll walk this path with you.”
GREG MULLINS IS STILL reeling from what he saw last summer. As the former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, the state’s urban fire service,
Greg still fights fires voluntarily as he’s done since he was a teenager. He was at Batemans Bay on the NSW south coast on New Year’s Eve when the Currowan fire had people fleeing to the sea. He also backed up against the Gospers Mountain megafire that surrounded north-western Sydney.
Forthright and earnest, he can offer numerous recom-mendations for what needs to be done differently, ranging
from rapid detection of new fire outbreaks in remote areas followed by swift aerial attack, to installing local solar-fed electricity grids so communications don’t go down. But his main message is that you mustn’t leave community out of this.
In a career spanning four decades, Greg has seen fire-fighting and its risk-mitigation strategies become increas-ingly sophisticated, which, unfortunately, in some cases, excluded the very communities it was trying to protect. When Greg first joined the fire service, landowners were almost wholly responsible for managing their own prop-erties. But then risk management was tasked to centralised government agencies for the sake of coordination and safety. Poor burning practices were also a concern. The responsibility was transferred exclusively to government and with it, Greg says, a lot of local know-how was lost.
After the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday disaster, auth- orities conceded that withholding information from the public had cost lives. Emergency public broadcasting was introduced afterwards, along with a new fire danger rating of catastrophic. Authorities learnt from that disaster how communities needed to be part of the solution. That was more than 10 years ago.
Greg Mullins, a former NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner
and internationally recognised authority on bushfire and disaster
response, today leads Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action,
a group of bushfire survivors, local councillors and firefighters
who lobby for urgent action on climate change.
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November . December 81
“Communities who understand fi re, survive fi re,” Greg says simply. And, with at least 65,000 years of experience, Aboriginal people know how to manage this land. Show-ing respect for their deep knowledge of this country, Greg says, is long overdue: “We need a horizon of years and decades, not weeks and months. That’s a change for the fi re services. But our Indigenous brothers and sisters used to think that way, so let’s tap into them.”
WHEN THE RAINS fi nally fell in February, Nook Webster returned to Bundanon, a once-private property on a bend in the Shoalhaven River,
west of Nowra, to see what damage had occurred. The Currowan megafi re had come close. In fact, it
burnt right to the edge of a large area Nook and his mob had treated with a cultural burn 16 months earlier, then stopped. Nook retraced his steps through the bush to fi nd the place where the two fi res had met. “This is a meeting place,” he said. “From this place we have knowledge and we learn.”
For Aboriginal people, the Shoalhaven River is a special feature in the landscape where two language groups meet
– Dharawal to the north and Dhurga to the south. In 2018 the 10th National Indigenous Fire Workshop was held at Bundanon, organised by the Firesticks Alliance and led by Nook, who’s an elder with both the Yuin and Walbanja. During 13 days and nights, Nook, his son and nephews walked with fi re as it trickled along the ground and led workshops for community, rangers and agency staff . He says the burn at Bundanon created its own dialogue about what cultural burning can do across a landscape.
“We need people not fi ghting fi re, but walking with fi re,” says Nook. “Through walking with fi re, we can create a healthy landscape.” Aboriginal fi re moves slowly and burns cool to protect a forest’s canopy. It burns only the grass and shrubs beneath and creates a patchwork of vegetation types and ages, unlike mainstream fi re manage-ment programs, which burn large blocks of land at once.
A cultural burn is also less intense than hazard reduction burns, the mainstay of modern fi re management. In this way it clears leaf litter and fallen bark but doesn’t carry enough heat for invasive native shrubs to germinate, which would raise the fi re risk. Instead, native grasses are encour-aged to grow back to hold the next fi re close to the ground. P
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“We need people not fighting fire, but walking with fire. Through walking with fire we can create a healthy landscape.”
The Firesticks Alliance ensures the right people are
involved in planning and implementing fi re on country,
based on their cultural connections to the land.
The organisation provides Indigenous leadership and
advocacy, running fi re workshops, such as this one
at Bundanon in NSW in 2018, across the country to
teach cultural fi re and land management practices.
86 Australian Geographic
IN THE EARLY DAYS of Firesticks, co-founder Oliver Costello recalls, it was hard to convince anyone in NSW to allow culturally appropriate burning. Even now, he
says, Aboriginal people must make cultural compromises to comply with fire and land management agency policy, and their access to cultural lands often hinges on local landholder support.
Oliver is a Bundjalung man from northern NSW who reconnected with his fire knowledge first in the Blue Mountains, then on Cape York Peninsula with Victor Steffensen, a long-time consultant reapply-ing traditional knowledge in Australia. Together they formed the Firesticks Alliance. Although their work will always be tied to Kuku Thaypan elders Tommy George and George Musgrave, both of whom have since passed away, the vision for Firesticks has always been to connect communities across Australia and help rekindle cultural fire practices.
The 2018 National Indigenous Fire Workshop was a big step forward in that regard. It was the first held outside Cape York Peninsula and was a way of pushing straight through barriers that have constrained Aboriginal people from practising their culture on country. At Bundanon, they were invited by the owners and supported by land management and fire agencies.
It was clear where the authority sat – with country. “The knowledge comes from the land; it teaches the lore,” Oliver explains. To decipher the fire stories of a place such as Bundanon, where cultural fire has been absent for so long, Aboriginal fire practitioners look to the “parent” trees, the oldest trees in an area, to see what kind of fire they need. By reading indicators in country – of the plants, birds, animals, rain, wind and soil – practitioners know the right time to burn, how often and how hot.
Oliver hopes that all Australians are beginning to under-stand that Aboriginal people’s traditional fire knowledge is a critical practice that’s integral to how we all should be looking after this country and each other. But he knows there are still profound cultural differences to overcome. He says that because authorities are fixated on removing fuel, they don’t manage for country – for the fire stories of that land. “It’s a big journey that we’re on,” he says.
THE BLACK SUMMER BUSHFIRES were the latest trag-edy in a long line of fire catastrophes. A decade ago, there was Victoria’s Black Saturday and before
that, the Canberra fires of 2003. For Phil Zylstra, a former firefighter turned academic, it was the Canberra fires that had him questioning mainstream understanding of fire.
Phil studies fire behaviour and forest flammability by taking a bird’s-eye view of fire-riddled landscapes. While working in fire management, he developed the f irst peer-reviewed fire behaviour model for eastern Australia’s eucalypt forests. He later tested it against fires with colleagues at the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, showing that the size and species of plants, not fuel loads, determine how quickly a forest goes up in flames.
Last summer, Phil says, bushfires burnt like never before, due to the dryness, and things got out of hand. “We’re kind of out of our depth. We don’t understand fire behaviour very well, we just like to tell ourselves that we do,” he says. “Our assumption that it’s all about fuel loads has completely misunderstood what has happened in the past.”
For about 80 years the general strategy led by fire agencies has been to fight fire with fire, to burn as much country as fast as possible, as Phil puts it. Get rid of the fuel, clear out the shrubby understorey. Burn it now, to save it later. Called hazard reduction burning, it’s based on the idea that recently burnt forests are less flammable than long-unburnt areas because there’s less fuel.
Now experts say that prescribed burning has reached the limits of what’s practically possible. Aiming to slow out-of-control wildfires, authorities are burning more land with little protection to life and property granted in return. To achieve 1 hectare less of bushfire, the best rate is 4ha of prescribed fire, the strategy goes, except that prescribed burning does little to slow a bushfire under extreme fire-weather conditions and in times of drought. It’s also getting risky with a narrowing window of weather suitable for prescribed burns, forcing agencies to meet their targets in less time. Then, of course, there’s the smoke that accompanies controlled burns.
Hazard reduction burning has always been a hot topic, with communities claiming more should be done. P
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82 Australian Geographic
Oliver Costello, at the Firesticks Alliance workshop
at Bundanon in NSW in 2018, where cultural burning later
protected the site from the Black Summer bushfires.
Through mentoring and leadership, Victor Steffensen (at left),
a Tagalaka man, works to revive traditional knowledge and values
passed to him by elders Dr Tommy George and Dr George Musgrave.
November . December 83
The vision has always been to connect communities and help rekindle their cultural fire practices.
The late Dr George Musgrave (at
left) and the late Dr Tommy George
– Kuku Thaypan men – hold a fire
torch. The two grew up on country on
Cape York Peninsula, QLD, steeped in
the knowledge of their elders. They, in
turn, were able pass on traditional fire
knowledge to a younger generation
that included Victor Steffensen.
84 Australian Geographic
“We’re just re-establishing a cultural learning pathway that’s been in place for thousands of years.”
A young girl sets fi re to dry grass in northern Australia,
where managing savannah grasslands using Indigenous
fi re knowledge is widely practised. It’s even returning
valuable income to communities in the form of carbon
credits. Fire in northern Australia is widely acknowledged
as healthy for country, and managing the rangelands
using Indigenous knowledge hugely reduces greenhouse
gas emissions from these fi res.
November . December 85
Black Summer actually came at the peak of prescribed burning practices in NSW, says Phil, who analysed publicly available fire history records. He found NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service doubled their efforts this past decade with more prescribed burning in their parks than during any decade before. “Our approach is that we just have to keep hitting it harder,” Phil says. “But we’re work-ing against the natural system.”
Fire and forests have their own processes, something Aboriginal people have long understood. Historically, they knew which forests to protect and which ones could be burnt safely, which species thrived with fire and which ones suffered. That knowledge is still there. Aboriginal cultural fire management is as much about choosing what not to burn as it is where fire should go, and all about understand-ing which species belong and what makes them healthy. “Sometimes that means no fire,” Oliver Costello explains. According to Phil Zylstra, modern fire management just doesn’t have the same nuance…at least not until now. Fire agencies such as the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) are planning to replace existing “crude” methods with improved risk-prediction tools to help them decide how and where prescribed fire should be applied in the land-scape. Similarly, University of Wollongong researchers have released an ‘atlas’ for eastern Australia that shows where prescribed burns would be most effective in a particular landscape and where it has limited value.
