Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2025 i Australian Geographic

IN NOVEMBER 2024 more than 7000 people attended Rising Tide’s “protestival” to blockade a coal carrier from leaving Newcastle Harbour in New South Wales. I arrived at Horseshoe Beach just after sunrise to observe activists preparing for the day ahead. They were eating bowls of cereal and guarding the ‘Art Raft’, which Newcastle artists had built specially for the event. NSW Police warned the raft would be dismantled and confiscated if it was launched off the beach, prompting protestors to keep a day-and-night vigil over the pontoon. Behind them, a ship belched greenhouse gas emissions into the sky. Some 170 activists were arrested during the protest, which demanded an end to all new fossil fuel projects, a 78 per cent tax on fossil fuel export profits, and an end to…

IT CAN TAKE a long time for a crow to forgive your transgressions – perhaps as long as 17 years! And it’s a similar story for the Australian magpie. But first, let me explain the connection. Crows are part of the corvid family, to which most species of magpie also belong. The Australian magpie isn’t a corvid, but it is distantly related. Corvids and the Australian magpie share plenty of similarities. For starters, they are remarkably intelligent. They’ve been observed using tools, playing games, and working in teams. Australian magpies have been known to remove tracking devices from each other, and each magpie can recognise up to 100 different people. Australian ornithologist Professor Gisela Kaplan raised magpies at home. On one occasion, she returned to her computer to see a…

IT WAS CLEAR from a young age that Marcus Dadd would grow up to work with animals in some capacity. At his childhood home in suburban Sydney, he lovingly tended to a menagerie of pets: birds, turtles, lizards, a rabbit, a lamb, and a dog. “My parents were so open to me having all these weird and exotic pets,” Marcus recounts, his blue eyes sparkling as he chuckles at the memory. “If you name it, I’ve probably had it.” Any creatures that Marcus couldn’t convince his parents to house in their backyard he instead cared for as a volunteer at Taronga Zoo, assisting the keepers during the school holidays. “I remember on my first day at the zoo as a 13-year-old, I was rostered on to the lions, tigers and…

1 Maugean skates are endemic to which Australian state or territory? 2 Who was Australia’s first prime minister? 3 Koalas exclusively eat the leaves of which plant? 4 Which two animals hold the shield on Australia’s coat of arms? 5 What is the name of the body of water that separates the Eyre and Yorke peninsulas? 6 Which Australian actor played James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)? 7 Which parrot species is also known as the “twenty-eight parrot”? 8 Who was the first governor of Western Australia? 9 What is Australia’s smallest possum species? 10 What is New South Wales’ largest inland lake? 11 What is the name of the 223km-long hiking trail that connects Alice Springs to Mount Sonder? 12 In 1699, who became the first…

BARCALDINE, AFFECTIONATELY NICKNAMED ‘Barcy’ by locals, is a hugely important and symbolic town in the history of working people in Australia. It was here in 1891 that shearers, confronted with the prospect of lower pay, famously went on strike. They joined together in a camp outside of town and held meetings under the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ – a 10m-tall ghost gum near the railway station. These meetings played an important role in the formation of the Australian Labor Party. Today, the town commemorates its historic radicalism through the Australian Workers Heritage Centre (a tribute to Australia’s male and female workers), the heritage-listed Shearers’ Strike Camp Site, and a beautifully recreated sculpture representing the Tree of Knowledge. The sculpture is particularly impressive at night, when it’s lit by coloured lights. Barcaldine…

TELLING THE STORY of Australia’s bunya pines was a refreshing change for wildlife photographer and writer ESTHER BEATON (Bunya nut boom, page 76). For one thing, the trees didn’t move. “As a nature and wildlife photographer I’m used to difficult field work,” she says. “My last few assignments for Australian Geographic were about mammals – nocturnal ones such as brushtail possums and long-nosed bandicoots, which are only active at night. It was difficult enough to get lenses and cameras to focus in the dark, but I also had to stumble around managing all my lighting set-ups on my own. So for my next assignment I wanted something ‘easy’ – something that doesn’t hide, sneak away, bite or scratch. “I had just moved to the Sunshine Coast of Queensland and I…

Culture on Karijini country The Karijini Experience returns 11–14 April 2025 for another incredible festival in the heart of the Pilbara in Western Australia. The four-day festival celebrates the very best of culture, art, food and music set against the spectacular natural scenery of Karijini National Park, the traditional lands of the Banjima people. For more info: karijiniexperience.com Case closed for Zuytdorp shipwreck Maritime archaeologists from Flinders University have taken a deep dive into the likely cause of the Zuytdorp shipwreck in 1712. The Dutch East India Company shipwreck, which lies 60km north of Kalbarri in Western Australia, was discovered in 1927 and identified in 1958. It was once thought the shipwreck was caused by navigational errors, when the crew strayed too far east into unfamiliar territory and smashed into…

