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Saving all creatures great and small in Australia’s biggest state

01

Protecting the powerful

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10 Le Boréal ANTARCTICA

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CONTENTS Australian Geographic January • February 2020 F E AT U R E S

42

POWER COUPLE

48

OUR TOP AWARD TURNS 60

56

UNDERWATER IQ

A pair of endangered owls breeding in a suburban backyard show why we need to protect remnant bushland.

This year’s milestone Australian of the Year nominations reflect where we are as a nation like never before.

Scientists are finding plenty of clues that fish are more intelligent than anyone imagined.

68

GALLERY GUARDIANS

82

OPEN YOUR EYES

92

RESTORING NATURE’S GLORY

Precious rock art in West Arnhem Land is being cared for by Indigenous rangers in an innovative new program.

The extraordinary human and natural history of Australia’s newest national park, the Houtman Abrolhos.

Working side by side in southern WA to create a 1000km continuous corridor of bushland.

PHOTO CREDIT: PETE OXFORD/MINDEN PICTURES SCIENTIFIC NAMES: CARCHARHINUS BRACHYURUS; SARDINOPS SAGAX

Safety in numbers: the bigger the shoal, the greater the confusion for predators, scientists say.

See page 56.

January . February 7

CONTENTS Australian Geographic

January • February 2020

Your Society

24 Snapshot: The Great Melbourne Telescope

Find out where your donations are going in 2020 and get the latest news. p36

42 Powerful owls

36 AGS Awards guest speaker, Victor Vescovo p68

G EO B UZ Z A N D R EG U L A R S

T R AV E L W I T H U S

p106 NT

26 27 28 30 31 33 34

From the Editor Your Say Big Picture Fixing the hole in our sky Bird Nerd: What’s in a name?

Dr Karl: Volcano-made Frankenstein The little dragon that rocks Snapshot: The Great Melbourne Telescope Beautiful butterfly eggs Saving the smoky mouse Aussie Towns: Silverton, NSW Defining Moments: Mahina – Australia’s deadliest cyclone Tim the Yowie Man Space Wild Australia

106

114

Rainforest refresh Trekking the Mackay Highlands Great Walk.

p82

106 Rainforest refresh

AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR TURNS 60

The very best of Australia’s nature, culture, people and places

UNDERWATER AND UNDERRATED The remarkable intelligence of fish

Hello possum Saving all creatures great and small in Australia’s biggest state

S E E PAG E 5 4 F O R M O R E D E TA I L S

p28

NSW

VIC

p114 TAS

Members of Aboriginal communities are warned that this edition of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC may contain images and names of deceased individuals.

S U B S C R I B E A N D SAV E

8 Australian Geographic

SA

p92

Secrets of the Snowy Aboriginal history and the mighty Snowy River combine on this kayak trip.

Subscribe to Australian Geographic and receive our 2020 Nature Photographer of the Year calendar and diary set valued at over $49.

QLD

WA

Protecting the powerful

Heavy weather

Houtman Abrolhos

Urban owls under pressure

Australia’s worst ever cyclone

Australia’s newest national park

O N T H E C OV E R The diminutive honey possum, or noolbenger (Tarsipes rostratus), is just 8cm long and weighs 10g.

Its elongated snout allows it to feed on the nectar and pollen of a range of flowering plants.

Photo by Marie Lochman.

PHOTO CREDITS, FROM TOP LEFT: ANDREW GREGORY; MUSEUMS VICTORIA; DAN GRAY; DON FUCHS SCIENTIFIC NAME: Ninox strenua

11 14 16 18 21 22 23 24

R A E N O R E I T FROANND ADVENTURES IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA HIGHL

Australia’s closest neighbour is also one of the most culturally diverse places on the planet.

It is a country loved so wholeheartedly by those who crave authenticity, playing home to 800+ different languages and the most unique tribes in the world. An opportunity to experience one of the traditional cultural festivals is something that should be on every culture-seekers’ bucket list. The more adventurous traveller can even climb to the top of Oceania’s highest mountain (Mount Wilhelm: 4,509m) or trek world-famous Kokoda.

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Children of Paiya Village in Papua New Guinea’s highlands | Photo by Jeremy Drake

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From the Editor-in-chief

Think big, act big

W

ELCOME TO

a new year and a new decade. As we put the finishing touches to this edition of Australian Geographic, outside my window the sun appears as an unearthly rosegold orb in an eerie ashen sky as bushfires rage across New South Wales shrouding Sydney in dense smoke.

It’s not the first time this extent and intensity of bushfires has gripped the country, but it’s barely summer and the crisis has already been unfolding for weeks.

In early November 2019, the Australian Geographic Society donated $50,000, on behalf of our members, to a raft of volunteer and not-for-profit organisations dedicated to bushfire-affected wildlife relief and rehabilitation. It’s these kinds of grass roots organisations that lie at the heart of our nation’s current response to climate change.

At AG we support many such organisations through the Society’s direct funding program and by publicising individuals and organisations engaged in this sort of work in the pages of the magazine and via our many other channels, as well as at our respected annual awards.

In this edition we bear witness to how smart collaborations can achieve landscape scale conservation outcomes.

In the biodiversity hotspot of southwest Western Australia, the Gondwana Link program (page 92) unites national environmental organisations, farmers, traditional custodians, landowners, private philanthropy, communities and even tourists. Between them they throw an ambitious veil of protection over what is a vast and varied region of the country. It’s the ability of smaller organisations and individuals to tackle big problems that makes this program so fascinating and sets it as an example worth following.

Even our nation’s highest accolade, the Australian of the Year (page 48), formally acknowledges the urgent need to seek innovative solutions to a range of big environmental pressures by exploring less traditional pathways.

These types of bottom-up efforts may be measured against a perceived lack of cohesive top-down responses both nationally and globally to climate change and other threats.

In contrast was the reaction to the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer back in the mid-1980s (page 18).

This scientific discovery and the identification of its causes sparked swift and coordinated action at the highest levels of international government and

AG subscriber benefits 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 scientific and environmental research, conservation, community projects and Australian adventurers.

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business. The resulting Montreal Protocol, signed by 197 countries, is still seen as the most successful environmental agreement ever, and, as the ozone hole continues to shrink, offers hope for a way forward on the increasingly complex battleground of climate change action.

You may have noticed that your local Australian Geographic shop changed its name recently to Curious Planet.

By way of explanation, these shops had used the “Australian Geographic” name under licence from the Australian Geographic company, which is the publisher of this magazine, all the other Australian Geographic media products you see and also operates the Australian Geographic Society charity.

The media company and the Society have no relationship with Curious Planet and its retail business. We understand some of our members are experiencing issues with Curious Planet and regret this, but because it is a distinct and separate business there is little we can do. We apologise if these changes to the shops have caused any inconvenience to our valued members.

If you have any queries, please contact us on editorial@ausgeo.com.au

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January . February 11

Notes from the field MANAGING DIRECTOR Jo Runciman

AG photographer Andrew Gregory and his wife, Marcelle, now enjoy many nights watching the powerful owls that share their backyard.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Chrissie Goldrick CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mike Ellott SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT EDITOR Karen McGhee ASSISTANT EDITOR Jess Teideman SUB-EDITOR Elizabeth Ginis DIRECTOR OF CARTOGRAPHY Will Pringle PROOFREADER Susan McCreery SENIOR DESIGNER Harmony Southern ADDITIONAL CARTOGRAPHIC CHECKING Geoscience Australia MANAGING EDITOR Katrina O’Brien COMMERCIAL MANAGING EDITOR Lauren Smith ASSISTANT COMMERCIAL EDITOR Rebecca Cotton DIGITAL MANAGING EDITOR Elizabeth Ginis DIGITAL PRODUCER Angela Heathcote

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY FOUNDER, PATRON Dick Smith AC

Notes from the field

AG SOCIETY EXPERT ADVISORY PANEL Chris Bray, Tim Jarvis AM, Anna Rose AG SOCIETY ADMINISTRATOR: Jess Teideman Email: society@ausgeo.com.au

more powerful than that of the Dutch East Indies flagship Batavia, which was wrecked off the Abrolhos in 1629.

Andrew Gregory knows a thing or two about potent stories. Three years ago, he was thrust into the secret world of powerful owls (page 42).

“I began an assignment that encompassed entire breeding seasons, and, along the way, managed to gain the trust of a family of these rare birds that allowed me to follow their lives,” he says. “I discovered incredible behaviour and saw them hunting on the ground and in the air.

I watched them feed each other, witnessed their affection, saw them grieve and felt their vulnerability.

“I spent nights dragging long lenses through the bush and experienced the frustration of not getting a shot, while at other times it all came together and the owls allowed me to watch their most intimate moments, like a family enjoying a bath in a stream before retiring to a roost tree, and an owlet peering outside its hollow for the first time, eyes wide in amazement.”

Features editors: Joanna Hartmann, John Pickrell Regular columnists: Bruce Elder, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki AM, John Pickrell, Fred Watson AM, Kel Richards, Tim the Yowie Man, Peter Rowland More contributors: Michael Amendolia, Holly Cormack, Levent Efe, Don Fuchs, Ego Guiotto, David Hancock, Wade Hughes, Hannah James, Jiri Lochman, Marie Lochman, Wendy MacKinnon, Peter Meredith, Matthew Newton, Michael Payne, Justin Walker

12 Australian Geographic

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AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC, journal of the Australian Geographic Society, is published six times a year (cover dates Jan–Feb, Mar–Apr, May–Jun, Jul–Aug, Sep–Oct, Nov–Dec) by Australian Geographic Holdings Pty Ltd (ABN 12 624 547 922), 52–54 Turner Street, Redfern NSW 2016. The trademark Australian Geographic is the property of Australian Geographic Holdings Pty Ltd. All 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 10.12.2019

PHOTO CREDIT: ANDREW GREGORY

Writing this issue’s story on the Houtman Abrolhos National Park (page 82) was a gift for Carolyn Beasley. “During my previous career in marine consulting I had visited by boat and fallen in love with the islands,” she says. “For this story, my journey was made by air, a method that makes the islands so accessible and avoids the oftenrough sea crossing. Aside from seeing these wild islands and reefs from above, another highlight was talking to the locals, those who consider the Abrolhos part of their backyard.

Their passion and devotion to the islands and the area’s unique history is inspiring.”

In an east coast primary school in the 1980s, the message Carolyn received about Australian history was that Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia, with only a passing reference to the Indigenous inhabitants and early Dutch sailors. But since moving to Western Australia she has learnt about the west coast’s Dutch connection, and says there’s no story

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YOUR SAY Featured Letter WILDLIFE HERO My nephew, Old Growth Steve as he likes to be called, is a conventional farmer in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, who has now taken an interest in his neighbours – the local wildlife.

In fact, he allowed a mother possum and its young to make a home in his ceiling. One day, the mother possum vanished and eventually the young one climbed down searching for her.

And what it found was Old Growth Steve, whom it immediately adopted.

To show who was boss, the possum climbed up onto Steve’s head.

Steve fed it something “milky” (I am not sure what) and the next day took it to a wildlife refuge. He has had a lot of encounters with the “locals” and finds that, in general, they are very friendly.

Andrew Toth, Waterloo, NSW

LOYAL SUBSCRIBERS My partner and I have been travelling to Australia for 30 years. One time we met lovely people in Perth who invited us to stay. In their living room I read my first Australian Geographic and was hooked. Now we have been members for 28 years and are still excited when we receive the new magazine. Thank you.

NELLY AND RUEDI KILLENBERGER, SWITZERLAND

RED HERRING Sorry, Dr Karl, you are in the wrong hemisphere. The “Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning” only applies if you are in England. Well, that’s where the saying originated.

When I was studying at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, Wiltshire, UK, one of our 14 Australian Geographic

MAILBAG WELCOMES FEEDBACK

January . February 2020

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.

lecturers gave us a detailed and interesting talk about meteorology and why the homily about red sky at night only applies if you are in England.

Your logic about the clouds is mainly correct – but the clear, red sky in the evening means no cold front is set to sweep in from the west, or there are no rain clouds lurking out over the Atlantic Ocean waiting to sweep into England overnight.

Think of lambing, think of cold wet sheep dying overnight in a freezing westerly gale. The old shepherds will tell you, “There are 365 days in a year and a sheep knows at least 366 ways of dying.”

Think of the rural shepherds hoping for a rain-free night, because more often than not they had to sleep out in the open with their flocks. Or think of the miserable prospect of

Send letters, including an address and phone number, to editorial@ ausgeo.com.au or to Australian Geographic, GPO Box 4088, Sydney NSW 2001. Letters will be edited for length and clarity.

having to shear wet sheep the next morning. “Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning” is all about a cold rain front sweeping in from the North Sea. No dense rain clouds out to the east usually meant no easterly gales tomorrow, sweeping down from the Arctic, as they continue to do today.

As I recall, the lecturer emphasised that the saying was originally a shepherds’ warning and only applied to England, but the saying had been translocated around the world due to British migration to the colonies, and the saying had been mangled into “a sailors’ delight, and a sailors’ warning.”

Think about it – which came first, shepherds worrying about tomorrow’s weather, or English gentlemen thinking of having a day’s boating tomorrow?

EVAN HOLT, SURF BEACH, NSW

QANTAS LINK I, as a reader from the first issue, was very interested in Alasdair McGregor’s story Flying far (AG 153) of Ross and Keith Smith’s winning of the Great Air Race from England to Australia in December 1919, 100 years ago.

The article is also so well illustrated and the flight must go down as one of the greatest in aviation history.

A disappointing omission was that there was no mention of the official organiser waiting in Darwin to greet the Smith brothers – their old Lighthorse and Australian Flying Corps comrade, Hudson Fysh, who went on to co-found Qantas.

He had made the overland journey from Longreach to Katherine in a Model T Ford with Paul McGinness, surveying landing grounds for competitors in the Great Air Race.

Here was inspiration for the foundation of Qantas, which grew to be that proud Australian organisation whose centenary will be celebrated in November this year.

JOHN HUDSON FYSH, WAMBERAL, NSW

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Talkb@ck SHOCKING MISTAKE It was stated in Life on the road (AG 153) that Mal Leyland had been electrocuted while on an expedition back in the 1960s.

But he is still alive! Talk about a Lazarus experience.

Maybe he just received a nasty shock.

BRENDAN SHERRIN, KINGSTON, TAS

PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY MAL LEYLAND

OLD BONES It was interesting to read your very good account of the Leyland brothers, Mal and Mike in Life on the road (AG 153). I had the privilege of meeting both of them at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide during the decade I was working there in the information and education office.

During the 1960s they visited the museum to obtain further information about the diprotodons that had once lived over wide areas of Australia.

The Leylands intended to visit Lake Callabonna in the north of South Australia, where a number of ancient skeletons had been found and collected for display in the museum many years earlier.

I sincerely hope that Mal has another opportunity to realise his hope for another series with his daughter, Carmen.

Good luck!

DOUG SETON, TEA TREE GULLY, SA

DUTCH ANCESTORS I thoroughly enjoyed Putting Australia on the map (AG 152), about the Dutch explorers to

Mal Leyland experienced a number of brushes with death as he and his late brother, Mike, explored Australia by car and boat in the 1960s.

Australia (AG 152). As a child in South Africa, we learnt about the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which created an outpost on the Cape of Good Hope as a way station for its travels to the Spice Islands. My ancestors were mostly Dutch but included at least one Malaysian woman banned to the Cape as a slave, so you might say I owe my very existence to the VOC. And now here I am in Australia, where the VOC also made its mark. I would love to read more on the subjects your article explored (excuse the pun).

ILSE VAN STADEN, BONNELLS BAY, NSW

In November, we published images by Ann Killeen of a stoush between a platypus and rakali that ended badly for the latter. Such interaction hadn’t been seen before. Here’s what you had to say: LANCE SNOWDON

I wonder if rakali could opportunistically predate platypus pups?

COOK’S OVERLOOK I find it incredible that Australian Geographic failed to mention that Magnetic Island was named in 1770 by Captain Cook who thought the island affected his compass. Subsequently his idea was tested at various places – all the rocks on the island are granite and have no magnetic qualities.

Otherwise the map was good and the article okay. My cousin’s wife, Dulcie Todd, once swam from Magnetic Island to Townsville as a young girl from Ayr (along with other swimmers too).

BEVERLEY TIMMS (TODD), COORANBONG, NSW

MON LULAN

Sad because we need those rakalis – they eat cane toads!

JULIE HARRINGTON-SPRATT

Awesome nature, pity it ended in death, but that’s the circle of life.

ELIZABETH HAWKER

I grew up seeing both these. Kept well away from the water rats…very aggressive when mating. Never saw the two species together. This might be why.

FIONA EVANS

I guess I was on the platypus’s side this time but I’ve always loved the busy water rats – they’re pretty cool customers!

January . February 15

GEOBUZZ JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2020

16 Australian Geographic

BIG PICTURE

NEW LIFE

By Wade Hughes Smoking like a volcano on an alien planet, and triggered in some mysterious way by the full moon, a sponge spawns deep on a reef in the Banda Sea, Indonesia.

Tiny entoprocta cluster thickly around the vent, combing the sponge’s exhalations for microscopic particles of food.

This image was a finalist in the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year 2019 competition.

Entries for 2020 are now open. For further details: naturephotographeroftheyear.com.au

January . February 17

FIXING THE HOLE IN OUR SKY Lessons from the Montreal Protocol, or how the people of the world can successfully respond as one to avert a global environmental catastrophe.

STORY BY KAREN MCGHEE

Balloons similar to this, carrying sensors, have been launched every week since 2003 at Davis research station by the Australian Antarctic Division to track ozone levels in the atmosphere.

18 Australian Geographic

GEOBUZZ

The US space agency NASA has been keeping a close watch on stratospheric ozone since the 1970s, producing these images, based on satellite data of the hole over Antarctica when it forms each year. They are finally showing a trend towards the hole closing.

PHOTO CREDITS, OPPOSITE: TODOR IOLOVSKI/AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION; THIS PAGE: NASA OZONE HOLE WATCH

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UST AS IT SEEMS THAT humans have done irreversible

damage to the planet’s atmosphere and set Earth on an inexorable path to a climate-based Armageddon, there’s a sign high in the sky over Antarctica that offers hope.

Kids during the last quarter of the 20th century grew up with the ozone hole looming large and ominously over their lives. When this potentially catastrophic ‘tear’ in the planet’s stratosphere, more than 10km above Antarctica, was discovered by scientists in 1985, it quickly set global alarm bells ringing.

Ozone is a gas that forms a kind of atmospheric blanket around the Earth to keep out much of the Sun’s UV radiation. Without it, life as we know it would never have evolved on this planet. The Antarctic hole quickly became recognised as the most extreme sign of a phenomenon scientists began finding evidence for worldwide during the 1980s: stratospheric ozone was being destroyed across the planet by human-produced gaseous chemicals, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were being used as propellants in aerosols and as highly effective refrigerants in refrigerators and air conditioners. It was feared that destruction of Earth’s ozone layer would mean we’d be bombarded during the 21st century by such high levels of cancer-causing UV radiation that life outdoors would be almost impossible for our species (as well, of course, for most other species on the planet).