As for all the maps and models he uses, Phil admits it’s a mere fraction of what Aboriginal fire practitioners have to offer. “Cultural burning is such a complex and clever science,” he explains.
WITH A THREAT so great and lives on the line, fire authorities are unlikely to change their main operations unless the alternative is really shown
to work. And that may be why, underscored by recent rec-ommendations from the NSW Bushfire Inquiry, there’s now extraordinary public interest in Indigenous ways with fire.
Conversations are happening at a local level, in commu-nity fire brigades, and collaborative research projects are underway. In the midlands of Tasmania, for example, at the suggestion of one farmer, the Aboriginal community is working with scientists to return fire (patrula) to a remnant eucalypt woodland on the property and study its effect.
Another is comparing the outcomes of cultural with prescribed burning in Warra National Park and Wattleridge Indigenous Protected Area, outside Guyra in northern NSW. University of New England ecologist Michelle McKemey describes it as a practical alliance between the NSW RFS, Northern Tablelands Local Land Services, Firesticks and the local Banbai rangers, who have been
empowered to reintroduce cultural burning on ances-tral lands. The Banbai rangers chose what to monitor before and after each burn and that includes the totemic short-beaked echidna and threatened backwater grevillea. Their cultural fire protected both species, reducing fuel loads without removing mature stands of grevillea or the echidna’s log hollows.
This two-way approach is at the heart of Aboriginal culture, Oliver Costello says, and likewise, the Firesticks Alliance reflects what has always been – people coming together, connected through ceremony and songlines, learning from each other and sharing knowledge.
“People would come from all over, gathering for cer-emony. My old people walked from here [in northern NSW] to the Bunya Mountains [in Queensland], and all along the way they would burn,” he says.
“Through Firesticks, we’re just re-establishing a cul-tural learning pathway that’s been in place for thousands of years. Sure, there are big gaps in knowledge, but the bigger the gap, the bigger the opportunity, and the more powerful that process is.”
But, Oliver adds, Aboriginal fire practitioners need seri-ous support for Indigenous-led programs, not short-sighted policies, if they are to restore whole landscapes. “In a modern sense, it’s about livelihood. Not just a cultural burn here, a workshop there, but cultural fire teams empow- ered to practise their culture on country under their own authority, supporting landholders and land managers, and being resourced and recognised for that.”
Nook Webster has ambitions, too. Working for South East Local Land Services, he hopes Aboriginal fire prac-titioners and landowners can find common ground in a stewardship approach that puts country first. “We want all landholders to start connecting with country, to help maintain and heal country, to take ownership and revisit the old ways to improve current conditions,” he says.
Realistically, it will take decades to revive cultural prac-tices in a meaningful way, but valuing traditional knowl-edge is the best opportunity we have in a changing climate to remake resilient landscapes and protect communities, Oliver says. “It’s going to take a long time to heal and we need to start now.”
“If traditional practices are applied back into the landscape,
everyone benefits from it,” says Nook Webster, a proponent of
Aboriginal ecological land management practices and a former
national parks ranger. “There’s food and moisture and the
landscape becomes a productive environment.”
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86 Australian Geographic
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN GILLIGAN
A bay of plentyThe rich biodiversity of Moreton Bay, in Queensland, has seen it
recognised as a Hope Spot, part of a series of global marine sites
considered critical to the health of the world’s oceans.
November . December 87
Griffith University’s Johan Gustafson investigates
estuarine habitat use. Here he
releases a bull shark back into
waters just north of the Gold Coast.
BULL SHARKS IN Moreton Bay are a very good sign for Brisbane. The waters of this subtropical east coast waterway are as close as 14km to the city’s CBD, and the coastal lands that fringe its westerly edge have been impacted by European settlement since the late 1800s. These days there
is ever-growing pressure on the natural ecosystems here, with the bay – which extends about 125km, from Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast in the south, to Caloundra on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in the north – being on the doorstep of Australia’s fastest-growing urban strip.
Because they are top-order predators, bull sharks are sensitive indicators of environmental change. So having them around is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, Johan Gustafson from the Griffi th Centre for Coastal Management, explains reassuringly.
The mouths of rivers feeding the popular waters of Moreton Bay comprise an important bull shark nursery area. Pregnant females arrive in the warmer months to give birth and their pups grow here, feeding on small fi sh in the dark estuarine waters before migrating off shore as adults. Understanding thesignifi cance to the bull shark life cycle of alternate artifi cialcoastal habitats in the area is crucial for determining the impactof coastal development on this threatened, and potentially dan-gerous, species.
There have been two recent documented human fatalities attributed to encounters with bull sharks in the canal and artifi -cial lake systems of the Gold Coast. Griffi th University research-ers suggest that, with increased impacts on the natural environment, artifi cial coastal habitats are becoming used more by large juvenile bull sharks, increasing the chance of interactions between these predators and people.
“Moreton Bay is becoming more developed especially around the mangroves, where there is also a lot of shipping and recreational fi shing,” Johan explains. “By removing the seagrass and mangrove areas along the coast, we could be re-moving the shark’s preferred habitats.” And that means they’re likely to look elsewhere for food.
Previous tagging studies on bull sharks from the Gold Coast region have shown that this species prefers to inhabit healthy estuarine sys-tems with enough prey to support them, rather than the artifi cial canals and lakes. However, because the sharks occur naturally in adjacent areas, they will often move into adjoining artifi cial habitats. An incentive for them is that most of their preferred prey – including tailor, mullet, herring, trevally and bream – thrive in the canals and lakes.
The Griffi th University researchers are learning much about how the sharks are using bays and river systems where there is a lot of development. When it rains, for example, more fresh water enters the rivers, resulting in more bull sharks around estu-
88 Australian Geographic
QLDMoreton BayBRISBANE
During the cooler months, deeper rocky reefs beyond
Moreton Bay are home to seasonal aggregations of
protected grey nurse sharks, seen here swimming
with a school of fusiliers.
November . December 89
A series of artificial canal estates has been developed
from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast to meet an
ever-increasing demand for housing. Their construction
often requires the reclamation of natural wetlands.
The expansive network of sandbanks in South Passage,
between Moreton and North Stradbroke islands, is clearly
seen from the air, highlighting the area’s critical role in
sediment transport along the south-east QLD coast.
90 Australian Geographic
aries. The team has also observed that larger sharks come into the waterways in September–October when the waters warm, a trigger for females to enter the river systems and give birth.
“Swimmers need to be mindful not to swim or paddle after big rainstorms,” Johan warns. “Rain is a big trigger for the sharks and this information needs to be incorporated into management responses.” The information may also contribute to the design and engineering of impediments to stop sharks entering built areas during these times, helping reduce the chance of negative interactions between sharks and people.
MORETON BAY’S COASTAL strip is naturally a maze of wetlands, the type of habitat that’s been increasingly threatened worldwide since about the middle of last
century. Here is no exception. But the good news is, as bull sharks show, many of the bay’s natural wildlife inhabitants are finding ways to survive, often with the help of passionate locals, researchers and conservationists.
Like a natural lung, Moreton Bay draws in salt water rich in oxygen as well as nutrients from the Pacific Ocean and dis-charges fresh water from the upper reaches of the catchment on the outgoing tide. This tidal ebb and flow is a constant for the marine habitats here, which range from rocky shores, deep reefs, sandy beaches and mudflats to seagrass meadows and mangroves. S
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Rare humpback dolphins, dugongs (see AG 118) and turtles, as well as a range of sharks – including hammerheads and tigers, as well as bulls – shelter in Moreton Bay’s waters, which are pro-tected by some of Australia’s largest sand islands, including South Stradbroke, North Stradbroke and Moreton. Deeper offshore reefs support a rich mix of both tropical and temperate species. Carpeted partly in a living veneer of complex coral diversity delivered by the East Australian Current from the Great Barrier Reef, these reefs of contrast are also the northern limit for cold-er-water species, such as the grey nurse shark. This docile fish is often seen by divers in the bay alongside filter-feeding manta rays arriving from the north.
Sheltered from a large ocean swell, Moreton Bay also has a long history of human occupation and use that stretches well back before Europeans arrived to the local Quandamooka people who worked alongside resident dolphins to catch fish. A sea spirit that manifests as a dolphin, Quandamook is an important creator spirit for Aboriginal people here.
Coral mining, sand mining and whaling began after European colonisation and turtles were hunted commercially from 1824 to 1950. A conservation movement focused on the bay began in the mid-1960s, with strong public opposi-tion against plans for a canal estate and further mining. This soon resulted in the first protected areas being declared within
Green turtles thrive in the warm,
sheltered waters of Moreton Bay, where
they feed on extensive seagrass beds.
November . December 91
Moreton Bay, to conserve habitats from coastal development while still allowing for sand and coral mining and commercial and recreational fishing.
Three decades later, in 1992, after a long campaign by local conservationists, scientists, tourism groups and educators, Moreton Bay Marine Park was declared to protect the area’s unique values while also continuing to allow sustainable use. Park management includes actions such as the development of designated ‘go slow areas’ for motorised boats, to protect turtles and dugongs from boat strikes, particularly in seagrass feeding areas.
The listing last year of Moreton Bay as a Hope Spot brings it wider global attention, which adds another level of protec-tion. The Hope Spot concept was developed by the Mission Blue initiative of internationally famed marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle. Supported by Rolex’s Perpetual Planet program, it aims to help safeguard “special places that are scientifically identified as critical to the health of the ocean...championed by local conservationists whom we support with communications, expeditions and scientific advisory”.