FROM VLAMINGH HEAD Lighthouse one balmy evening I saw an ocean erupt with breaching whales. It brought home to me just how important it is to protect Ningaloo and Exmouth Gulf on Western Australia’s north-west coast. Perched on an isolated hill at the northern end of the Cape Range, the lighthouse stands 50m above the sea and 300m away from a foreshore, beside one of the world’s greatest humpback highways. Each evening you’ll find Ningaloo devotees standing near the lighthouse watching the sun sink into the Indian Ocean. Following this tradition, in September 2022 a small group of us went to the car park near the lighthouse to watch the sunset. We were in for a surprise. The Indian Ocean filled the horizon to the west. Waves breaking nearby marked…

1816 Australia’s first public hospital is established in Sydney IN MAY 1810 Lachlan Macquarie, the Governor of New South Wales, called for tenders for the design and construction of a new general hospital. He chose the design of a double-storey colonnaded structure with a large central building and two wings. This new general hospital would replace the prefabricated wooden hospital brought to Australia by the Second Fleet in 1790. With no government funds to build it, he contracted three businessmen – D’Arcy Wentworth, Garnham Blaxcell and Alexander Riley – for its construction, and granted them a monopoly on the colony’s rum imports as payment. And so it became known as the ‘Rum Hospital’. Governor Macquarie laid the foundation stone for the new hospital on Macquarie Street on 30 October 1811,…

LUCY THRILLS THE CROWD ON 30 JANUARY Lucy Barnard received her Adventurer of the Year medallion at the first Australian Geographic Awards Roadshow event of the year. Lucy also received a special medallion for her dog Wombat. Lucy captivated the sold-out Sydney crowd with recollections of her years on the road through South and Central America. She shared her hopes for the future as she makes her way north through the USA and Canada towards her finish point at Utqiagvik (Barrow) in Alaska, which she aims to reach in mid-2026. Long-distance walker Bailey Seamer and adventurer ‘Outback’ Michael Atkinson joined her on stage. Bailey and Mike are great friends of Lucy, and occasionally joined her along sections of her epic trek when extra security was needed. Mike is a past…

THE RED FACE, black beard and gold-trimmed blue robes of the Chinese god Guan Di make an exotic splash in the corner of a quiet country pub in North East Tasmania, far from their origins. Protected by a glass display case, the porcelain statue may go unnoticed by most patrons at the Weldborough Hotel, but it’s an important reminder of a time when Chinese migrants outnumbered Europeans in this part of the island state. The contribution of Chinese migrants and their descendants from the 1880s through to today is celebrated in Home: Here and Now, which recently finished its run at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) in Hobart. The exhibition, which will next tour the state’s north-east, reveals a chapter of Tasmania’s history that’s often overlooked. Chinese settlement…

THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA’S WATERWAYS there’s an invisible danger lurking. It’s not the crocodile or the bunyip, or the grasping branches of sunken trees. It’s a silent pollutant stealthily seeping into the bodies of aquatic creatures. In November 2024 a CSIRO study of freshwater Macquarie River turtles (Emydura macquarii macquarii) reported one of the highest levels of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) ever recorded in Australian animals. This chemical onslaught has had major impacts on turtle health and has contributed to the decline of the species’ already dwindling populations. So, what are these pollutants that seem to be taking such a toll on Aussie wildlife? Why are they infiltrating our creeks and rivers? And just how pervasive is the problem? Often dubbed ‘forever chemicals’, PFAS are a group of man-made chemicals that…

“A lot of farmers respect the bush and its native animals… They want to see sustainable agricultural practices.” IT’S A CLOUDLESS day as our vehicle heads across a hillside incised with deep furrows. The bare paddock is tinged with grey stubble, remnants of the last cereal crop to grow on this land. A wide sweep of the eye takes in two dozen figures walking each furrow with dangling bags of native shrub and tree seedlings. At 5m intervals, they insert a plant into the soil and move on. “Thirty years ago, who would have thought the bush was worth putting back?” says Alex Hams, Bush Heritage Australia’s south-west landscape manager, as we drive slowly past each planter. “Conservation was a word not meaningfully used in Australia then. But I feel…