Dr Paul Fraser, now a CSIRO honorary fellow, has been involved with the ozone crisis since it began. He was just embarking on his career in the 1970s as an atmospheric chemist when he was drawn to what was then still a scientific theory that CFCs could damage Earth’s stratosphere. He became pivotal in setting up Australia’s atmospheric CFC monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania in 1976 and it was samples he collected there, at the Mawson research

station in Antarctica, and elsewhere that helped, in the 1980s, to confirm global ozone depletion was occurring due to CFCs. The governments of the world reacted swiftly and almost universally. In 1987 the first of an eventual 197 signed an agreement – the Montreal Protocol – to stop producing and using ozone-depleting substances (ODS), such as CFCs. There were some voices of dissent who questioned the science. But even for governments not convinced by what the research was showing, the outcome of doing nothing was so potentially diabolical it was seen as better to err on the side of caution and heed the most widespread expert advice. Notably, two of the world’s long-term conservative governments of the day who wielded much influence worldwide – those of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA – were both outspoken supporters of the Montreal Protocol and continued to be through various amendments that gradually extended its reach and led to faster phasing out of ODS. “In the very early days the first significant step to reducing CFCs was banning their use in aerosols, and that industry quickly transferred to using non–ozone depleting propellants,” Paul says, explaining that the decision made by everyday people around the world to not use aerosols powered by CFCs rapidly helped reduce emissions.

Overall, however, the actions of the Montreal Protocol took time to kick in. Through the 1990s ODS continued to increase in the atmosphere, and the Antarctic hole – which appears over the continent in early spring each year due to extreme winter stratospheric conditions there that accelerate the chemical reactions that destroy ozone – kept growing.

But the rise in stratospheric ODS eventually peaked in the late 1990s and has since been falling. Every four years, a report is issued by the UN about the status of the ozone hole and ozone depletion science.

January . February 19

Australia’s Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station has been critical to studies of the Earth’s atmosphere since the 1970s.

20 Australian Geographic

THE SUCCESS OF THE PROTOCOL OFFERS HOPE FOR GLOBAL WARMING. scientist Dr Andrew Klekociuk. “But AAD researchers are also tracking the impact on Antarctic ecosystems of the ozone hole, and the higher levels of UV radiation that it allows in. We know from AAD research, for example, that krill are influenced by elevated UV, and go down deeper to cope in the water column.” While there is still much work to be done on evaluating the impact of this, these tiny crustaceans drive food webs in Antarctica and beyond so the impacts are potentially enormous.

Although there are significant differences between how and what causes rising emissions of ODS and greenhouse gases, it’s widely thought that the success of the Protocol offers hope for global warming and provides lessons in how that can also be brought under control.

Leader of CSIRO’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub Professor David Karoly, has worked across research into the consequences of both elevated emissions of greenhouse gases and ODS. He says three key things made the Montreal Protocol work. First, it took a top-down approach, with the governments of all countries agreeing unilaterally to restrict their emissions.

“Second the companies that were making and selling ODS realised they could also make and sell the replacement chemicals,” David continues. “So they were potentially going to make more money because they had new patents for the replacements.

“And third, the industry-led ‘merchants of doubt’ about the links between stratospheric ozone depletion and the ODS weren’t as successful [as they are being in regard to climate change] because the companies didn’t support them when they realised they could make money with replacement chemicals.”

PHOTO CREDIT: REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY

The recovery began around 2000, says Australian scientist Dr Matt Tully, who’s been working on the planet’s ozone issue for 15 years and has contributed to worldwide scientific assessments of ozone depletion since 2009. He’s responsible for the ongoing ozone program at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and is a member of the International Ozone Commission.

The healing of the ozone hole has been a slow trend, he says, and there is a lot of variation in its status from year to year, depending on conditions over Antarctica. But in the most recent assessment, released last year, scientists finally confirmed that long-term recovery of the hole is underway.

“The assessments before weren’t prepared to call it,” Matt says. “There was too much variation from year to year, but in 2018 for the first time the assessment declared there were signs of recovery in the Antarctic ozone hole.” And last year, he adds, had the smallest ozone hole in more than 20 years, although due to its fluctuating nature it may open wider again while still continuing on its overall downward trajectory. Measurements taken by scientists with the BOM, CSIRO and Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) are crucial in compiling these four-yearly assessments and also in keeping watch that all countries maintain their obligations, under the Montreal Protocol, not to use CFCs. These days Cape Grim is one of only three premier baseline air pollution stations in the world – the others are in Hawaii and the Canadian Arctic. In 2018–19 monitoring by this network documented and located a rogue producer of CFCs in China, flouting the terms of the Montreal Protocol. They were dealt with swiftly and shut down.

While the Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever, Paul warns that the world still has a way to go in reducing global levels of ODS. “We’ve only just gone through the worst part of it,” he says. It’s expected that it won’t be until the 2060s that levels of ODS in the stratosphere will be brought back to pre-1970s levels.

In the meantime, there are still impacts caused by the problem that are only just beginning to emerge. The AAD has been collecting ozone data in Antarctica on a weekly basis now for two decades. “The measurements themselves are very important in helping to give information on the amount of ozone in the stratosphere,” says AAD atmospheric

GEOBUZZ

BIRD NERD with Peter Rowland

WHAT’S IN A NAME? EVENT

CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA DAY 1 March NOW AUSTRALIA’S biggest community-based environmental event and a worldwide movement, Clean Up Australia began in 1989 in Sydney. Find a clean-up event being held in your neighbourhood and join in, or create your own event, to help make the country a cleaner place for everyone.

Remember, every single bit of rubbish you pick up counts!

For locations near you, visit: cleanup.org.au

PHOTO CREDITS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA DAY; PETER ROWLAND; COURTESY OCEAN LOVERS FESTIVAL SCIENTIFIC NAME, OPPOSITE: Petroica boodang

EVENT

OCEAN LOVERS FESTIVAL Bondi, NSW 18–22 March THIS ANNUAL FESTIVAL is the place to see change through the lenses of scientists, eco-innovators, artists and musicians championing the health of our oceans and their species. Catch films, talks and an Eco Expo of ways people can help the ocean, including kids’ science workshops.

Art, music and ideas are presented at venues around Bondi. Check the program for more details: oceanloversfestival.com

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N SWEDEN THERE is a saying: “God made the plants and animals, Linnaeus named them.” In the 1700s, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus promoted his so-called Binomial System for assigning scientific names to species. It was adopted worldwide and remains the universal system for applying scientific names to plants and animals.

In the binomial system each species is given a name that consists of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages.

The first part is based on the genus to which the species belongs, while the second part identifies the species within the genus and often describes a habit or physical characteristic of the species in question. The latter can also be inspired by mythology, names of prominent people, or are simply a derivative of the species’ popular (common) name or nickname.

While a species will only have one scientific name, most have more than one common name.

In Australia, the common names of several bird species, such as wren, chough and robin, have been derived from the common names of birds found in Britain. This can be quite misleading because, in many cases, the birds are not related to their namesakes, despite bearing a superficial resemblance or sharing similar habits.

Certain Australasian robins (genus Petroica) do bear a resemblance to the northern hemisphere European robin Erithacus rubecula, although they’re not closely related.

The scarlet robin, Petroica boodang, flame robin, P. phoenicea, and redcapped robin, P. goodenovii, all have a red breast, similar to the European robin, and all forage on or close to the ground for insects and other invertebrates (the European robin also eats fruits, seeds, carrion and small vertebrates). The European robin has brown upper parts and wings and both the male and female are similar in appearance. The scarlet, flame and red-capped robins all have some red on the breast, but it is much brighter and more extensive in males. The females are generally brownish above, while the males are dark grey to black with a contrasting white wing stripe. The redcapped robin, as the common name suggests, has a red crown.

The scarlet robin is found in south-eastern (including Tasmania) and south-western Australia, and on Norfolk Island. The flame robin occurs in south-eastern Australia, from southern Queensland, south to Tasmania and to just west of the South Australian border. The red-capped robin is found in all mainland states and territories.

The scarlet robin (Petroica boodang) shared its name with another species of bird until 1999, when the latter, the Norfolk robin (Petroica multicolor), was recognised as a distinct species.

FOLLOW Peter on Twitter: @_peterrowland and Instagram: _peterrowland

January . February 21

GEOBUZZ

NEED TO KNOW with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

VOLCANO-MADE FRANKENSTEIN The Indonesian archipelago is renowned for violent volcanoes, with the most recent eruption coming from Anak Krakatau in December 2018.

LOOKING UP with Glenn Dawes x1

22 Australian Geographic

Lord Byron, to whom she was pregnant.

Because they had all been kept indoors by the unusually cold weather, Byron suggested they write ghost stories to scare each other.

One night, Mary had a burst of inspiration that led to Frankenstein.

In her story, German medical student and scientist Dr Frankenstein used the new and mysterious force of electricity to create a monster that was ugly on the outside, but good on the inside.

But when Dr Frankenstein refused to love the monster, it turned evil and killed the doctor’s brother and wife.

Frankenstein chased the monster to the North Pole, where they both died.

And that’s how a volcano created Frankenstein, albeit indirectly.

Mt Tambora threw out so much dust it cooled the planet by about 1°C and, in Geneva, confined a bunch of freethinking literary types indoors, where the unusual weather inspired the much-feted tale.

DR KARL is a prolific 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 augmented reality features and is published by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.

Follow him on Twitter at @DoctorKarl

x10

Binoculars Close to the bright star Sirius lies the open star cluster M41, with both visible in the same binocular field.

The bulk appears as a distinctive circular haze about the size of the Moon. There is a handful of bright stars visible, including a central red one.

x100

Small telescope In the northern evening sky is a pair of stars, the twins of Gemini, known as Castor and Pollux. Using high power you’ll discover that Castor is an impressive double star consisting of two close, almost-matching, white stars with a more distant red companion!

Glenn Dawes is a coauthor of the yearbook Astronomy 2020 Australia (Quasar Publishing). quasarastronomy.com.au

PHOTO CREDITS, THIS PAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK; OPPOSITE: STEVE WILSON SCIENTIFIC NAME: Tympanocryptis cephalus

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HEN MOST people think of volcanoes, destruction usually comes to mind.

But one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded human history gave birth – to Frankenstein!

When Mt Tambora exploded in Indonesia in 1815, it ejected about 100cu.km of debris that obscured about 10 per cent of sunlight globally.

The next year, 1816, was so cold it was widely known as the “year without a summer”. Some 12,000km away in America, 1816 became a year of massive crop failures and thousands of people starved to death as a result.

In the New England region, in northeastern USA, snow fell in July at the height of summer. This single volcano in faraway Indonesia also affected Europe, where some 200,000 people died from starvation due to crop failures.

In Geneva, 1816 was the coldest year in the two centuries to 1960 – and it was there where Frankenstein was created. Just outside the Swiss city in June 1816, at the Villa Diodati, the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had a storytelling competition with 19-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft (whom he married in December).

At the same villa was Mary’s 18-yearold stepsister and her famous lover,

Naked eye The evening sky showcases the two brightest stars. The first is brilliant Sirius in Canis Major. Slightly fainter but much further away is the second, Canopus in Carina, which is far more luminous than Sirius. If it was relocated to the same distance as Sirius, Canopus would even outshine Venus!

Spot the lizard! This rare photo of one of nature’s supreme masters of camouflage, the Gascoyne pebble-mimic dragon, took luck and persistence.

GEOBUZZ

THE LITTLE DRAGON THAT ROCKS This tiny reptile is supremely adept at disappearing into its environment.

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get much harsher: plains of blinding white quartz studded with stunted acacia shrubs stretching towards a horizon shimmering in a heat haze. Survival in such a place is tough. It stretches credibility that an animal could be so finely tuned to this land of scorched stones that it lives nowhere else. Such a specialised creature does exist, but finding it is near impossible.

There are several small lizard species called pebble-mimic dragons that live in Western Australia’s stony, arid lands.

They have head-and-body lengths of about 6.5cm and are coloured in tones of brown and red that match perfectly with substrates extending over vast tracts from the Pilbara in the north to the goldfields of the state’s south-east. Unlike most other dragon lizards, pebble-mimics are not particularly swift. Theirs is a strategy of ‘scuttle and crouch’, achieving near-invisibility the second they stop and tuck in their limbs. These dragons have taken camouflage to a whole new level. Reptiles rarely mimic inanimate objects.

But these lizards go beyond matching background colours or textures – they physically copy surrounding stones.

ANDSCAPES DON’T

With round heads, plump bodies, short limbs and thin little tails they blend superbly with dryland stones called gibbers.

In the Gascoyne region, the Gascoyne pebble-mimic dragon has gone a step further and evolved to resemble a particular kind of rock. Its pale-brown to almost-white colouration specifically mimics quartz. Very few have ever been photographed and it’s the most poorly known member of the pebble-mimic group – unsurprising considering the remoteness of where this lizard occurs and the difficulties of seeing it in the landscape. It’s assumed its habitat is broadly similar to those of other pebble-mimics.

On a recent visit to the Gascoyne region I was hopeful but far from confident of seeing one. The chances of spotting a little round white lizard among billions of quartz stones are remote. But one hot afternoon I thought of how I could narrow the odds by looking in the shade of acacias, got lucky and found one. I’d like to think my keen eyes saw through its uncanny disguise but the truth is, it broke the cardinal rule of camouflage. It moved.

TEXT AND PHOTO BY STEVE WILSON January . February 23

SNAPSHOT

Collectively known as “The Barrys”, a group of enthusiastic volunteers dedicates hours of time and energy to the restoration of the telescope.

THE GREAT MELBOURNE TELESCOPE

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N 5 November 1868 a long-awaited shipment arrived at the Port of Melbourne – the Great Melbourne Telescope. While construction had begun in Ireland in 1866, a large-scale telescope to observe the Southern Hemisphere’s skies had been in planning since the 1850s.

Sent across the world in parts, it would, after its reassembly at the Melbourne Observatory, become the second largest telescope in existence at the time.

Manufactured by Dublin engineer Thomas Grubb, it was a Cassegrain Reflector telescope with a 48-inch (1.2m) speculum metal mirror. The shipment included, local newspapers announced, “two ponderous and immense wooden cases” containing a 22-foot-long (6.7m) metal lattice tube and huge polished mirrors that weighed several tons, and was being “gradually removed to its destination”.

Enormous bluestone piers to support the instrument were completed on New Year’s Day in 1869 and labourers installed the telescope’s heaviest parts over the following 10 days. By June, the building to house the telescope was completed and, with the instrument tested and calibrated, it opened in August 1869. The telescope became a symbol of colonial scientific endeavour and achievement, its progress reported around the country. Crowds of people would visit when the weather was clear to observe the Moon, sometimes to the detriment of work by the incumbent astronomers.

The telescope was used to examine faint nebulae and galaxies, astronomers recording their observations with technical drawings and sketches. Unfortunately, however, technology had overtaken the telescope’s design during its construction and it was not entirely suited to new advances in astronomical photography and spectroscopy.

Adjustments were made by replacing the smaller mirror at the end of the tube with photographic apparatus to allow for photography of the Moon, and some of these images were declared at the time to be the best astronomical photographs ever taken.

24 Australian Geographic

But additional problems in maintaining the speculum’s metal mirrors, combined with the advent of smaller and more agile telescopes, meant the Great Melbourne Telescope only saw occasional use after 1899. The Melbourne Observatory closed in 1944 and the telescope was dismantled and sent to Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra, the following year.

After modifications, including shortening of the lattice tube and replacement of the metal mirror with a silvered 50-inch mirror of borosilicate glass, the telescope reopened.

In the 1990s, it was converted into Australia’s first fully robotic and computerised digital imaging telescope.

Bushf ires that swept through Canberra in 2003 destroyed all modern instruments at the observatory but the cast iron spine of the Great Melbourne Telescope survived, relatively unscathed. Five years later the telescope’s remains were recovered by staff and volunteers from Museums Victoria who, in a joint project with the Astronomical Society of Victoria and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Victoria, began refurbishing the telescope.

The project’s volunteers – all engineering and astronomy experts – have met every Wednesday since 2008. Known as “The Barrys” (because four members have Barry as either a first or last name), they have contributed more than 30,000 hours to the project so far. Engineer Barry Adcock described working on the project as a “rare privilege”, saying he was inspired by the telescope’s innovative design.

Assembled in its original form for the first time since it was dismantled 76 years ago, the telescope is now on display in the Pumping Station at Scienceworks in Melbourne, where visitors can watch the restoration being undertaken.

Work continues to restore the full functionality of the telescope and return it to the Melbourne Observatory.

LINDA BRAINWOOD Linda is a picture researcher and the editor of the Dictionary of Sydney website at the State Library of NSW.

PHOTO CREDITS: MUSEUMS VICTORIA

This marvel of 19th-century Irish engineering is being painstakingly restored to full working order by a band of dedicated enthusiasts.

GEOBUZZ Erection of the Great Melbourne Telescope, with its distinctive latticework tube, at the Melbourne Observatory in January 1869.

January . February 25

Yellow-spot jewel

Speckled line blue

Common pearl white

Orange ochre

Golden-rayed blue

Bronze ant-blue

Tailed emperor

Painted sedge-skipper

GEOBUZZ

BEAUTY MINUTIAE

Function and form beget art in a world where life is less than half a millimetre wide.

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ou’ve probably seen tiny specks like these on leaves or twigs without realising what they are or appreciating their true beauty. These butterfly eggs were collected and prepared by Dr Ross Field, former Museums Victoria head of natural sciences, and photographed

by Dr Ken Walker, senior curator and Simon Hinkley, senior collection manager, both in entomology at Museums Victoria. At the time, Ken was using cutting-edge camera gear and software technology to photograph exotic pest species for Australian customs and turned his lens to Ross’s butterfly project. Back then, photographing tiny biological features was the domain of expensive, cumbersome electron 26 Australian Geographic

microscopes that can only be operated by highly skilled technicians. Ken was a pioneer in Australia of using light microscopes, like you’d find in any lab, to photograph very small specimens and applying montaging software to bring them to life in full-colour 3D imagery. When he applied the technology to Ross’s butterfly eggs, both men were stunned by what they saw. This technology is now used more widely in biology than electron micrographs because it produces images in full colour, full focus and glorious detail at a fraction of the cost.

Why do butterfly eggs need to be so elaborately structured and diverse? As yet, no-one knows.

KAREN MCGHEE

PHOTO CREDITS: MUSEUMS VICTORIA SCIENTIFIC NAMES, LEFT TO RIGHT FROM TOP: Cephrenes augiades; Hypochrysops byzos; Catopyrops florinda; Elodina angulipennis; Trapezites eliena; Candalides noelkeri; Acrodipsas brisbanensis; Charaxes sempronius; Hesperilla picta

Orange palm-dart

GEOBUZZ

THE SMOKY MOUSE IS NO ORDINARY RODENT

This endangered native mammal is crucial for forest health.

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that Australia’s rodents receive less attention than many of our better-known marsupial mammals.

For most of us, native rats and mice are often hard to distinguish from introduced pests.

And yet Australia’s native rodents are unique and face the same threats as our marsupials.

