Wrong.

“I think most people think the common brushtail possum is really common because it is found in a lot of the coastal fringes, urban fringes, of Australia,” says Pat Hodgens, a fauna ecologist with Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC).

“But this species has actually had a massive range contraction. It is now extinct in more than 50 per cent of its former range, with massive losses in Central Australia and northern Australia still currently occurring.”

On Ngalia-Warlpiri and Luritja Country – near Alice Springs (Mparntwe) – the possum has been locally extinct for decades.

But earlier this month it returned when 40 common brushtail possums were flown on a special charter flight from South Australia back to Country at AWC’s Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary – a predator-free, fenced, 9450ha safe haven for native species, located four hours outside of Alice Springs.

The individuals – translocated from various populations on South Australia’s mainland and Kangaroo Island – were welcomed by rangers and young people from the Laramba Aboriginal Community, Anmatyerr and Ngalia-Warlpiri/Luritja people, and the AWC team.

“It was a pretty big effort for us,” says AWC ecologist Tim Henderson, who is in charge of Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary’s species reintroduction program. “To catch them from those locations, put them on a charter plane and fly them out here, and then release them into their new home in Newhaven.”

“[The possums] are very important within the landscape from an ecological point of view, and also from a cultural point of view,” says Tim.

“They play an important role culturally. A lot of the local Indigenous people remember possums in their Dreaming stories that are passed down from older generations.”

Cultural connections

The common brushtail possum holds such great cultural significance in Central Australia that the region’s Anmatyerr people have a dedicated dance to the sacred species – Rrpwamper.

Passed down through the generations, Rrpwamper (Possum Dreaming) was performed by members of the Laramba Aboriginal Community to welcome the species back to Country.

“We perform the ceremony to connect possums back to the Land, and connect them back to the People,” explains Anmatyerr Elder Johnny Jack, guardian of the Rrpwamper story. “We are really glad to have possums back on our Country and for people to know the possum again.”

Tim adds, “It’s very special to return such a culturally important animal to the desert.”

Disappearance from Central Australia

Once abundant throughout Central Australia, after colonisation the common brushtail possum suffered the same plight as many native species.

“The decline in populations follows the pattern of most other small-to-medium-sized native mammals,” explains Tim. “The possum became far less common after European settlement, disappearing from most of its former range in inland Australia over the last 40–60 years.

“By the early 2000s, in Central Australia, the possum was restricted to small remnant populations in the ranges near Alice Springs. Surveys coordinated by the Northern Territory government suggest the population may have disappeared entirely from the region as recently as 2012.”

“Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of anywhere in the world,” adds Pat.

“The main threats to most of our small mammal species, like the brushtail possum, are introduced predators, feral cats and foxes, and also altered fire regimes since Australia was colonised, which has meant that we’re seeing lots more intensive, hot wildfires that are burning out habitat and food trees.”

Related: New safe haven for locally extinct red-tailed phascogale

‘A good recipe for success’

Pat is confident the common brushtail possums will thrive in their new home.

“We know that these guys are very tough. They’re very adaptable,” he says.

“They have a really good chance of establishing within the arid zone, because recently, brushtail possums from Kangaroo Island were reintroduced into a semi-arid zone in the Flinders Ranges National Park. They’ve done incredibly well there; they’ve been reproducing and are really well established.

“They’re going into Newhaven sanctuary, where there are no feral predators, which is obviously the best chance they can have. And Australian Wildlife Conservancy is a world leader with mammal reintroductions into fenced reserves. So there’s a pretty good recipe for success here.”

The possums join seven other species already translocated to Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary – the mala (2017), red-tailed phascogale (2017), brush-tailed bettong (2021), bilby (2022), burrowing bettong (2022), central rock-rat (2022) and golden bandicoot (2023).

“Here at Newhaven we’re aiming to restore the ecology to what it was before feral predators impacted the landscape. Brushtail possums form a part of that historical ecology, and they have an important role to play within the ecosystem,” explains Tim.

Related: An unlikely alliance: Wombat and fox family become housemates 

“We expect the brushtail possums to eat things like plants, seeds, flowers and fruit, but also feed on things like small reptiles and insects. We also expect them to utilise different shelter sites. Newhaven has a lot of rocky crevices and gullies for them to shelter in. We also have burrowing animals – we’ve got the burrowing bettong and bilbies that establish warren systems within the landscape. Brushtail possums are known to use those warrens as well, and we expect them to do the same here at Newhaven.”

Many of the possums have also been fitted with GPS and VHF radio trackers. “We can track and see how they’re doing over the next couple of months and work out what kind of shelter sites they’re using and where they’re moving around the landscape,” says Tim.

The post Possums welcomed back to Country in Red Centre appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Members of Aboriginal communities are warned that this story may contain images and names of deceased people.

The Eora people of the area now called Sydney faced profound change when the First Fleet arrived in 1788 carrying nearly 1500 people, limited food supplies, a cargo of foreign animals, sophisticated firearms and a firm belief in their superiority. Within two years, Bidjigal (Bidgigal) man Pemulwuy had mounted strong resistance to the incursion of white settlers onto his people’s traditional lands. Governor Phillip initially maintained cordial relations with the local people, having been instructed to treat the “Indians” well, and “conciliate their affections…[and] maintain friendly relations”. Conflict, however, was inevitable. 

The Eora had a complex system of laws that governed social relations, behaviour and resource use. The European invaders had no appreciation of this, and considered the Eora to be savages. A 1789 outbreak of smallpox, introduced by the Europeans, significantly reduced the Indigenous population and temporarily delayed open conflict.

On 10 December 1790, Pemulwuy was involved in the mortal wounding of John McIntyre, who’d been appointed Phillip’s gamekeeper, one of three convicts armed and sent out to hunt game to add to the colony’s dwindling food supply. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that McIntyre was “feared and hated by the Eora people”, and surmises that the attack was retribution for his breaking of Indigenous laws and his violence towards the local people.

Phillip called for a punitive raid, sending 50 soldiers and two surgeons equipped with head bags. That party failed to return with corpses, so they were sent out again. In response to this and the growing attacks on his people’s rights, Pemulwuy led a series of raids from 1792 on farming settlements on Bidjigal lands, burning huts, stealing maize and attacking travellers. 

By April 1794 the violence was frequent and extensive. In the Battle of Toongabbie, the European reprisal party severed the head of a slain warrior and took it back to Sydney as evidence. In the most substantial confrontation, Pemulwuy led 100 warriors into Parramatta, threatening to spear anyone who tried to stop them. Soldiers opened fire, at least five Indigenous men were killed, and Pemulwuy was wounded. But he survived and escaped a few days later, enhancing his already impressive reputation.

On 1 May 1801, Governor King issued a government and general order that “Aborigines” near Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect could be shot on sight. In November, a proclamation outlawed Pemulwuy and offered a sliding scale of rewards for his death or capture: “To a prisoner for life or 14 years, a conditional emancipation. To a person already conditionally emancipated, a free pardon and a recommendation for a free passage to England. To a settler, the labour of a prisoner for 12 months. To any other descriptions of persons, 20 gallons of spirits and two suits of slops [cheap ready-made clothing].” 

On about 2 June 1802, Pemulwuy was shot dead and his head was cut off and sent to Sir Joseph Banks in England for his collection. Soon after, a dispatch arrived from Lord Hobart to Governor King lamenting the settlers’ treatment of the Aboriginal population: “Be it clearly understood that on future occasions, any instance of injustice of wanton cruelty towards the natives will be punished with the utmost severity of the law.” 

Who shot Pemulwuy remains a mystery. Research by historian Dr Keith Vincent Smith pointed to Henry Hacking, quartermaster on the First Fleet’s HMS Sirius. 

Later research by writer Doug Kohlhoff suggested instead that settlers were far more likely to have been the killers. However, Kohlhoff asks whether it really matters who killed Pemulwuy. At one level, it would matter greatly to his people, but on another, he says: “Knowing who fired the fatal shot does not affect Pemulwuy’s place in history. Pemulwuy was, as [Governor] King recognised, ‘a brave and independent character’. He inspired others, fought hard and died for his land and his people. For that, we can all admire him.”

‘Pemulwuy fights back’ forms part of the National Museum of Australia’s Defining Moments in Australian History project.

The post Defining Moments in Australian History: Pemulwuy fights back appeared first on Australian Geographic.

After the war, MacKenzie focused more on animal research, converting a house in Melbourne into a laboratory and museum which he named the Australian Institute of Anatomical Research. In 1920 he relocated to a larger property and hired technical assistants. By 1924 the institute boasted 2000 items – from anatomical drawings to ‘wet’ and mounted specimens – gifted to the government to create the National Museum of Australian Zoology. A new public building, designed by W. Hayward Morris, was commissioned in the ACT to house the collection. The building was completed in 1930, and featured auxiliary research stations and plans for future zoological gardens. It was renamed the Australian Institute of Anatomy in 1931. 

