Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2025 i Australian Geographic

HOLLOW WOOD STAR STANDING ON THE edge of the footpath on a suburban Canberra street chatting to passers-by isn’t normally the way people think bird photography happens. Researchers gave me the location of a gang-gang cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum) nest and I spent a few hours waiting and watching a pair come and go from the site, which was located right next to the road. Gang-gangs keep a hollow open by chewing the wood around it to stop it from healing and closing up. Here, in this moment, the chewed tree rings resemble the colouring around the bird’s own neck – creating a special composition. I know many people have a strict belief that you shouldn’t photograph nests at all. I take a pragmatic approach while keeping the bird’s interests central.…

WYCLIFFE WELL IS a tiny speck off the Stuart Highway in the middle of the Northern Territory, about 130km south of Tennant Creek. The former roadhouse was named after the site of a water well sunk in 1875 for workers on the Overland Telegraph Line. During World War II a market garden was established near the old well to supply troops travelling to and from Darwin, and army transport driver Viv Martin spotted “a small silver craft hovering over a group of Australian soldiers” at the “nearby” Karlu Karlu/Devils Marbles. (In outback parlance 25km is considered to be nearby.) “Dad stopped on a nearby hill to take a photo,” says Viv’s son Phil. But by the time he got there, the two flying saucers – which he describes as each…

THE IDEA BEHIND ‘pet years’ is to have a simple way to compare the life stages of our pets to human life spans. The standard understanding is that one pet year equals seven human years. However, the reality is much more complex. After all, most one-year-old pets can make babies – but seven-year-old humans cannot. There are three main factors that affect the maximum life span of an animal. First is intelligence: the ‘smarter’ the animal, the better it can adapt to its environment and survive. The second relates to environmental hazards: most animals in the wild are killed by predators, disease or injuries well before they begin losing performance as a result of ageing. And the third factor is nutrition: too much or too little food will shorten an…

THERE’S A CERTAIN thrill in trading a well-worn highway for scenic backroads that whisper history and adventure. Tourist Drive 33 offers exactly that, an enticing journey through the lush hinterland of the New South Wales Central Coast. More than just a road trip, this route showcases a seamless blend of nature, heritage and gourmet experiences. The Central Coast is already a leading ECO Certified Destination, recently acheiving ‘Ecotourism’ status – a promotion from its previous ‘Nature Tourism’ status and a testament to the region’s commitment to sustainable travel and environmental conservation. Mooney Mooney: pearls and oysters by the water My journey kicks off at Mooney Mooney, a peaceful riverside village where Broken Bay Pearl Farm offers a glimpse into NSW’s only pearl farm. Joining a tour, I watch in awe…

IT’S EASY, AT first, to think the famed reefs of Raja Ampat, in eastern Indonesia’s West Papua province, have avoided many of the stresses facing reefs elsewhere. Festooned with colourful corals and teeming with marine life – from fingernail-sized pygmy seahorses to manta rays with the wingspans of small planes – Raja Ampat’s reefs offer some of the world’s most mesmerising scuba-diving experiences. But there’s one sure sign that things are not as they should be: leopard sharks are rarely seen by divers here anymore. The Indo-Pacific leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum), also known as the zebra shark, is easily identified by its striking spot pattern and long, slender tail. The species has a wide distribution in the tropical Indo-Pacific. Data collected by ecologist Dr Christine Dudgeon at The University of…

AT CERTAIN POINTS along the wild and unspoilt coastline of the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land and Western Australia’s Kimberley, tamarind trees provide shade from the blistering sun. The trees aren’t native, and yet they’ve been here for centuries. The answer to this riddle is that they were planted here by what were most likely Australia’s first outside visitors. It wasn’t the British, the French or even the Dutch, but traders from the port of Makassar on the island of Sulawesi in present-day Indonesia. The traders came seeking sea cucumbers, which they dried into a product called trepang or bêche-de-mer. And they brought more than just the tamarinds. First Nations peoples interacted with the Makassans, exchanging language and dugout canoes, and even intermarrying. They were involved in international trade well before…