Take the critically endangered smoky mouse, for example.

This forest dweller is about the size of a small rat but can be differentiated by its bluish-grey coloured fur. It has an omnivorous diet, feeding on seeds, fruit, flowers and truffle-like fungi, as well as invertebrates such as the Bogong moth.

The smoky mouse is an industrious little ball of fur that plays an important role in keeping forests healthy by aerating soil, increasing water penetration and spreading truffle spores in its droppings. These truffles that the smoky mouse helps to spread form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of surrounding plants, helping them to take in water and nutrients.

Once widespread throughout Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, the smoky mouse is disappearing at an alarming rate. Causes include habitat loss, predation by foxes and cats and altered fire regimes. Many of the native plants on which the smoky mouse relies are also falling prey to ‘cinnamon fungus’ (Phytophthora cinnamomi).

This deadly introduced pathogen causes a condition in plants called ‘root rot’ or ‘dieback’, which has damaged forests and destroyed the habitat of many of our native animals.

But there’s some good news for the smoky mouse. The Saving our Species (SoS) program, which aims to secure threatened populations of plants and animals across NSW, is working to save the rodent from extinction. It has been

ILLUSTRATION BY: KEVIN STEAD SCIENTIFIC NAME: Pseudomys fumeus

T’S NOT SURPRISING

classified as a site-managed species, which means that its remaining populations are being carefully monitored for conservation at specific sites around NSW. There are currently three of these working to save the smoky mouse from extinction – the Priam Breeding Facility, one next to South East Forest National Park and one in Nullica State Forest. At the Priam facility the mice are encouraged to breed by growing native flowers in their enclosures and providing a ready supply of seeds and fruits for them to eat.

In an effort to target the threats facing the smoky mouse, SoS has also organised activities that will assist the species.

These include: control programs for foxes, wild dogs, rabbits and feral cats establishment of responsible fire regimes to maintain floristic and structural diversity in smoky mouse habitat controlling cinnamon fungus infection by avoiding transfer of soil into areas of smoky mouse habitat conducting searches for the species in proposed logging areas.

HOLLY CORMACK For more about the smoky mouse and to assist in securing its survival by making a donation or reporting a sighting, visit the website below.

environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/threatened-species/saving-our-species-program

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By Kel Richards

WHALERS AND WALERS

WO CREATURES in Aussie English are pronounced identically but spelt differently.

The first is a fish and the second a horse. The fish is the Murray cod, which is known colloquially as a “whale” because of its size. Murray cod have been nicknamed “whales” since the 1870s. A large specimen can weigh as much as a human (and live as long!).

There was a certain type of swaggie called a “whaler” because he followed

the banks of the Murray, Darling, Lachlan or Murrumbidgee rivers, living on the cod he could catch.

The horse was called a “waler” (short for “New South Waler”) and was noted for its strength and toughness.

In World War I, Australian Light Horse troops were mounted mainly on walers – often rounded up from brumby herds and broken to harness by a team of rough riders under the command of Major ‘Banjo’ Paterson.

January . February 27

AUSSIE TOWNS

SILVERTON, NSW

Perched on the edge of the desert, this outback town might be a shadow of its former self but it’s definitely worth a visit.

5

ORIGIN OF NAME

Mundi Mundi Lookout 5km north of Silverton

In 1883 the tiny mining settlement of Umberumberka moved 2km to the south-east.

The locals decided to give it a different name and so the new silver mining town became Silverton.

2 6 Day Dream Mine

4

18km north-east of Silverton

1

3 Silverton

NSW

I

F IT WASN’T for

the small community of artists, its desirability as an outback setting for movies and the seemingly never-ending tourist trade, Silverton would be little more than a ghost town on the desert’s edge. Located west of Broken Hill and close to the South Australian border, this once thriving mining town had a population of 3000 during its heydey in the late 1800s. Now it’s little more than a few historic buildings, the remnants of vibrant streets, several art galleries and a pub. There are a few musts for a visit here. After a drink at the Silverton Hotel, travel a couple kilometres to the Mundi Mundi Lookout and gaze to the horizon over barren desert. Then take in a tour at the Day Dream Mine, the last mine in the area that is still open for inspection.

28 Australian Geographic

Silverton is located near the South Australian border, 1167km west of Sydney via the Great Western, Mitchell and Barrier highways; 26km west of Broken Hill; and 536km north-east of Adelaide via the Barrier Highway.

VISITOR INFORMATION Silverton Visitor Information Centre, 19 Stirling Lane, open daily 8am–4pm. Call 08 8088 7566. visitnsw.com/destinations/outback-nsw/ broken-hill-area/silverton

GEOBUZZ

Silverton Public School

Things to see and do

SILVERTON TIMELINE

Silverton Gaol Museum.

Before Europeans arrived, the Wiljali people moved through the area.

In 1844 Charles Sturt (right) sighted the Barrier Range during an expedition from Adelaide.

Silverton Public School.

SILVERTON PUBLIC SCHOOL AND MUSEUM 1

The Silverton Public School, which started life as a tent in 1884, evolved into a tin shack in 1887, and finally became this simple building in 1889. The school served the local community until it was finally closed in 1970. Its most famous teacher was Mary Jane Cameron, who worked there as an assistant teacher from 1887 to 1889, and became the renowned Australian poet Dame Mary Gilmore. It is now a museum and, through photographs and artefacts, tells the story of the district and of education in outback Australia.

PHOTO CREDITS, OPPOSITE: SHUTTERSTOCK; THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ELIZABETH CZITRONYI / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BOSILJKA ZUTICH / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; THE ARTCHIVES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA [B 46528/182]; SHUTTERSTOCK; WILLIAM ROBINSON / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

2

SILVERTON HOTEL

As well as being a watering hole for film crews, the pub (pictured opposite) has itself become a popular film location, featuring in a truly diverse range of films including Wake in Fright, Mad Max 2, A Town Like Alice, Hostage, Razorback, Journey into Darkness, Dirty Deeds, The Craic and Golden Soak. The original pub opened in 1884, burnt down in 1918 and was replaced by the current building, which previously housed the town’s postal service. It’s a pub with character and the building has a wry sense of humour typical of outback Australia.

3

MAD MAX MUSEUM

The museum celebrates the apocalyptic movie Mad Max 2, which was filmed around Silverton. The museum has some of the vehicles used in the movie, extensive collections of local Mad Max-related memorabilia and life-sized models in full costume. It is open 10am–4pm. For more info: 08 8088 6128.

SILVERTON GAOL MUSEUM 4

Silverton’s original gaol was a timber and iron building. By 1888 it was regarded as totally inadequate and unfit even for prisoners. The present building was erected in 1889. It became an overnight lock-up in 1892, a boys’ reformatory in the 1930s and was closed in 1943. It was restored by the local historical society and reopened as a museum in 1968.

SCENIC LOOKOUT AT MUNDI MUNDI 5

There is nothing quite like standing on a hill and gazing to the horizon over barren desert. It is a reminder of how vast and isolated so much of central Australia is.

If you drive north from Silverton for about 5km you will see a sign saying “Mundi Mundi Lookout 400m on right” and from this vantage point you can look down and across the Mundi Mundi Plains. The setting was made internationally famous when it appeared in Mad Max 2.

6

Prospectors arrived in 1867 after a local station hand claimed, mistakenly, to have discovered gold.

In 1880 rich deposits of silver were discovered and 300 miners flooded into the district.

In 1881 John Stokie established the Umberumberka claim. A settlement with that name grew up 2km north-east of present day Silverton.

Silverton was surveyed in 1883.

In 1884 1222 mineral leases, 937 business permits and 114 miners’ rights were issued. In that year 6000 tonnes of ore were extracted.

By 1885–86 the town’s population reached 3000. Silverton was proclaimed a township in 1885 and a municipality the following year.

In 1888 the Silverton Tramway Company was set up. It built a railway line to the SA border.

In 1892 Umberumberka mine closed.

DAY DREAM MINE

The only mine in the area where visitors can have a genuine mining experience is at the old Day Dream Mine site. Drive east out of Silverton and turn left along a dirt road to the old mine. It’s about 18km from Silverton to the mine. The Day Dream Mine opened in 1883 and continued until 1983. The area still has the detritus of its mining heyday with equipment littering the site. There are regular guided tours.

For more info: 0427 885 682 daydreammine.com.au

By 1901 the town was in decline, houses were moved and only 286 people remained. Today it has a permanent population of about 50 people (2016 Census).

Since 1988 Bruce Elder has travelled to every town in Australia. He has written more than 10 travel books including the Globetrotter Guides to Australia, Sydney and Queensland; 1015 Things to See and Do in Australia; and Explore Queensland and Explore NSW. He worked as a full-time travel writer with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from 1996 to 2012. aussietowns.com.au January . February 29

MAHINA – AUSTRALIA’S DEADLIEST CYCLONE: 1899

M

ORE THAN 300 people died when Tropical Cyclone

This historical image shows the paths of Tropical Cyclone Mahina and a second cyclone, Nachon, that developed in the Gulf of Carpentaria at the same time.

The cyclone produced huge seas and a surge of water that swept far inland from where a number of Indigenous people were swept to sea. Witnesses also reported seeing grass ripped from the ground and dolphin carcasses 6m above sea level.

British East India ship The Duke of Norfolk was first to reach the area on 5 March, and picked up Captain Porter’s wife and baby from their schooner but did not actively search for other survivors. News of the cyclone reached Brisbane on 8 March and a rescue effort was launched two days later.

By then the local Indigenous people had buried the many bodies that had washed up on shore. There were survivors, and newspaper reports told stories of men and women swimming for days to reach land, carrying on their backs people who were unable to swim.

Mahina was a Category 5, as are all cyclones with a central pressure of 929 hectopascals (hPa) or lower. Cyclone Tracy, which devastated Darwin in 1974, had a pressure of 950 hPA and Cyclone Yasi, which crossed the north Queensland coast in 2011, registered 929 hPA. Captain Porter reportedly took a barometric pressure reading of 27 inches of mercury (inHg), equal to 914 hPa, at Mahina’s peak. Recently discovered historical evidence suggests Porter recorded a much lower pressure – 26 inHG (880 hPa) – but no-one at the time believed that was possible. If Mahina’s pressure did fall to 880 hPa, it would make it one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever recorded and, according to current research, capable of producing a sea-water inundation of 13m.

Part of the Defining Moments in Australian History project.

To find out more: nma.gov.au/definingmoments

30 Australian Geographic

CREDIT: HISTORIC COLLECTION / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Mahina slammed into the north Queensland coast on 4 March 1899, making it Australia’s deadliest cyclone ever. Most victims were divers and seamen working on the Thursday Island pearling fleet.

Queensland’s lucrative pearling industry began after commercial quantities of pearl oysters were discovered in the Torres Strait in 1869. Pearl oyster shell was prized in the late 19th century for buttons, furniture inlay and personal ornaments and at the peak of demand was worth £400 (about $60,000 today) a ton. Northern Australia became one of the world’s major suppliers. Headquartered on Thursday Island, the industry employed a 2000-strong workforce by the late 1890s. Boat skippers, divers and crew came from the islands of Torres Strait and throughout the Pacific to work on fleets of two-masted luggers.

One of their greatest threats was stormy weather. Synoptic weather forecasting was well understood at the end of the 1800s and Queensland had a pioneer in the field – Clement Wragge, a government meteorologist from 1887 to 1902. Under his management, weather stations reported conditions and barometric pressure readings via an overland telegraph line that connected Brisbane to Thursday Island, via Cooktown. On 3 March 1899, Wragge described conditions between Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia as “suspicious”. And on 6 March 1899 he named a new tropical disturbance developing south-east of Vanatinai Island, PNG, as Cyclone Mahina. He also noted the development of a second cyclone, Nachon, in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

On 8 March Wragge wrote that he “feared Mahina will not prove as soft and gentle as the Tahitian maiden of that name, for it is likely to give us some trouble. Special warnings have again been sent to all coast towns and the storm signals have been hoisted for the benefit of shipping.” But Mahina had already hit Bathurst Bay, 167km north of Cooktown, at about 11pm on Saturday 4 March. As many as 1000 men, women and children were on board about eight schooners in the area and more than 100 luggers were anchored to offload shell. By 10am at least half the fleet was destroyed and more than 307 people were dead.

Of the Bathurst Bay schooners, only Crest of the Wave survived because its captain, William Porter, a New Zealander, cut down its mast to prevent it from capsizing.

GEOBUZZ

EVENT

TIM THE YOWIE MAN

AUSTRALIA’S GREATEST BORES Attempting to surf these rarely witnessed tidal phenomena is strictly for the very lucky, or very foolhardy.

A PORTRAIT OF AUSTRALIA Warwick Art Gallery, Queensland 9 January–29 February SHOWCASING stunning photos from Australian Geographic’s acclaimed book A Portrait of Australia, this travelling exhibition moves to a new venue, the Warwick Art Gallery, Queensland, in the new year. Celebrating the bush, outback and coast and the people living there, the exhibition takes you to some of the most remote parts of the country to tell remarkable stories of ordinary Australians. This exhibition was developed by the National Museum of Australia with AG. For venues: nma.gov.au/ exhibitions/portrait-of-australia

DATE

PHOTO CREDIT, TOP LEFT: COLIN BEARD/AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC. ILLUSTRATION BY BEN SANDERS

DON’T FORGET TO LEAP! THIS YEAR IS a leap year, when an extra day is added to the calendar on 29 February. The phenomenon occurs every four years to align the 365-day Gregorian calendar year with the solar year, the length of time the earth takes to orbit the Sun, which is about 365 and one-quarter days. (The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used worldwide, and is based on the Julian calendar established by Julius Caesar in 45 BCA.) If we didn’t compensate for that extra quarter of a day per year every four years by adding the extra day in February, it would accumulate and add 25 days to every century.

I

N 2002 Damon Harvey entered surfing folklore when he rode a wave all the way from Snapper Rocks, near the New South Wales–Queensland border, 2.2km up the coast to Kirra Beach.

As epic as it was, Damon’s four-minute ride was not done on the longest wave recorded in Australia.

The country’s longest waves occur in the estuaries of some of our most remote rivers. Better known as tidal bores these waves aren’t the result of wind blowing over water, rather a combination of huge tidal ranges and ideal river contours. While the large tidal range is a major element in the formation of a bore, the shape of the river is just as critical. For a tidal bore to form, the river needs to funnel the incoming water so it reduces the duration of the flood tide to the point where the tide advances as a sudden increase in water level.

The world’s best-known tidal bore is on the Amazon River in Brazil where the Pororoca Bore can measure up to 4m high and reach 500km inland. Really!

Australia has three locations where bores can occur, namely the Ord River in Western Australia, the Styx River in central Queensland and the Daly River in the Northern Territory.

Due to the isolated locations of these bores, they are rarely recorded.

In 2015 a couple of Darwin fishermen filmed the Daly River tidal bore, which takes the form of a standing wave, instead of a breaking surfable wave, rolling down the river. Earlier this year, a group of scientists witnessed the Styx River bore, which produces breaking waves up to a metre high.

“We were setting up water-quality monitoring equipment in the catchment of a river and a local landholder told us to keep an eye out for the bore,” says Philip Jetson of environmental consultancy Catchment Solutions. “At the time of the expected high tide, we stood on

the bend of the river waiting for the bore,” he recalls, adding he was at least 10km upstream from the river mouth at the time. “You could hear it before you could see it, a distinctive noise of rushing water, and then we saw it, a white line of water rolling towards us.” While not as big as some bores around the world, Philip reports that it was about half a metre high. “You could easily boogie board it,” he says.

“But I wouldn’t try and surf it – too many sharks feeding in the upturned water at the back of the bore.”

Professor Hubert Chanson, a Queensland University hydraulics engineer and world-leading tidal bore researcher, laments the loss of the Ord River tidal bore. “Following a big flood in 2001, reports of the bore have dried up,” Hubert explains. “The existence of a bore is a very fragile balance and when there is a change in river conditions it is possible for the bores to disappear for several years before reappearing.”

As to surfing Australia’s tidal bores, Hubert agrees with Philip Jetson. “Even daredevil adventure surfer Antony Colas won’t surf Australia’s bores; there are too many crocodiles and sharks to contend with.”

Naturalist, author, broadcaster and tour guide Tim the Yowie Man has dedicated the past 25 years to documenting Australia’s unusual natural phenomena. He’s the author of several books, including Haunted and Mysterious Australia (New Holland, 2018). Follow him on Facebook and Twitter: @TimYowie

January . February 31

GEOBUZZ

DOWNLOAD

STAR WALK 2 – NIGHT SKY MAP Explore the night sky through the screen of your device with this handy stargazing app.

Point it skywards for a real-time view of celestial bodies. Use its augmented reality feature to overlay a virtual view of space on what your camera sees and explore three-dimensional representations of planetary nebulae.

And use the time-machine function to explore the night sky from years past or into the future.

READ

LOOKING FOR WHALES

IMAGE CREDITS, FROM TOP: NASA/JPL-CALTECH; SHUTTERSTOCK

Wade and Robyn Hughes Halstead Press, $39.95 The intelligence and grace of whales are captured in this book through evocative, mostly black-andwhite, images and insightful writing.

Compiled by West Australian couple Wade and Robyn Hughes, it takes you on a journey from chilly Arctic feeding aggregations to waters off tropical Pacific atolls where calves are born.

READ

COSMIC CHRONICLES: A USER’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE Fred Watson NewSouth, $32.99 Are we alone in the Universe? Where did the Moon come from?

How do we know what stars are made of? Could there really be a future in asteroid mining? In this book, Fred Watson, AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC’S own longtime space writer, explores the hottest topics in space science and astronomy.

This illustration shows a hypothetical dust ring from a disintegrated ‘ploonet’ orbiting KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star.

★ SPACE

THE PUZZLE OF TABBY’S STAR

A

love puzzles and the Universe has plenty.

But few rival the mindbending mystery of a Sun-like star officially named KIC 8462852.

Usually known as Tabby’s star after the lead astronomer involved in its discovery, American Tabetha Boyajian, it’s been recorded in photographic star atlases since the 19th century.

But its odd behaviour was revealed in a very 21st-century way, by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which has been hugely successful in finding the planets of distant stars by observing regular dips in their brightness as orbiting objects passed in front of them. In 2015 the telescope revealed that Tabby’s star showed truly weird behaviour. Rather than regular 1 per cent brightness dips, Tabby’s star has irregular dips of up to 22 per cent. An early theory was that perhaps an alien megastructure was built around it – an energy-harvesting device known as a Dyson ring. Telescopes were deployed STRONOMERS

to search for artificial radio signals or laser light pulses, but none were found. Then, in 2017, analysis of infrared and ultraviolet light from Tabby’s star proved no solid object could explain its odd behaviour.

Dusty clouds were no answer either as the dust rings known to be around some stars couldn’t account for the irregular fading. Neither could obstructions such as debris from colliding planets.

Then, late last year, a new model proposed that a large dusty moon, stripped from its parent planet to become a ‘ploonet’, is now orbiting Tabby. Heated to melting point by the star, the ploonet could produce exactly the observed light changes.

The challenge now is to seek similar stars to see if the model holds up.