Related: Gallery: Australia’s National Treasures

Opening at the start of the Great Depression, the institute suffered a lack of funding in its early years. Its collections expanded to include ethnographic material, casts of hominid skulls, and human remains. The latter – including Ned Kelly’s skull and death mask, and body parts from wounded soldiers preserved in formaldehyde and donated by the London Royal College of Surgeons – earned the institute its macabre reputation, which continues today, and the epithet of Canberra’s ‘most haunted building’.

It also displayed ‘exceptional’ objects, including anatomical anomalies and curiosities, such as Phar Lap’s 6.35kg heart displayed beside the heart of an average thoroughbred. 

The institute also received First Nations artefacts donated by professional and amateur collectors. These would form the National Ethnographic Collection which in the following decades comprised more than 20,000 items, including hunting weapons and tribal regalia. The institute also held Aboriginal remains collected by amateur anthropologist George Murray Black, a civil engineer and pastoralist from Gippsland. Between 1929 and 1950, Black ransacked Aboriginal burial grounds across New South Wales and Victoria and sent the skeletal remains of about 1600 individuals to the institute. When the Australian Institute of Anatomy was disbanded in 1985, these collections were transferred to the National Museum of Australia (NMA). The NMA’s repatriation program has been returning ancestral remains and sacred objects to First Nations communities for the past 20 years. 

Related: Gallery: History of Canberra

The post The macabre history of Canberra’s ‘haunted’ NFSA building appeared first on Australian Geographic.

On the remote tip of Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, the small, vibrant community of Cygnet Bay comes alive each spring to celebrate the end of the annual pearl harvest.

Now in its fifth year, the Pearl Harvest Festival is a three-day event run by Cygnet Bay Pearls, one of Australia’s oldest pearl farms. Located about 220km north of Broome on the pristine Kimberley Coast – where striking sandstone escarpments tower over white sandy beaches and lush mangrove forests give way to sweeping tidal creeks – the family-run farm has a history spanning more than 75 years.

The festival is the brainchild of James Brown, a third-generation pearl farmer and Cygnet Bay Pearls’ manager. His grandfather Dean Brown visited Cygnet Bay’s secluded beaches in 1946 while navigating the Kimberley Coast in a wooden pearl lugger. There, in offshore waters, Dean harvested the Australian South Sea pearl oyster for its shell. Also known as the silver-lipped oyster, this is one of the world’s largest and rarest pearl oyster species. It produces the prized South Sea pearl and its shell contains a hard inner iridescent layer of lustrous nacre – mother-of-pearl.

The Brown family has been harvesting oysters here ever since Dean arrived, first by diving for wild oysters and laterby spawning oyster spat in hatcheries and cultivating the adults to produce pearls. Their pearl-farming business was established in 1960 and is one of only three companies to have survived the calamitous oyster losses that occurred in the Kimberley in 2007 after Oyster Oedema Disease spread through South Sea pearl oyster populations. The disease, coupled with the global financial crisis in 2008, devastated and almost destroyed the local pearl industry.

As part of a survival strategy, Cygnet Bay Pearls began integrating tourism into its operations and opened its doors to the public. Since 2009, the farm has attracted more than 10,000 visitors a year and it’s not hard to see what brings tourists here: the farm is perched in a picturesque setting, where the Kimberley’s red pindan soil meets the warm turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean.

But the business now also offers a number of tourism experiences. Visitors are able to stay in glamping safari tents or the original pearling shacks of the 1960s and ’70s. And they can explore the surrounding scenery on land or sea tours and learn about the cultural significance of South Sea pearls to the local Bardi Jawi people.

And then there’s the jewel in the tourism crown – the annual Pearl Harvest Festival. “Harvest is always a nail-biting time for us,” says Jess Hornblow, an executive manager at Pearls of Australia, an umbrella company established by James Brown in 2018. “It takes two years to grow a pearl. That’s a long time to wait to see if you’ve done it right.”

The pearl farm produces cultured pearls. These are created through a natural process that occurs when an introduced irritant such as a shell-based seed, typically from a mussel shell, is carefully inserted into an oyster’s soft tissue. The bead becomes the nucleus of a pearl, around which the oyster secretes protective layer upon layer of nacre, gradually building a coveted gem. Not every oyster will produce a pearl. Some will contain an implanted bead without any nacre deposits; some will contain a bead that is partially covered; and some will contain only keshi, tiny natural pearls produced by oysters in response to irritants.

The joy of the harvest is when an oyster’s shell is opened to reveal a perfectly formed and lustrous gem-quality pearl nestled in the mollusc’s flesh. The annual festival celebrates this phenomenon as it’s replicated across the farm each year, bringing together staff, locals from surrounding Kimberley Coast communities, and tourists.

As the sun sets over the beach at Cockle Cove, a school of mullet glides through the mangroves, soft tunes hang in the balmy air, and the warm glow of an evening bonfire flickers golden light onto smiling faces. Earlier this afternoon, we were adorned with strands of local pearls – on loan for the evening – before we boarded amphibious vehicles and cruised to this secluded beach. This evening, as part of the festival’s ticketed Stranded in Style event, we’re being stranded (with pearls) on the sands of Cockle Cove to sip champagne, feast on canapés, and watch the sun set over the bay as the 2021 Pearl Harvest Festival is officially opened.

“This has been a very big year,” James says, welcoming us to the weekend-long festival. “With the climate-change effect in our waters and the disease and health issues we’ve faced, our challenges over the past years have been immense,” he says. “I am so happy to tell you that we have recently done a trial harvest of a crop that is coming out of the water very soon, and we were shocked to find that they are the best pearls we’ve seen here at Cygnet Bay since the onset of those mystery diseases…that’s an extraordinary, unexpected positive.”

The crowd cheers. James finishes his welcoming address, we raise our glasses, and the festival is officially in full swing. All around me Cygnet Bay pearls are on display. Some of us are wearing strands, others are wearing pendants or bracelets. Some of the pearls are perfectly round, others are baroque (irregularlyshaped). I see drop- and button-shaped pearls, half-circles, and non-spherical, lumpy pearls. They range in price from a couple of hundred dollars to many thousands of dollars apiece. We excitedly peruse each other’s loaned adornments – a wonderful way to meet fellow festival-goers and a beautiful introduction to the world of pearls.

“Even as staff we get excited when we get to wear strands,” Jess says. “It makes us feel special, a bit rockstarish even.” The pearls are available for purchase, but there is no pressure on anyone to buy them. “It’s about making people feel special in jewellery that they may never own or choose to own,” Jess explains. “It sets the vibe. It’s like, from me to you, here’s us in friendship tonight. It’s the Kimberley way.”

The three day festival packed with activities, including presentations about the history of pearling in the Kimberley, pearl harvesting and pearl-meat cooking demonstrations and tastings, pearl-appreciation talks, and presentations by marine researchers about the health of the Kimberley waterways. There are live music events, competitions, and giveaways. The farm’s restaurant is open, and festival-goers are free to swim in the farm’s infinity pool.

For a unique perspective, I join a flight over the Dampier Peninsula with KAS Helicopters. Pilot Hilary Wilkins is offering tours all weekend. She points out landmarks in the ancient landscape, including the distinctive red cliffs of nearby Cape Leveque. The swirling tides are mesmerising, and the shallows are teeming with marine life. At one point, a school of 10 or more reef sharks appears highly visible against the sandy seabed. Around the next outcrop, a saltwater crocodile cruises past the cliffs. Small sandy beaches are interrupted by rocky outcrops that are home to fresh oysters.

The South Sea oyster is a solitary species that thrives in waters rich with microscopic plankton. Like all oysters, it is a filter feeder that plays an important role in maintaining and even restoring marine environments. South Sea oysters filter algae from the plankton and in the process clear the water. This helps sunlight penetrate, which in turn promotes the health of seagrasses and other underwater habitats.

For more than 40,000 years, the Bardi Jawi people have harvested pearl oysters in the waters off the Dampier Peninsula. Traditionally, pearl meat was an important food source and shells were carved into artworks known as riji, which were worn during ceremonies and traded. Skilled artisans would shape the shells into teardrops, known as guwan, then carve lines and patterns into them using kangaroo jawbones. They’d stain the designs with red ochre, creating the riji.