THE VIETNAM WAR – one of the 20th century’s longest military conflicts – began, according to most historians, with active US military involvement in the region in 1954, although its underlying origins stretch back to the 1800s. Fundamentally, the war pitted communist North Vietnam and its allies against South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States. But it also involved several other countries. Australia’s involvement began in 1962 when it agreed, as a US ally, to send ‘military advisers’ to Vietnam. Then, in 1965, in a move intended to further strengthen relations with the US and help prevent the “spread of communism in Southeast Asia”, Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced Australia would send a battalion of combat troops to South Vietnam (see War’s lingering shadow, page 96). By the…

AUSTRALIA IS FACING a waste management crisis. Litter – visible everywhere from plastic-choked oceans to degraded bushland – is just the tip of the iceberg. Each year about 75 million tonnes of waste is generated across the country, a figure that continues to rise alongside population growth. The National waste and resource recovery report 2024 reveals only 12 per cent of plastics produced in Australia are recovered, while an estimated 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste leak into local marine ecosystems annually, causing severe harm to biodiversity. In the National Waste Policy Action Plan 2024 the federal government outlines a 2030 target to reduce total waste generated by 10 per cent per person. In the meantime, waste continues to accumulate, having a detrimental impact on wildlife, biodiversity and the climate. Stronger…

ONCE IN A while, our planet reminds us of its awesome power by releasing a little of the magma that permeates its mantle in a volcanic eruption. However, you might be surprised to know that Earth is not alone in having volcanoes – in fact, it’s beaten numerically by the planet Venus, whose surface is pockmarked with more than 1600 of them. But Venus’s opaque atmosphere makes it hard to establish whether any of them are still active. When it comes to active volcanoes, Jupiter’s moon Io takes the crown. Violent eruptions on this distant world have been observed for many years, and its entire surface is being renewed constantly by lava from its 400 or so active vents. The heat source for these volcanoes is the gravitational squeezing and…

BEGINNING WITH THE smallest of soaks atop Mount Baw Baw high in the Victorian Alps, the Yarra River flows through pristine forests, national park, farming land and residential areas before famously winding through the city of Melbourne and into the mudflats of Port Phillip Bay, some 242km from its genesis. The river provides Melbourne with 70 per cent of its drinking water and supports productive agriculture. Dotted throughout the river’s 4078sq.km catchment and 24 tributaries are popular recreational spots for some of Australia’s favourite pastimes including boating, rowing, fishing, birdwatching, swimming, rope swinging and picnicking. The Yarra catchment is also home to about two million people and one-third of Victoria’s animal species. Flowing through the Kulin nation, the river was an important meeting place for First Nations peoples for tens…

ROSIE GALEA CHUCKLES as she describes the call of the bush stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius). “I’ve heard that people often think it’s a woman screaming,” she says. “The sound is certainly unique and distinctive, but it’s very much how the Victorian landscape should sound when dusk falls.” Rosie and her partner Mark Reed are members of the Upper Spring Creek Landcare Group in central Victoria. At their home in Lockwood, about 130km from Melbourne, they’ve built four enclosures on their 26ha property in an effort to save the bush stone-curlew from extinction in Victoria, where it’s been listed as critically endangered since 2023. “When we moved here 20 years ago, we saw our first ever pair of curlews from the kitchen window,” Rosie recalls. “Every winter for the next four years…

NEAT ROWS OF parallel sand dunes stretch on for miles in the vast Simpson Desert. Occasionally, though, a desolate plain opens to the horizon between these sandhills. We’re driving through one of these plains right now, following a straight track that seems to aim at infinity. Fluffy clouds litter the sky, leftovers of a rainband that moved through two days ago. Then, animated by shimmering heat radiating off the ground, something resembling a rickety picket fence appears far ahead. The strange apparition on the horizon is a stand of trees. They are Acacia peuce, also known as waddi trees or waddywoods, among the world’s rarest trees. Only three stands – including this one in the Mac Clark (Acacia peuce) Conservation Reserve in the west Simpson Desert – are known to…

AS THE 1ST Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment began its year-long deployment to South Vietnam in 1965, young Norman John Rowe thought he had the world at his feet. Blessed with a strong tenor voice, ‘Normie’, as the 18-year-old from Melbourne was known, had quit his trainee telephone technician’s job with the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) and set out to conquer the entertainment world as a rock-and-roll musician. Stardom came quickly; he enjoyed his first number-one hit in April that year. Normie Rowe had arrived on the music scene, but the lottery of life would soon disrupt the trajectory of his promising career. Military conscription in Australia had been abandoned in 1959 but was reintroduced in 1964 to support the war effort in Vietnam. Controversially, this call-up of 20-year-old men now included…