FRED WATSON is Australia’s Astronomer at Large.

FRED ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS Q: The Moon is moving a few centimetres from Earth each year, so gravitational and centrifugal forces are not balanced. How long before Earth and Moon become far enough apart to be independent of each other?

Peter Schaper, Biggenden, QLD

A: Never. Because of subtle tidal forces, the Earth and Moon separation will slow, eventually stabilising at about 500,000km. Earth’s rotation will also slow, lengthening a day to about 47 of our current days, with the same hemisphere always facing the Moon. But this is so far away that transformation of the Sun into a giant star may already have melted our planet.

January . February 33

WILD AUSTRALIA

SAVE HALF THE WORLD Reserving 50 per cent of Earth for nature could be more achievable than it seems and keep us from catastrophe.

E

human population is expected to soar past 8 billion by 2023. So it’s no wonder the leading threat facing the vast majority of imperilled plants and animals on the IUCN Red List of threatened species is habitat loss. The number of people has doubled since 1970 while populations of other vertebrates – fish, amphibians, lizards and our mammalian cousins – have collapsed, shrinking by as much as 60 per cent. They have been the losers as our urban, agricultural and industrial areas have ballooned to cover an ever-expanding area of the planet’s surface.

This is one factor supporting the theory that we are now in the early stages of the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on Earth, with species being lost at many times the typical ‘background’ extinction rate. As pioneering projects seek to build wildlife corridors to join up protected areas and give species the space they need to survive, a far more ambitious proposal imagines we could stem biodiversity loss by setting aside half of the Earth’s surface for nature.

The idea has been raised in various forms in recent years and given a thorough treatment in the book Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, by famed American naturalist Edward O. Wilson. “Half of the species described today will be gone by the end of the century, unless we take drastic action,” Wilson beseeches readers. “We’re extinguishing Earth’s biodiversity as though the species of the natural world are no better than weeds and kitchen vermin. Have we no shame?”

Our current conservation approach is too piecemeal and reactionary to succeed, claims Wilson, who believes turning half of Earth into protected areas might allow us to save up to 80 per cent of species alive today. If it sounds ambitious, that’s because it is.

ARTH’S

34 Australian Geographic

Currently only about 15.4 per cent of the planet’s land area, and 7 per cent of oceans, is managed for conservation. In Australia, only 19.74 per cent, or 1,517,875sq.km, is currently protected in some way.

The half-Earth idea would build on existing wildlife corridors, such as the Gondwana Link project in south-western Western Australia (see Restoring nature’s former glory, page 92), to create broad areas of connected habitats – and it might not be as difficult to achieve as it first seems. A study by National Geographic Society (NGS) researchers, published in the journal Scientific Reports last October found that about 56 per cent of the world’s land surface remains in a relatively natural state and has been little impacted by people, offering some sense of where increases to protected areas might come from.

There also appears to be broad support for the idea. The NGS was behind a survey on the proposal, which sought the opinions of 12,000 people in 12 countries including the USA, Australia, China and Brazil. Published last September, it revealed that most respondents supported the concept of dramatically increasing the amount of land currently managed for conservation.

There is already reason to hope. As Wilson writes, existing conservation efforts have reduced extinction rates by as much as 20 per cent compared with what would have been lost had we done nothing. We just need to redouble our efforts – governments, NGOs, landholders and others must think on a grander scale and embrace far more radical efforts to dedicate land for conservation purposes. As Wilson says, it’s going to require a major shift in our thinking.

JOHN PICKRELL is a former editor of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC. Follow him on Twitter: @john_pickrell

PHOTO CREDIT: HENRY COOK/GETTY SCIENTIFIC NAME: Dasyurus hallucatus

Like all wild creatures, Australia’s northern quoll needs its own place on Earth.

GEOBUZZ

WILD AUSTRALIA DIARY ENTRIES

VIC

Explore river red gums, Barmah NP

ENJOY this northern Victorian, wildlifepacked park on World Wetlands Day, on 2 February. Among 16 internationally important Ramsar sites in the MurrayDarling Basin, the floodplains here include the world’s biggest river red gum stand, which spills into NSW. Many creatures, such as marsupial gliders and endangered superb parrots, depend on these magnificent eucalypts for food and shelter. More info: call Parks Victoria on 13 19 63 or visit parks.vic.gov.au

Talking Australia Subscribe and never miss an episode of our entertaining new podcast.

Jimmy Ashby At 18, Jimmy jumped on his bike for a life-changing trip. Thirteen months later, he'd cycled 39,000km across four continents and 32 countries.

For his efforts Jimmy was presented with AG's 2019 Young Adventurer of the Year award.

Victor Vescovo While 12 people have walked on the moon only three have been to the bottom of the ocean. Undersea explorer Victor Vescovo is one: he's dived the world's five deeps.

SA

PHOTO CREDITS, FROM TOP: JIRI LOCHMAN; CHRISSIE GOLDRICK; TIM BAUER; DON FUCHS SCIENTIFIC NAMES, FROM TOP: Varanus rosenbergi; Chorizema sp.

THIS is a great time to see Rosenberg’s goannas, now egg-laying on Kangaroo Island (KI), which has become one of the species’ last strongholds after dramatic mainland population declines. Look for them in coastal areas across the island, in habitats such as heath and sand dunes where they lay eggs in hollows dug into termite mounds. More info: call KI Natural Resources Centre on 08 8553 4444 or visit naturalresources.sa.gov.au/kangarooisland/

WA

Enjoy summer flowers, Noble Falls Walk Trail, Gidgegannup

WA is famous for its spring wildflowers, but many areas around Perth also have charming summer displays of native blooms, including yellow-eyed flame peas, blue lace flowers, pom poms, grevilleas and boronias. A good place to see some of these is along the pleasant 3.6km Noble Falls Walk Trail, which winds alongside Wooroloo Brook near Gidgegannup, 43km north-east of Perth.

More info: call the Swan Valley Visitor Centre on 08 9207 8899 or visit swan. wa.gov.au/Parksrecreation/ Noble-Falls

Ron Allum This pioneering Aussie cave diver and inventor (left) helped film director James Cameron reach the deepest-known point in Earth’s oceans.

Darryl Jones

Spot Rosenberg’s goannas, Kangaroo Island

you can have protected areas. But you can't have horses in protected areas.

From anti bird feeder to becoming a responsible voice for a beloved Aussie pastime, this bird scientist opened up the debate.

Dr Sylvia Earle Legendary deep ocean explorer, marine scientist and Rolex Testimonee Sylvia talks about her wish to inspire a new generation of females.

David Watson Brumbies are both revered and reviled in Oz. David says you can have horses and

For a full list of our inspiring podcast guests, including Valerie Taylor, Terri Irwin and Dr Glenn Singleman, head to: australiangeographic.com.au/series/talking_australia

Subscribe to Talking Australia 1. If you are using an iPhone, open the pre-installed “Podcasts” app (Android users can install one of the free podcast apps, such as “Pocket Casts”) 2. Search for: Talking Australia

3. Tap on the cover 4. Tap on the purple “subscribe” button 5. Enjoy the podcast and please leave us a rating and review!

OR simply scan the QR code at left

ENTER Competition WE’RE GIVING away 10 copies of our stunning new book In Living Memory. Turn its pages to take a trip down memory lane from 1930 to 1980, surveying a collection of surprising and entertaining photographs of everyday Australian life.

Author Alasdair McGregor places the images in their historic context with insightful commentary to introduce each of the four chapters – the way we lived, the way we moved, the way we worked and the way we played.

Enter at:

australiangeographic.com.au/154 January . February 35

Voices of hope Australian Geographic Society Awards 2019

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a pin drop, despite the presence of 350 excitable guests, in the grand ballrooom of the Shangri-La Hotel last November as Albert Wiggan delivered his acceptance speech for Conservationist of the Year. The Bardi-Kija-Nyul Nyul elder from Cygnet Bay in the Kimberley, Western Australia, spoke with eloquence and passion about the urgent need for contemporary society to tap into the ancient trove of knowledge about caring for country held by Indigenous Australians. “The story that my people have held for thousands of years is about what’s sustainable and what’s the right way to live on this country,” Albert said. “It’s the story of all indigenous people around the world, and what’s important to remember is that 2000 years ago we were all indigenous people living off the land.

In all our DNA is this fundamental understanding about how to survive on this planet and how to move forward without completely destroy-

Albert Wiggan (above) has the room transfixed as he encourages Australians to value and use Aboriginal knowledge of country in the battle to save the environment in general and the Kimberley in particular. AG’s Chrissie Goldrick (left) welcomes guests and thanks the sponsors at the start of the night.

OU COULD HAVE heard

36 Australian Geographic

ing who we are, and for me, I have been blessed to maintain that knowledge and to then try and help you to discover it.”

WATCH Albert’s moving speech, and those of all our 2019 winners, on our website australiangeographic.com.au/154

Cyclist Jimmy Ashby proudly shows off his gold medallion for Young Adventurer of the Year.

NSW Minister for Energy and Environment Matt Kean MP presents budding scientist Angelina Arora with the Young Conservationist of the Year award.

Long-distance ocean rower Michelle Lee charms the crowd with her sheer delight at her Adventurer of the Year award.

APT’s Angus Tandy awards a medallion to Unity, Spirit of Adventure winner Nick Gleeson’s faithful seeing-eye dog.

Presenting Partner/ Adventurer of the Year

Young Adventurer of the Year

Eco-tourism pioneer and Lifetime of Conservation recipient John Rumney trades jokes with Omega’s Emir Sinanovic.

2019 Australian Geographic Society Gala Awards Sponsors

Conservationist of the Year

TV legend Mal Leyland, one half of the Leyland Brothers duo, receives his Lifetime of Adventure award.

Talking Australia

Lifetime of Adventure

Spirit of Adventure

Lifetime of Conservation

Podcasts with all our 2019 winners are available now on our podcast channel.

SCAN HERE January . February 37

LIGHTNING RIDGE 2020 DATES Week 1: 17–22 Au gust 2020 Week 2: 24–29 Au gust 2020 (return diggers on ly) COST $2200 or $1980 for return diggers BOOKING Email dig@australia S nopalcentre.com or visit australia nopalcentre.com or call 0427 904 58 7

This group of amateur palaeontologists explores the Big Opal, a working opal mine in Lightning Ridge.

Expedition diary

Lightning Ridge G

AZING OUT AT SUNSET from

Nettleton’s First Shaft Lookout – the site of Lightning Ridge’s first hand-dug opal mining shaft – it’s not difficult to picture the ancient wildlife that once roamed among the trees here, in north-western New South Wales. It’s evidence of these prehistoric creatures that draws avid fossil hunters to the Ridge each year. Touted by return diggers as their annual

therapy session, the Fossil Dig, run by the Australian Opal Centre (AOC), provides unique access to the world of Australian palaeontology. While searching through miners’ tailings for opalised fossil material, the first shout of “I think I’ve found something!” is met with an excitement that permeates the entire experience.

Guided by expert palaeontologists and gemologists, activities range from fossil identification and discovery, to field trips into active opal mining areas.

Any discoveries during the week become part of the AOC’s collection and contribute to research. Returning in 2019 for my third year as AG Society host, I had an appreciation for just how valuable the work of dig participants is in expanding our knowledge of prehistoric Australian animals and A rare opalised fossil discovered during the AGS expedition.

38 Australian Geographic

Tiny examples of plant fossil material (top) gathered by members of the 2019 Australian Geographic Society opal dig, who are pictured here celebrating together.

plants. Material that in previous years might have been placed in the interesting but unknown pile could now be identified as osteoderm – bony deposits in skin that may form scales or plates.

Week Two of the dig is for return participants, who are able to tailor the program to suit their interests and those of the Opal Centre. This may mean a full week of hunting for that elusive dinosaur tooth, or helping out with a range of tasks, from GPS mapping to creating moulds and casts of important fossils from the AOC collection.

No matter the activity, after a long day, relaxation is found at the artesian bore baths – the melting pot of Lightning Ridge in more ways than one! Soaking in the 40°C-plus water, you can listen to myriad accents of locals, lured to the region by the search for opal and the unique lifestyle it brings.

REBECCA COTTON

Your subscription is essential to the Australian Geographic Society

Sponsorship update ADVENTURE

Canoeing the Cooper Cooper Creek has a mystique stretching back to the Burke and Wills expedition of 1861.

To our knowledge, no-one has canoed the entire creek from its origin, at the confluence of the Barcoo and Thompson rivers at Windorah in south-western Queensland, to Innamincka in South Australia, some 650km downstream. Four canoeists from Berri, SA, achieved this feat in May last year. The culmination of 12 months planning based on 20 years of outback and wilderness exploration by the team.

The Cooper is only navigable when enough rainfall from monsoonal activity occurs in south-central QLD, which is only about every 10 years.

This is usually in late summer when temperatures can be

The team canoeing the Cooper: (l–r) Bill Starr, Syd Wright, John Hammond and Jeff Hayes. above 40oC and insect life is horrendous. The Cooper floods in many channels, spreading out as much as 50km wide, posing navigation problems. Extensive GPS mapping from satellite imagery of previous floods was required, together with the satellite equipment to guide the canoe party.

BIOLOGY

in the Northern Territory and along the Great Barrier Reef, indicating the behaviour is not limited to the Fitzroy. But the Fitzroy is the only location where the technique has been observed consistently, providing a great opportunity to document this amazing behaviour. To see footage captured by Daniele head to our website: australiangeographic.com.au

Humpback dolphins After a decade observing this species in the Fitzroy River of central Queensland, Dr Daniele Cagnazzi has documented numerous foraging tactics – but none as remarkable as strand-feeding, where dolphins herd fish onto the beach and launch themselves out of the water to feed. In Australia, humpback dolphins have been reported strand-feeding

ADVENTURE

Award deadline Applications for the Nancy-Bird Walton sponsorship close at midnight AEST on Friday 31 January 2020.

This prestigious $5000 award is to support female adventurers.

For details and to apply for the award, visit our website: australiangeographic.com.au

AG SOCIETY FUNDRAISER POWERFUL OWL The powerful owl (PO) is Australia’s biggest owl, with a wingspan of up to 1.5m. A PO may be able to kill a possum in a single bite, but the species can’t compete with loss of its habitat.

It is now threatened with extinction in NSW, Vic, Qld and SA. Despite this, POs can survive in suburban backyards and even breed there (see page 42).

You can help by supporting The Powerful Owl Project, a BirdLife Australia program that’s been working to save these big owls since 2011 by training citizen scientists to undertake hands-on conservation and habitat protection.

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.

To subscribe, call 1300 555 176 Who are the Australian Geographic Society?

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 disperses 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.

The Australian Geographic Society is proudly supported by KPMG and Corrs Chambers Westgarth

MAKE A DIFFERENCE. PLEASE DONATE TODAY Funds raised will help save and support urban and suburban powerful owls into the future.

Visit australiangeographic.com.au/fundraising or call 02 9316 7214.

January . February 39

Marine Adventures

Luxury Camps & Lodges

Ancient Culture

Arnhem Land is home to some of Australia’s most stunning marine environments.

On your adventure you’ll enjoy exclusive marine activities, including a barramundi fishing expedition on the Liverpool River. At Seven Spirit Bay, discover the pristine waters of the Cobourg Marine Park Sanctuary aboard state-of-the-art adventure crafts and fishing boats.

Enjoy seven nights in our network of luxurious safari camps and wilderness lodges, including Arnhem Land Barramundi Lodge, Murwangi Safari Camp and the iconic Seven Spirit Bay. Perfectly positioned in the most stunning locations throughout Arnhem Land, each lodge features luxurious accommodation, exceptional cuisine & exclusive activities.

The vast region of Arnhem Land is richly endowed with a culture that is more than 60,000 years old, making it the oldest surviving culture in human history.

As part your adventure, you’ll enjoy authentic cultural experiences with Indigenous guides, leaning about this sacred and mystical land from those who know it best.

*Conditions apply. All flight offers are subject to specific fare class availability in economy. If fare class unavailable, a surcharge may apply. Flight offers are return ex MEL, SYD, BNE, PER, ADL and include taxes. Flight offers applicable to selected departure dates only. Additional $600 per couple discount available for selected departure dates only. Must book by 29 February 2020. For new bookings only. Enquire or visit our website for further details.

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Along the way, stay in our network of luxurious safari camps and wilderness lodges, including the iconic Seven Spirit Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula. As part of the adventure, you’ll also enjoy a host of authentic cultural activities with Indigenous guides, learning about this extraordinary region from those who know it best.

Call 1800 688 222 outbackspirittours.com.au

Highlights of the adventure include: • Spend 7 nights in our network of luxurious safari camps and lodges • Discover the vast Arafura Swamp, location for the film ‘Ten Canoes’ • View ancient rock art galleries and cruise magnificent wetlands at Davidson’s Arnhem Land Safaris, Mount Borradaile • Enjoy a Welcome to Country performance at Yirrkala, followed by a special bush medicine and healing demonstration • Explore historic Victoria Settlement at Port Essington, Circa 1838 • Discover the pristine waters of the Cobourg Marine Park Sanctuary • Fish for barramundi & enjoy a range of breathtaking marine adventures • Enjoy an array of 4WD safaris and be immersed in this sacred land

Power couple A pair of endangered owls breeding in a suburban backyard shows why we need to protect remnant bushland in our cities.

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW GREGORY

H

our backyard fire on a moonless winter night, my wife, Marcelle, and I were lulled by sounds of growling possums, trickling water and crackling flames. “Did you hear that?” Marcelle asked as she sat up suddenly. “A high-pitched trilling, like a baby calling its mother.” We’d just moved into a new home on Sydney’s northern beaches and had no idea this strange noise was to become such a familiar and welcome part of our lives. Our cottage is one of the area’s original residences and, as we soon happily discovered, our backyard is shared territory with a menagerie of native wildlife.

It abuts a littoral rainforest patch through which a springfed creek flows before tumbling into a glittering waterfall.

This gully of tall, spotted gums, spiky cabbage palms and towering tree ferns attracts birds and supports many small mammals and reptiles. The first night in the house I was woken at dawn by a cacophony of squawking birds. Opening the back door to investigate, I saw a male powerful owl (Ninox strenua) clutching a brushtail possum in a tree. As a squadron of birds harangued him like harpies, he shot me a glance, unfurled his wide wings and launched from his perch, the dead possum dangling from his huge talons.

A few nights later we realised the mysterious trilling was coming from a tree surrounded by dense bush. Then one evening, as we sat beside our fire, the sound began moving towards us. A large, downy, white powerful owlet settled on a branch above our heads, big yellow eyes peering from its rhythmically bobbing head. Next morning, it was roosting with its parents in giant bamboo near our back door.

UDDLED BESIDE

Science citizens The powerful owl is the largest of Australia’s 11 owl species. Endemic to the mainland’s east and south-east, it’s listed as a threatened species throughout its range. BirdLife Australia’s Birds in Backyards program co-manages the 42 Australian Geographic

Powerful owl distribution

Powerful Owl Project (POP), which is using public sightings recorded on its Birdata app to build a detailed picture of the distribution and breeding success of the species across the Sydney Basin.