Sylvia has visited and dived in Queensland for many years and the recognition of the waters off Brisbane as a Hope Spot are not surprising. The conservation initiative describes Moreton Bay as “a mecca for marine biodiversity” that “hosts tropical, subtropical and temperate species within its matrix of man-groves, mudf lats, seagrass, coral reefs, and sand islands.” For more on Hope Spots, see: mission-blue.org/hope-spots
WITH SLIGHTLY MORE than 3 million people, Brisbane is Australia’s third most populous city, behind Sydney and Melbourne. Being at the centre of a south-east
Queensland strip that’s experiencing Australia’s most rapid urban-isation, its population is expected to reach 4–5 million by 2031. Mostly notably, Brisbane is book-ended by expanding urban centres surrounding the Sunshine Coast to the north and the Gold Coast to the south, all of which are on the shores of Moreton Bay. Most of the population in this area already resides around 15 catchments that drain into the bay.
These waters face pressures from a suite of impacts common to coastal cities the world over. Some are linked specifically to developments such as the incremental expansion of the Port of Brisbane and construction of the Gold Coast Seaway. Others arise from the cumulative impacts of urbanisation and include run-off, sedimentation, stormwater and the deposition of asso-ciated marine debris, habitat loss, and increasing watercraft use.
Mangrove forests filter land-based run-off, particularly sedi-ments and nutrients, and help support clearer and cleaner water, which is important for coral reef health and seagrass meadows.
Rare humpback dolphins, dugongs and turtles, as well as a range of sharks, find shelter in Moreton Bay’s waters.
Marine plants such as the common grey
mangrove play key roles in the Moreton
Bay ecosystem. They contribute to primary
production, food security and habitat for a
huge range of marine animal species.
The Australian humpback dolphin,
which survives in inshore habitats around
built coastal areas of Moreton Bay,
including the Brisbane River, was only
recently described as a separate species.
92 Australian Geographic
It’s also acknowledged that three-quarters of all fish caught in Queensland directly use mangroves or depend on food chains that rely on them. In the past, the destruction of saltmarsh, mangroves and tidal flats that soften the natural foreshore has occurred due to the creation of some of the largest canal estates and lakes in Australia. Some of these are directly attached to the natural estuarine systems, while others are an extension of the waterway with tidal flows restricted by gates and locks to prevent erosion and allow for the expansion of waterfront property available for development.
These artificial waterways tend to have poorer water quality, limited circulation and more input from untreated stormwater. And as indicated by the Griffith University bull shark research in the area, they affect the ecology and interaction between spe-cies found here. Once viewed as salty, insect-infested eyesores that blocked coastal views and impeded foreshore developments including marinas, ports, jetties and boat ramps, mangrove forests are now being widely acknowledged for their benefits.
The Queensland government has begun implementing management strategies to help address its own historic contribu-tion to the global decrease in these vital habitats. Notably, that includes a 450m mangrove walk – designed to educate about, and encourage an appreciation for, wetland areas – currently under construction between the City Botanic Gardens and Queen’s Wharf in Brisbane.
THE GOLD COAST’S expansive and stunning sandy shores and surf breaks are famous worldwide. Coastal processes work undertaken by the Griffith Centre for
Coastal Management during the past two decades has helped preserve important social and economic values in Moreton Bay, often protecting and enhancing the surf breaks and beaches that draw tourists to the area and underpin the lifestyle enjoyed by a growing number of locals.
However, the Gold Coast is also particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events, which often cause significant erosion, and that has been the focus of a long-term program for effective beach management, with which the Griffith Centre has also been involved. Along this stretch of coast, erosion has been an important natural process for many millennia. Sediments are transported northwards, driven by south-east wind and waves.
There can be a difficult balance between allowing the forces of nature have their way and protecting coastal urban land-scapes. And so a major focus of the Griffith Centre’s work has been to help ensure ongoing sediment transport continues along beaches that are affected by artificial obstructions, such as tidal entrances that force sand to build up on the updraught side and erosion to occur on the downdraught side.
The Gold Coast Seaway and associated sand bypass system was constructed between 1984 and 1986 to facilitate safe entry for commercial and recreational boats. Although it led to the loss of some estuarine marine habitats, the addition of a large amount of rock has also created an artificial habitat that supports an abundance of marine species enjoyed by divers and fishers.
“There was a need to artificially move sand from one side of the estuary to the other to ensure we didn’t lose South Stradbroke Island and to ensure the continued movement of sand up the coast,” explains Professor Rodger Tomlinson, the Griffith Centre’s founding director.
Natural sediment transport has been critical to sustaining the entire Moreton Bay ecosystem by creating the barrier Islands – South Stradbroke, North Stradbroke and Moreton islands. Over time these have become stabilised by vegetation and have isolated the bay to help support a relatively sheltered and shallow environment. “Without the barrier islands, this stretch of coast would be very different,” Rodger says. “It’s
“We have created a variety of reef types over the years to sustain a broad diversity of marine life including fish.”
Engineer Rodger Tomlinson, foundation director of the Griffith Centre
for Coastal Management, looks for solutions to natural hazard threats,
such as sand drift and wave action, to coastal communities.
November . December 51
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hard to know where the coastline would be, sediment would be exposed to greater wave energy and there would be no seagrass or mangroves, which would influence the species that live there.”
BETWEEN 1963 AND 1984 a cluster of ships was scuttled by the Queensland government to provide safe anchorage for recreational boat owners on Moreton Bay’s sheltered
eastern side. These are the Tangalooma Wrecks. Currents carry-ing the larvae of marine invertebrates have since established them as artificial reefs attracting more than 100 fish species. They’re also visited by turtles, dugongs, cormorants and other large charismatic marine species, turning these wrecks into tourist attractions, particularly popular for snorkelling and scuba diving.
In other areas of Moreton Bay, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science has created artificial reefs to meet the needs of recreational fishers and reduce fishing impacts on natural reefs. The first was deployed in 2008, and there are now eight established as part of the Moreton Bay Artificial Reef Pro-gram. “We have created a variety of reef types over the years to sustain a broad diversity of marine life including fish,” says Steve Hoseck, a marine ranger with the department. “They are designed to benefit a range of different fishers, including spearfishers, line fishers, charter fishers, and some of our more recent reefs also benefit scuba divers.”
The reefs are constructed from a range of materials and have been named to reflect their purpose and design – reef balls,
IF THERE was ever a year when we met the native animals in
our backyards, it was this one. As COVID-19 confined us to home, and neighbourhoods became our only permitted outdoor destinations, we’ve grown more aware and appreciative of nature on our doorsteps. Cockatoo squawks and magpie songs became our daily soundtrack as we worked from home. In Australia we’re lucky to enjoy superb access to native landscapes and creatures. All our regional capitals boast great rivers and har-bours near their centres
and vast national parks within easy reach, often accessible by public transport. And our gardens can be havens for birds, lizards, possums and frogs. AG’s new book Urban Wild celebrates the native creatures surrounding us daily. Be inspired to discover what’s just beyond the front door – the birds and beasts we often take for granted. Peek beneath the sur-face of local waterways, such as Moreton Bay, and revel in their biodi-versity. And learn how to make your backyard wildlife-friendly and what’s okay to feed those feathered visitors.
The Aussie animals that share our cities, our backyards and our lives
November . December 93
Urban Wild
128 Urban Wild
DUGONGDugong dugon Few Australians have ever
seen a dugong, yet they’re
the most common marine
mammals in northern
Australia’s coastal waters,
outnumbering seals, whales
and even dolphins. These
slow-moving herbivores can
consume more than 25kg of
seagrass per day.
Flirtations with mariners of bygone eras made dugongs the stuff of romantic legends. Today, Australian scientists are uncovering the truth about these mysterious creatures.
Story by KAREN MCGHEE Photography By DARREN JEW
The mermaids of Moreton Bay
IT’S AN IDYLLIC spring morning on southern Queensland’s Moreton Bay and conditions are perfect for finding mermaids. Flocks of shearwaters bob on a glassy sea. Green turtles regu-
larly break the surface for noisy breaths between dives to graze on seagrass meadows. Pied cormorants pop up periodically, their long necks like submarine periscopes. And pods of sleek-swimming bottlenose dolphins steer inquisitively towards our boat.
Photographer Darren Jew and I are not, of course, looking for mermaids, but the creatures believed to have sparked the legend. Soon enough, a perfect ocean-going tail – shaped like a dolphin’s but at least 1m wide at its trailing edge – breaks the water and waves briefly, Brisbane’s distant skyline glistening behind in the early light.
It’s easy to see how lonely sailors might at one time have thought this signalled a creature of submerged beauty. But minutes later we see a face that’s more Dr Seuss than Nereid. Clearly, those old mariners liked spinning tales, or were influenced by rum and isolation.
The exquisite tail and contrastingly comical face belong to one of Moreton Bay’s 800–1000 dugongs, which live adjacent to one of Australia’s most rapidly developing regions. The creature’s odd-looking head emerges just long enough to retract the valves that keep water from its nostrils while submerged and, with a snort, it sucks in fresh air before quickly disappearing beneath the surface.
LIMITED SURFACE TIME is a dugong trademark. Along with their preference for turbid water, it’s a major reason they’re so
elusive and why few Australians have ever seen one. Yet they’re the most common marine mammals in northern Australia’s coastal waters, outnumbering seals, whales and dolphins. They’re also big, with adults reaching lengths of about 3m and weights of 400–600kg.