THE VAST ECOSYSTEM of Brisbane’s Moreton Bay contains a multitude of species. There, in the sheltered waters, winding inlets and salt marshes of Quandamooka country, you can find sharks, rays, and hundreds of fish and coral species. Bottlenose and humpback dolphins swim and forage there, as do dugongs and six of the world’s seven species of sea turtle. Meanwhile, the expansive estuary with its shoals, seagrass beds and mangrove forests offers a haven for many endangered species, so you’ll see roosting grounds of far eastern curlews, as well as swamp orchids and ant-blue butterflies. You may even see a southern right whale stopping by. But that’s not all. If you take a close look along the shores and among the mangroves, says Dr Elvis Okoffo: “You will see a lot…

THE INNOVATION COMING out of regional Australia now is so exciting that we’re devoting a three-part series to the topic, beginning with On the snail trail (page 78). To shoot the series we called on the talents of Western Australia-based photographer DUNCAN WRIGHT, who’s great with both people and places. “I love getting a call-up for an assignment that allows me to have a creative and flexible approach to image-making,” he says. “This job was exactly that: travelling to three far-flung corners of Australia – Esperance in WA, Murrumbateman in regional NSW and the Torres Strait Islands – to meet inventors who’d come up with wild and wide-ranging ideas to solve their own unique issues. All three shoots were set in these vast landscapes. I wanted to show how hard…

Rainbow lorikeets still rule the roost Citizen scientists counted more than 4.1 million birds during the 2024 Aussie Bird Count, providing invaluable data for BirdLife Australia to better understand avian biodiversity across the nation. The results are now in! The rainbow lorikeet has topped the nationwide list for the 11th year in a row. This colourful parrot was the most-counted bird in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland. In second place came the noisy miner. This small (and highly territorial) native honeyeater was the second-most counted bird in NSW and QLD, and the third most-counted bird in SA and VIC. The Australian magpie placed third, followed by the sulphur-crested cockatoo, welcome swallow, galah, silver gull, Australian white ibis, house sparrow and little corella. Other notable species…

IT’S NIGHT AND I’m anxious. In front of me, on a remote highway in Australia’s tropical Top End, the woman I love is using a towel to scare off a giant snake. Sitting in the driver’s seat of our stationary car, my job is to keep the headlights on the olive python (Liasis olivaceus) that’s stretched out on the tarmac beside my life partner. Janine (the brave woman) moves closer, gently waving the towel, attempting to convince the huge snake to move off the highway so it won’t be run over. It’s about 3.7m long – half the width of the road – and has a body as thick as my calf. It probably weighs about 50kg. This is not an animal we’d normally try to intimidate. The snake raises…

I’M OFTEN ASKED about the space probes that are leaving the solar system, never to return. There are five of them: Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 – all launched in the 1970s – and New Horizons, which began its journey to Pluto and beyond in 2006. These tokens of humanity are extraordinary because they’ll probably outlast the species that created them, and perhaps even our planet. Space is so empty they could travel billions of years unimpeded by a collision or capture into orbit around another star. All these missions were outstandingly successful in their quest to explore the solar system’s outer reaches, and all but the two Pioneers still actively communicate with Earth. Their signals are received and transmitted via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN),…

NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN! WE ARE ACCEPTING Nominations for the Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year awards in May and June. Australian Geographic’s annual adventure awards are the longest-running and most prestigious accolades for Australia’s adventure community. Last year we honoured four amazing individuals who each exemplified personal qualities of courage, endurance and dedication while achieving ambitious goals over extended periods of time (see AG 184 for full story). The four award categories are explained on the right-hand side of this page. To find out more about how to nominate someone – and read updates on our past adventurers, including James McAlloon, Lisa Blair, Michael Smith, Alexander Campbell and Sebastian Howe – visit our website at australiangeographicsociety.org. Nominations close on 30 June. Last year we replaced the annual gala awards dinner…