The undulating topography of the NSW capital underpins a mosaic of meandering bushland remnants in an urban matrix. These green fingers of native vegetation, which mostly follow gullies or creeks, are animal highways in urban landscapes and increasingly important powerful owl habitat. Bush within them can have tree canopies suitable for roosting and dense undergrowth. These also support prey such as ringtail and brushtail possums and often have suitable nesting sites. So far, POP has recorded about 230 owl territories near creeks. The owls nest in hollows that are in short supply because they’re only found in large, old trees, typically taking 150-plus years to develop. Often, a breeding pair will use the same nest hollow year after year.

Soon after our first owlet encounter, POP officer Dr Beth Mott came to our house to show us signs in our backyard indicating the presence of powerful owls – “POs” she calls them. At the base of a cheese tree she found ringtail possum teeth in grey, finger-long pellets containing fur and bone. “These are like a cat’s fur ball,” she said. “They tell you what an owl has been eating.” Around the tree’s base Beth showed us what looked like dried yoghurt splashes of uric acid paste known as ‘whitewash’ that indicate owl perching and roosting trees. “I spend a lot of my time looking for poo and vomit,” Beth said, laughing.

Taking a break from raising her nestling, our resident mother owl, with brood patch on her belly, clenches her talons in a signal to potential threats to stay away.

WATCH a video by Andrew Gregory of his backyard owls at australiangeographic.com.au/154

January . February 43

The male returns to a roost with the pair’s favourite prey – a ringtail possum. He will break off strips of flesh and feed them to the owlet.

We headed for the nest tree – a spotted gum with a hollow about 7m up. A whitewash patch indicated where the male had been roosting. Sadly, we found an owlet’s remains at the tree’s base. As she took samples Beth explained that the chick was unlikely to have fallen from the nest but had probably been eaten by its parents – a supreme act of recycling. She showed how the feathers were spread out. “See how cleanly they’ve been cut?” Beth said. “I’ve only seen this once before.”

Fledgling mortality is relatively high. Research suggests that in 2017 alone, a tenth of the Sydney Basin’s PO owlets died within a week of fledging.

Bringing up baby The PO family remained in our backyard, hiding in the tree canopy and growling at noisy miners and currawongs that squawked at them whenever they moved. Sometimes, the adult owls roosted all day with a kill before feeding strips of flesh to their owlet in the evening, responding to its shrill trilling as it begged for more. Ringtail possum was the most common menu item, but we also saw them feeding on brushtails, flying foxes and young brush turkeys and other birds.

At dusk, they would begin calling to each other. Then the parents would f ly off to hunt, leaving the owlet, which we named Snowy, alone. If we turned on our lights, Snowy would come to the tree above our back door and trill. When Marcelle called its name, it would reply, trilling and head bobbing as it 44 Australian Geographic

Research indicates car strikes kill 15 per cent of the Sydney Basin population every year. moved from tree to tree. When we had fires, it would often come down and catch beetles attracted to the light.

Snowy slowly shed its downy chest feathers as its adult plumage appeared. Males have square heads, while females’ heads are rounder; Snowy looked to be a male. He stayed around all summer, suffering on hot days and coming down to the creek to drink. In the evenings he practised hunting, scaring bats and trying to catch rats and small birds.

We listened as Snowy’s voice broke over the course of a week before he began calling like an adult, with one long, shaky “wooo”. Then suddenly he was gone. Tragically, we discovered he’d been killed by a car in our street and was buried in a neighbour’s backyard. Collisions are one of the biggest threats to POs. Research indicates car strikes kill 17 per cent of the entire population every year and cause more than 80 per cent of PO deaths near Sydney. Owls are also killed when they fly into windows (see AG 148).

The parents roosted in the same tree for days at a time. I was struck by how cat-like they were, growling, purring and

Powerful owls vomit pellets of fur and bones, the analysis of which can show what prey they are eating.

This down-covered owlet, perched on the edge of its nest hollow at dusk, is almost ready to fledge.

Libby Hall cares for an injured southern boobook owl at the Taronga Zoo Wildlife Hospital, in Sydney.

Rescue and release With time and dedication, injured powerful owls can be saved.

I grooming each other. POs mate for life and these two were clearly love birds. In the lead-up to the winter breeding season following Snowy’s death they were obviously still together and resident in our backyard. We heard them courting one day at dusk, making deep growls and purrs to each other, before eventually mating. By June, the female was ensconced within the tree and clearly nesting. The male would call to her and she would answer. Powerful owl eggs are hen’s-egg size and incubation takes about 38 days.

We had gained their trust and they apparently recognised us by sight, so we could watch them near the hollow. In late August, the female began to leave the tree. The male continued to bring food for her and the owlet, which we could hear trilling from inside the hollow. After hatching, powerful owlets grow rapidly, taking 30–35 days to become 55cm fledglings.

By then, I had become a volunteer with the Powerful Owl Project. One day, Beth called and asked me to check if there were any POs in a nearby reserve where the council was planning a fuel-reduction burn. Controlled burns are often held at crucial times when owls and other fauna breed. When owls are choosing a nesting hollow, they’re easily spooked, and clearing vegetation or burning near a nest tree can cause owls to abandon a long-held nest site. Even just the smoke from a fire can be a problem; when valleys fill up with smoke, both young and adult owls can die.

I visited the reserve and slowly walked through the forest, scanning the canopy. While peering up at the opening of a

N SYDNEY, injured powerful owls are mostly taken to the Taronga Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Mosman.

There they are first kept in a small enclosure, then transferred to an aviary, and, when strong enough, taken to a walled and shuttered enclosure that won’t damage their wings. Last year the hospital received eight POs. Two were dead on arrival, two died afterwards and four were eventually released.

I visited the hospital with Jacqui Marlow from wildlife rescue service Sydney Wildlife, who was collecting a young male that’d been treated for a month after being found near Lane Cove National Park with head injuries.

Hospital Manager Libby Hall had him fly around the enclosure twice daily and he was now strong enough to be released.

“We have good success with powerful owls if their injuries aren’t too severe,” Libby said. But they often have multiple

injuries after being hit by a car and don’t survive.

As Jacqui and I drove to the release site, the owl in a special box with a perch, we stopped to place bunting on a broken wildlife fence. “Possums get through here and onto the road and then owls chase them and get hit,” Jacqui explained.

At Lane Cove NP, at a clearing by the river, Jacqui placed the box on the ground near a tall tree, opened it and crawled away on her hands and knees. She’s released 10 owls this way. “I try to let them go as close as I can to where they were found, but as far away from busy roads as possible,” she said.

We didn’t have to wait long before the owl popped his head out, peered around and launched himself into the tree. After a few minutes scanning the area, he gave us one last look with those enormous yellow eyes and then silently disappeared into the darkness.

January . February 45

Our resident powerful owl mother returns to her nestling owlet. These owls need to nest in large hollows and the female spends more than 70 days raising young.

As habitat becomes scarcer, young owls are staying longer with their parents, who will continue feeding them.

large hollow in an ancient dead tree, I stepped on a branch. The noise startled a resident owlet, which popped its head out and peered down at me. I passed the sighting on to Beth, who alerted the council and the burn was cancelled. The owlet and its sibling successfully fledged about a week apart.

Part of the family In our second nesting season our resident owl pair again produced a single owlet – Snowy II, a female who also often perched in the tree above our back door. At night, we’d listen to her hassling her mum for food outside our bedroom window.

Research suggests that as habitat becomes scarcer, young owls are staying longer with their parents, who will continue feeding them into the next breeding season and that appeared to happen with Snowy II. What makes our backyard ideal is that it has a breeding hollow, access to water, somewhere safe to roost and enough prey to support breeding. But suburban Sydney has a limited number of locations that tick all those boxes. The total adult PO population in the Sydney Basin is thought to now be about 500, which is probably at about capacity, with nesting habitat availability likely to be the limiting factor.

Urban development is making suitable habitat ever scarcer.

We feel privileged to share our home with our owl residents and are working hard to optimise the habitat for them; visitors are often surprised at the diversity of f lora and fauna in our backyard. The owls are now an integral part of our lives – I talk to them while working in my vegetable patch and I lie awake at dawn, listening for the calls that tell me they are returning AG home from foraging.

46 Australian Geographic

Become a volunteer THE POWERFUL OWL PROJECT now also collects data in Queensland, with Victoria following soon.

It welcomes all owl activity reports. BirdLife Australia holds regular workshops for project volunteers, land managers and others, providing training in survey techniques and how to protect and improve habitat so native wildlife can flourish in urban spaces. More info: birdlife.org.au/projects/powerful-owl-project

How you can help powerful owls Become a volunteer and record sightings using BirdLife Australia’s Birdata app.

Protect old trees, particularly those with hollows.

Plant native vegetation in your backyard and local reserves.

Don’t use rat poison; owls may take a sick rat.

Don’t let dogs or cats out at night because they may kill owl prey species.

Protect and value habitat in your area.

Avoid car strikes by driving more slowly at night near creeks.

Make windows more conspicuous to reduce collisions (see AG 148).

To learn how you can help support powerful owls, see page 38.

Owls in mainland Australia and Tasmania Nocturnal hoots, barks or screeches are sure signs of an owl living in your area. Use this quick guide to see which species it might be.

AUSTRALIA HAS two genera of owls, Ninox and Tyto. The latter – the masked owls – includes the well-known barn owl, which occurs throughout the world. The Ninox owls are known as hawkowls and all lack the definite heart-shaped face of the Tyto owls. Most of Australia’s native owl species rely on old-growth trees. These contain hollows that can take more than 100 years to form and are favoured as nesting sites by our owls. Loss of such trees through habitat clearing is a major threat to Australia’s owls.

PHOTO CREDITS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ESTHER BEATON; ESTHER BEATON; BARRY KEARNEY; SHUTTERSTOCK; JAMES PEAKE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; JULIE FLETCHER; MINDEN PICTURES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BRAD LEUE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CHAMELEONSEYE

HAWK OWLS

Powerful owl

Rufous owl

Barking owl

Southern boobook

Tasmanian boobook

Ninox strenua Length: 50–60cm Wingspan: 110–140cm Weight: M 1450g, F 1250g

Ninox rufa Length: 46–57cm Wingspan: 100–120cm Weight: M 1200g, F 1000g

Ninox connivens Length: 39–44cm Wingspan: 85–120cm Weight: M 425–740g, F 380–710g

Ninox boobook Length: 30–35cm Wingspan: 56–82cm Weight: M 250g, F 315g

Ninox leucopsis Length: 28–30cm Wingspan: 60–78cm Weight: M 190g, F 214g

Australia’s largest owl.

Lives in mainland open forests and woodlands from south-eastern QLD to SA. Long, double-hoot call. Wide variety of prey from large possums and gliders to bats, small birds, rodents and sometimes large beetles.

Australia’s second-largest owl. Lives in variety of forest habitats in northern Australia, from rainforest to savannah woodlands. Call is a low-pitched “woo-hoo”.

Hunts possums, bats, birds and insects. Usually seen alone or in pairs.

Lives mostly in dry forest/woodland in south-eastern Australia, NT and WA. Distinctive dog-like call and a single, loud, high-pitched scream. Hunts roosting birds, from frogmouths to magpies, sugar gliders, and rabbits in open areas.

Australia’s smallest and most common owl. Found anywhere with trees Australia-wide. Call is “boo-book”, “mo-poke” or “more-pork”. Feeds on insects, birds, mammals, reptiles. Hunts moths near streetlights.

Roosts in trees and caves.

Nests in tree hollows.

Lives in woods across Tasmania. Roundish owl with large head and bright-yellow eyes. Call a series of two-noted hoots. Diet probably dominated by invertebrates, supplemented with small vertebrates. May migrate to mainland Australia in autumn/winter.

MASKED OWLS

Barn owl

Eastern grass owl

Greater sooty owl

Lesser sooty owl

Masked owl

Tyto alba Length: 29–38cm Wingspan: 70–100cm Weight: 310–360g

Tyto longimembris Length: 30–38cm Wingspan: 100–115cm Weight: M 265–310g, F 310–480g

Tyto tenebricosa Length: M 33–36cm, F 38–43cm Wingspan: M 82–111cm, F 101–118cm Weight: M 490g, F 890g

Tyto multipunctata Length: M 32cm, F 36cm Wingspan: M 79cm, F 90cm Weight: M 370g, F 560g

Tyto novaehollandiae Length: M 33–41cm, F 39–50cm Wingspan: M 90–110cm, F 96–128cm Weight: M 240–800g, F 545–1260g

Lives Australia-wide.

Common, but shy and rarely seen. Distinctive heart-shaped face. Call is infrequent loud screech.

Feeds mostly on small mammals, but also birds, reptiles, frogs and insects.

Hunts mostly over open ground. Numbers rise during mouse plagues.

A ground-nester found in grasslands, coastal heath, swamps and farmland in eastern and northern Australia.

Nomadic. Mostly silent, but may produce rasping screech or hissing trill.

Hunts mainly for ground mammals.

Lives in south-eastern Australia forests. Large, heavily built with dark facial disc with black outline. Loud whistling screech, like a falling bomb. Hunts in forest gullies for possums, and also rats and bandicoots.

Lives only in rainforest and other dense forest in far north QLD. Call is a bomb-whistle. Preys on small mammals and birds as well as geckos and frogs. May roost in caves.

Nests in tree hollows, usually from March to May.

Found in heavy forests within 300km of the coast in eastern and northern Australia, south-western WA and TAS. Has screeching hiss call. Bandicoots and rabbits are prey.

January . February 47

2020

TA S

AUSTR A LIAN OF THE

Y E AR Dr Jess Melbourne-Thomas

MARINE, ANTARCTIC AND CLIMATE SCIENTIST 48 Australian Geographic

OUR TOP AWARD TUR NS 60 This year’s milestone Australian of the Year nominations reflect where we are as a nation more than ever before.

STORY BY CHRISSIE GOLDRICK PORTRAIT BY MATTHEW NEWTON

D

R JESS MELBOURNE-THOMAS

considers the moment she slipped through thin sea ice and plunged into the teethrattling waters of the Southern Ocean as the highlight of a research voyage to Antarctica in 2012. Momentarily distracted by a minke whale that popped its head up through a hole in the ice, Jess missed her otherwise careful footing.

It is a delightful and revealing recollection from a scientist dedicated to the preservation of fragile marine ecosystems and passionate about expanding the role of science in informing public policy on climate change. Her dedication has led to her to being named Tasmanian of the Year for 2020.

Equally characteristic is the way Jess swiftly def lects any personal glory, preferring instead to acknowledge the

contributions of the other Tasmanian finalists, two of whom were also women working in science.

Each state and territory around the nation announced its recipients for the 2020 Australian of the Year back in October/November 2019. The national result will be announced in Canberra on the eve of Australia Day, 25 January, along with the Senior and Young Australians of the Year and the Local Hero winner.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the respected federal government-run award and, along with 38-year-old mother of two and marine scientist Jess, the seven other state and territory finalists for the 2020 national honour range from medical practitioners to musicians and from educationalists to sportspeople.

The mix of disciplines in 2020 closely mirrors the history of the award, which

January . February 49

was first given to virologist and Nobel Laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnet in 1960 and subsequently awarded to opera singer Joan Sutherland and America’s Cup skipper Alexander ‘Jock’ Sturrock in the ensuing two years. Since then there have been military personnel, politicians and entrepreneurs, including Dick Smith who was announced as Australian of the Year just as Australian Geographic launched in January 1986, and the occasional controversial figure such as Alan Bond.

Jess acknowledges that Australian of the Year has often captured the zeitgeist. “These awards ref lect the times, and nowadays hopefully recognise how important science has been, and continues to be, not only in understanding what’s changing but also how we can respond to those changes,” she says.

Jess’s journey began in and around the waters of Hobart where she learnt to scuba dive as a teenager and, along with her father and brother, explored the island’s giant marine kelp forests. “The magical experience of diving in a kelp forest is like f lying through a jungle surrounded by an amazing diversity of life,” says Jess. “Those forests are now effectively gone because of climate change. It makes me sad when I think my kids won’t have that same experience and get to see those environments the way I did.”

The young Jess aspired to be an Antarctic scientist and in 2003 took up an opportunity to study as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the UK where she specialised in coral reefs. It opened her eyes to the dramatic effects of climate change and other human impacts, such as overfishing and nutrient input on delicate marine ecosystems. On returning home to Hobart and gaining her PhD in 2010, Jess landed a role with the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre and later with the Australian Antarctic Division, where she sailed aboard Aurora Australis to conduct the sea ice studies that saw her brief ly sharing the waters with that spy-hopping whale.

She co-founded a global network for women in polar science to address some of their particular issues, such as extended periods spent away from home and children, and the fact that traditionally it has been a male-dominated field. This evolved into the Homeward Bound project, which Jess co-founded in 2014, that aims to take 1000 women to Antarctica over 10 years to workshop collaborative international responses to climate change against the backdrop of an inspiring environment where its physical effects are clearly evident. The initiative has since broadened its focus to advocate for greater diversity generally in leadership, science and decision making in tackling the major environmental issues.

“I’ve come from being interested in understanding the fundamentals of ecology to thinking more about how humans interact with ecosystems and how we can better connect knowledge to decision making,” Jess says of her latest role as a CSIRO transdisciplinary researcher and knowledge broker.

50 Australian Geographic

“It’s a platform for talking about the things that are so important in the world today and where we need to see change.”

“We have this traditional model where scientists go off and do their work, write a paper and publish it in a journal and hope that somebody who needs it picks it up and is able to make some kind of decision based on the information. But it doesn’t work anymore because so many of the problems we have now are very urgent, and we need more efficient ways to connect science to policy.”

Jess is focused on finding ways to address the big challenges in the marine environment by involving multiple stakeholders to better understand their needs and develop models or research to find solutions to specific problems. She’s committed to broadening the scope to include non-traditional information sources, such as Indigenous knowledge, alongside that of mainstream science.

It’s the kind of fresh and innovative thinking needed to tackle the planet’s grand-scale problems and Jess sees her Tasmania Australian of the Year honour as an opportunity.

“The pool of nominees was just incredible, and hearing about people making change in their communities, and becoming immersed in all the wonderful stories of people who won awards in the past is so inspiring,” she says. “It’s a platform for talking about the things that are so important in the world today and where we need to see change, and so, hopefully, I can seize the opportunity to talk about those things in a way that can be listened to and acted upon.”

Jess Melbourne-Thomas, along with her seven fellow candidates for Australian of the Year, and the other 24 candidates across three sub-categories, will be honoured at a televised ceremony at the National Arboretum in Canberra on the evening of 25 January.

According to the National Australia Day Council’s CEO, Karlie Brand, the 60th anniversary is a particularly special year to be a finalist because the annual event will also celebrate the history of the awards and its past awardees. “The national finalists are an extraordinary group of people whose impact ranges from medical and scientific endeavours to volunteering, human rights advocacy, education, sustainability action and more,” says Karlie. “Their stories ref lect our communities and the world in which we live, inspiring us and reminding us we can all make a difference.”

Visit the Australian of the Year exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Open 9am–5pm daily until 16 February.

Free entry.