Dugongs occur near seagrass meadows in the tropical and sub-tropical waters of about 40 Indo-Pacific countries. Australia is the species’ stronghold: perhaps 70,000 cruise the shallows of at least 10 different locations along the 25,000km of our northern coastline from Shark Bay, Western Australia, to Moreton Bay. The Torres Strait has the biggest population, with surveys suggesting at least 15,000 are there.
Above water, you won’t detect much noise from a dugong. But if you
put your head under water near a group of them, you’re likely to hear
chirping, as researchers have found.
Beneath the Surface 129
Discover the Aussie animals sharing our cities, backyards and lives.
Tourists enjoy exploring the shadowy
underwater world created by the rusty
hulks of the Tangalooma Wrecks off
Moreton Island.
Urban Wild is available now from AG online, all QBD
bookshops and other good bookstores. See page 52 for
how to get a free copy when you subscribe or renew your
existing subscription.
94 Australian Geographic
fish caves, fish boxes and apollo habitat modules. The design required for a site is defined by surrounding physical parameters because each reef needs to remain in place undisturbed long enough to allow time for the marine life to establish.
“Offshore, our reefs are more exposed to the elements and are made from really solid concrete structures that are stable and weigh anywhere from 16 to 20 tonnes,” Steve explains. The program has some units constructed from steel in deeper locations around Moreton Bay.
Different structure types attract different species, although it’s difficult to predict what structure type is going to attract what species. The modules are placed on sandy habitat, where there is no reef structure within 600m.
First the structure provides shelter for small fish, then ben-thic species such as coral, sponges and algae begin to settle and grow. Next come the species that feed on the benthic organism, and finally the larger predators arrive, helping to establish an artificial ecosystem.
DR ELIZABETH HAWKINS, founding director and lead researcher at Dolphin Research Australia, completed post-graduate research on dolphin behaviour, particu-
larly communication, at Tangalooma in 2001. These days she’s working on the Moreton Bay Dolphin Research Project, established in 2014 in partnership with the Queensland Department of Environment and Science. It identifies dolphins by using fin characteristics and after six consecutive seasons the team has identified 840 individual bottlenose dolphins and 178 humpback dolphins in Moreton Bay.
Australian humpback dolphins prefer inshore habitats in
Moreton Bay. The western side, around the Brisbane River, is a key habitat for them. The turbid estuarine waters there support the species’ southernmost east coast population. “The majority of our work is about observing the animals and their wild ways so we can really get an understanding of how they use this space, how they interact with each other and how that fits in to the whole population structure,” Elizabeth says. “We need long-term systematic surveys and comparative data so we can ensure their conservation and protection.”
Understanding the social world of humpback dolphins is in its infancy, but Elizabeth’s research has already found that males form paired alliances.
She is unable to say yet how the dolphins are coping with urban impacts but this will become clearer. What is known is that dolphins in Moreton Bay are under a great deal of pressure from a number of threats from human activity.
Animals are often harmed or killed by propeller and vessel strikes along with fishing gear entanglements. “Prelimi-nary research by colleagues has found that Australian humpback dolphins have relatively high loads of pollutants, which could be negatively impacting their reproductive systems,” Elizabeth says. “But how resilient these dolphins are to these threatening processes is currently unknown.”
The team has begun to collect and analyse biopsy samples to investigate the toxicology of the animals. Humpback dolphins are particularly susceptible because their habitat preference is based on community and learnt behaviour.
“They do not choose to avoid busy impacted areas such as the Port of Brisbane because this inshore area is actually an important habitat for them,” Elizabeth says.
What is known is that dolphins in Moreton Bay are under a great deal of pressure.
Elizabeth Hawkins studies human–dolphin
interactions in Moreton Bay. She identifies
individual dolphins by marks on the dorsal fins,
which are being caused increasingly by strikes
from boats.
November . December 95
AG
MORETON BAY IS a critical feeding area for resident green and loggerhead turtles. Although some nesting has been documented here, it mostly occurs north of
Bundaberg. Dr Kathy Townsend, a University of the Sunshine Coast animal ecology lecturer, is investigating how urban debris affects marine species such as sea turtles.“I look inside a lot of different things that have stranded,” Kathy says, explaining that a necropsy is often needed to identify a cause of death. Strandings can include both living and dead animals. Even when animals are alive and taken into care, stranding is still likely to cause death. The Queensland government’s Moreton Bay stranding database shows there has been an annual average of about 298 strandings for each of the past five years. The figures include dead, sick, injured, incapacitated, entangled or rescued marine turtles.
When Kathy began doing necropsies on sea turtles in 2006, 2 per cent of deaths were attributed to plastic ingestion. That statistic is now about 33 per cent. Kathy has also found marine debris in the guts of animals where the primary cause of death had been attributed to entanglement in fishing gear or boat strike. In 2018 she co-authored a paper to clarify how many pieces of marine debris it takes to kill a sea turtle. Results from nearly 1000 turtle necropsies used in the study revealed it took just 14 pieces of plastic to kill in half the individuals examined, and that a single piece has a 21 per cent chance of causing death.
Kathy recalls removing an assortment of debris from the gut of one juvenile sea turtle: “We retrieved items like fishing net, twine, plastic bags, balloons…pieces of hard plastic, such as a takeaway container, lolly wrappers, bits of foam from a meat tray – normal consumer stuff you find on the beach and use day to day.” Her team is now working on a global analysis to identify SC
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locations where sea turtles have a higher chance of interacting with marine debris. “We’re trying to identify sources of debris, how it moves from the land to the ocean, and how it travels on the currents,” Kathy says. It’s hoped this research will suggest ways to reduce the risk of interaction. Kathy says it might be most efficient to address stormwater issues in specific catchments, rather than all catchments, meaning local authorities can make the most of limited resources.
One of Kathy’s post-graduate students, Amalya Valle, is inves- tigating seabird distribution in Moreton Bay and how these creatures interact with marine debris. She hopes the project will identify whether certain species are more susceptible to specific marine debris types and is also investigating the issue from a behavioural perspective. By placing cameras on garbage bins, Amalya can see which species are foraging in them, how they’re getting inside, what material they’re targeting, and if there’s a bin type that reduces the risks.
Many computer-generated models operate under the assump-tion there is more rubbish where there are more people. Kathy and Amalya are investigating other factors such as local popu-lation demographics and the median wage and social structure of an area. “You would think that a place like Moreton Bay, which is really close to Brisbane, would show strong signs of human impact,” Kathy says. “We are finding quite the opposite as people walk along their favourite beach and clean it up, which is really lovely, but it does make our job more challenging.”
Kathy applauds the fact that the region’s people seem to have a sense of pride about where they live, taking cleaning up into their own hands. It’s yet another reason why Moreton Bay deserves its new status as a Mission Blue Hope Spot.
PhD student Amalya Valle is studying
the interaction between marine debris and
seabirds in Moreton Bay.
Kathy Townsend carries out necropsies
on turtles that have died in Moreton Bay to
better understand the threats they face in an
increasingly urban setting.
96 Australian Geographic96 Australian Geographic
November . December 97
Running Man Rock
STORY BY RAY MARTIN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
RAY MARTIN AND KEN DUNCAN
A chance sighting from an aeroplane window led respected journalist and broadcaster Ray Martin
on an exciting outback adventure.
The extraordinary Running Man
Rock (left), here photographed
by Ray Martin (below) from a
helicopter, is part of an ancient
landscape that was once
an inland sea. It straddles
the QLD–NT border
south of Mount Isa.
IT WAS ABOUT SIX YEARS ago that I fi rst discovered him, purely by chance. At an hour and a half out of Sydney, my commercial fl ight turned north-west towards Darwin. And there he was in all his rampant majesty.
Running Man Rock, I call him.I fi rst took his portrait from 37,000ft, through the
double-plastic portal of a jetliner. Like the bloke in the American Express ad, I never leave home without my camera.
Over the years, I’ve taken thousands of photographs from high in the sky and happily gifted one or two prints to friends and family and sold quite a few more. I’ve now snapped Running Man – this extraordinary natural phenomenon of rock, sand and wildfl owers – at least a dozen times.
Flying north these days, I recognise all the familiar aerialsignposts: from the long lines of dunes that run south-eastto north-west, parallel to the prevailing winds, like weltsfrom the crack of a mighty whip; to the fi ligreerivers of the vast Diamantina Channel Country that spill across the fl oodplain like a wild woman’s knot-ted, black tresses; then fi nally the thin slash of a red dirt runway beside the old Roxborough Downs cattle station homestead, which tells me we’re almost overhead.
Suddenly there he is, racing out of the Barkly Tableland towards the Georgina River, exploding out of Northern Territory sunsets into outback Queensland, not far from Boulia and its mysterious Min Min lights.
98 Australian Geographic
This is the image I see from the window
of a commercial fl ight at 37,000ft ,
en route from Sydney to Darwin.
An entirely natural phenomenon, the
super-sized fi gure with outstretched
arms and legs is encircled by a vast array
of rock walls, gullies and astonishing
coloured patterns.
Enlarged area
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November . December 99
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He has a distinctive round head and body. His arms are stretched out each side and his legs are in full stride. Bigger and much more regal than Marree Man, in South Australia, Running Man was created not by a whitefella’s bulldozer 20-odd years ago, but by Dreaming spirits when this ancient land formed.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see him either. It’s not like lying on the grass looking up at the clouds trying to fi nd the full symphony orchestra or quartet of dancing troubadours that a loved one promises she can see among the lenticu-lar formations of fl uff y stuff . Once you’ve spied the mighty Running Man you can’t miss him.
You do, however, need to be at least a few hundred feet above the ground in an airliner, light plane or helicopter to truly appreciate just how awesome he is. But then it’s no secret, of course, that so much of the Australian landscape – from Lake Eyre, and even Uluru, to the Kimberley coast – is best seen from on high.
