Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2025 i Australian Geographic

A FACE TO LOVE I MOVED TO Sydney from France seven years ago, eager to pursue my passion for underwater photography in the South Pacific. Since then, I’ve scuba dived almost weekly in the waters off Australia’s biggest city and I’m constantly excited by what I see. Take, for example, the eastern frogfish (Batrachomoeus dubius). It’s become one of my favourite photographic subjects because it’s full of character, with large lips, raised eyebrows and a “beard” – a face only a mother could love! Before this, when I’d seen this species by day it was almost fully hidden – just its face peeking out watching for danger. This individual had its whole body exposed but it seemed relaxed and tolerant to my approach for a close-up shot, and I can…

THE WAY AHEAD is blocked by an imposing jumble of jet-black boulders precariously stacked on each other. Beneath this is an eerie underworld of secret chambers where giant pythons and carnivorous ghost bats lurk. It could be a scene from a horror film, but it’s not. It’s Kalkajaka (Black Mountain), a foreboding sight that rises from thick green jungle on the Trevathan Range about 25km south of Cooktown in Far North Queensland. Given its dominance in the landscape, it’s no surprise this is a sacred place for the Kuku Yalanji people. One of their Dreamtime stories tells of an argument between two giant brothers who fight over a woman and throw huge boulders at each other until the mountain is formed. Geologists explain the striking mountain was created about 260…

A Stonehenge puzzle solved ONE OF THE many mysteries of Stonehenge – where its Altar Stone came from – has recently been solved. The huge sandstone blocks known as sarsens in the prehistoric structure’s outer ring are each about 4m high, 2m wide, weigh about 25 tons, and came from about 26km away. The smaller bluestones of basalt in the inner ring, are each 1-3t in weight, up to about 2.5m tall and came from 240km away. But the origin of the Altar Stone – 5m long and 6t in weight – has been a mystery. Due to modern sensitivities, it’s no longer possible to drill into the Altar Stone to fully analyse it. However, in the past, several pieces were chipped from various stones at Stonehenge. Australian scientists from…

WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM make history. The forgotten lives of women at the Parramatta Female Factory show female convicts rarely make it into the history books, either. Between 1821 and 1848, thousands of women passed through this institution, 25km west of Sydney, New South Wales. Many of their names and histories are lost to time – but their collective legacy still resonates at the site. “You stand here and you feel it; those women are talking to you through the walls,” says Gay Hendriksen, president and research coordinator at Parramatta Female Factory Friends, a community action group working to protect and conserve the site. “It’s an extraordinary place, and extraordinary that it still survives – which is why we want World Heritage Site listing.” The surviving buildings and structures of the…

THERE’S THE SLOW clip-clop of feathery steel-shod feet on pavement and the growl of a bullocky admonishing his charges. There are ladies in bonnet hats aboard sulkies pulled by ponies, and bow-legged men on frisky thoroughbreds. There are hay and wool bales. There’s the smell of horses and warm whiskered breath; the beat of big hearts. This is the main street of Surat, in South West Queensland, 100 years ago. The calm is shattered as a cream-coloured coach rattles past, pulled by five grey horses. Fred “Tommy” Thompson is in the driver’s seat, and he’s in a hurry. The mail must reach Yuleba, a rural town about 76km north east of Surat. The date is 14 August 1924 and this is the last Cobb & Co coach to run in…

A WALL OF bright signs warn me before I step closer: “Dangerous Animals – Do Not Touch”. As I carefully inch closer to the aquarium tank, I notice that sitting inside in a shell is an inconspicuous animal no bigger than a golf ball. A series of striking, metallic blue markings appear magically over its body, and it stretches its rubber-like arms to close the two shell pieces together, vanishing from view. “Meet the most intelligent invertebrate on the planet,” Dr Wen-Sung Chung announces as he proudly introduces his “blueys” – blue-lined octopuses – that form part of his research. He’s studying the nervous system and behaviour of cephalopods, the group of molluscs that includes octopuses and squids. Despite their appearance, these tiny little blueys can be deadly, especially if…

IT’S DECEMBER 2023 and Dan Prochazka and his partner, Nicola Beatrix, are awake early. They emerge from their tiny house near Castlemaine in west central Victoria into a frosty summer morning. Toddler daughter in tow, they walk 20 steps to a hangar-like open garage with tractors and building supplies at one end and a camp kitchen at the other. A kangaroo skin is slung over the back of a chair as a warmer. “Roadkill… found about 300m from here yesterday morning,” Dan says, nodding to a pot of dark kangaroo stew bubbling away on the gas stove. Dan and Nicola are on a pathway to sustainable living. But turning the dream into reality takes lateral thinking and a lot of hard work. Looking west from the temporary kitchen, past a…