2020 AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR FINALISTS These are the other seven state and territory winners. One of the eight finalists (including Dr Jess Melbourne-Thomas) will be named Australian of the Year on 25 January in Canberra.

2020

ACT FLORAL EMBLEM, ROYAL BLUEBELL

2020

ACT

NSW

OF THE

OF THE

AUSTR A LIAN

AUSTR A LIAN

Y E AR

Y E AR

Katrina Fanning

Professor Munjed Al Muderis

ORTHOPAEDIC SURGEON AND HUMAN-RIGHTS ADVOCATE

WOMEN’S RUGBY LEAGUE PIONEER Age: 46 Lives: Canberra

SCIENTIFIC NAMES, FROM LEFT: Wahlenbergia gloriosa; Telopea speciosissima

TEXT AND PHOTOS COURTESY NATIONAL AUSTRALIA DAY COUNCIL FLORAL EMBLEM ILLUSTRATIONS BY HEIDI WILLIS

F

OR MORE THAN 25 YEARS, Wiradjuri woman Katrina Fanning has lived and breathed rugby league. Following a successful career as a player, she was appointed manager of the Indigenous Women’s All Stars team, Chairperson of the Australian Rugby League Indigenous Council, and President of the Canberra and Australian Women’s Rugby League Associations.

In 2014 she was named Canberra Woman of the Year, and ACT NAIDOC Person of the Year. Then, last year, Katrina was the third woman to be appointed to the Canberra Raiders board of directors. Katrina brings enormous management capability to the appointment, having worked in senior roles with Centrelink, Aboriginal Hostels Limited, and the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, as well as holding positions on various committees and boards. She believes that the ACT can lead the way nationally for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people outcomes, in creating and leading their own solutions.

NSW FLORAL EMBLEM, WARATAH

Age: 47 Lives: Sydney

A

FTER FLEEING the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s regime in a leaking boat, Professor Munjed Al Muderis was detained on Christmas Island, then in Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia.

He overcame extraordinary obstacles to become an orthopaedic surgeon, specialising in hip, knee and reconstructive surgery and now advocates for the human rights of others. A compassionate ambassador for multiple organisations, including the Red Cross, Munjed has taken a team to his former homeland of Iraq Sixteen medical, seven times, to help the health or science victims of the conflict he personnel have fled, and has educated other been named orthopaedic surgeons in Australian of complex limb reconstruction. the Year.

His surgical innovations and breakthroughs are helping people throughout the world.

Munjed exemplifies the valuable and positive contribution that refugees can make, and what it truly means to be Australian.

January . February 51

2020

2020

AUSTR ALIAN

AUSTR ALIAN

SA

NT

QLD

AUSTR ALIAN

OF THE

OF THE

OF THE

YEAR

YEAR NT FLORAL EMBLEM, STURT’S DESERT ROSE

2020 YEAR

SA FLORAL EMBLEM, STURT’S DESERT PEA

QLD FLORAL EMBLEM, COOKTOWN ORCHID

Dr Geoffrey Thompson

Rachel Downie

Dr James Muecke AM

SPORTS PHYSICIAN AND EX-RAAF FLYING DOCTOR

EYE SURGEON AND BLINDNESS PREVENTION PIONEER

EDUCATOR AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Age: 74 Lives: Darwin

Age: 56 Lives: Norwood

Age: 48 Lives: Buderim

52 Australian Geographic

T

WENTY-FIVE years ago, Rachel Downie became an educator to help young people flourish. After losing a Year 9 student to suicide, she needed to find a way to support young people to say something when things aren’t right. She discovered students often felt too frightened to come forward with possible life-saving information, because of peer expectations.

She developed and self-funded Stymie, a website that allows students to anonymously report harm. Since 2014 she has presented Stymie to more than 300,000 students who are using it to report family violence, bullying, cyber-bullying, depression, illegal activity, harassment, self-harm and harm to their communities. In 2018 schools using Stymie have received more than 40,000 notifications from concerned students, empowering them to use their empathy and conscience to report harm, and further a culture of care in schools.

Dendrobium bigibbum

S

INCE STARTING HIS medical career in Kenya, Dr James Muecke AM has been passionate about fighting blindness.

In 2000 he co-founded Vision Myanmar – which has developed and operated eye health initiatives in that country – at the SA Institute of Ophthalmology. James also co-founded Sight For All (SFA), a social impact organisation aiming to create a world where everyone can see. With 80 per cent of blindness avoidable, and almost 90 per cent in poor countries, he treats it as a human rights issue. James creates low-cost programs to fight blindness through research, education and infrastructure, including the comprehensive training of colleagues in SFA partner countries. His leadership has improved eye health and alleviated poverty and disadvantage.

SCIENTIFIC NAMES, FROM LEFT: Gossypium sturtianum; Swainsona formosa;

D

R GEOFFREY THOMPSON is one of the Northern Territory’s quiet achievers, with a distinguished career as a flying doctor and history of service to sports medicine and the community. Born in rural SA, Geoffrey graduated in medicine before joining the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as a flight surgeon and medical officer. In 1974, when Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, he oversaw the RAAF effort to evacuate the city. During the days that followed, he helped assess, treat and evacuate severely injured citizens of Darwin – despite having lost his home and possessions. After leaving the RAAF, he ran general medical clinics in remote Indigenous communities, often using his own plane for transport.

As a sports medicine specialist, he was the first president and founding member of Sports Medicine Australia (NT), and since 2008 he has been the chief medical officer for the Australian Paralympic Committee.

2020

2020

AUSTR ALIAN

AUSTR ALIAN

Y E AR

Y E AR

VIC OF THE

WA OF THE

WA FLORAL EMBLEM, RED-AND-GREEN KANGAROO PAW VIC FLORAL EMBLEM, COMMON HEATH

Archie Roach AM

Annie Fogarty AM

SCIENTIFIC NAMES, FROM LEFT: Epacris impressa; Anigozanthos manglesii

MUSICAL STORYTELLER

EDUCATION SOCIAL VENTURER

Age: 63 Lives: south-west Victoria

Age: 59 Lives: Peppermint Grove

A

W

RCHIE ROACH AM is a singer, songwriter, musician and campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians. After being forcibly removed from his family at age two, he has overcome teenage alcoholism and homelessness – and the 2010 death of his beloved wife, Ruby – to become an Australian music legend.

In 1992 he won two ARIA Awards for his 1990 debut album Charcoal Lane. He also received a Human Rights Achievement Award for his iconic Stolen Generations song, Took the Children Away – a first for any songwriter. He has since released 11 more albums and embarked on nationwide and global tours, exploring issues The first that affect Indigenous Aboriginal Aussie people in modern Australia. of the Year was Today he runs the Archie Roach world champion Foundation, which looks to boxer Lionel Rose improve opportunities for young in 1968.

Indigenous people through art and culture. Archie’s work spreads a powerful message of love, reconciliation and healing.

ITH HER HUSBAND, Brett, Annie Fogarty AM founded the Fogarty Foundation in 2000 to help advance education, support young people to reach their full potential and to build stronger communities. Under Annie’s leadership, the foundation identifies areas of need, supports partner organisations with philanthropic funds, connections and knowledge, and develops initiatives that deliver educational opportunities, inspire leadership and enrich lives. The foundation enhances excellence in schools by investing in education programs, teachers and school leaders. Through the foundation, Annie has developed the Fogarty EDvance program, which improves the educational outcomes of children who attend schools in lower socioeconomic communities. The foundation’s scholarship program for tertiary students provides financial support, a leadership program, enrichment opportunities and supportive networks to help develop future leaders. Annie is also involved with several organisations that help foster innovation and creativity in young people, and is committed to ensuring excellent education for all.

AG

January . February 53

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In his element, Macquarie University ďŹ sh cognition scientist Professor Culum Brown comes face to face with some of the creatures that have fascinated him since childhood.

These are snubnose dart at the Sydney Aquarium.

56 Australian Geographic

Underwater and Underrated Scientists are finding plenty of clues that ďŹ sh are more intelligent than anyone imagined.

STORY BY PETER MEREDITH

January . February 57

Having the largest brains of all ďŹ sh, manta rays are curious and enjoy interacting with divers. They particularly like having their bellies tickled by bubbles escaping from scuba gear when divers swim beneath them.

58 Australian Geographic

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PHOTO CREDITS, OPENING IMAGE: MICHAEL AMENDOLIA; OPPOSITE: CARLOS VILLOCH – MAGICSEA.COM / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; THIS PAGE: JORDAN ROBINS; SCIENTIFC NAME, OPENING IMAGE: Trachinotus blochii; OPPOSITE: Manta birostris; THIS PAGE: Kyphosus sydneyanus

HERE’S A MYTH that the memory of a goldfish lasts only three seconds. But that wasn’t how Professor Culum Brown saw it when he was 12. He kept fish as pets and would while away the hours staring at them instead of doing his homework. The more he stared, the more they fascinated him. What he found most intriguing was the way they seemed to recognise and react to him.

“They ignored everybody else and they knew that in the morning when I came to feed them I’d put the food in a particular spot and they’d be there waiting,” he says. “It was pretty obvious to me, even as a kid, that they were much smarter than people thought.”

Culum went on to snorkel a lot during his youth in Southeast Asia, where his father worked, and is now a marine biologist at Macquarie University, Sydney.

“Most people are oblivious to what goes on in the water,” he says. “The more I looked into it, the more I realised nobody knew much about it. That was a kind of inspiration. I never set out to be a marine biologist, but that’s where life took me.”

For some 20 years now, his focus has been on fish intelligence and cognition. With numerous journal articles and a major book on the topic, he’s considered Australia’s leading expert. “There was never any doubt in my mind that fish are clever. It was just a question of how clever,” Culum says. “I guess I’m still answering that question.”

A

LL VERTEBRATE ANIMALS,

including fish and humans, descended from a common ancestor.

The former belong to a numerous and successful group that originated more than 500 million years ago.

First came jawless fish, then cartilaginous fish – sharks, rays, sawfish and skates – about 450 million years ago, followed about 375 million years ago by bony fish, with hard skeletons. This long evolutionary history has given fish ample time to develop complex and diverse behaviours as well as the cognitive hardware to go with them.

To put that vast span of time into perspective, compare it with the considerably shorter history of the human species, which emerged in its modern form only

These silver drummer off Neds Beach, Lord Howe Island, might seem to be smiling, but facial expressions like ours aren’t how fish communicate. Many species do, however, use sound.

195,000 years ago. Because, however, we share ancestors with modern fish, we have many of the same features, Culum says. “Fundamentally, all vertebrates have been built from the same box of Lego,” he explains. “Humans are just fish with a few tweaks.”

Fish diversity is mind-boggling. There are thought to be at least 65,000 vertebrate species alive today and of these more than half – 33,000 – are fish. They inhabit every conceivable aquatic niche, with total numbers of individuals in the trillions.

But despite their pedigree and evolutionary success, fish have an image problem. Humans tend to equate ancient with primitive, clinging to an obsolete view of evolution as a steady progression from inferior to advanced, with highly intelligent humans at the pinnacle. But that’s turning out to be a highly simplistic reading of the facts.

January . February 59

Culum Brown, pictured with a zebra shark behind his head, is one of about 50 scientists worldwide working on fish cognition and intelligence.

The Eurasian, or common, minnow, of the carp family, is an especially gregarious species. Its vast shoals can perform complex synchronised manoeuvres to escape predators.

I

office in Macquarie Uni’s Biological Sciences department. He’s a laid-back, tall and strongly built man wearing a short-sleeved shirt, shorts and no shoes. His hair is a tight mass of wild curls, his smiling face is stubbled and he wears small silver earrings.

Inside his office there are the obligatory fish pictures and doodles by his kids on a board behind his desk, while piled on the floor are a wetsuit and fins. Getting down to business, Culum is quick to emphasise how close humans and fish are in evolutionary terms. “Although our fishy ancestors date back about 500 million years, the physiology and the genetics have hardly changed in that time,” he says.

“The hormones are the same; the neurons are the same; brain structure is very similar. People tend to focus on how different we are, but the scientific reality is that we’re actually very, very similar. The idea of higher and lower, primitive and advanced, doesn’t exist in evolutionary terms – we’re just another animal among the diversity. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that humans are the best and that you can only be intelligent if you’re similar to a human.”

Fish may seem dumb to us because their expressionless faces make them look dumb and uncommunicative. But that’s partly because we don’t understand the signals they give out. It takes much watching to become familiar with those signals, as scuba divers and owners of pet fish can testify.

We also seem to be unduly influenced by a perception that small brains must be primitive. On a scientific level, it’s a misconception that because the fish brain lacks a cortex – which in humans is responsible for perceiving, producing and understanding language – it must necessarily be incapable of performing many of the tasks of a

60 Australian Geographic

Culum is quick to emphasise how close humans and fish are in evolutionary terms. human cortex. But Culum argues that the human cortex has taken on a huge number of roles that were once the domain of other brain regions. After all, a small brain and lack of a cortex hasn’t prevented many birds from becoming super-smart. Why should fish be any different?

Then there’s brain lateralisation, a structural adaptation that allows the brain’s two hemispheres to perform different tasks. “It’s like a computer, in which different elements can work on different parts of a problem simultaneously and can collaborate,” Culum explains. “Thirty years ago, we used to think lateralisation was a uniquely human trait. Now it turns out just about every animal has a lateralised brain. Experiments on parrots and different fish show that the more strongly lateralised the brain is, the smarter and better it is at problem-solving.”

To do its job effectively, the brain needs information from the outside world to work on, and this comes from an animal’s sensory organs. How do these stack up in fish? In a word, brilliantly. Their vision is superior to ours – they can see more colours – and the abilities of many species to taste and smell are on par with ours.

PHOTO CREDITS, THIS PAGE FROM LEFT: FERO BEDNAR / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; MICHAEL AMENDOLIA; OPPOSITE FROM TOP: B.A.E. INC. / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RYAN SAULT / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GRAPHIC BY MIKE ELLOTT; SCIENTIFIC NAME, THIS PAGE: Phoxinus phoxinus; Stegostoma fasciatum; OPPOSITE: Carcharodon carcharias

MEET CULUM AT his

Ancient but not primitive

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UMANS AND fish evolved from a common ancestor. Early humans appeared on the planet just 6 million years ago and modern humans not until about 195,000 years ago. By contrast, the genealogy of fish goes back more than 500 million years. They’ve been evolving for far longer than their land-based descendants, making them the most highly evolved of Earth’s vertebrates.

This means ancient does not equate with primitive. Scientists no longer see vertebrate evolution as a linear progression rising from primitive to sophisticated, with humans at the top and the human brain as the gold standard.

Rather they see it as a radiation from a common ancestor, with different animal groups evolving in parallel.

As Culum Brown has written: “Following this reasoning, biological and cognitive complexity is not defined by how closely animals are related to humans but rather by the niche they occupy and the problems they commonly face during everyday existence... There has been ample time for fish to evolve complex and diverse behaviour patterns as well as the cognitive hardware that goes with it to match the diversity of ecological niches they occupy.”

What this means, he says, is that most fish species are no more ‘primitive’ than we are.

65 MYA

6 MYA

365MYA

375MYA

MYA = MILLION YEARS AGO

450MYA

550MYA FISH-LIKE ANCESTOR

This prehistoric shark fossil highlights the vast span of time that has enabled cartilaginous fish to become acutely sensitised to their environment.

A great white shark cruises the depths with hangers-on. As the biggest predatory fish, the great white is relatively large-brained. It is an intelligent, inquisitive and highly social animal with many complex behaviours.

January . February 61

SYNCHRONOUS SWARMING

Refined for survival The fish brain has been honed by more than 500 million years of evolution into a highly sophisticated survival tool.

Here are some of the skills it enables.

MENTAL MAP At low tide, the frillfin goby shelters in rock pools. If threatened by a predator, it will jump over exposed rock from one pool into a neighbouring one. It does this without being able to see its destination, relying on a mental map of the surrounding area it has made while swimming over it at high tide. If it needs to, it continues jumping from pool to pool to deep water.

CLEANING SERVICE Cleaner wrasse remove and eat parasites and dead skin on the bodies of larger fish, some of them predators.

Wrasse provide this service at fixed sites, known as cleaning stations, on coral outcrops. Clients come from near and far to be cleaned.

A wrasse can remember up to 100 different clients.

SHOOT TO KILL The archerfish squirts a water jet from the mouth to knock down insect prey above the water. Its specially shaped mouth and tongue give it a range of up to 3m and the ability to discharge single shots or machine-gun bursts. When young, each fish learns shooting skills from experienced hunters in its social group.

A shoal of hundreds of fish can change direction instantly and in unison.

The manoeuvre relies on individual shoal members being super-sensitive to their immediate neighbours’ movements. For this they use their eyesight and their lateral line, a sonar-like system of sensory organs on their flanks that detect turbulence and changes in water pressure.

TOOL USE The Great Barrier Reef’s blackspot tuskfish grasps shelled prey, such as clams, in its mouth, smashing them on a rock to reach the flesh.

Scientists say the rock is being used as a tool. Regular use of the same rocks leads to middens of smashed shells.

TEAMWORK Groupers and moray eels often team up to hunt, combining the groupers’ speed in open water with the eels’ skill at flushing prey from narrow crevices in reefs.

When a grouper wants to hunt, it invites an eel by using a distinct signal. Teamwork improves hunting efficiency and the hunters share their catch.

Medulla

Optic lobe

Cerbrum

FISH BRAIN

VARIATION ON A THEME Olfactory tract

62 Australian Geographic

The brains of all vertebrates, including fish, are built to the same basic plan, with variations on the theme. The fish brain may lack a cortex but has many structures and functions matching those of other vertebrate brains. It is also lateralised, meaning its two hemispheres can work on different tasks simultaneously. Brain lateralisation was once thought to be unique to humans.

ILLUSTRATION: LEVENT EFE

Cerebellum

Research conducted by Culum Brown on rainbowfish shows they have complex social lives, recognise social hierarchies and prefer to shoal with familiars rather than strangers.

PHOTO CREDIT: KRISFOTO/GETTY SCIENTIFIC NAME: Melanotaenia praecox

Social learning and memory are essential for any creature living in a large, complex-social group.

As for hearing, fish have two systems: one is based directly on the conventional vertebrate inner ear, the other on the lateral line, a visible line along a fish’s side that collects information about water vibration and pressure from the surrounding environment. Not surprisingly, up to half of all fish species use sound to communicate. Minnows, for example, vocalise at one another when fighting.

Furthermore, like many other terrestrial and marine creatures, some fish can detect the Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation. Other fish generate bursts of electricity and use them in a way that’s similar to how bats use echolocation to hunt and navigate.

B

ECAUSE INTELLIGENCE HAS evolved independently

in many different parts of the animal family tree, it’s likely to be something that is very useful for survival. Culum believes the factors that drive it are both

environmental and social. “It’s fundamentally to do with your lifestyle, the problems you need to solve to get by and the environment you live in,” he says. For example, it could be influenced by having to find food in sophisticated environments. But it could also be helpful for processing social complexity. “You need a big brain to keep track of social relationships,” Culum adds.