Along with Running Man there are also two large fi gure-eight shapes to his left. Chinese tourists are one day likely to fl ock there to snap that famously lucky number on their smartphones. And, believe it or not, there’s a distinct ‘map of Australia looking up from Running Man’s left foot (minus Tasmania, I’m sorry to report). But that’s only the centrepiece of this giant canvas of patterns, pastels and geological contortions that stretches across the empty landscape.
Radiating out from the highly colourful, rocky panorama are hundreds of semicircles and quadrant shapes – like the ripples of a huge stone thrown into a giant pond. I would guess the whole extravaganza spreads maybe 4–5km, perhaps more, across this dry gidgee and saltbush country, where vast cattle properties fatten Wagyu and sell it to the world’s best restaurants. That’s in a good season, after the rains fl ow down from the Gulf and eventually drain into the sink the Arabana people have always called Kati Thanda and what many others know as Lake Eyre.
Not one of the Qantas or Virgin pilots who provided me with Running Man Rock’s rough coordinates had ever seen him before. They were as bedazzled as I had been, seeing him in action for the fi rst time from 37,000ft.
Some of these professional fl yers boasted to have chalked up endless hours in their early careers steering cargo and small commuter planes through this same colourful, jigsaw-puzzle outback country. But still, they’d never even glimpsed this mighty fi gure before it was pointed out to them. Mind you, he’s only been out there for a 100 million years or so.
The whole extravaganza spreads maybe 4–5km across this dry gidgee and saltbush country.
100 Australian Geographic
Certainly not a place for the faint-hearted,
this empty, cattle-fattening country is home to
unbreakable young stockmen (above), beautiful river
red gums (left) and carpets of wildflowers (opposite).
The meandering Georgina River (right) is usually just a series of
waterholes until the rainy season, when it occasionally runs all
the way down to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in SA.
November . December 101
To be fair, for much of that time – before the era of Jurassic Park – he was probably lying under the inland sea and subsequently trodden down by mobs of dinosaurs and other prehistoric wanderers. On the ground there’s no shortage of coral-encrusted rocks and I don’t know how far you would have to dig beneath Running Man to find those big dino-saur skeletons. It’s certainly true that the excitement of farm-ers and palaeontologists uncovering dinosaur bones all around Winton vibrates right across this wild and woolly part of out-back Queensland.
THE FLOOD and black soil plains stretch out beyond the filmy horizon, well thatched by Flinders and Mitchell grasses and lightly timbered with mulga and gnarled
gidgee trees, which, having one of the hardest woods in the world, make the best firewood.
This can be a raw and unforgiving landscape. Those hapless explorers Burke and Wills trudged all the way from Melbourne with their camels to end their days out here. A generation later, the country was opened up to white pastoralists – mostly shepherds – who had frequent bloody encounters with the Aboriginal people who understandably objected to having their traditional lands invaded and stolen from them. It became a ghostly battlefield that ended badly and tragically for the First Australians… as it always seems to do.
When the sheep herders were driven to disaster – beaten by drought and dingoes – the beef breeders came with their rustlers and hustlers. In fact, the first property that legend-ary Cattle King Sidney Kidman ever bought in Queensland, Carandotta, was exactly where Running Man Rock marks out its southern border fence. Now adding to this already iconic and colourful tapestry, there is a highly speculative but growing belief that south of here – on the edge of the Simpson Desert – lies the true location of Harold Lasseter’s lost gold reef, an El Dorado of unimaginable riches (see Fabled Fortune, AG 150).
You have to shake your head in wonderment. This vast, empty land has it all. The vistas and beauty are guaranteed to take your breath away. But the isolation, heat and thirst will kill you within hours if you don’t respect it. So will some of the unique fauna – beyond the roos, camels and brumbies.
“Look out for the cigarette snakes,” one local blackfella warned me on the verandah of the Urandangi pub, explaining that it’s a deadly, local sand snake just 1m long.
“Why do you call him the cigarette snake?” I asked.“Because if he bites you,” came the answer with a well-
practised grin, “you’ve only got time to light up one smoke before you cark it.”
I think he was talking about the inland taipan, also called the fierce snake – the world’s deadliest.
Some years ago I showed my Running Man Rock pho-tographs, taken from 11km up in the sky, to Ken Duncan – Australia’s most highly acclaimed landscape photographer. Ken happens to be an old friend, with whom I’ve travelled many times in the outback and overseas. Like everyone, Ken was stunned by the size and extravagance of Running Man.
Always a willing volunteer for the next cockeyed adventure, he quickly put his hand up again, saying, “Count me in, when-ever you decide to go!”
I had reminded Ken that it was as recently as 1983 that a German television crew was commissioned by the West Australian government to film a documentary about that state. When they had finished the assignment they told then premier, Ray O’Connor, about a unique rock formation they had ‘dis-covered’ in the state’s far north-east.
Their discovery eventually became known to the world as the Bungle Bungles, in Purnululu National Park in the east Kimberley, which has since become one of Australia’s most popular national parks. That was less than four decades ago.
Anyone who travels this wide brown land of ours knows that there must be many other remote but exquisite sites, just waiting to be discovered by modern adventurers. Outback tourism – including the growing army of Grey Nomads – is desperate to identify and mark them on the itinerant traveller’s map (once they’re allowed to hit the open road again).
So that was another incentive for Ken Duncan and me to try and find Running Man Rock and photograph him on location. We were both filled with trepidation, wondering whether he would be anywhere near as spectacular on the ground as he was from 37,000ft.
I mentioned this unique Australian rock display to a couple of regional Queensland mates, John Wagner from Toowoomba and Peter ‘Polly’ Lindores, who hails from just outside of Warwick. “Having a go” is in their DNA and both are out-
Like everyone, photographer Ken Duncan was stunned by the size and extravagance of Running Man.
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102 Australian Geographic
standing businessmen and irrepressible adventurers. John built the groundbreaking new airport at Toowoomba, along with many other innovative projects in south-eastern Queensland. He has flown the length and breadth of the outback at the controls of his private planes and helicopters.
Polly, who ran one of Australia’s most successful high-rise crane operations for a couple of decades, knows the inland better than most – especially from a Robertson R44 chopper, which he drives like an airborne Toyota HiLux.
Both men, despite their impossibly busy schedules, need no excuse to “go bush”. And they can now afford to do it in style. Although they don’t need to be asked twice to climb into the cab of a bashed-up semitrailer and crash the gears through an ocean of bulldust and dead-end bush tracks, which we did. They can also fix anything that’s caked in grease, makes a noise and has a starter motor. Or so it seems.
AFTER TALKING FOR a couple of years about a “fly-drive expedition” to find Running Man Rock, it finally hap-pened late last year – just pre-COVID-19. And what
an extraordinary, quasi-military operation it turned out to be, strategised by Belinda Williams, Polly’s highly talented partner and a painter.
Making up our full expeditionary force, supplying power and plonk (enough red wine and water to equip a cathedral altar for a year) plus cooking skills, Belinda also drove the convoy out the back of Boulia.
We were quite the human cocktail.There was a wildly successful new and used car dealer
from Toowoomba; an unstoppable travel agent from the Gold Coast; a clever guitarist; a fishing entrepreneur from Brisbane; an award-winning cinematographer from Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program named Andy Taylor and my 30-year-old son, Luke. Also along on the expedition were two colourful characters from Melbourne who’d led a search for Lasseter’s Lost
Reef (with some degree of certainty, which is a story for another time).
After first flying into Mount Isa, four of us helicoptered through the afternoon shadows, down the long waterholes that make up the Georgina River. We joined the rest of the team and set up operations out of the abandoned stock-men’s quarters of nearby Linda Downs station.
Anxious about what we might find, if any-thing, Ken and I set out next day to try and locate our elusive Running Man.
Initially, it wasn’t easy. But cleverly tracking along a fence line, which Polly, our unstoppable chopper pilot, had identified in my original photographs, “Our Man” suddenly snapped into focus.
He seemed to be asking, “What took you so long?”Still, it was a truly spectacular sight in the midst of this starkly
beautiful country in the afterglow of a setting sun.Over the next few days we shot Running Man from every
conceivable angle and altitude. We landed on his sandy head and amid the sea of wildflowers on his belly. We marvelled at the expanse of rock walls, thrown out in wave after wave, like terraced rice paddies, climbing 500m up the hillside. Perfectly proportioned, they looked as if an army of highly skilled stone-masons had built them.
Of course, it’s all the creation of just one artisan – Mother Nature herself – which leaves you simply gobsmacked.
I seriously believe that the uncompromising vistas and experi- ence of Running Man Rock could kick-start a real tourist bonanza here in outback Queensland. In the post-COVID era, when Australians won’t be flying overseas en masse for a while, the timing of this new natural feature could be the perfect antidote.
Straddling the Queensland–NT border, Running Man Rock is certainly no more isolated or remote than Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre or the Bungle Bungles, which draw a constant stream of more-adventurous travellers.
Light-plane f lights or helicopter rides from nearby Tobermorey Station and Roadhouse on the Plenty Highway would make Running Man easily accessible for tourists. It’s an absolute no-brainer.
Just make sure you bring your camera.
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It was a truly spectacular sight in the midst of this starkly beautiful country
in the afterglow of a setting sun.
Gidgee trees provide
food and shelter for
livestock out here, and
the best campfire fuel
anywhere. Our colourful
expeditionary team put
the wood to good use, with
steaks and a sing-song.
NOTE: Running Man Rock is located on private property and is
not open to the public. It’s hoped that a future expedition will shed
light on its cultural and scientific values and begin the process of
creating a new tourist attraction in Queensland’s outback.
A documentary film is in production at this time.