Bruce Wiggan, a Bardi Jawi Elder, is the resident riji artist at Cygnet Bay. His creations are on display at the farm, and he enjoys demonstrating his craft to visitors. Following in his father’s footsteps, Bruce etches stories into the oyster shells and is proud to be keeping the ancient tradition alive. His family has worked closely with the Brown family since Dean arrived in the region on his wooden lugger in 1946. The families share a strong multigenerational relationship; in the early days, the Wiggans and Browns dived for pearl shells together at Cygnet Bay, and in the 1960s worked together and became some of the first Australians to successfully culture South Sea pearls.

I meet Bruce’s brother Dilleye Wiggan, a tour guide with Cygnet Bay Pearls, on day two of the festival when I join his Giant Tides Boat Tour. As we venture out into King Sound to experience the power of the world’s largest tropical tides and witness some of the fastest ocean currents on the planet, giant whirlpools swirl around us. Dilleye stands proudly at the front of our amphibious vessel and spreads his arms wide. “Let me show you my Country,” he says, beaming with pride.

Back on dry land the festival continues. Before dinner, a line-up of willing but unsuspecting festival- goers throw their hats in the ring to compete in this year’s oyster-eating competition. A handful are selected at random, and the competition begins. They must dress in gumboots and an apron, then split open a South Sea oyster and eat its meat.

“[South Sea] oysters grow to the size of a dinner plate,” Jess says to the contestants. “So tonight, we’ve been kind and only given you a beginner’s oyster.” The first person to show they’ve eaten their oyster will be crowned the winner. “Before you eat your oyster, however, you must first check for pearls,” Jess says, laughing. She warns the contestants to also check for pea crabs, which are likely to be housed in the shells with the oyster.

A buzzer sounds and the crowd goes wild. Angus from Perth is off to a good start, but Jodie from Broome is already steaming ahead – she’s been to a harvest party before and her experience shows. Sarah from Broome can’t get her shell open. Ben from Darwin and Naomi from Karratha are current Cygnet Bay staff, but that’s not helping them tonight – they’re trailing far behind.

Local Bardi Jawi man Frank Davey Jr, from the nearby Gumbanan Wilderness Retreat, takes out the honours. I ask whether he’s ever eaten a South Sea oyster before. “No, I haven’t,” he says, grimacing. “That was horrible.” The crowd roars with laughter and we make our way to the harvest buffet to feast on things more pleasant.

The last day of the festival the festival, Family Fun Day, raises money for a cause close to James’s heart: Save the Children’s Woombooriny Amboon Angarriiya Partnership Initiative. This aims to ensure Dampier Peninsula children and youths grow up strong, proud, healthy and connected to their families, communities and culture. James is an ambassador.

It is a day filled with live music, a sausage sizzle, face painting and family-friendly activities, including a water slide. It marks the end of the festival and brings together local families. Many have a personal connection to the Cygnet Bay farm. “When my great-grandfather came here, he worked with a number of local Aboriginal families,” James says. “Some of the children from those families are among my best friends, even today.”

James is inspired by the region’s long pearling tradition, and proud of his family’s 75-year history in Cygnet Bay. “Life here has always been about the struggle to create a sustainable community amid some of the world’s most wild, remote, challenging, but intensely beautiful, country,” he says. “I feel like we are doing this in this most spectacular part of our world. I am so proud of my parents, and my grandparents before them, for doing this.”

Over the years, Cygnet Bay Pearls has evolved to survive. Although the Pearl Harvest Festival is still young, it’s an important part of the company’s future. “By opening Cygnet Bay up to tourists and welcoming you here to join with us this weekend in our celebrations, you too are now part of our story,” James says. “This is your story too.”

The post The pearl principle appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The dog-on-the-tuckerbox legend dates to the mid-1800s when bullock teams – the 19th-century equivalents of semitrailers – transported supplies between Sydney and Melbourne. Depending on weather and track conditions, the trip could take weeks. The bullock team drivers, known as bullockies, established a series of camps, each separated by about a day’s travel, where they could rest overnight, and, if needed, change teams.

To help pass the time around the campfire, or while waiting to cross a flooded creek, the bullockies would often recite rhymes, sometimes of a risqué nature. If one had to leave his team and seek help or scout ahead to check track conditions, his dog would usually guard his possessions. That included one of a bullocky’s most prized objects – his tuckerbox, where he’d keep his food. It was like the modern-day esky used by tradies.

Although there are several versions of the dog-on-the tuckerbox story, the one recognised by most folklorists involves Bill the Bullocky, an 1850s drover who, one day, exhausted from trying to drag his wagon out of a bog nine miles from Gundagai, took a break for a well-earned lunch. However, when poor Bill reached for his tuckerbox, he found that his dog had unfortunately fouled it. Regardless of whether the incident was true or not, a doggerel poem entitled “Bullocky Bill”, published anonymously in the mid-1850s about the unfortunate incident, helped spread the story beyond just bullocky camps.

Cris Piper of Adelong, whose father’s uncle, Reg Livingston, ran the Coolac Store for many years in the early 1900s, believes “Bill” was likely bogged at Muttama Creek, located, you guessed it, nine miles from Gundagai. “Reg would often tell us that, even up to the early 1930s, bullock teams going south would camp on the north side of Muttama Creek, near the Nine Mile Peg, waiting for water levels to subside,” Cris says.

The 19th-century ode gained further notoriety in 1923 when Jack Moses wrote a booklet, Beyond the City Gates, which recounted the fable about the famous dog in a new poem called “Nine Miles from Gundagai”. Jack apparently considered the original text too crude, so he removed the “h” from an offending word so that one of the lines instead read “and the dog sat on the tuckerbox”.

Sometime in the next year or two, the first physical incarnation of the dog was erected nine miles out of Gundagai, near current-day Coolac. Crudely cut from a sheet of galvanised iron and tacked on to the side of a tall pole, it was more a two-dimensional silhouette than a statue. Then, in 1928, Gundagai stonemason Frank Rusconi suggested a more permanent memorial dedicated to pioneers and bullockies be erected. The locals loved the idea and Frank was duly commissioned to create the statue.

It was originally to be erected on the roadside near the Nine Mile Peg, but local authorities instead chose the Five Mile (from Gundagai) campsite on the basis that it was more convenient to the Hume Highway and closer to Gundagai, thereby more beneficial to the town’s tourism.

Most Australians were aware of the dog-on-the-tuckerbox story, so it was a big deal when the statue was unveiled on 28 November 1932. It was so big, in fact, that Prime Minister Joseph Lyons did the honours. Today, if you call into the Beehive Hotel at Coolac there’s a good chance you’ll find 54-year-old local Robert Carberry propped up on a bar stool.

He’ll proudly tell you that in his great-grandfather’s role as shire president, Herbert Patrick Carberry (HP) accompanied the PM at the unveiling of the dog, and presented him with a bottle of champagne. He’ll also tell you it was on HP’s property that the original two-dimensional cut-out was hung. Where that treasure is now “nobody knows”, Robert says. “It could be lying in a paddock somewhere or at the bottom of the local tip.”

Despite its friendly disposition, over the years the famous dog has been the subject of quite a bit of unwanted attention. Shortly after it was unveiled, the name of Joseph Lyons was chiselled away from the base of the monument, presumably as a political act, and in July 2019 it was pushed off its plinth resulting in several deep scratches and a broken ear.

Ouch!

The national landmark was bundled up and rushed in the back of a ute (the preferred method of transport for all cattle dogs) to the Australian National University’s School of Art and Design, where it was eventually restored to full health and returned to the rest stop.

Being hauled away for facial surgery, however, was nothing compared with the harrowing experience the bronze dog endured on the night of 27 October 1981, when, under cover of darkness, a group of students from the Canberra College of Advanced Education (CCAE), now University of Canberra, pilfered the famous sculpture.

Judith Corkhill was living at that time in Reid House, a CCAE student residence. “Sometime late in the evening the call went out by a group of senior Reidians asking for volunteers to take part in a stealth operation to steal the dog as part of a scavenger hunt,” explains Judith, adding, “A Kingswood car had been secured and was ready to go.”

Judith admits she opted out, thinking the others wouldn’t go through with the dog-napping. “But how wrong I was,” she recalls. She was woken very early the next morning by laughter and people running down the corridor and shrieks of “They did it, they got the dog!” Judith remembers clearly the moment she set eyes on the abducted dog. “It was on the concourse near the entrance to the refectory, a cardboard sign with “RSVP” written in large letters hanging around its neck,” she says.

When Gundagai woke to find their famed dog missing, it didn’t take long for word to spread, and a nationwide hunt was underway.

Later that morning, officers at Belconnen police station in Canberra received an anonymous tip-off and raced to the campus, where they located and seized the dog. Of course, by then, the perpetrators had well and truly vanished.