An aspect of intelligence that has long interested Culum has been the way fish learn and remember. One experiment he did on rainbowfish, a popular aquarium species endemic to Australia and Papua New Guinea, involved a net that moved from one end of a fish tank to the other. The net had a single hole in it; to avoid getting trapped, the fish needed to find the hole quickly.

It took them only five goes to master the test. Furthermore, larger groups did better than smaller ones, suggesting they learn from each other via a process known as social learning. And, even though rainbowfish live for only two years, the test fish still remembered the skill 11 months later.

Social learning and memory are essential for any creature living in a large, complex-social group. Fish can spend most of their lives in shoals or schools. They must learn and memorise their shoal’s structure, remember their status within it and be able to recognise kin and familiars.

January . February 63

A cleaner wrasse services a clarion angelfish at a cleaning station.

The interactions between wrasse and their clients are among the most sophisticated and complex social systems of any animals.

Having social learning allows the potential for transferring information between individuals and also between generations, leading to the development of ‘cultural traits’ or ‘traditions’ that can persist over time, Culum says.

Regular migration routes are examples. Northern Hemisphere cod have been moving to new spawning grounds in recent years, perhaps because commercial fishing has removed older individuals that remember traditional routes, depleting the species’ cultural knowledge.

Most fish activity involves moving through the environment. Long return journeys demand finely tuned spatial learning and memory that can generate mental maps featuring recognisable features in the environment. Without them fish wouldn’t be able to find their way around.

Fish also display some of the most remarkable examples of cooperation between species in the animal kingdom. One of the best examples involves cleaner wrasse. These fish, typically less than 20cm long, make a meal of parasites and bits of dead skin on the bodies of larger, often predatory, ‘client’ fishes. Cleaners operate at fixed ‘cleaning stations’ on coral outcrops. Clients that gather there are of varying species. A cleaner wrasse can remember and recognise more than 100 individual clients and prioritise them according to residential status, dealing with outsiders first because it knows that locals will stick around but outsiders may seek another station if service isn’t fast enough.

64 Australian Geographic

Occasionally a cleaner is tempted to ignore the usual menu items and instead bites off a mouthful of tasty and nutritional mucus from a client. The client may flinch at this and swim off ‘in a huff’ while the cleaner, anxious not to lose a customer, swims after it and placates it with a soothing back rub delivered with its pelvic and pectoral fins, in what Culum describes as a striking example of social intelligence.

Another example of cooperation between species involves groupers and giant moray eels, which team up for hunting expeditions. A grouper seeking a hunting partner will entice a moray out of its cavity with specific ‘come hunt with me’ signals. Then the pair sets off, the eel flushing prey from crevices, while the grouper uses its speed to snap up the meals that they share.

All this involves cognitive complexity on several levels: the deliberate communication between the two to set up

PHOTO CREDIT, ABOVE LEFT: MCPHOTO/NILSEN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Labroides dimidiatus; Holacanthus clarionensis

Fish also display some of the most remarkable examples of cooperation between species.

PHOTO CREDIT, ABOVE: REINHARD DIRSCHERL/GETTY SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Muraena helena, Epinephelus marginatus

A moray and a grouper prepare to hunt together. A grouper can invite a moray to hunt by using either a distinctive ‘hunt with me’ body shimmy or a headstand signal that points towards hidden prey.

the hunt; the different roles they play; and the subsequent sharing of food.

With many scientific studies now pointing to fish being highly intelligent, we face awkward ethical and moral questions about our treatment of them. Remember, they are our among our most numerous food sources and commonly used as pets and laboratory test subjects.

Do they suffer and feel pain in these interactions with us? If so, shouldn’t we try to minimise their suffering by granting them the same animal welfare rights we grant other creatures such as livestock, dogs and cats?

In a 2015 paper in the journal Animal Cognition, Culum argued that there is no doubt fish have the ability to perceive pain. “It would be impossible for fish to survive as cognitively and behaviourally complex animals without a capacity to feel pain,” he wrote. “Feeling pain and responding appropriately…are clearly critical to survival.”

P

ROFESSOR ASHLEY WARD is an animal behaviourist

at the University of Sydney. He studies groupliving in animals, mostly the collective behaviour of fish. While growing up in the UK, he, too, had an inspiring childhood encounter with fish. It happened after he’d been given a face mask for snorkelling.

“I jumped into a river not far from where I lived and saw this incredible shoal of minnows,” Ashley tells me.

“There were hundreds and it was mind-blowing, the way they moved together and performed these orchestrated, coordinated movements. It was the most fantastic thing I’d ever seen.”

As we chat in his office, we’re joined at the window by a noisy miner bird that feeds from a plastic container.

Its name is Ken, Ashley says, and it’s a regular visitor.

Through their fish studies, Ashley and his team have developed a mathematical tool kit that helps reveal January . February 65

He has no doubt fish are intelligent and capable of highly sophisticated behaviour.

P

ROFESSOR BRIAN KEY heads the Brain Growth and

Regeneration lab at The University of Queensland.

He works on fish, frogs and mice and doesn’t mince words on the subject of fish pain. In a paper entitled “Why fish do not feel pain” published in 2016 in the journal Animal Sentience, he lays out the evidence that they lack the neural hardware, specifically a cortex, to experience it.

A fish can’t tell you if it’s feeling pain, Brian argues.

We can only watch how it behaves and make an interpretation based on that. “Once you try to take that beyond

66 Australian Geographic

There’s safety in numbers for this shoal of bigeye trevally.

Scientists have found that the bigger a shoal, the more it confuses predators and therefore the safer it is for individual fish. As well, collective decision-making is faster.

behavioural analysis, it’s all guesswork,” he says. “You’re making assumptions without looking at the neural basis.

It’s premature to jump to conclusions about issues such as pain in fish. Science is trying to understand the neural basis of it, but we’re not there yet.”

On the question of animal welfare, Brian emphasises it needn’t be linked specifically to an animal’s ability to feel pain. “You can apply human principles to animal welfare,” he says. “Those principles don’t have to be based on scientific evidence; they can be based on the morals and ethics of a society.”

Culum is one of many scientists who disagree with Brian’s stance on whether fish feel pain. He says it’s a human-centred argument based on the idea that fish don’t share the structures that humans have for feeling pain.

He points out that many studies show that fish have the neurons to detect pain, and their behaviour changes in ways you’d expect see when they’re feeling pain.

“If you feel pain and don’t respond in an appropriate way, you’re almost certainly going to die,” he says.

“The reason all animals feel and respond to pain is purely survival, which explains why it’s so ancient. To argue that fish don’t have this capacity on the basis of some predetermined belief that they’re primitive is nonsensical.”

Nevertheless, Culum does come close to agreeing with Brian on animal welfare, previously writing that “it behoves us as human beings to treat all animals with respect and to minimise pain and suffering where we are able to do so”.

I

T’S BEEN A LONG road since those pet fish first inspired

Culum. And it’s now come full circle: his nine-yearold daughter, Maia, recently had the same kind of aha moment that he once had in front of his fish tank as a small boy. “I’ve got her feeding the fish every day at home, and just a week ago she said exactly what I’d said: ‘Look, they only respond to me, not to anybody else.’

So she’s having the same kind of realisations that I did, AG at almost the same age.”

PHOTO CREDIT: REINHARD DIRSCHERL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO SCIENTIFIC NAME: Caranx sexfasciatus

how individual fish interact with those around them, and how the group shapes individuals.

“The collective behaviour of fish is mathematically very similar to the collective behaviour of certainly birds, certainly krill, certainly sheep, and perhaps humans too,” he says. Collective decision-making within a group – for instance, about the direction a shoal should turn – is something else Ashley has studied. He’s found that the bigger the group, the faster and better its decisionmaking. “I’ve attended endless tedious academic meetings, and inevitably the larger the meeting, the longer it takes to get resolution. If group-living animals were paralysed by increasing group size, group-living simply wouldn’t work,” he says.

Ashley has found the same phenomenon across a range of fish. Collecting, integrating and acting on information doesn’t require each individual to have its own say or to object. The process is achieved in a smooth, non-vocal way and the result is dramatic to watch.

“Where that talks to fish intelligence is in the ability of each individual in the group to act as a part of the whole, to integrate into the group, perform a function and rely on others to perform other functions, but still do it effectively,” Ashley explains.

He has no doubt fish are intelligent and capable of highly sophisticated behaviour, but he keeps an open mind on whether they feel pain or suffer in the sense we understand. Even so, he’s in favour of an animal welfare approach, especially with commercial fishing, laboratory animals and pets. He adds that there can be few things worse for a shoaling fish than being alone in a small, featureless container: “If you put a single herring in a tub, it dies of loneliness, of the sheer stress of the situation.”

January . February 67

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID HANCOCK

GUARDIANS OF THE GALLERIES Precious rock art at remote sites in West Arnhem Land is being cared for by Indigenous rangers as part of an innovative new conservation program.

68 Australian Geographic

At Kuwuleng, near Manmoyi, a rock art gallery sits high on a stony escarpment looking over a woodland and creek.

Generations of artists have painted over each other’s work here , creating a tapestry of designs in different colours.

Kunbidjih – hand stencils – stand out.

January . February 69

70 Australian Geographic

These figures of a barramundi and the female form are remarkably well preserved considering they’ve been made with the white pigment huntite.

This rare mineral, which is mined, traded and highly valued by the Bininj Aboriginal people, is known by archaeologists as a “fugitive” pigment: it’s vulnerable to wind and water erosion and can be damaged when brushed by vegetation or animals.

January . February 71

Daluk (woman) ranger Annemarie Ahwon holds a colour scale by a reclining figure at Marebu, near Manmoyi. Rangers photograph all rock art with and without technical details to ensure they are documented and recorded accurately.

“BIM! BIM! BIM!”

calls Sarah Billis at the top of her voice as the rising sun spreads a torrent of warm light among the eucalypts and turkey bushes at Manmoyi outstation in West Arnhem Land.

Home to the Bininj people, Manmoyi is a small, remote community on the Arnhem Land plateau. Gathered around the smoking embers of the previous night’s campfires, with cups of warm tea cradled in their hands, a few people are waiting for the chill to go off this fine, dry-season morning.

They look towards Sarah, a senior Bininj woman, as she repeats her call through a megaphone: “Bim! Bim! Bim!” Bim is short for kunwarddebim, the Kunwinjku word for rock art. And Sarah’s calls are intended to gather people to go search for these precious cultural works. Whether it’s a cold dry-season morning or a humid day late in the year, looking for bim appeals to most Bininj. It provides an opportunity to travel clan estates, connect with ancestors, and gather and eat bush foods such as sugarbag (the honey of native bees) and seasonal fruit, including mandudjmi (green plum) and mandjarduk (red bush apple). Importantly, the activity imparts knowledge to the young Bininj about culture and land.

The Bininj are traditional occupants of West Arnhem Land, which includes the rugged 22,000sq.km plateau known by speakers of Bininj Kunwok (dialects of the region) as Kuwarddewardde and by others as the stone country. Kuwarddewardde borders Kakadu and Nitmiluk national parks in the west and south-west and takes in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) and parts of the Djelk IPA and Mimal Land Management area.

The plateau’s Kombolgie sandstone has been carved by a relentless cycle of wet and dry seasons for millennia.

72 Australian Geographic

Much of the Arnhem Land stone country is protected as either national park or Indigenous protected area.

Like a knife cutting in slow motion, water run-off has exposed sandstone to create a network of fissures, chasms and gorges. The plateau’s relative geological stability has afforded plant and animal species protection from fire and flood and allowed them to evolve mostly in isolation. Some are found nowhere else on Earth. The Bininj, too, have found sanctuary in the stone country, one of the world’s most remote and inaccessible regions.

Excavations at Madjedbebe, in the Mirrar clan estate, on the Jabiluka mining lease, north of Kakadu National Park – some 130km west of Manmoyi – have confirmed Aboriginal habitation of the region dates back to the Pleistocene epoch. Scientists dug down 4m to uncover skeletal remains and finely crafted stone artefacts such as axe heads, spear points and grinding stones.

The Arnhem Land plateau is one of Earth’s least disturbed environments. Remote and rugged sandstone formations have provided canvasses for the Bininj that have endured for millennia.

Like a knife cutting in slow motion, water run-off has exposed sandstone to create a network of ďŹ ssures, chasms and gorges.

January . February 73

74 Australian Geographic

Traditional owner Johnny Read examines an image of a European vessel drawn between 1870 and 1920. Shielded by a rocky overhang, this gallery, 100km from the coast, is dominated by saltwater themes including images of a whale, birds and boats.

The region is a treasure trove of World Heritagelisted art that is largely neglected, except by the Bininj.

Ricky Nabarlambarl and his partner Edna Midjarda survey a cave complex at Nawekke, near Manmoyi. Painted figures nearby tell the Bininj that namarnde – bad spirits – inhabit this area and not to wander into the bush alone – a warning to children to stay close to their parents.

At ground level on a long sandstone wall, a beautifully symmetrical painting of a Macassan prau (boat), from Indonesia, sits alongside older images of fish, yams and small dynamic figures of Aboriginal hunters. The paintings and archaeological discoveries indicate Madjedbebe has been at the crossroads of human activity in the Top End for at least 65,000 years.

Australia has one of the world’s greatest rock art traditions. There are more than 125,000 known sites, from the Torres Strait to Tasmania. Some contain grand, elevated galleries while others may hold a single faded image on an out-of-the-way rock face or cave wall. Artistic styles include paintings, rock engravings (petroglyphs) and beeswax motifs and designs. It is hard to date rock art but scientists believe some examples to be 30,000 years old.

Rock-art hotspots around the country include Arnhem Land and the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of northern Western Australia. The Arnhem Land plateau is particularly rich – it’s estimated there are three or four art sites for every 1000ha of rocky terrain, potentially adding up to more than 40,000 sites.

Most art is in or near areas where the Bininj have lived for thousands of years and while some sites are specific to men or women, most are communal. The art usually serves a purpose – to educate children about the natural and spiritual worlds, describe food sources, provide warnings, delineate clan boundaries, tell stories about important events or simply celebrate life.

Of particular interest in the stone country is art from the period when the Bininj came into contact with people from other cultures, notably the Macassans and Europeans.

It is one of the best records of contact between cultures that exists in this country. At some galleries paintings of white, ghostly figures (Europeans) smoking pipes or carrying rifles sit atop creatures that resemble massive macropods (but are probably horses). These 150-year-old illustrations sit alongside, and in some cases are painted over, bold, naturalistic figures that date back thousands of years.

The region is a treasure trove of World Heritage-listed art that is largely neglected, except by the Bininj.

January . February 75

Warddeken rangers travel across the IPA in 4WDs, often making their own tracks through the bush. When they can drive no further they walk, following animal trails and creeks.

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WO TROOP CARRIERS filled

with Manmoyi residents plunge engine-deep into the Mann River, spraying water either side. The vehicles soon crawl up the steep bank onto a sandy track that heads west. Five kilometres on, the troopies take to the bush to follow a buffalo road, a trail created by feral buffalo that winds through the bush. When the terrain becomes impassable by fourwheel-drive it’s time to walk.

Senior traditional custodians Berribob Watson, Sarah Billis, Ricky Nabarlambarl and Edna Midjarda are accompanied by Dion Koimala, Marshall Bangarr, Milly Naborlhborlh, Annemarie Ahwon and DDjenkin Guymala.

All are employed by Warddeken Land Management Limited (WLML) as rangers. Dr Claudia Cialone, who oversees the WLML Rock Art Project, is also with them.

Rock-art research used to be primarily the domain of anthropologists and archaeologists employed by tertiary institutions with government funding. The products of their research – including interviews, documentation of conversations with traditional owners, photographic images, and artefacts taken from sites – often remained with institutions where they were archived, studied further by academics, or used by governments to justify protection or exploitation of an area. Rarely did the data come back to a community in any form other than a research paper or government document.

Rock-art research grants are largely directed through the Australian Research Council, one of the Federal Government’s main agencies for allocating funds to academics and researchers at Australian universities.

Grants to study any aspect of rock art are rarely given to Aboriginal organisations. But the Bininj have now turned that model on its head. In 2010 Aboriginal elders from West Arnhem Land’s Warddeken and Djelk IPAs established the Karrkad-Kanjdji Trust (KKT) to source alternative funding for land management and cultural projects. The trust approaches Australian and international philanthropic organisations and individuals. It recently established a $5 million Arnhem Land rock-art project, the main contributor being the Ian Potter Foundation.

76 Australian Geographic

“Philanthropy allows us to connect with funders willing to support the vision of communities and organisations like ours.”

A dramatic painting of a kangaroo (kunj), more than 3m high, dominates a gallery at Kundjorlomdjorlom, near Kabulwarnamyo.

The area is situated near a fast-flowing creek and is popular with native bees that produce sugarbag (honey). Generations of Bininj have conducted important ceremonies here and filled numerous sandstone galleries with spectacular images.

January . February 77

Shaun Ansell, CEO of WLML, says the rock-art program is innovative and well beyond the scope of government.

“It means we’re not chasing the government dollar that relies on somebody in Canberra speaking to some expert who has formed an opinion based on a study,” he explains.

“In the past we have had to fall in line with government and bureaucratic policy. Philanthropy allows us to connect with funders willing to support the vision of communities and organisations like ours.”

Yet raising private funds takes significant time and energy.

That’s one reason the KKT is an exceptional example of how to engage in that space, Shaun says. “WLML on its own does not have capacity to create and manage those relationships in the first place, whereas having a purposefully constructed body like KKT to go out there and engage on our behalf actually enables that to happen.”

A

corporate boardrooms and government decision makers, the Bininj from Manmoyi begin a long walk into the stone country between rocks and boulders, following watercourses and passing through pandanus groves, avoiding spiky spinifex clumps as they go, much as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.

Berribob Watson and Ricky Nabarlambarl take turns carrying a shotgun in case the group disturbs a buffalo, the plateau’s most dangerous creature. All wear GPS wrist trackers for processing at ranger headquarters to ensure sites can be found again and to log the work.

During the following week, the Bininj travel to several sites in the estates of the Djordi, Bordoh and Wurrbbarn clans. Traditional owners know some sites well. Others haven’t been visited in living memory. Younger rangers record with cameras and tablets. Claudia interviews older people about their recollections and records stories of individual paintings.

WORLD AWAY FROM

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When she began to work with the Bininj as a PhD student, a supervisor told her she wouldn’t truly understand them or their culture unless she learnt Kunwinjku. “So I set that as my first priority,” Claudia says. “People appreciated that I was making so much effort to express anything in [their] language. All interviews and stories are recorded in Kunwinjku, which is more comprehensive and useful among the Bininj than English. It can be translated later.”

The project goes hand in glove with the Warddeken vision of managing land holistically. The Bininj consider the stories behind the art as essential to locating, conserving and protecting as much of it as possible. The project also has other practical outcomes: to get people on country, improve employment – especially among women – and bring generations together.

Traditional land management is vital to preserving rockart. Regular burning decreases build-ups of fuel such as spinifex and leaf litter from intruding into sites, making fires less destructive. Bushfires can become so intense that sandstone splits off rock faces or explodes. Buffalo and pigs can also destroy ancient sites by rubbing against rock. At two sites – Dumebey and Bukbuk – rangers erected stockyard panels to exclude large feral animals sheltering from the weather.