November . December 103
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Ken Duncan stands atop one of the hundreds of
granite rock walls that fan out in semicircles across this
breathtaking landscape for maybe 4–5km, resembling
giant ripples on a pond.
It was only when we viewed Running Man Rock from the
helicopter that we also saw a stylised map of Australia,
minus Tassie, at his left foot.
Out here, renowned photographer Ken Duncan
and our intrepid pilot Pete ‘Polly’ Lindores
found the Robertson R44 chopper the best
way to explore the Running Man Rock site –
flying it like an aerial Toyota HiLux.
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November . December 105
P106
Townsville’s amazing new underwater museumTownsville’s amazing new underwater museum
P116
Alice, queen of the desert drag show
One of the underwater
sculptures at the
Museum of Underwater
Art off the coast of
Townsville, QLD.
Art, submergedArt, submerged
A breathtaking new underwater art museum in the waters
off north Queensland is inspiring a new love for the
embattled Great Barrier Reef.
Story and photos by Cathy Finch
In a garden under the sea
106 Australian Geographic
November . December 107
The Southern Hemisphere’s fi rst
underwater art museum literally
melds human culture and the
creatures of the GBR, such as the
cuttlefi sh known as Kevin seen here .
108 Australian Geographic
An underwater photographer enjoys the evocative art of the
Coral Greenhouse, where culture
meets conservation.
The installation’s above-water sculpture, Ocean Siren,
radiates colours that change in
response to the surrounding
sea temperature.
November . December 109
It’s one of Earth’s most complex natural systems, home to countless animals. And to the rest of the world it’s one of the most identifiably Australian places. We all know what it is – the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)– and that it’s under pressure. But how can we frame its intricate natural architecture in a new way that inspires people to love it enough to care about its future?
That was the question passionate Townsville-based marine scientists Dr Adam Smith and Dr Paul Marshall were struggling with when they attended a talk by a fellow scientist discussing an underwater art installation on a reef in Cancun, Mexico.
It turned out to be a watershed moment.“Like all good ideas,” Adam says, “the seeds stem
from somewhere else. I listened to this scientist talk about what had been done on a reef in Mexico and thought what a perfect fit this concept would be for Townsville.
“We are a reef city, with the GBR on our doorstep, but many people don’t even realise this. We are the hub for scientific reef research and our city has a gathering of great minds studying our oceans and reef at James Cook University. We have the world’s largest living aquarium on display, but tourists still tend to link Cairns with the GBR, not Townsville. We needed to come up with some-thing that was going to shine a light on the science and culture of our reef here. And it needed to be thought- provoking on a global scale.”
THE IDEA OF underwater art installations located off the north Queensland coast was hatched. And this year, four years later, the Museum
of Underwater Art (MOUA) launched its first huge in-situ artwork on John Brewer Reef, 70km off the coast from Townsville.
“You know the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’?” Adam asks. “Well, it has taken a city to get MOUA installed. So many extraordinary people, com-panies, private businesses and government departments have pulled together to be involved, supplying their time, expertise and funding to make this happen.”
Located in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast is
the largest living structure in the world.
QLD
Townsville
BRISBANE
Crane lifts of up to 30t were needed to lower
the MOUA statues to the sea floor.
MOUA statues are all cast from real people, including children
who are representative of the future of the reef.
In time the statues will become covered in coral, and fish will make them their homes.
The 10-day installation process was complex and
challenging and took place within the confi nes of
an extremely sensitive marine environment.
A cuttlefi sh has already taken up residence in one of the
Coral Greenhouse hanging baskets.
110 Australian Geographic
The installation on Brewer’s is the fi rst of three. Others are planned for Magnetic Island, also off the Townsville coast, and Palm Island, further north.
“But of course we are enormously proud and excited about the opening of this fi rst installation. It’s a world-class experience,” says Adam, who is deputy chair of the MOUA board and owner of Reef Ecologic, a Townsville-based company that provides advice, research and training on issues facing coral reefs.
The MOUA team felt it was vital that the project attract a world-renowned artist, to bring it global atten-tion. “So with little or no budget, we contacted the best of the best – UK sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, who has previously been involved in underwater sculptures across the Northern Hemisphere.”
But how to attract him to the project with no money? “So we invited him to stay in our homes,” Adam recalls, explaining that Jason was embraced like a family member by the project team.
“We shared meals, took him diving and found out he is a particularly good squash player.” The strategy worked and Jason agreed to the project. Many meetings and much planning and collaboration followed during the next four years. “There needed to be strong vision for this project and the conversations with Jason were long and ongoing,” Adam says.
Jason’s willingness to take on a chal-lenging project on the other side of the world is evidence of his passion for art and conservation. Born in the UK, he graduated in 1998 from the London Institute of Arts with an honours degree in sculpture.
He’s also a fully qualifi ed diving instructor – trained in Queensland – and a naturalist and talented underwater photographer.
The vision for MOUA is to provide a submerged experience that inspires reef conservation and engages the community in cultural land and sea stories. Jason achieves that with a Coral Greenhouse idea that melds humanity and the reef, both metaphorically and fi g-uratively. Jason’s installation features life-like statues, cast using real people, to give life and breath to the reef itself, connecting art, science, culture and conservation.
I’m lucky enough to be on Yongala Dives’ inau-gural dive trip to the site. As the sun rises, we leave Townsville for the two-hour voyage to John BrewerReef. There is an air of anticipation among those on board. Owner and skipper of Yongala Dive, Matt King,is clearly excited to be able to off er visitors to Townsvillea new experience. “This is something diff erent from anything else around,” he says. “Our company dives the famous Yongala wreck (see AG 114) every day, so I’m very spoilt. But as far as a dive site goes, this doesn’t have to be the most fantastic fi shy site in the world – this
site is going to attract people because it’s so diff erent.” In time, the site’s structures will become covered in coral, and fi sh will make them their homes.
“The concept is to bring more people to the reef and region by raising awareness about the reef,” Matt explains.
“Hopefully, they will also learn things they didn’t know, tak-ing home ways in which they personally can have a positive impact on [the reef ’s] preservation. It’s a
Ocean Siren is the fi rst
sign of the underwater
art gallery that lies
70km off shore. PH
OTO
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TO
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AN
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ASO
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ES T
AY
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November . December 111
great idea for sure. It’s a trip for everyone, not just divers. Bring Grandma. Surrounding MOUA is this fabulous healthy reef, covered in magnificent plate coral that snorkellers also will love and enjoy.”
Also on board is Richard Woodgett, the underwater videographer employed by artist Jason to document the entire installation process, which took 10 days of living and working out on the reef. The fabrication of the structures took more than nine months in a Townsville warehouse.
Richard describes the operation as highly organised and running entirely to plan. “Initially, the installa-tion process kept getting delayed because of weather. The ocean needed to be like glass, but eventually they picked their window well. The greenhouse and statues were loaded onto a barge and towed by a tug, very, very slowly, to the selected site on the reef.” There were 15 construction crew and four commercial divers, who had full communication with the surface. Bit by bit, it went in.
Jason’s statues are all made of porous, pH-neutral con-crete, which is not harmful to anything alive in the marine environment. In fact, the concrete, complete with lit-tle holes promoting animal lodgings, encourages coral growth, and, in time, will capture spawning coral from the nearby reef. It is envisaged that coral transplanting will also begin once permits and approvals are in place.
To top off this complex construction task, the frame of the Coral Greenhouse, made of corrosion-resistant Grade 316 stainless steel, weighing 58 tonnes, and mea-suring 12m x 9m x 6m, was lowered and attached to a substantial concrete flooring. Mirroring a terrestrial greenhouse, where plants are propagated, this under-water structure sits some 16m down on the seabed, encouraging propagation of both corals and sea life and surrounded by 25 sculptures of various objects and human forms.
IT IS TIME to see it for myself. Diving down to 16m, we make our way towards the outline of the green-house roof, rising through the blue. Sunlight dances
on the fringes of floating umbrella palm sculptures as I swim through the A-frame opening of the greenhouse to be met, instantly, by Kevin the cuttlefish. Kevin is not a statue. Named by pre-opening divers, he’s a real- life spectacular marine mollusc who has taken up early residence in one of the greenhouse’s hanging baskets.
Kevin willingly encourages my own lingering fasci-nation with cuttlefish, then turns his large googly eyes towards me one last time before extending his waving arms, gliding off, switching colours with electrifying speed and leaving me alone in this larger scale magnetic scene of beauty and intrigue. Then I turn my attention to Margaret.
Healthy invertebrate growth on the
statues encourages larger sea life to
enter and make MOUA their home.
She’s a life-sized Reef Guardian, bowing pensively over her microscope, already covered in algae, and attract- ing fish life that weaves about her features. Margaret Chong is Jason’s muse for this statue, a proud Gangalidda woman from the outback community of Doomadgee, Queensland. She is one of eight human statues tending the reef, building a new relationship with a frail habitat in dire need of protection. I swim slowly from one statue to another, feeling the life they already radiate, entombed in time here, beneath the waves.
One small boy holds a planter pot. Another wields garden scissors. Creeping up the hip of a small girl, hair pulled back in a ponytail and sitting cross-legged beside a watering can, a sea star uses its hundreds of tiny tubular feet to explore its new surroundings. With the com-ing and going of a school of barracuda, the atmosphere of this structure changes as it does when different fish species come and go through its unconstrained design. It has been built to withstand waves and a category four cyclone. I vow to return annually after this dive, to watch with intrigue the story of its growth. “I am making these inert objects, but the environment is giving them souls,” Jason explains. “This is one of the most ambitious artworks I have ever created. It is a portal, or interface, if you like, into our underwater world, for people to understand what a beautiful and sacred space it really is.”