Retired police officer Melita Zielonko, 21 at the time, remembers the day as if it were yesterday. “We weren’t treating the situation lightly,” she recalls. “We thought what a stupid prank it was to steal a national icon and we were focused on finding it and getting it back to its rightful home.” Forty-one years on, the Dog on the Tuckerbox monument is more firmly entrenched than ever in our national psyche. “I still think of it every time I drive past Gundagai,” Melita says. “It was a career highlight.”

According to some business owners, the dog may be a little too popular with travellers on the Hume Highway, with many stopping for the obligatory photo with the dog but not venturing into the town. There was even discussion in 2021 of moving the dog from its highway home of 90 years and into Gundagai.

However, that was abandoned and, instead, in an attempt to connect the iconic landmark to the town’s CBD, sculptor Darien Pullen was commissioned in 2021 to create three puppy statues, which were recently placed outside businesses along the main street. “Dog on the Tuckerbox has had a litter of three pups,” screamed the media release.

“Scoop” is on the pavement outside the former newsagency with a newspaper in its mouth; “Chip” is outside Lott’s Family Hotel waiting for its owner; and “Snag” is chomping on some sausages outside Smart’s Butchery. The plan is for even more puppies to join their mates in years to come. I suspect Bill the Bullocky would be laughing in his grave. All this ongoing fuss over his dog’s misdirected droppings.

The post Power of the dog appeared first on Australian Geographic.

There’s no streaming services, no television, ‘the talkies’ haven’t hit cinemas yet. In fact, there are no cinemas.

It’s time to put on your Sunday best and head to the theatre for a magic show.

It was the age of fabulous illusions, famed tricks and fantastic sleights of hand.

Magicians wore the finest of dinner suits, flanked by glamorous assistants. They saw women in half, swallowed swords, caught bullets in mid air, levitated, made things metamorphosise and escaped the seemingly inescapable.

It was, indeed, the Golden Age of Magic.

The general consensus among historians is that the Golden Age of Magic spanned the years 1880–1920.

But to understand this era, it’s worth looking at the events that came before it.

Magic’s early pioneers

Before being recognised as a legitimate art form, magic was the trade of sketchy conjurers – tricking people in the streets and working the carnival circuit. 

Two magicians are credited with taking magic from low brow to high. They cleaned it up and created sensational spectacles, worthy of theatres and paying audiences. 

The first was a Frenchman, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. If this name sounds familiar it’s because famous American magician Harry Houdini later named himself in homage to his idol. 

Robert-Houdin was the first magician to pull on a tailcoat tuxedo and appeal to the upper hierarchies of society.

“He was very suave and had a very beautiful saloon-style presentation,” says cultural historian Margot Riley, who recently curated an exhibition about the Golden Age of Magic at the State Library of NSW. “He was really operating to the upper echelons of French society.”

He was also a watchmaker by trade, the skills of which spread over into his phenomenal tricks. “He specialised in very sophisticated styles of illusions,” Margot says. 

The second trailblazer was Scotsman John Henry Anderson, aka ‘The Great Wizard of the North’. Anderson was incredibly theatrical. An actor himself, he’d also acquired a string of theatres. He captivated audiences with his expert showmanship, and popularised the trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

But perhaps Anderson’s biggest contribution to magic was his ability to spruik it.

“He was a businessman and a promoter, he really understood how to sell something,” says Margot. “Because, really magic doesn’t exist – it’s an idea. Many of the promotional techniques that we are now familiar with started with Anderson.”

The elaborate, verbose language that is now synonymous with magic also began with Anderson. 

“It was all meant to bamboozle,” says Margot. “He was performing to working class people, people without a lot of education – for them to see him up there talking in this incredibly flamboyant kind of language was just as mesmerising as the magic.

“It also distracted people from what was actually going on. It was the patter, the language, the art of performing that was part of the trick.”

The Golden Age

With Robert-Houdin and Anderson paving the way, this new spectacular, sophisticated style of magic took off across the globe.

Soon, stage show magicians were performing their dazzling illusions and bamboozling tricks to sell-out crowds in theatres and music halls throughout Europe and America.

Acts like Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Carter the Great, Dante, Charles Bertram, Maskelyne, Devant, Harry Kellar, Herrmann the Great, Bernado, and many others, became household names.

This group of master magicians were among the highest paid and most famous entertainers of their time. 

Meanwhile, Down Under, an appetite was growing for the kind of entertainment magic provided. 

“Gold had been discovered so the population had exploded,” says Margot. “There were people with money to burn and they had leisure time.

“People were coming from the country into the city looking for entertainment and diversion – the more extravagant and exciting, the better.”

Magic also appealed to all demographics and social classes.

“It was family entertainment. It was a nice clean night out, and it was glamorous.”

You’d think it would have been difficult to sign these superstar showman up for tours all the way down here in Australia, but it turns out our geography worked in our favour.

“There was a global circuit,” explains Margot. “They’d come from America, from Europe, so travel to Australia was off-season. While it was winter in Europe they were able to travel to Australia in summer. 

“And it was important for them to keep earning and keep performing. So they were keen.”

Soon, theatres were sold out across Australia, and new theatres were rapidly being built to accommodate (and entice) the travelling magicians. 

“Audiences spanned from country folk who saw the shows in regional theatres, through to the highest echelons of society in the cities, who were just as much entertained.” 

Mark Mayer, current president of the Australian Society of Musicians, says the performances had widespread popularity and catered to all demographics. 

“Everybody was there,” says Mark. “In the front seats would be all the wealthy people, and then they’d have the ‘nickle and dime’ seats at the back for all others to be able to go.

“They were variety shows – a variety of close-up tricks, and obviously the huge stage illusions like sawing the woman in half, disappearing the elephant, great escapes and disappearances.  

“Audience participation was also a big thing.”

Carter the Great’s greatest illusions

American magician Charles Joseph Carter was known for his extravagant illusions.

When he toured Australia in 1907, he travelled with 28 tonnes of apparatus, everything he needed to pull off these marvels, advertised to ‘obfuscate the will, charm the imagination, confound intelligence’.

One of his most popular spectacles was a trick called ‘Cheating the Gallows’ during which Carter, covered in shroud, would vanish just as he dropped at the end of a hangman’s noose.

“Carter’s show carried a full range of illusions, which grew in size after each consecutive tour,” says Margot Riley, a curator at the State Library of NSW.

Among these were the ‘The Lion’s Bride’ in which a young girl was thrown into a cage containing a live African lion, and in an instant the lion transformed into Carter, dressed in a lion costume, and ‘The Quartered Woman’, following on from ‘The Sawing in Half’ Illusion during which his assistant was ‘severed’ and locked in a complex block with her limbs stretched in all directions. 

Then there was ‘The Phantom Bride’.

“This was a simple chair attached to ropes,” explains Margot. “His wife would sit in the chair, and it would be hoisted several feet in the air. Upon his command she would vanish in thin air and the chair would fall to the ground. He originally called this illusion ‘The Magical Divorce’ but apparently his wife didn’t get the joke and made him change the name of the illusion.”

Carter was also famous for ‘The Vanishing Elephant’ – an illusion originally developed by Harry Houdini but adopted and adapted by Carter.

Essentially, an elephant was ushered into the rear of a large cabinet. The cabinet was then closed and the front turned to the audience. On command both the front and back doors were dropped open to reveal the elephant was gone. The audience could only see the back of the stage through a round opening in the cabinet.

– Images courtesy State Library of NSW

Crowd expectations were also remarkably different to those of today. One of the most stark examples of this is the attention span of audiences, says Mark.

“During the Golden Age audiences were so different. For example, Houdini would do an escape that these days would take a minute and a half, maybe two minutes of stage time – he’d take 20 minutes to do it!

“He’d get into a cabinet, be locked up, then they’d put a screen in front of it. The real story is that he would get out of it in about two minutes and then sit down and read a book and wait. Then he’d pop out pretending to be worn out and sweating.

“If we did that nowadays everyone would walk out, get out their phones, and go ‘this is bullsh*t’.”

The next generation

While the history books tell us The Golden Age of Magic came to an end in the 1920s, here in Australia, a new chapter of magic rose in its place.

Inspired by the great international entertainers who had toured here, soon Australia was producing its own celebrity magicians – big names like Magic Murray, Sloggett, The Amazing Mr Rooklyn and the most famous of all, The Great Levante. 

After achieving great fame at home, this new generation of magicians also took their shows overseas, forging their own hugely successful international careers. 

“During the Golden Age they’d been exposed to those masters, they’d seen those performers”, says Mark. 

“They carried that on, even though the Golden Age itself had ended.”