There are both natural and unnatural processes of rock art deterioration. It is impossible to stop a number of natural processes. Wind picks up grains of sand and gently sandblasts objects, rock is exfoliated over time, temperatures change, humidity goes up and down, wasps build nests on the art, termites leave trails, painted rocks fall down, banyans and figs send roots down and across the face of rock art, and leaves brush against it.

Rangers take close notice of trees next to rock art; if they look like they are going to touch it, they are removed and their roots poisoned so they don’t grow back.

Spinifex is scratched out in some areas and regular visits are scheduled to control encroaching vegetation.

Bininj traditional owner Terah Guymala lives at Manmoyi and participates in ancient ceremonies.

He also plays in Nabarlek, a band that sings of contemporary issues and tours Australia.

F UT U RE VOIC E S Terah Guymala was told stories at art sites as a child and believes sharing such recollections can help keep communities on country for generations to come. Preserving these living memories in digital databases, he says, will ensure people remain connected to both the past and the land.

W

HEN I LOOK AT these images they remind me of when I was a kid.

They were bedtime stories for me: a big fire lit up the painting on the wall and I saw it and the painting became real for me. I looked at it and my grandparents told me the story – it was there on the wall.

When I grew up I realised they were real stories. Those old people told us how people lived in this country and how important it is.

When we see the real thing – an emu or a kangaroo – we know it is all connected.

Losing traditional knowledge is becoming a big problem.

By documenting and recording it, and putting it in a database, the story is going to be here forever for our kids.

Whenever they go and visit a site, they will see what we’ve been talking about. When they look at the database, they will listen to the story and it will remind them.

Today, this is the new way we are doing it – by recording it.

My grandfathers and their grandfathers didn’t write stories in a book or on a computer – it was all about talking. When I go to a certain place – when I touch that place – the stories come up.

It’s written in our heart and our head – once we touch that ground we see the images. The stories connect us to the place. We don’t want to lose that.

At Manmoyi we don’t have fulltime schooling. We want a full-time school so our kids get a good education – it is really important.

Rock art is a key to opening the door, and providing job opportunities, not just in land management but in tourism. We have good stories to tell. There is a benefit for our kids but we need them to have a full-time education on our homelands and full-time jobs as well.

A lot of people don’t care about us – not government – but there

are some people who try to help, who have a love for the environment, who try to look after their animals, their art, fire, the land itself. There are people outside who can help us. We want to connect with them, tell them our stories and show them the big picture – how we care and what we want and why it is important to continue living on country.

We want to live here. We don’t want to lose our future. The stories connect our kids to the past and to country – they are the ones who are going to live in this country and encourage young ones to live like their forefathers did. Mah [it’s good]!

Terah Guymala is a traditional custodian of the Bordoh clan estate. He is also a former director of Warddeken Land Management Limited, and a musician.

January . February 79

An ancient masterpiece at Kuwuleng art site, near Manmoyi, spreads before Edna Midjarda.

The surviving red pigment indicates the images were made with an iron-based material, absorbed into the rock over thousands of years. They are of running men carrying spears, perhaps chasing kangaroos or emus – a snapshot of ancient life.

The art of the Arnhem Land plateau is rich in antiquity, quality and quantity.

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Dr Daryl Wesley, an archaeologist from Flinders University, in South Australia, who has spent years working alongside Aboriginal custodians, says rock art started to deteriorate quickly when Aboriginal people were taken out of the landscape and encouraged to live in large settlements.

“The penny dropped when I was working in [West] Arnhem Land,” he says. “If we can get people back doing activities that closely resemble living on country, which is what Aboriginal ranger programs do, then we are 90 per cent of the way to conserving rock art. Looking after the country and landscape is looking after the art. The last 10 per cent is getting to know where the sites are, establishing site recording programs and designing annual programs to decide which sites should be visited more often or not.”

The establishment of a digital database of sites and paintings should be a priority for all Indigenous organisations, says Peter Cooke, a former CEO of WLML and a rock-art advisor to Mimal Land Management. “Digital conservation captures things as they are today,” he says.

“A lot of interest from academics is about interpretation but my interest is not so much interpretation, except where we can access Indigenous professors. I am determined we save images looking as good as they can, then in the future we can do analysis out of the field using software that has possibly not been developed yet.”

M

ANY ART SITES ARE in

spectacular locations – on elevated ledges looking over sweeping plains, beside picturesque waterways, on the walls of cavernous shelters, and near groves of native fruit trees. Images may have survived thousands of years and are likely to endure for many more but traditional knowledge is under threat.

Claudia Cialone offers tips to daluk ranger Tineesha Narorrga on photographing hard-to-access art. Using small tripods and digital cameras, rangers avoid heavy gear in the rugged terrain. A colour scale on a stick (bottom right) is part of the recording process.

Claudia always appreciates the art but says it means far more with the story behind it. “It is the story in context, the culture, the environment, not just the painting on the wall,” she says. “The story made by the Bininj and even reinterpreted by the Bininj excites me.” Arnhem Land plateau art is rich in antiquity, quality and quantity. Many paintings 15–20,000 years old are artistically brilliant.

Some are clearly celebration stories – the first kangaroo or emu killed. A hand stencil indicates a certain person visited a site; stencils of small hands are like baby photos.

In some places they seem to indicate a person growing up.

“It’s a real joy to see things somebody from 20,000 years ago painted that resonate today as fabulous or interesting art,” Peter Cooke says. “To come across an outstanding piece of work and to be standing in the same place, almost in the footsteps of the person who painted it is an extraordinary feeling of connecting across time.”

The Bininj know the core of their culture is threatened if they can’t conserve their art and stories, and they appreciate help from any quarter. “I like working away from larger communities and being on country,” says Aboriginal ranger Milly Naborlhborlh. “This rock-art project connects me with family and ancestors and I feel like I am doing important work.” Senior custodian Berribob Watson is more pragmatic about the project. “We need to work quickly,” he says. “There are many old people who know the stories AG who have finished up or cannot get onto country.”

January . February 81

Long Island, part of the new Houtman Abrolhos Islands NP, was one of the islands used by survivors of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.

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Open your eyes The newest addition to Australia’s national park inventory, the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, boasts both extraordinary human and natural histories.

STORY BY CAROLYN BEASLEY

January . February 83

I

T WAS JUST HOURS before dawn on 4 June 1629 when Captain

Adriaen Jacobszoon of the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, mistook breaking surf for moonlight glinting on the ocean.

His ship, the Batavia, was carrying the richest cargo ever to leave the Netherlands, plus more than 300 crew, soldiers and passengers.

The salvaged stern of the ill-fated Batavia has been reconstructed and is proudly displayed in the WA Shipwrecks Museum, in Fremantle.

The Abrolhos, he explains, are at the southern limit for the range of many tropical species, but also the northern limit for many temperate species. He offers Australian sea lions as an example: “This is the furthest north they go, and you find them swimming around in coral reef gardens, which are the southernmost coral reefs in the Indian Ocean.” Similarly, white-faced storm petrels and little shearwaters nest here, at the northern limit of their range. Sooty terns, brown noddies and wedge-tailed shearwaters – all of which form some of their largest colonies in Australia on the Abrolhos – are at their southern limit.

The Leeuwin Current (see AG 147) brings tropical water south to mix with currents that form the boundary of the Indian Ocean circulation system. This causes the nutrient upwelling behind the productivity driving the Abrolhos ecosystem.

Chris has been tracking the seabirds and found they forage off the continental shelf over canyons up to 5000m deep.

Being near this deepwater productivity, the Abrolhos provide a place for seabirds to breed close to food. “This is pretty much the most important seabird breeding place in Australia and, so far, it has not received much attention,” Chris says.

Why a national park?

Lobster economy

“A biologist I met many years ago described the islands to me as Australia’s Galapagos,” says Dr Chris Surman, a marine ecologist who has been researching populations of seabirds here for three decades and is the author of a new book, Houtman Abrolhos: A Natural History.

This natural bounty also fuels the Abrolhos’s most important industry, the West Coast Rock Lobster Fishery. Worth about $430 million a year, it is WA’s most valuable fishery, and the Abrolhos catch is a significant proportion of the total haul. In 2000 the fishery became the first in the world Continued page 88

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PHOTO CREDIT, PREVIOUS PAGE: AUSTRALIA’S CORAL COAST/TOURISM WESTERN AUSTRALIA; THIS PAGE: COURTESY WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MARITIME MUSEUM

Smashing into a coral reef at top speed unleashed carnage and mayhem. But for those who survived the shipwreck, their harrowing ordeal was just beginning. The saga of the Batavia, fl agship of the VOC fleet, unfolded at the Houtman Abrolhos Islands (now known locally as the Abrolhos), about 60km west of Geraldton, 400km north of Perth, Western Australia.

This archipelago of 192 islands has since become recognised as a place of exceptional historic and natural values, and in July last year became Australia’s newest national park.

The announcement marked the 400-year anniversary of the first European sighting of the islands. In 1619 VOC captain Frederick von Houtman stumbled on and mapped the southern half of present-day WA, before strong winds required him to move further offshore for safety. Almost colliding with these islands, he marked “Abrolhos” on his charts, said to be a contraction of the Portuguese term abre os olhos, meaning “open your eyes”.

Cartographers added “Houtman” to distinguish the WA archipelago from the other Abrolhos Islands, located in Brazil.

As a national park, the islands now fall under the jurisdiction of the WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, which aims to preserve their outstanding values while encouraging sustainable tourism. Previously, the archipelago and the waters surrounding it were managed by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s Fisheries branch as an A-Class marine reserve, within which various zones accommodated the needs of commercial and recreational fishing and conservation. The colourful fishing camps and jetties that dot 22 of the islands remain outside the new park.

To support sustainable tourism, the WA government has committed $10 million for upgrading infrastructure such as the airstrip, boardwalks and shade shelters on East Wallabi Island. A landing dock is being built on Beacon Island. There’ll also be a new ranger base with vessels to help protect the area’s high conservation values.

Pigeon Island, which is surrounded by reefs, is a part-time home to many licensed lobster fishers.

PHOTO CREDITS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CAROLYN BEASLEY; AUSTRALIA’S CORAL COAST/TOURISM WESTERN AUSTRALIA; DR CHRIS SURMAN. SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Neophoca cinerea; Anous tenuirostris

“This is pretty much the most important seabird breeding place in Australia.”

Dr Chris Surman, who pioneered seabird research at the Abrolhos, holds the first lesser noddy tracked using a micro-GPS. This 100g bird travels more than 100km from the islands in search of food.

Australian sea lions cruise in the waters of the Abrolhos and haul out to rest on beaches.

The islands are at the northern end of the range of this endangered species that’s found only in Australian waters.

January . February 85

Houtman Abrolhos Islands

Pigeon Island is one of 22 islands in the Abrolhos containing infrastructure, mostly shacks and houses belonging to rock-lobster ďŹ shers.

FACT

FACT After the Batavia shipwreck, 125 men, women and children were murdered by mutineers.

86 Australian Geographic

PHOTO CREDIT: STEWART ALLEN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Abrolhos aquaculture includes pearling, aquarium corals, and soon, yellowtail kingfish.

7

Pull into the public jetty at East Wallabi and explore the island.

3

Pigeon Island community centre and pub.

9

Crested terns on Coronation Island.

6

A school of mixed parrot fish.

10 things to experience on the Houtman Abrolhos Islands Take a flight. Seeing the archipelago from the air gives a great perspective on the islands and reefs.

You’ll also see marine wildlife and the site of many historic wrecks.

1

Visit the stone fort on West Wallabi Island. Here, soldiers banished by Batavia mutineers found water and wallabies to eat, and built a fort for protection. The four-walled structure still stands today, the oldest European building in Australia.

PHOTO CREDITS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TOURISM WESTERN AUSTRALIA; STEWART ALLEN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; DR CHRIS SURMAN; DR CHRIS SURMAN; SHUTTERSTOCK SCIENTIFIC NAME: Thalasseus bergii

2

Rehydrate at the Pigeon Island pub. Meet the locals while helping to support their community. Snap a photo of the colourful fishing shacks and jetties.

3

Visit the Latitude Pearls farm.

4 See black pearls being grown before viewing the jewellery in the gallery in Geraldton. Prearrange your farm visit with the company.

Drop a line in. The waters here are rich with fish, making it a piscator’s paradise.

5

Scuba dive in calm weather on the Batavia wreck site in 4–6m of water, where VOC cannons are still visible.

6

Visit Turtle Bay, which is often protected from the worst of the wind, on East Wallabi Island.

Walk the nature trail looking for tammar wallabies. Snorkel off the beach among giant clams, tropical fish and lobsters.

7

an Australian sea lion in the 8 Meet northern part of its range. Look for them resting on beaches or rocks or cavorting in the water. Keep your distance on land because they can be aggressive if they feel threatened.

Be amazed by some of Australia’s largest seabird colonies. Always watch from a respectful distance and do not enter rookeries. When seabirds are forced to take flight, they waste precious energy needed for foraging and migration and may also be leaving eggs.

9

Pay your respects at Beacon and Long islands, feeling the ghosts of the past and experiencing the unforgiving environment faced by the Batavia survivors.

10

4 Black-lip pearl oysters in the Abrolhos produce pearls prized for their diverse colours.

At just 14m above sea level, Flag Hill on East Wallabi Island is the highest point in the Abrolhos.

88 Australian Geographic

In recent years, the aquaculture industry has been making its mark at the Abrolhos. family and spent her school holidays at Basile Island. “It was a really fun childhood,” she says. “We got to spend a lot of time on the ocean and fishing.” Pia adds that the island is still very traditional. “There are Italians there who still have coffee every day at 3pm,” she says. “They always take the time to have that catch-up.”

In recent years, the aquaculture industry has been making its mark at the Abrolhos. Pia’s family company diversified into farming black-lip pearl oysters, forming the company Latitude Pearls. For Pia, pearling was a steep learning curve, because the only other black pearl industry is in Tahiti. “The guy who did get it started, he’s my now husband,” she says with a laugh.

Community spirit Pia’s love of the islands prompted her to start the Flotsam and Jetsam Art Competition, in Geraldton. Together with volunteers, she conducts a yearly clean-up of rubbish at the islands, filling her boat with 4t of rubbish. The community converts

PHOTO CREDIT: CAROLYN BEASLEY

to be certified as ecologically sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. It has since continued to maintain its sustainable status by adapting the way it operates. Previously, rules controlled the number of lobster pots each licensee could use and fishing was allowed for three and a half months a year. Due to low numbers of juveniles, the fishery changed in 2009 to be restricted instead by catch and in 2019–20, the total allowable commercial catch was set at 6300 tonnes. Fishers have annual quotas that they can transfer to other licence holders.

Peter Bailey is a third-generation Geraldton fisherman and a board member of the peak industry body, the Western Rock Lobster Council. He explains that before the change to a quota system, fishing camps were set up and had their own temporary communities each March– June. “All the families would go over [to the islands],” Peter says. “My kids were the last generation that went to school over there.”

Lobster fishing is now spread throughout the year.

“As successful as the quota [system] has been, that was certainly one of the negatives for the communities,” Peter says. However, the communities are not dead, and the Easter period, with the best chance of striking calm weather, is still a busy time at the Abrolhos. “My kids are older now, but all want to go to the islands for Easter,” Peter says.

Pia Boschetti also comes from an Abrolhos fishing

Dr Sylvia Earle.

Mission Blue Hope Spot

PHOTO CREDITS, FROM LEFT: DR CHRIS SURMAN; PAUL MORIGI/STRINGER/GETTY SCIENTIFIC NAME: Puffinus carneipes

Wedge-tailed shearwaters are the most abundant breeding seabird at the Abrolhos. During April they depart for wintering grounds in the middle of the tropical Indian Ocean.

the trash into art, and the competition attracts a diverse range of entrants. In July 2019, the art competition linked with a festival celebrating 400 years since the first European sighting of the islands, instigated by local historian and Abrolhos author Dr Howard Gray. “There are two sides to this festival,” Howard explains. “One is the Dutch coming in and ‘discovering’ this land. But the other is that it was an already occupied land – it has been for millennia.”

The local Yamaji word “balayi” means “watch out”, and given the meaning of Abrolhos, the festival was named the BalayiOpen Your Eyes celebration. Among a range of events, Yamaji art, dance and choirs featured, bringing two cultures together.

Howard recommends the Museum of Geraldton and there I learn more about shipwrecks at the Abrolhos. I stare in wonder at the giant assembled stone portico that was once on board the Batavia and which was slated to be a grand new gateway to the Indonesian city of Batavia. Silver coins intended to fuel the economy of the Spice Islands are here too and I read more details of the infamous story of how a premeditated, bloody mutiny was enacted despite a shipwreck, of Commander Pelsaert sailing in an overcrowded longboat some 2600km to present-day Indonesia, and of his return with a rescue ship.

Despite the many outstanding natural and historic wonders of the islands, tourism at the Abrolhos is still a fledgling affair.

Mayor of the City of Greater Geraldton, Shane Van Styn, is passionate about developing a sustainable tourism industry and would like to see diverse facilities across the island group, ranging from camping facilities and more or improved airstrips to moored pontoons for fast-ferry day-trippers.

Shane says that in the short term, unless you own your own boat or have access to a lobster-fishing shack, there are only a couple of ways to visit. The Eco Abrolhos, a low-volume cruise boat run by an ex-lobster fishing family, is one. And there are also charter boats run from Perth or Geraldton.

Visiting the islands Another popular way to visit the Abrolhos is via a light aircraft daytrip from Geraldton, and I join Shine Aviation to experience a flying visit. I take a seat next to the pilot Jed Young and

I

N 2009 AMERICAN oceanographer Dr Sylvia Earle launched Mission Blue, a global alliance with a vision to explore and protect the oceans through a series of Hope Spots, ocean areas identified as being of critical importance to restoring marine ecosystems.

Hope Spots may be nominated by anyone but are assessed by a Mission Blue council, based on criteria such as: the habitat they provide; the rare or endemic species they support; historical or cultural values; or their ability to reverse human-made damage to the planet.

Currently, less than 6 per cent of oceans are protected, and the organisation seeks to inspire the safeguarding of at least 30 per cent by 2030. Some Hope Spots currently have no protection. Others need strengthening.

Mission Blue, together with more than 200 local organisations, works with communities to establish protection. In 2017 Mission Blue added the Houtman Abrolhos Islands as a Hope Spot based on the area’s significant rare and endemic species; importance for nesting seabirds; whale migrations; and diversity of fish life.

Nomination of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands was made by Regional Development Australia Midwest Gascoyne and the Western Australian Ocean Foundation.

In adding the Abrolhos to the Hope Spot list, Mission Blue noted that the site is an example of conservation and sustainability in some of Australia’s most pristine waters, coexisting with economic activities such as lobster fishing and aquaculture.

A major sponsor of Mission Blue is Rolex, which has supported Sylvia’s work for decades.

Through the Perpetual Planet initiative launched in 2019, the watchmaker supports exploration that seeks to preserve the natural world, such as Mission Blue oceanic expeditions and study tours.

January . February 89