The GBR can teach us about the interconnected-ness of all life. It is up to each of us to implement small changes into our daily lives, to ensure our reefs are here for our children and for the benefit of future generations. It was empowering to see statues cast on real children. These will act as beacons in time, mapping
coral growth and drawing in more hearts to care about the health of our reefs.
Back on Townsville’s foreshore I visit another arm of the installation – Ocean Siren – a 4m-high sculp-ture modelled on Takoda Johnson, a young member of the Wulgurukaba tribe. Ocean Siren is linked to a live feed from a weather station on nearby Davies Reef. Her 202 multi-coloured LED lights change colour depending on the surrounding sea temperature, potentially warning of warming seas and risks to coral reefs. It is another clever, visually emotive, way to highlight the needs of our oceans. “It is very exciting,” Takoda says. “Ocean Siren is look-ing out onto the ocean and reef like my people have done for thousands of years. It is a great honour for me. When I was younger my great-great-grandad would always paint these beautiful paintings and tell us stories of how we always need to respect and look after the ocean. I didn’t really understand. But now that I’m older I feel like we need to think about what we’re doing to the ocean and how we’re impacting it.”
Ocean Siren looks over the ocean to Magnetic Island and beyond, holding a baler shell, a link to the ocean that has been used to blow messages to her people for millennia. MOUA holds an important message for us all as a meeting place of art, tourism and marine science – a beacon of light and life, for the reef, and its future.
112 Australian Geographic
The author flew as a guest of Airnorth from Toowoomba
to Townsville. airnorth.com.au
TO VISIT MOUA: Yongala dive yongaladive.com.au ;
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116 Australian Geographic
Fabulously glittering disco balls set
the scene for the Throb on Todd’s
midnight show on the final night of
Alice Springs’ FABalice extravaganza.
November . December 117
WHEN MITZI, FELICIA and Bernadette drove a big silver-turned-pink bus through the Australian outback towards Alice Springs’ Lasseters Hotel Casino Resort in the 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, no-
one could have known the iconic status it would hold. Now, Priscilla’s legacy lives on at FABalice, a rainbow festival inspired by the movie that had everyone’s lipsticked lips celebrating the raw glitz and glamour of Australian drag.
After a week travelling through the Northern Territory’s Red Centre, I arrive in Alice Springs late Thursday evening. The bus that’s brought me here is a far cry from the glamorous Priscilla, but a fitting start to a weekend that proves “a cock in a frock on a rock” is exactly what this country needs.
A breeze whispers through the air, its warmth forcing the hairs on my arms to stand and then quickly flatten as beads of sweat trail their way over my skin. It’s my first time in the Aussie outback town and I’m astonished by the multifariousness of it all – culturally, geologically and environ-mentally. On one side, the MacDonnell Ranges stand tall and exposed, and on the other, small buildings hug the banks of the Todd River. The township looks like any other in regional Australia, and yet there’s an eccentricity I can’t quite put my finger on. The Todd River runs dry through the town, but today puddles of water offer respite to its consistently parched sands, thanks to a rare light showering of rain.
Story and photography by Anna Kantilaftas
More than 26 years after The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was
released, FABalice brings drag royalty back to Alice Springs for a long weekend of cabaret, rainbows and glittering pride.
Glittering pride for Alice Springs
Festivals and Events
118 Australian Geographic
When the harsh sun rises on Friday morning and the tenacious flies start to wake for their daily routine of professional irritations, I navigate my way to the Alice Springs Airport for the FABalice Welcome.
The airport is small, as you’d expect of an outback town, and yet today it takes on an air of extravagance. Rainbow banners and twinkling lights bedazzle the baggage carousel. DJ Clitterally spins her set while expertly flicking her hair as if she’s just stepped off the set of a shampoo commercial, while Marzi Panne and Miss Ellaneous sway their hips and snap photos against the rainbow backdrop. Dressed in a pink dress and blond wig, Teresa Cumnsaw leans against a maroon Bufori Madison; she looks like she was born for the spotlight but is also a little unsure of the part she plays. My eyes are conflicted between the sultry stares of Clitterally and the bashfulness of Teresa.
“I’m new to this,” Teresa tells me, about her journey to becoming a queen. “In 2016 I dressed up for a friend’s 30th. Then FABalice launched in 2019, and I would watch Clitterally do her makeup for different events, and that’s when it all started.
“It was a slow process for me. It wasn’t really until September last year that I started to embrace drag. Clitterally just started dressing me up and doing my makeup. She’s taught me a lot, like how to dress, how to do my makeup. She’s my biggest supporter.”
This support network, I learn, is the hairspray that holds FABalice together.
Between spins, Clitterally, who is originally from Bendigo, Victoria, shares her progression into drag.
“I got approached in Alice Springs by a local bar to host Drag Queen Bingo,” she says. “That was just over 12 months ago now. I’m also very new to it all.
“I’m still a baby drag queen; I’ve got heaps to learn, but being surrounded by all these other amazing drag queens at FABalice, I’ve been picking their brains and learning how to do things.”
WE’RE INTERRUPTED BY the airport’s speakers and suddenly a swarm of people are app- roaching the baggage carousel after their
three-hour flight from Sydney. They walk towards the colourful display, eyes to
the floor and yet unknowingly bopping along to the beat of Calvin Harris. But even their apprehension can’t stop the glitter contagion of FABalice, and, like magical pixie dust, the queens’ lipstick grins catch on and the closer the passengers walk, the bigger their smiles become.
By the time Friday night rolls around, the fabulous-ness of the weekend has caught on and people arrive in droves at the Alice Springs Convention Centre for the Priscilla Show, the extravagant opening of the Drag Crawl. Colourful wigs, fairy wings and flamboyant outfits decorate the otherwise corporate entrance. A rainbow arch leads to the outdoor amphitheatre where the moon and stars sparkle overhead as if they too were planned decorations.
Gay Roberto’s DJ tunes dampen the chatter of the crowd. Marzi Panne and Miss Ellaneous take to the stage and capture the audience’s attention with their costumes alone. Their flight attendant skit, followed by the show-stealing antics of Freddie Merkin, a drag king, sends me and the rest of the crowd into fits of laughter.
A distinct laugh turns my attention away from the stage. Behind me, a beautiful woman in wide leg pants and a high blond ponytail stares, fixated on the stage.
Teresa Cumnsaw, Miss Ellaneous and Marzie Panne (L–R)
welcome travellers at Alice Springs Airport.
NorthernTerritory
Alice Springs
DARWIN
Producer Jacqui Cunningham,
aka DJ Cunningpants, spins sets while
Miss Ellaneous dances nearby.
The Old Quarry in Alice Springs is a
spectacular outdoor venue that sprinkles
some glamour on the red dust of the outback.
November . December 119
By the time Friday night rolls around, the fabulousness of the weekend has
caught on and people arrive in droves.
Miss Ellaneous and Marzie Panne host the Throb on Todd show,
which features Brokeback Mountain-
inspired acts and pole dancers.
Festivals and Events
120 Australian Geographic
Rainbow wings and
rollerskates are de
rigueur in town during
the FABalice pageant.
I recognise her immediately. At 76 years of age, Carlotta still out-glamours most and I’m instantly drawn to her confi dence and eccentricities.
The alleged inspiration behind The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and the star of former Sydney-based male revue Les Girls, takes to the stage at the night’s second venue, the Star of Alice, alongside famed performer Trevor Ashley. Dressed in a glitzy silver-sequinned gown and white feather boa, Carlottahas the crowd both in stitches and stunned as crude jokes fi ll the space between her singing perform-ances. She struggles across the grassed arena in stilettos, and suddenly eyes avert their attention from her shim-mering dress to the ground, everyone hoping they’re not the chosen subject of her next roasting.
“I looked like a heifer,” she tells me later, laughing off her clumsy attempt to interact with the crowd.
It’s hard not to be entranced by the tenacity of a woman who can make even the rudest and crudest jokes seem endearing, and after tonight there’s an extra twinkle in my admiration for her.
The Drag Crawl ends at Monte’s Lounge, and the crowd seems to have shifted gears into party mode. Cabaret performances by Clitterally, Teresa Cumnsaw, Chocolate Boxx and Drag Territory, among others, get the audience on their feet and quickly turns the fl oor show into a dance party.
As I cart my weary body back to my room, glit-ter is already scattered across most of the footpaths throughout Alice Springs, and it’s almost as if the ground beneath my feet is mirroring the clear, starry sky. And it’s only the fi rst night.
ALICE SPRINGS’ MELTING POT of diversity takes centre stage on Saturday. Rainbow chalk, care-fully crafted by children and families, artfully
adds colour to the town’s Todd Mall, laying the metaphor-ical rainbow carpet for the afternoon’s FABalice pageant.
Floats start to make their way down the mall. This is like Mardi Gras in the Aussie outback and the streets are fi lled with the sounds of people cheering, music blasting, and inquisitive questions, leading the way to the family-friendly Drag Races.
“FABalice does a really good job of visibility and drag culture,” Clitterally prompts, as we watch bystanders join in the racing fun. “Especially since we’re doing all these
family events, which show drag queens aren’t just over-sexualised, 18-plus red light shows. They are actually for everybody.
“All I want to do is make peo-ple happy. All those kids over there,
they’re looking and coming up to us and saying ‘Oh my god you’re so beau-tiful’ and all they see is this big, big,
big emphasis on big, beautiful, strong, independent women... But I just love that
everyone is amazed by all the glitter, and the big hair.”
I contemplate joining the race, but the ex-haustion, caused by a combination of walking, heat and a late Friday night, is getting the better
of me and I realise I don’t have the party stamina I used to. “How do you do it?” I ask Teresa, who is quickly becoming my go-to party pal. “Practice,” she says, “and lots of alcohol.”