Stay tuned for Part II – The Magic of Magic in Oz, coming soon!

The post The Golden Age of Magic appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The age of megafauna

Australia used to be home to all manner of giant animals called megafauna, until most of them went extinct about 40,000 years ago. These megafauna lived alongside animals we now consider characteristic of the Australian bush – kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles and the like – but many were larger species of these.

There were giant wombats called Phascolonus, 2.5-metre-tall short-faced kangaroos, and the 3-tonne Diprotodon optatum (the largest marsupial ever). In fact, some Australian megafaunal species, such as the red kangaroo, emu and cassowary, survive through to the modern day.

The fossil megafauna of New Guinea are considerably less well-studied than those of Australia. But despite being shrouded in mystery, New Guinea’s fossil record has given us hints of fascinating and unusual animals whose evolutionary stories are entwined with Australia’s.

Related: Human impact and climate changed killed megafauna

Palaeontologists have done sporadic expeditions and fossil digs in New Guinea, including digs by American and Australian researchers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

It was during an archaeological excavation in the early 1970s, led by Mary-Jane Mountain, that two jaws of an extinct giant kangaroo were unearthed. A young researcher (now professor) named Tim Flannery called the species Protemnodon nombe.

The fossils Flannery described are about 20,000–50,000 years old. They come from the Nombe Rockshelter, an archaeological and palaeontological site in the mountains of central Papua New Guinea. This site also delivered fossils of another kangaroo and giant four-legged marsupials called diprotodontids.

An unexpected discovery

Flinders University Professor Gavin Prideaux and I recently re-examined the fossils of Protemnodon nombe and found something unexpected. This strange kangaroo was not a species of the genus Protemnodon, which used to live all over Australia, from the Kimberley to Tasmania. It was something a lot more primitive and unknown.

In particular, its unusual molars with curved enamel crests set it apart from all other known kangaroos. We moved the species into a brand new genus unique to New Guinea and (very creatively) renamed it Nombe nombe.

Our findings show Nombe may have evolved from an ancient form of kangaroo that migrated into New Guinea from Australia in the late Miocene epoch, some 5–8 million years ago.

In those days, the islands of New Guinea and Australia were connected by a land bridge due to lower sea levels – whereas today they’re separated by the Torres Strait.

This “bridge” allowed early Australian mammals, including megafauna, to migrate to New Guinea’s rainforests. When the Torres Strait flooded again, these animal populations became disconnected from their Australian relatives and evolved separately to suit their tropical and mountainous New Guinean home.

Related: Aboriginal Australians co-existed with megafauna for at least 17,000 years

We now consider Nombe to be the descendant of one of these ancient lineages of kangaroos. The squat, muscular animal lived in a diverse mountainous rainforest with thick undergrowth and a closed canopy. It evolved to eat tough leaves from trees and shrubs, which gave it a thick jawbone and strong chewing muscles.

The species is currently only known from two fossil lower jaws. And much more remains to be discovered. Did Nombe hop like modern kangaroos? Why did it go extinct?

As is typical of palaeontology, one discovery inspires an entire host of new questions.

Strange but familiar animals

Little of the endemic animal life of New Guinea is known outside of the island, even though it is very strange and very interesting. Very few Australians have much of an idea of what’s there, just over the strait.

When I went to the Papua New Guinea Museum in Port Moresby early in my PhD, I was thrilled by the animals I encountered. There are several living species of large, long-nosed, worm-eating echidna – one of which weighs up to 15 kilograms.

There are also dwarf cassowaries and many different wallaby, tree kangaroo and possum species that don’t exist in Australia – plus many more in the fossil record.

We tend to think of these animals as being uniquely Australian, but they have other intriguing forms in New Guinea.

As an Australian biologist, it’s both odd and exhilarating to see these “Aussie” animals that have expanded into new and weird forms in another landscape.

Excitingly for me and my colleagues, Nombe nombe may breathe some new life into palaeontology in New Guinea. We’re part of a small group of researchers that was recently awarded a grant to undertake three digs at two different sites in eastern and central Papua New Guinea over the next three years.

Working with the curators of the Papua New Guinea Museum and other biologists, we hope to inspire young local biology students to study palaeontology and discover new fossil species. If we’re lucky, there may even be a complete skeleton of Nombe nombe waiting for us.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

The post This giant kangaroo once roamed New Guinea – descended from an Australian ancestor that migrated millions of years ago appeared first on Australian Geographic.

For tens of thousands of years, First Nations people have addressed changing weather on this continent and successfully applied their knowledges to land management. Their knowledge and contribution deserve full recognition.

To this end, our new research argues Australian researchers must recognise the value of First Nations people to find new and more effective ways to tackle climate and environment problems.

Climate change needs to be addressed

Graeme Samuel’s independent review of federal environment law in 2020 found Australia’s natural places were in clear and serious decline. The review called for long-term strategies, including those that “respect and harness the knowledge of Indigenous Australians to better inform how the environment is managed”.

We teach Indigenous perspectives across a range of disciplines. These approaches promote recognition of the inextricable links between humans and their environment.

This way of thinking can bring a sense of environmental responsibility and accountability. This could lead to new approaches to problems such as climate change and natural disasters.

In southeast Australia, climate change over the past century has resulted in weather patterns that increase the likelihood of bushfires.

At the same time, non-Indigenous land management practices, including those that prevent cultural burn-off practices, have increased the amount of flammable plant material, sometimes resulting in more intense bushfires.

But evidence suggests Indigenous fire regimes help manage forests, protect biodiversity and prevent catastrophic bush fires.

Scientists have also demonstrated how implementing Indigenous fire knowledges can reduce environmental destruction and greenhouse gas emissions. One example of this is the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Project in the Northern Territory. Such practices help Indigenous communities maintain and protect their cultural practices whilst also delivering financial benefits.

In another example, scientists recognised the accuracy of Indigenous knowledges about bird fire-spreading behaviour and collaborated with Traditional Owners to gather evidence of this. The scientists documented certain bird species deliberately spreading fires by picking up burning sticks and dropping them in unburnt areas to drive out prey. Understanding this phenomenon has allowed scientists to better understand the spread of controlled fires, and informed regional fire management policy.

Such examples of academic-Indigenous collaboration are not limited only to fire management.

In eastern Tasmania, graziers and scientists are working alongside Indigenous community as part of a grant from the Federal Government’s $5 billion Future Drought Fund.

Indigenous knowledge-holders provide expertise on grassland management and drought resilience to farmers in order to improve sustainability through regenerative land management.

Cultural losses will continue if we do nothing

The cultural cost of not valuing the global relevance of Indigenous knowledges was highlighted by the destruction of caves in Juukan Gorge in May 2020. This loss of global heritage was not only catastrophic to Indigenous Traditional Owners. Anthropologists and archaeologists viewed the incident as desecration and detrimental to future research of the site’s deep history.

The Samuel review recommended Indigenous cultural heritage be better protected by legislation. However, the Western Australian government recently passed legislation that still enables the destruction of cultural heritage sites.

In creating collaborative ways forward in research, scholars can be role models in appreciating and engaging with Indigenous perspectives and knowledge.

This approach can be utilised by broader society, including political decisions about land management.

Learning to respect Indigenous cultures strengthens our social, economic, and environmental resilience. In working with Indigenous people, we are likely to extend our time on our planet, and support continued practices of the oldest living human cultures on Earth.

Maryanne Macdonald, Lecturer, Indigenous Education, Edith Cowan University; Darren Garvey, Senior Lecturer at Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University; Eyal Gringart, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Social Science, Edith Cowan University, and Ken Hayward, Lecturer at Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Related: Eucalyptus and the ancient kingdom of fire

The post Recognising Indigenous knowledges is not just culturally sound, it’s good science appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The blue-grey and rusted-brown of the hut’s corrugated iron A-frame roof contrasts with the green of the surrounding grasses. Golden morning light splays across its weatherboard walls. Whatever the weather in this southern end of Kosciuszko National Park, in New South Wales, Cascade Hut (known as Cascades) is a welcome sight.

“It was on a bit of a lean,” Pat recalls of the first time, in 1969, that he saw Cascades. After hearing about it from a friend, he and his wife, Sue, had spent the day searching for it on a cross-country ski trip with their three young children in tow. “The ground and the hut were covered with snow,” Pat says. “We were relieved that we’d found it…there were no snow tents back then and maps weren’t quite what they are now.”

After 50 years of visiting Cascades (“perhaps 200 times”, he guesses), Pat has seen the hut – and the open frost hollow adjoining it, where it’s too cold for trees to grow – in all kinds of weather. “On a windy day you can see patterns in the trees as you look across the secluded valley,” he says. “The treetops move in waves and the light is amazing.”