At home underwater THE OCEAN HAS always been a muse for SHEREE MARRIS (above), inspiring a career brimming with adventure, discovery and storytelling. “Growing up on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, I spent my childhood exploring mangroves, rocky reefs and sandy shores,” she says. “My natural curiosity deepened when I began volunteering with dolphin researchers in Port Phillip Bay.” This experience set her on the path to becoming a marine biologist, award-winning author and science communicator. Her impressive career and passion for marine wildlife made her the natural choice for this issue’s cover story, Serious sea smarts (page 72). For that she joined world-renowned octopus expert Dr Wen-Sung Chung on Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island, diving deep into the mysteries of octopus intelligence. “Photographing wildlife underwater is extremely challenging,” Sheree says. “You’re wrangling…

Top First Nations art prize opens Entries are now open for the annual National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), Australia’s longest running and most prestigious Indigenous art awards. Sponsored by Telstra, the awards are open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists across a range of categories including general painting, multimedia, bark painting and more. Entries close on 2 March 2025. An exhibition of the finalists’ artworks will be held at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory from 21 June. For more info: magnt.net.au/natsiaa-guidelines A helping hand in coral restoration In a world-first, CSIRO scientists have developed a soft robotic ‘hand’ to assist coral propagation efforts in laboratories. This robotic hand – attached to a coral farming robot called CHARM – will partially…

Brisbane founded 1825 Brisbane begins asthe Moreton Bay Penal Settlement IN 1817, BRITAIN’S Colonial Secretary, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, raised concerns that transportation to New South Wales was no longer a deterrent to the “criminal class”. Word had spread of convicts’ successes in the new land, especially during Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s 1810–21 term. Bathurst suspected transportation was no longer seen as a punishment short of hanging, but an option with some appeal. In 1819, he commissioned John Thomas Bigge to report on how transportation to NSW could be made a more effective deterrent. Bigge’s reports made many detailed recommendations to restore “terror” to transportation, including the establishment of new penal settlements where recidivist convicts would face the harshest treatment. In response, Governor Thomas Brisbane instructed Surveyor-General John Oxley in…

Highlights from the AG Awards for Nature The Domain Theatre at the Art Gallery of New South Wales was the elegant setting for the inaugural Australian Geographic Awards for Nature event on 17 October last year when we announced three winning projects that shared in a funding pool of $100,000 (see full story in AG 183). We were thrilled to welcome Rachel Ward as guest presenter and to have the opportunity to view her wonderful documentary Rachel’s Farm. A renowned actor, writer and producer, Rachel is a passionate advocate for the need to embrace new ways of farming to enhance, rather than damage, the natural environment. She and husband Bryan Brown employ regenerative techniques on their farm on the NSW Mid North Coast, and they drove to Sydney on the…

MARK NEWTON WAS at Archerfield Wetlands in Brisbane’s south-west when curiosity got the better of him and he placed his hand beside a red imported fire ant (RIFA) nest. “I wanted to poke the bear,” the retired ecologist says, explaining the stunt he wouldn’t encourage others to try. “I only got about half a dozen ants on me, but that was enough… It was like little sharp pinpoints of pain,” he says. “They just came spilling out of the nest. I could flick those few off but, bloody hell, there were hundreds of them and they were very angry. If they ran all over me, that would be a horrible experience. If [they swarmed] pets or small children, it would be horrible.” This was Mark’s first – and hopefully last…

BACK IN 2015, a brilliant young musician named Valda Wilson was a principal operatic soprano with the Oldenburg State Theatre in Germany. This rising Australian star was well on the way to realising her artistic ambitions on the major stages of Europe. A long way from home, Valda wrote an impassioned letter to a Sydney local council, so concerned was she as to the fate of one of the city’s small, and most unusual, cultural gems. Valda grew up in Castlecrag, a suburb in the Willoughby local government area in Sydney’s lower north shore. The harbourside enclave had – and still has – bush-swathed blocks and narrow sinuous roadways that, rather than fighting against the topography, yielded to its contours. Castlecrag is a suburb unlike any other in Australia. The…

1 How many opposable thumbs does a koala have per hand? 2 What is the southernmost point of mainland Australia? 3 What is the name of the highway that spans the Nullarbor Plain? 4 What is the name of Australia’s deepest cave, located in southern Tasmania? 5 What “Big Thing” is found at Kingston SE in South Australia? 6 Which two Aussie mammals lay eggs? 7 True or false: kookaburras are native to Western Australia. 8 Which river is the largest tributary of Sydney Harbour? 9 To which three Australian colonies were convicts transported directly from Britain? 10 Which wallaby species has a horny projection at the end of its tail, similar to a fingernail? 11 Great Sandy National Park is located in which Australian state or territory? 12 What…

GLOBAL ATTENTION BECAME focussed on regional New South Wales during early 1965 when 30 University of Sydney (USYD) students – members of the group Student Action For Aborigines (SAFA) – set out on what was dubbed the Freedom Ride, through the towns of Walgett, Moree, Bowraville and Kempsey. This 15-day bus journey, inspired by the famed 1961 US civil rights Freedom Rides, aimed to highlight substandard living conditions for First Nations people and widespread racism in the state’s country towns. Led by Arrernte man Charles “Charlie” Perkins, who was then one of only two Indigenous students enrolled at USYD, the ride’s actions enroute involved several highly publicised protests. These included the challenging of entry bans against Aboriginal ex-servicemen at Walgett’s Returned Services League Club and restrictions to Aboriginal children entering…