I hear her advice but opt for an afternoon snooze in the aircon instead. There’s a big Saturday night ahead, the fi rst of the festivities
Floats start to make their way down the mall. This is like Mardi Gras in the Aussie outback.
Festivals and Events
Clitterally’s performance takes us to the tropics at Monte’s
Lounge (below). The audience embraces the weekend’s theme
and arrives with glitter, feathers and colourful costumes (right).
November . December 121
being the Ex-DRAG-Vaganza. Held at the spectacular venue The Old Quarry, it’s the highlight event for most of the performers.
A silhouette of exposed red quartzite is lit up by rain-bow lights, and stands as a reminder of where we are. The shade of the night off ers respite from the scorching sun and the relentless buzzing of fl ies, both notorious legacies of Australia’s Red Centre.
The timber dance fl oors of Friday night and the chalky pavement of earlier today are now replaced with dusty red dirt. The Old Quarry feels miles away from town, and more reminiscent of Burning Man than Mardi Gras. Costumes, lycra, tulle and streamers dominate the crowd, contortionists bend their way through a cage and heads sway to the pounding beats selected by DJ Cunningpants. Chocolate Boxx does the splits on stage and Freddie Merkin again sends the crowds into tittering messes.
It’s a f itting pre-show to the magnum opus of FABalice – Throb on Todd’s Midnight Show. I decide to beat the bus crowds travelling from The Old Quarry and arrive at the Alice Springs Convention Centre early enough to not have to join a queue. I haven’t lined up for a nightclub since my early 20s.
Inside, the Convention Centre has transformed from the rainbow splash the night before. Blackened walls, glitter disco balls and curtained booths lay the way for
a night of fun. Teresa, now out of costume, taps me on the shoulder as I inspect the table decorations. “It’s me, Teresa…or Terry,” he tells me, with an embrace. He invites me over to where his entourage is sitting, and one by one I’m introduced to his family and friends. His sister is noticeably beaming with pride at Teresa’s performances during the weekend.
In just two days, I’ve noticed the transformation of Teresa, from the shy woman blending into the back-ground at the airport to the confi dent performer who took to the stage at Monte’s Lounge. I ask Terry what he thinks FABalice does for the community he grew up in.
“[It gets] the community to be more accepting, bringing the conversation of drag to the surface rather than trying to hide. [It’s an opportunity] to come out and feel like you’re just yourself and you don’t need to hide,” he says.
As I sit by the pool on the fi nal day of FABalice, I refl ect on last night’s conversation with Terry about the value of an event like this in a town like Alice.
It’s so much more than just entertainment. It’s an opportunity for people to let their hair down and cel-ebrate the love, pride and glittering community spirit of Alice Springs. Sure, the festival may be inspired by The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but it’s also a showcase of just how far it has come since the movie was released. AG
The crowd pushes to the front to get
a glimpse of Miss Ellaneous, who opens
the Throb on Todd's Midnight Show.
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At the time of going to press they were
proceeding as planned, but things may change
due to COVID-19.
waters of Wineglass Bay and
enjoy much more.
13–18 SEPT 2021
WHO: Pinetrees Lodge
DATES: 13–18 September 2021
COST: From $4936pp
(twin share)
MORE INFO: Call 02 9262 6585,
email [email protected] or
visit pinetrees.com.au
It’s an exciting time for
conservation on Lord Howe
Island. Last year, a major
rodent eradication project
was completed, and so far
the results are promising. The
removal of rodents should have
a positive impact on the island’s
birdlife, which will be the focus
of next year’s AG Expedition.
Over six days, we’ll survey the
island for populations of local
Australian Geographic Expedition to Lord Howe Island
and migratory birds. We hope
to fi nd species recovering in
existing breeding grounds and
expanding into new ones.
AVAILABLE ONLINE ON AUSTRALIANGEOGRAPHIC.COM.AU/SHOP AND AT QBD BOOKS STORES
$34.95 $49.95 $59.95
RRP: $14.95
$12.99RRP: $14.95
$12.99RRP: $14.95
$12.99RRP: $14.95
$12.99
NOW AVAILABLE IN ALL QBD BOOKS STORES
November .December 2020
Expedition diary
WHO: Holiday Haven Bendalong
DATES: Year-round
COST: Cabin accommodation
from $150 per night
MORE INFO: Call 02 4444 8860,
email bendalong@holidayhaven.
com.au or visit holidayhaven.
com au/bendalong
Holiday Haven Bendalong, on
the idyllic NSW south coast, is
perfect for getting back to nature
or the traditional family holiday.
It’s a paradise for anyone wanting
to relax, bushwalk, swim, fi sh or
surf. Nestled among tall eucalypts,
Holiday Haven Bendalong off ers
a range of accommodation for
camping, caravanning and cabin
holidays. Boasting Inyadda Beach
and its surf breaks, as well as the
calm waters of Washerwomans
and Boat Harbour beaches,
A paradise awaits
WHO: Banrock Station
DATES: Year-round, self-guided
walking tours.
MORE INFO: 08 8583 0299,
email cellardoor@banrockstation.
com.au or visit
banrockstation.com.au
A visit to the Ramsar-
accredited Banrock Station
Wine & Wetland Centre is more
than just a visit to a Cellar
Door. Located in the heart of
the Riverland, South Australia,
the Banrock Station Wetlands
boasts more than 1400ha
of fl oodplains, woodlands,
shrublands and native mallee
habitat. All this is home to more
than 180 diff erent bird species,
including the rare regent parrot.
With three self-guided walking
Walks, wildlife and winetracks, information huts and
bird-viewing hides, you are
sure to spot an abundance
of wildlife.
the park is home to resident
wildlife – native birds, possums,
kangaroos, and even stingrays off
the local boat ramp.
WHO: Eclipse Travel
DATES: 6–18 August 2021
COST: From $5800pp
MORE INFO: Call 02 9016 2930,
email [email protected].
au, or visit eclipsetravel.com.
au/package/best-of-papua-new-
guinea-experience
Experience a taste of Papua
New Guinea with this tour
to Goroka, Mount Hagen,
Rabaul and the Duke of York
Islands. You’ll learn how to make
traditional bilums, visit the
haunting Asaro Mudmen tribe,
stay at a locally owned mountain
lodge, witness a ritualistic
Baining fi re dance, explore
remote tropical islands, swim
with dolphins, discover Admiral
Yamamoto’s WWII bunker,
Unique culture right on your doorstep!
and so much more. This guided
tour off ers an incredible
overview to all PNG has to off er.
6–18 AUG 2021
OPEN YEAR-
ROUND OPEN YEAR-
ROUND
November . December 129
WHO: APT Touring
DATES: April–Sept 2021
COST: From $7995pp, twin share
SAVE: $1600 per couple*
*Conditions apply.
BOOKINGS:visit aptouring.com.au/gkbk12
Join our expert driver-guides
for an off -road journey of a
lifetime. On our 12-day Iconic
Kimberley small group 4WD
journey, you’ll explore hidden
wonders like Mitchell Falls and
the breathtaking Bungle Bungles.
And aft er exploring by day,
relax in APT’s exclusive luxury
wilderness lodges. APT has been
operating tours in the Kimberley
for more than 40 years, and are
APT Kimberley Wilderness Adventures
APRIL– SEPT 2021
experts in tailoring holidays
to showcase the best of this
magical region.
Dinosaurs of Australia
LIDA XING IS A palaeontologist and palaeo-artist based in Beijing, China. His science-based
reconstructions of prehistoric creatures have featured in National Geographic and Nature as
well as on numerous occasions in AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC. He earned his master’s degree in
palaeontology from the University of Alberta, Canada; has done extensive fieldwork
excavating feathered dinosaurs in China; and has published numerous academic papers on
dinosaur tracks. On this occasion in 2014, Xing illustrated all of Australia’s then-known
dinosaurs for a poster. Australia’s dinosaur species are unique, but our fossil record is meagre
compared with other locations. Our ancient, flat landscape makes fossils hard to find and
leaves them exposed to the elements. The potential for future discoveries, however, together
with a relative lack of knowledge about Australian dinosaurs, makes it an exciting place for
palaeontologists such as Lida Xing.
By Lida Xingfrom an inserted poster AG 122Sep–Oct 2014
130 Australian Geographic
The art of AUSTR ALIAN GEOGR APHICAG’s archives are a treasure trove of scientific illustration and botanical and
zoological art. Here we revisit some of the highlights from our vast collection.
EXHIBITION ON SHOWPINE RIVERS HERITAGE MUSEUM | WHITESIDE, QLD | 16 October 2020 – 14 February 2021
ORANGE REGIONAL MUSEUM | ORANGE, NSW | 21 October - 22 November 2020
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA | CANBERRA, ACT | 3 December 2020 – 7 March 2021
Discover the remarkable stories of ordinary Australians
in this exhibition celebrating the bush, the outback, the
coast and the people who live there.
A travelling exhibition from the National Museum of Australia developed in collaboration with
Australian Geographic. Photograph by Colin Beard.
nma.gov.au/portrait-of-australia
EXHIBITION ON SHOWPINE RIVERS HERITAGE MUSEUM | WHITESIDE, QLD | 16 October 2020 – 14 February 2021
ORANGE REGIONAL MUSEUM | ORANGE, NSW | 21 October - 22 November 2020
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA | CANBERRA, ACT | 3 December 2020 – 7 March 2021
Discover the remarkable stories of ordinary Australians
in this exhibition celebrating the bush, the outback, the
coast and the people who live there.
A travelling exhibition from the National Museum of Australia developed in collaboration with
Australian Geographic. Photograph by Colin Beard.
nma.gov.au/portrait-of-australia