Alpine huts hold a special place in the national psyche, epitomising ideals about what it means to be Australian: hardy, resourceful and rugged. There are about 200 dotted across the Australian Alps, built by graziers, goldminers, foresters, Snowy Mountains Scheme workers, skiers and bushwalkers – some as early as the 1860s. Today, a handful of devoted volunteer groups keeps them standing.

Pat worked as an engineer for 30 years in Wollongong, south of Sydney, before moving to Jindabyne, on the edge of the NSW Snowy Mountains, in 1985. Described by fellow volunteers and friends as “a quiet achiever…team leader, technical expert, and passionate historian”, he’s been a key player in protecting and maintaining the huts.

He’s been a long-time member of the Illawarra Alpine Club (IAC), and with a team of fellow volunteers from the club took on the role of caretaker for Cascades and, later, three other nearby huts – Charlie Carters, Tin Mines and Teddys.

Cascades was built in 1935 by Rob Benson for the Nankervis family as a refuge for cattlemen needing shelter while herding stock or “brumby running”. These days, skiers, bushwalkers and mountain-bike riders are the most common visitors. 

Inside, there’s a box of matches and stack of dry firewood. Visitors are expected to follow an unspoken etiquette that involves them using the hut for refuge; only overnighting in emergency situations; treating it with respect; replacing what they use; and taking care with fires and candles. “Whatever you do,” says Pat, “don’t set fire to it. That’s rule number one.”

Pat has many happy memories of being at Cascades. He recalls erecting tents nearby with Sue and their children, lighting the fire inside, closing the door against the snow during the annual ski tours he shared with friends for 20 years, and passing around rum toddies with fellow volunteers during working bees.

Pat and Sue have passed on their love of adventure, nature and the mountains to their children. Their eldest son, Mike, spends much of the year in a tent under the star-filled sky teaching clients nature photography and bush skills, helping them to be self-sufficient in the bush, even when it’s under a blanket of snow (see Mike’s photo on our cover). Mike knows the value Cascades holds for Pat. “He gets joy in watching other people coming out here and experiencing the park,” Mike says. “He has a deep love for this area, so it’s a way of giving back.”

Pat appreciates the experiences Cascades has given him in this valley flanked by alpine grasses, heaths and wildflowers, and surrounded by snow- and mountain-gum forests. The hut remains standing today in large part due to his efforts, along with those of Sue, fellow IAC volunteers and other members of the Kosciuszko Huts Association (KHA). The work of volunteers is invaluable to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), which has ultimate responsibility for the huts.

Every year since 1975, a group of IAC volunteers has gathered each Easter to maintain Cascades. In 1975 the challenge was immense. The hut was 40 years old but “looked much older”, according to Pat. The rammed earth floor needed upgrading, the structural posts needed replacing, drainage around the hut required attention and the bark roof leaked. The challenge was not simply to improve the hut’s function, but also to restore the heritage building’s original aesthetics. Pat and the NPWS were guided by the Burra Charter, which, published in 1979, outlines the principles and procedures that should be adhered to when conserving heritage places in Australia.

Former NPWS regional manager Dave Darlington, who’s become a good friend of Pat and his family, says most visitors wouldn’t realise the dedication that’s gone into preserving the function and original aesthetics of Cascades. “You wouldn’t realise that it’s got new bones inside it, not unlike a human getting a couple of artificial joint replacements,” he says. “It looks the same on the outside, but the inside is super strong and it withstands the elements.”

Fellow volunteer and Pat’s long-time friend Col Wooden agrees. “You can’t just get a carpenter to come and rebuild these huts,” he says, “because you’ll end up with a box. You’ve got to teach them to be bodgy.”

The “bodginess” Col refers to includes creative ways of upholding a historic appearance while improving the hut’s durability in alpine conditions. According to Col, Pat was meticulous about using original materials and traditional techniques but occasionally stuck to his guns when he considered function to be more important.

Dave cites three elements that come together when preserving the cultural heritage of huts. “First, you need to understand the historical context of the huts,” he says. “Then you need to have the technique or knowledge to replace a roof, a chimney, or a post that’s rotted out, and third, you need to be able to manage a team of people.” Added to this is the challenge of working in a remote location, where tools, materials and equipment sometimes need to be carried in on foot. “You’re not in a place where you can bring up a scissor lift, press a button and the lift goes up in the air,” Dave says. “You’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Dave worked with many volunteer groups during his time with the NPWS. “Volunteer groups are the lifeline for these huts,” he says. “And this group is one of the best I’ve ever interacted with. They’re capable, they’re passionate, and they’ve had that long-term connection with the huts they’re maintaining.”

The passion of people for alpine huts is never more evident than when those huts are threatened by bushfires. In the 2019–20 Black Summer, 12 Snowy Mountains huts were lost despite considerable efforts of firefighters. Thanks to some creative thinking from Dave and his team, who came up with the idea of wrapping huts in a type of foil to protect them from fire and embers, Cascades still stands, strong, tall and unburnt by those devastating fires. The technique has since saved many other huts. 

Lachie Gales places an unusual-looking axe into his backpack and shoulders the load. The tool – a broadaxe – looks like something from a Game of Thrones’ set. It was made 100 years ago and used by bush carpenters whose trade now is as rare as the axe itself. “Occasionally you come across workmanship in a hut that was built by cattlemen,” Lachie says. “And you can tell a skilled bush carpenter has been there.”

Because of its wide cutting edge and bevelling (sharpening) on only one side, the broadaxe is used by carpenters to make flat surfaces from round logs. The axe helps Lachie and his team retain the original features of the huts they restore. 

Lachie and his mate Pat O’Donohue follow snow poles that have been strategically placed to mark a route across the Bogong High Plains, in the Victorian Alps, towards Mt Jim and Mt Cope. Pat, whose red Gore-Tex jacket stands out against the dreary sky, is carrying a ladder. As the clouds part briefly, Westons Hut comes into view. 

The long-term nature of Lachie and Pat’s friendship is evident in their banter. Their deep connection with Australia’s High Country began years ago. For Lachie, it was through a high school economics teacher who had a passion for adventure and encouraged him to experience the mountains. “That teacher created a turning-point moment in my life,” says Lachie, who responded well to the physical challenges of being in the bush, and the need for self-reliance it engendered.

Lachie maintains his love of the bush 45 years later by restoring and maintaining huts in far-flung places. His work with Pat and other volunteers is a way of giving others access to nature. “Our group’s passion for these huts is seeded in our respect for this place,” Pat says. “It started as a way to contribute back, but now it’s become something bigger than that.”

In 2010 Pat and Lachie were among two dozen volunteers who resurrected Westons Hut, surrounded by the charred trunks of snow gums and mountain ash trees that burnt with the original building in the 2006–07 fires. Many huts lost to fires aren’t rebuilt. Westons had a different fate, for two reasons. First was its value to the Weston family. With links to cattlemen Eric Weston and Fred Briggs, who built the hut in 1932, the family advocated strongly
for its resurrection, partly because of its ideal location midway between Mt Feathertop and the Bogong High Plains. Second, it survived thanks to the hard work and commitment of a team of volunteers from the Victorian High Country Huts Association, led by Lachie. With a quiet but upbeat leadership style, and a wealth of skills gained running a building business in Wangaratta for 35 years, he was the driving force behind the restoration. 

Lachie admires the resourcefulness of the cattlemen who built the huts: they did what they could with what they could find, working with the timber harvested nearby using materials they could repurpose, including kerosene cans flattened into tin sheets. 

Stepping into the huts transports Lachie to those times, and he feels humbled. “I have a deep understanding of what it takes to build any sort of structure – the physicality, the mental effort, and the resilience required,” he says. “For the old-timers, those issues were much more difficult, and every time I see their work, I’m transported back in empathy to what they endured. I sit at the feet of those who came before.”

Yet as a qualified builder he can’t resist improving on the workmanship where he can. “The romanticism of cattlemen’s huts doesn’t travel very far with us,” Lachie says, laughing. “Cattlemen had determination and grit, but they weren’t always great builders.” He refers to leaky bark roofs, chimneys on a lean and crumbling stone structures that were never intended to withstand decades of exposure to harsh sunshine and pelting rain. In bringing Westons back to life, Lachie and his team paid homage to the original design. The existing post holes defined the shape of the new building and the split palings that now clad the walls were made in the traditional way. The high, pitched roof and sheltered verandah reflect what was there before. 

“Our brief was to build a functional refuge that had a clear connection to the previous heritage of the original hut,” Lachie says. Built using a combination of traditional and contemporary methods, Westons will endure the alpine weather for years to come. 