FABIAN DOUGLAS WASN’T expecting a butterfly bonanza at Western Victoria’s Lake Wyn Wyn. He and fellow entomologist Frank Noelker had joined birdwatchers there that sunny spring day in 1993, so the focus was on other fauna. Fabian thought, “I won’t make a spectacle of myself getting out the net – there’s not going to be anything rare here anyway.” So he’d set off through the boobialla with binoculars, no butterfly net in hand. “Then I saw this butterfly go through in the middle distance,” Fabian recalls. At first, he assumed it was a common dusky-blue – although out here on the salt lake’s flood plain it was a long way from its larval food plant. Common dusky-blue caterpillars nosh on parasitic cassytha vines, but those were some distance back among…

AUSTRALIA’S INNOVATION LANDSCAPE is often viewed through the lens of its major cities, but look closer and you’ll see innovation is thriving in our regional areas. These are places where necessity breeds invention, and where challenges are met with resourceful solutions. For centuries in Australia, our geographical remoteness has shaped our history and identity. This was outlined famously in Geoffrey Blainey’s seminal book, The Tyranny of Distance. And in our regions, that notion is amplified. One need only think of the number of problems solved over the years with a length of Number 8 wire or a strand of hay baling twine to appreciate the inherent resourcefulness of those living and working outside major cities. Harnessed the right way, regional innovation – driven by resourceful locals, skilled migrants and a…

IT’S UNQUESTIONABLY ONE of our planet’s greatest conservation success stories – the comeback of the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) from the brink of extinction. And nowhere in the world is it so strongly evident as along the Western Australian coast. The humpback is a species with a global distribution, but there are two geographically separate and genetically distinct populations – one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere. In winter, both migrate near coastlines towards calving grounds in warmer waters and return to polar feeding grounds each summer. And both were decimated by commercial whaling during the 20th century. In fact, by the mid-1960s, when whaling of humpbacks ended in WA waters, only a few hundred adults remained in the population that migrates annually along the state’s…

JUNEE IS A railway town with a charming, old-fashioned ambience. It has elegant streets, well-preserved historical buildings with wide verandahs, and a railway station that dominates the town centre. It’s in the South Western Slopes bioregion of New South Wales, a rich and productive agricultural area that produces canola, wheat, oats, olives, barley, wool and fat lambs. There are also many vineyards. Of particular interest is the elegant (but, sadly, now-closed) Monte Cristo Homestead, an impressive two-storey Victorian mansion built in 1884–1885 by grazier and developer Christopher William Crawley. In 1876 Crawley bought 210ha of land on the town’s west side and 130ha on the east, hoping to exploit the arrival of the Great Southern Railway, which opened in 1878. He built the Railway Hotel and soon made his fortune.…

Vietnam’s scars FEATURED LETTER When I was 20, my younger brother won a prize in the birthday lottery (War’s Lingering Shadow, AG 185). Previously he had applied to join the Navy, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight. Total hypocrisy by the Australian Government of the day, my brother was considered unfit to serve on a ship but was drafted to serve on the frontline in Vietnam as cannon fodder. It’s a lie that all those who were sent to Vietnam were volunteers – they were not. The Nashos were sent there because it cost the government less to use them than to use regular soldiers. Political bastardry! My brother lost his girlfriend while he was in Vietnam – she married the other bloke – and my brother never…

ELECTED UNOPPOSED AS Labor party leader after Kevin Rudd’s resignation, Julia Gillard was sworn in as the 27th prime minister of Australia on 24 June 2010. In doing so she became Australia’s first female prime minister, and her impact as leader endures today. The most famous moment of Gillard’s prime ministership occurred on 9 October 2012 when she delivered her powerful ‘misogyny speech’ in Parliament. Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, had accused her of hypocrisy and sexism as she defended house speaker, Peter Slipper – himself implicated in a misogynistic text scandal – during a motion for his removal. Gillard addressed the topic head-on. “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not,” she began, later stating, “If he wants to know what misogyny looks…