IN 2022, AUSTRALIA and 195 other countries pledged to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity. The resulting agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, included the ‘30x30 target’ – to protect at least 30 per cent of land, inland waters and oceans, have at least 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration, and halt human-induced extinction of known threatened species, all by 2030. Australia, with its many unique species, high rate of extinction, and real opportunities to protect and repair nature, has an important part to play. The recent COP16 UN Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, was the chance to finalise unresolved items and check on the progress of those targets. So, what were the outcomes? Australia and 43 other countries submitted full national biodiversity strategies and action…

ASK ALMOST ANYONE which planet has rings around it, and you’ll get the answer “Saturn”, especially if they’ve ever viewed it through a telescope. But not many people know that the other gas giants in our Solar System – Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune – also have rings, although they’re much fainter than those of Saturn. Now, a group of Earth scientists at Melbourne’s Monash University have asked the question “Did Earth ever have a ring?” And surprisingly the evidence they’ve uncovered points to an intriguing “yes”. Their work took them to an era 466 million years ago called the Middle Ordovician, when our planet was subjected to a high rate of bombardment by meteorites and asteroids. We know this from the large number of craters that remain, and from asteroid…

MICHAEL DILLON AM LIFETIME OF ADVENTURE Michael ‘Mike’ Dillon is the leading adventure filmmaker and cinematographer of his generation. WORDS USED TO describe Tim Macartney-Snape in a documentary about his 1990 Sea to Summit Everest expedition could just as easily apply to Michael Dillon, the cinematographer who went with him: “On Earth’s flattest continent, he trains for Earth’s highest mountains. In sweltering heat, he steels himself for snow.” Many of the expeditions Mike has filmed are the stuff of legend. Among them is the 1984 first Australian summit of Everest by Macartney-Snape with Greg Mortimer, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year (see The Hardest Night, AG 182). Less well known is Mike himself. This humble individual receives the 2024 Lifetime of Adventure award, the Society’s highest honour, for a…

Once the botanicals are depleted, she extracts the infused oil and bottles it. FOUR YEARS AGO a man from a high-end interior design store laughed at Maryka Malano when she shared her dream of creating a unique Tasmanian perfume that showcased the island state. Now she and her partner, Masey, are crafting perfumes in their home in Honeywood, on Greater Hobart’s northern outskirts, using fragrance extraction methods developed by ancient Egyptian alchemists. The Tasmanian couple have created an organic skincare and perfume range for their beauty brand, Malano, using traditional alchemy techniques of distillation and maceration (soaking aromatic ingredients in a base liquid such as alcohol or oil to extract its fragrance). And Maryka has her sights firmly set on creating a fragrance that captures the scent of Tasmania. She…

RISING ABOVE A tall karri eucalypt forest, the granite domes of WesternAustralia’s Porongurup Range National Park sit ancient and heavy with time. They’re part of a landscape left over from 500 million years ago, when two-thirds of the world’s continents were huddled together and covered in lush rainforests on the supercontinent called Gondwana. The breakup of Gondwana had a widespread drying effect on most of the Australian landscape, but not here. The high elevation of the Porongurup peaks attracts a steady supply of rainfall, which is why a karri forest prevails here, about 500km east of where it otherwise would. Beneath the trees, in moist banks of karri loam, little holes the size of five and 10 cent pieces dot the path that winds around the boulders and trees to…

WHY TRAVEL WITH US? ACCESS Travelling with Australian Geographic inspires people to care about the planet by providing meaningful opportunities to explore it. Our experiences are rich in nature and adventure, and our travel partners specialise in small-group experiences. EXPERTISE Australian Geographic’s adventurers, scientists, historians and photographers have brought the world to you for almost 40 years. Now you’re invited to join them in the country’s most intriguing places, from the Great Barrier Reef to the red heart. SUSTAINABILITY Australian Geographic is committed to sustaining the environment, culture and heritage of each place we visit, from addressing climate change to promoting awareness of the world’s oldest continuing cultures and revealing the country’s countless treasures. GIVING BACK All the travel experiences offered raise funds for our Society. As our not-for-profit arm,…

THIS CHARMING, TREE-LINED historic town on the Barossa Valley’s eastern side was named after one of its early settlers, politician and local businessman George Fife Angas. The valley itself was named by Colonel William Light after Barrosa in Spain, where he’d fought against the French in 1811 during the Peninsular War. The original village of Angaston, which was originally known as German Pass, comprised a single house and several simple dugouts. The founding father of the town, Angas, arrived in 1851 and two years later Angaston was proclaimed a District Council. An early description of the area claimed it was “the richest and best watered district in the state… of most splendid soil, every way adapted for the location of hundreds of settlers”. This richness led to vines and orchards…