Ten or so kilometres east of Westons, a small group of bushwalkers shelters from the rain inside Cope Hut. Sleeping bags hang from the rafters, drying in the heat of a pot-belly fire. When I open the door, I instantly feel the warmth from inside – the insulation Lachie and Pat’s team installed five years ago is working its magic.

A woman warming by the fire with a hot cup of tea is immensely grateful for the refuge of the hut. She and her partner arrived with wet boots, packs and sleeping bags. “It’s so good to be dry and warm in here,” she says. “It’s a welcome solace from a day in the rain.”

The woman is enjoying the hut in exactly the way Lachie, Pat and the Cascades crew envisaged. An alpine hut is a place of safety, a refuge from the wilds, and a way to make the mountains accessible to those who dare to wander from the security of their everyday lives. After hours of physical exertion and the mental load that adventure can sometimes bring, the huts are there to provide shelter and solace.

“You just throw your pack off,” Pat says “You get your choofer [fuel stove] out and warm something. You feel the burden falling away from you and sheer relief just to be there. It’s just beautiful.”

When Kelly Searl arrived as a child in the Snowy Mountains for family ski trips to find Kosciuszko without snow, her parents would take her into the back country, where they’d walk to a hut. “You’d have to cross rivers and take your shoes off, put them back on, jump on your parents’ backs. I remember it just being so much fun as a kid,” she says.

Years later, Kelly still returns to the mountains and enjoys the same kinds of experiences in the alpine huts with her own kids. “You always come in with rosy cheeks and a cold nose, but lungs full of mountain air, so you never feel anything but excellent,” she says. “Or you’re wet, but it’s still fun because you get a hot chocolate once you get to the hut.”

In 2020 Kelly was moved by the horror of watching thousands of hectares of the Australian Alps burn in the Black Summer bushfires. After building a successful sustainable homewares company, Pony Rider, she wanted to give something back. She created The National Project, a not-for-profit initiative that is raising funds to restore Bullocks Hut, in Kosciuszko NP, via customer donations and a percentage of sales.

“The absolute premise of what I believe is that to change someone’s nature, they need to experience nature,” Kelly says. “But how can people get out there among it if there’s no safe space or shelter?”

While Kelly has never met Pat Edmondson and his son Mike, nor Lachie Gales and his long-time friend Pat O’Donohue, Kelly is grateful to the people who have devoted so much of their lives to caring for alpine huts.

“I’m in awe of them,” she says. She sees the solution to many of the world’s ills as getting people out into nature – and the huts are a vehicle to that solution. “A hut is something that’s been handmade by somebody. It’s been made for a purpose. It’s not made for vanity. It’s made for shelter, just like a home is.”

Alpine huts and the ethos around them provide opportunities for connection and grounding that Kelly believes people seek. “I think everybody is struggling for more connection, especially in this digital world. So I love the hut ethos, which says you always leave something for the next person. You always make sure there’s a packet of matches, and there’s firewood inside that’s dry,” she says. “If we applied the leave-it-better-than-you-found-it hut ethos to our planet, this earth would be such a better place.”

The post High Country heroes appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Heritage-listed nationally because of its extensive cultural and environmental values, Martuwarra, at 735km long, is also WA’s largest listed Aboriginal cultural heritage site. The River and its 20 tributaries flow over the lands of at least nine Indigenous nations, crossing Ngarinyin, Worla, Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Kija, Walmajarri, Mangala, Warrwa and Nyikina countries.

Culture is strong in these parts and Martuwarra is central to identity, law and legend. It is revered as a living ancestral being. 

It’s also a volatile watershed that can be reduced to little more than a trickle in places during the Dry, with species that rely on it for survival being restricted to remnant pools. At other times, the entire system floods with monsoonal rains, carrying enormous volumes of water across the landscape. 

I’ve experienced this raging river system firsthand multiple times since my first descent of it in 2010. And I’ve led many whitewater rafting and kayaking expeditions on Martuwarra, mostly with friends but sometimes alone. 

To reconnect with this truly wild landscape, I’m embarking on a two-week, 400km expedition with a team of fellow adventurers. Our goal is to follow Martuwarra in a 16ft (4.9m) inflatable raft, from the system’s upper reaches to Fitzroy Crossing, about 355km east of Broome. From that point, the threat of saltwater crocodiles becomes too great.

Our team of seven includes Martuwarra rafting veteran and Bunuba man AJ Aiken, his son CJ Aiken, renowned Nyikina artist Mark Coles Smith, photographer Jackson Gallagher and myself, a seasoned whitewater rafter. Also with us is Marianne ‘Ria’ Jago, an acoustic ecologist completing her PhD in “listening to Country” at Queensland’s University of the Sunshine Coast and John Fredericks, supporting the expedition in a kayak that will serve as our safety boat.

With Australian Geographic Society sponsorship, we are self-supported and modestly provisioned for 14 days. It’s March, late in the Wet and the only access to Martuwarra’s headwaters is via light aircraft. Our plan is to fly from Derby, which is situated on the edge of King Sound in far north WA, to our starting point on the Barnett River, one of Martuwarra’s tributaries. 

Conveniently for us, the Great Northern Highway meets the River at Fitzroy Crossing. That will be the end point of our on-water journey. 

Small, single-engined high-winged planes like this one taking us to our journey’s starting point are the workhorses of the Kimberley. It rattles like the gates of a rodeo chute holding back a bronco, and as its wheels leave the hot tarmac, a breeze streams through the slightly open window, offering reprieve from the stifling humidity. 

Once we’re properly airborne, I get a sense of what we’re in for. Seemingly endless expanses of open space stretch below us, punctuated with rocky orange escarpments and scattered blankets of brilliant green vegetation. Water vapour rises from the earth, confirming we’re in the Wet. There is only one way forward now and I’m nervous. 

I try to convince myself that all will be well, despite the remoteness and inaccessibility of this river system and how unpredictable the conditions can be. “It’s all good. You’ve got this,” I tell myself. “Get some rest.” 

I close my eyes but can’t sleep.

Our first strokes on the Martuwarra system are in the Barnett River, in Ngarinyin Country – home to the Wandjina, powerful Creation spirits associated with rain. 

What a place to start. Representations of Creation beings adorn the ancient landscape’s sacred rock faces. We settle into the rhythms of life on the River, hopeful there will be enough water to carry us all the way through the remote passage to Fitzroy Crossing. March is historically not a high-water month on the Martuwarra system, but thankfully the skies are black. Dropping water levels are a concern for our safe passage.

“Bring the rain; send us all the way,” AJ yells in Bunuba. Just as he finishes his entreaty, the rattling boom from a large thunderhead cloud silences the team and makes the hairs stand up on the backs of our necks. It feels like the Wandjina have heard AJ. 

Don’t tempt fate, I think, respecting the immense power of the country we are in.

We are soon surrounded by summits that reach up to 600m above sea level. They drop steeply into deep ravines, cutting through shelves of sandstone. This section is particularly inaccessible and seldom visited. Permission is needed from the Traditional Owners to enter. 

These ranges were the final frontier for colonists who only fully penetrated the region to establish pastoralism after the fall in 1897 of Jandamarra, leader of an Indigenous-led armed resistance. But the canyons are too rugged to be easily navigated on horseback, so have remained relatively untouched. Looking up from a boulder-strewn, walled-in canyon, I can see why these ranges are so rarely visited.

The first two gorges we travel through dissect the ranges and are drop pool–style rapids full of white water. We take our time in these sections. In places, the River itself almost feels lonely.

The sounds of the prolific bird and insect life are deafening; a goanna splashes into the water and curious freshwater crocodiles check us out. It is an ancient landscape, seemingly untouched by time. We fish, laugh and swim. AJ keeps calling for rain. 

After five days we emerge at the bottom of our first major portion of white water. We rush to set up camp – it looks as if we have some big rain coming. The sky blackens, thunder rattles though our bones and lightning cracks all around us. 

Just as we finish cooking our dinner, the rain starts and it comes down hard. We retreat, trying to keep our sleeping space dry as the downfall intensifies, hammering down on us. It’s torrential and comes in sideways. In Nyikina they have a word for this: larrb (a heavy downpour that thrashes and beats down).

A grey dawn emerges from a blanket of cloud and drizzle. Everyone is cold and no-one has slept, but we load the raft and continue on. The next 100km meanders across the largest wetland in the Kimberley. This section has a few names: the Badlands, Yoda’s Swamp and Gladstone Lake. Badlands seems most fitting. 