2017 Nobel Peace Prize won by Melbourne-founded nuclear disarmament organisation IN THE LATE 1960s, as the Cold War nuclear arms race gained momentum across the globe, the United Nations penned an international treaty to address the looming threat of global nuclear annihilation. Opened for signature in July 1968, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aimed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful cooperation in the use of nuclear energy. It came into force in 1970 and was extended indefinitely on 11 May 1995. More than 190 countries signed the pact, including five nations with nuclear weapons – the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China. But the agreement sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, not abolish them. And anti-nuclear…

NINETY-SEVEN PER CENT of Australians are concerned about the potential extinction of native animals, and two-thirds are very or extremely concerned. This is a key finding from a large community survey conducted by Monash University for the Biodiversity Council. People have valid reasons to be concerned. During the past two centuries, Australia has maintained a dismal record of biodiversity loss, and despite increased awareness today, the rate of loss continues to increase. No one will ever again see the Daintree’s river banana (Musa fitzalanii), pig-footed bandicoot (Chaeropus spp.), big-eared hopping mouse (Notomys macrotis), Tasmanian emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis), paradise parrot (Psephotellus pulcherrimus), Christmas Island forest skink (Emoia nativitatis) or Eungella gastric-brooding frog (Rheobatrachus vitellinus) – and we and the ecosystems they were once part of are poorer for it. Officially,…

AFTER MORE THAN 50 years of existence, Mansfield Autism Statewide Services (MASS) outgrew its facilities. Overwhelming demand and excessively long waitlists called for urgent expansion. So in 2020, MASS, a not-for-profit that supports young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their carers, bought a property in Victoria’s High Country. And there, cradled by the Aussie bush, it created a farmstay that offers respite and therapeutic care for kids with ASD and their families. “Through a combination of government grants, philanthropic trusts, donations, fundraising events and our own contributions, we’ve almost finished our $40 million expansion plan on our 100-acre farm on the rural outskirts of Mansfield,” says Simone Reeves, director of MASS. “Our new property now has a new school building, 12 retreat cabins where we hold family camps…

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY EXPEDITION REPORT I WAKE TO the gentle sway of the boat. A rush of excitement pulls me out of my hazy morning dreams as I remember where I am. Drawing back the shutter, I look out at remote South West Tasmania – a place I’ve always wanted to visit and see with my own eyes. Still, crystal-clear waters reflect the mountains rising from the landscape. The quietness of the scene is beautiful. I’m lucky to be waking in this special place that rarely sees humans anymore. Yet this is a place steeped in First Nations culture and history, its landscapes shaped over millennia by First Nations peoples. I’m exploring Tasmania onboard Coral Expeditions’ Coral Discoverer. We boarded at Hobart last night before setting off on a tour…

WHEN AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL threatened species list was updated in March, almost a third of the newly listed animals were frogs. With the additions of the Mount Ballow mountain frog (Philoria knowlesi), giant burrowing frog (Heleioporus australiacus) and the southern giant burrowing frog (Heleioporus australiacus flavopunctatus) to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act List of Threatened Fauna, Australia’s number of threatened frog species has now risen to 53. Given there are more than 250 known frog species in Australia, that means about 20 per cent of our native frog species are at risk of extinction. It’s no secret frog populations worldwide are in decline, impacted by a cocktail of threats including habitat loss and modification, pesticides, pollution, invasive species and climate change. But a major driver of what’s becoming known…

ON 7 MAY 1942 a World War II naval battle was unfolding in the heart of the Coral Sea a few hundred kilometres off the North Queensland coast. At 0720 hours Japanese scouts spotted the American oil tanker USS Neosho and its destroyer escort USS Sims en route to refuel US navy ships. Mistaking the tanker for an aircraft carrier, the Japanese command dispatched torpedo bombers against the American vessels. By morning’s end, both ships and many of their crew had been claimed by the sea. It’s not known how much oil the Neosho contained when it was torpedoed during the Battle of the Coral Sea – or how much remains stored inside this shipwreck 83 years later. All of Neosho’s oil may have spilled into the ocean when it…