The monsoonal rain continues as we navigate along an endless maze of corridors. Huge spiders cling to webs in the canopy above us. Large huntsmen crawl all over the raft. A golden orb-weaving spider as large as my fist runs up my neck and onto my hat searching for higher ground. It’s the first of many to do so. They don’t bother me, but I soon learn Mark is scared of them: despite us having been good mates for years I didn’t know this about him until now and take great amusement in his discomfort.

“Left or right channel, Mark?” I ask as we hit a fork. Hundreds of large spiderwebs hang over each channel. Mark makes a nervous noise. I laugh. It’s nice to see a little chink in the big man’s armour. “Left it is!” I say, gleefully. For the next couple of days, the vegetation remains thickly covered with webs. 

The Badlands are testing. The days of paddling are long: bat colonies flank the River; as well as the spiders we encounter freshwater crocodiles; and, in the vast water body, we easily lose sight of the riverbanks and stray off track. Tangled in a thicket of melaleuca and pandanus trees, I check the GPS. The River is 5km away. There is so much water here we’ve veered off course – once a little creek, the water body now covers the floodplain. My earlier concerns about there not being enough water are replaced by fears that there may be too much. We joke that we may never escape the purgatory of the Badlands.

The water level is constantly rising. It hasn’t stopped raining for days, and from horizon to horizon the sky is filled with dark, heavy clouds. As we approach the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, a number of major tributaries join Martuwarra. The catchment is now massive – half the size of Tasmania. We are paddling on what seems like an ocean. It takes almost an hour to travel from one side to the other of the vast, complex current before we reach our next canyon.

I’ve never seen so much water seething between the rock walls here. The first rapid is full of giant whirlpools. The Elders of this country say the water serpent Gala-ru lives in the depths and if you swim out there it will kill you. Looking out over the churning water, I agree that attempting to swim there would be suicidal: you’d be giving yourself to the River.

Our next day is a rest day. We all need it. At this stage of our expedition, the days are merging into each other. We are fully engulfed in our quest, working together like tiny ants to make our way down the giant flooded River, hoping we’ll make it. It’s humbling to follow the River further into the flood. We’re perched above the most dangerous section of white water. I’m concerned about the conditions, worried there may be too much risk involved for us to continue. 

John heads out on his kayak to “surf a wave” while the team cooks dinner. After a while Ria notes that he’s been gone for a long time. Night settles in and there is still no sign of him. Eventually he appears…without the kayak. “I was sucked out of my kayak by a massive whirlpool,” he says, clearly shaken. “It’s gone – I almost didn’t make it to dry ground.”

The situation just got a lot more serious. We now have no safety boat, so all seven of us, as well as two weeks’ worth of expedition gear, will need to fit in the raft. The River is higher than I’ve ever seen it and we are in an extremely remote canyon. 

Our safest bet is to leave the gear here and hike to a station to be airlifted out. I call one of the best bush pilots the Kimberley has to offer on the satellite phone. “No chance, mate,” he says. “Maybe in five days if this low-pressure system clears up.”

I know from my numerous trips into the gorge that the biggest rapids are just around the corner. I’d intended for us to portage these drops, carrying our gear overland to skip these rapids and rejoin the River downstream. 

But with the water lapping against the vertical canyon walls, it’s clear this is not an option. At these flows, with seven people in the raft, we would capsize upon entering the current. The chance of us not losing at least one person to the tremendously powerful River would be slim.

After a day of contemplation, the group and I make the only call we can. We don’t have enough food to wait for the water level to drop, so we decide the team will hike out of the canyon and continue on foot beyond the dangerous section. We’ll then rejoin the River and complete the journey with all seven of us in the raft, despite no longer having the safety kayak. 

The only problem is there is too much gear for us to carry. John and I decide to stay behind to navigate the raft through the rapids. We wish the team a good hike, pull on two life jackets each and get into the raft, which is now significantly lighter. 

This isn’t fun anymore. 

I don’t want to roll the dice with the River gods, the serpent or any other transcendent force waiting in the depths for me to make a mistake but it’s our best option. After five minutes on the River, John and I get out and walk along the canyon rim for the better part of the day. We look down at the massive rapid forged for giants. The 15m-high cliff jump we usually do while on this section of the River is now completely under water. On the canyon walls, rock art estimated to be 40–60,000 years old has water lapping at it. Looking down, we can see whirlpools much larger than our raft developing. These powerful vortices could suck us so deep underwater that chances are we wouldn’t resurface. 

By the time we get back to the raft the sun is setting. Truth be told, I’m terrified. I just want to be safe at the bottom, reuniting with the team. With only 20 minutes of daylight left, it seems too risky to get back on the water. I ask John what he thinks we should do. “Let’s go; let’s get out of here,” he says.

“Do you have at least two flips in you?” I ask. He says he does. Already exhausted, I’m not sure I have the energy to manage two capsizes, but with the daylight fading, I know we don’t have time to keep talking about it.

Paddling white water of this size is a unique experience. The immense volume of water refracts and churns in every direction, bouncing off walls, circulating in vortices, and funnelling into underwater caves. There are dumping waves the size of small buildings. 

We push out into the current. Hacking at the water with our paddles, we feel defenceless against the assault of white water. We hack, hack and hack, desperately trying to position the raft on the narrow navigable path.

The largest rapid is just ahead of us and we both know the raft is going to flip. If we can make it far enough left at the top, we won’t be pushed into a siphon that is drawing up to 75 per cent of the River’s flow and where the water is sucked through a pile of rocks that could trap us under the surface indefinitely. We dig in with all we have, pulling with every bit of strength we can muster. We make it over the first big wave. The second one flips us over. We’re still above the siphon and could easily be pulled in. I hold on for dear life. The paddle is torn from my hands, but I don’t let go of the raft. My shoes are the next thing the River takes. They’re ripped off my feet. I feel as if I’m in a washing machine that’s been thrown off a cliff. 

The violence momentarily subsides and I see that we are past the siphon. I don’t know whether John is still holding on and I climb on top of the upside-down raft to look for him. 

John is there. I pull him up and we right the raft. John hands me his paddle and unties a spare in the boat. It’s now pretty much dark, and we’re in the thick of it.

“Jump left! Now jump right!” I scream as I attempt to square up the features I can see in the diminishing light to stop us from flipping again. Night falls, and we’re still in the white water. 

We push on into the darkness, and within half an hour reach the bottom of the gorge. There is no sign of our crew. We set up camp. The next day, again nothing. Still no sign of our teammates. 

About 40 hours later the team finally limps to the rendezvous coordinates. Mark hands me a super-heavy bag and collapses on the ground. Everyone else is quiet. It’s clear the hike was brutal. What we’d thought would be a half-day walk turned out to be a 30km slog through a knee-deep sludge of black soil.

At the top of the next canyon, with all of us aboard, the raft is flipped by a wave but the conditions here are far calmer than what John and I experienced upstream so I’m not stressed. I can’t say the same for CJ. As he returns to the surface, he gasps for air with wide eyes after having been sucked under water to a great depth. We push on.

Night falls and we arrive at Danggu Geikie Gorge. It’s bathed in the light of the full moon. The shapes of animals come alive from the limestone walls and we’re regaled with stories by an ecstatic AJ who is finally back in “his place, his Country”. The road is within earshot. It’s day 16 of the expedition. We drag the boat out of the water and simply lie down. For me, sleep comes quickly.

By 10 the next morning, I’m standing in an air-conditioned cafe ordering an iced coffee and a smoothie, still covered in mud. I ask Jackson and Ria if they’ve had fun. Looking tired, dehydrated and traumatised, they don’t respond. 

Once we’re hydrated and unpacking what’s happened, AJ lets us know we’re in Bunuba Country. We’re surrounded by some of the first pastoral leases set up in the Kimberley (c.1886), including Fossil Downs, Leopold Downs and Brooking Springs. These places are of great historical significance in the story of Jandamarra’s resistance to the pastoralisation of the Kimberley. “Threats to the area continue to this day, especially as we now approach the lower catchment,” Jackson says, referring to water harvesting, fracking and mining. “The main stakeholders are already the wealthiest in Australia.”

What’s evident from our expedition is that Martuwarra does not exist in isolation; it’s a complex web of ecology, hydrology, community and culture. What affects one section of the River affects the whole system. In Nyikina they say “yimardoowarra”: I belong to the River, not the other way around.

To help protect the river system, the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council of Traditional Owners is starting a River Keepers program that encourages young Indigenous people from various nations to work together to care for the whole catchment, incubating sustainable economic development with a focus on environmental and cultural preservation. 

The skies are blue and I’m left with a sense of hope for the future.

Lachie Carracher thanks Martuwarra for providing safe passage, and the Council of Traditional Owners for allowing the team to visit. Learn more about Martuwarra and the Council of Traditional Owners at         martuwarrafitzroyriver.org

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