UNCHARTERED TERRITORY
Climate change has captured the public’s attention only recently. But there is ample proof that Australia has been affected by climate change in the past. Consider the factors that led to the extinction of our mega-fauna and the fact that Lake Eyre was once a permanent body of water 25m deep and holding up to seven Sydney Harbours.
And that 60,000 years ago Lake Mungo was some 15m deep, with a surface area of about 200sq km. The climate in this region remained stable for around 20,000 years supporting an abundance of biological diversity.
"After all, if water birds flew towards the centre of the continent, there must be water there. Right?”
FOR THE BIRDS
Early European explorers to Australia were confident they would find a vast inland sea in the middle of our continent. Many went searching for it, and many died in the process. But why was it that so many believed in an inland sea? Birdwatching accounts for their confidence.
By 1803, Captain Matthew Flinders had circumnavigated Australia’s mainland. So the educated classes understood how vast Australia was. But, in the early 1800s, much of the inland of the Australian continent had not yet been mapped.
Sitting in the comfort of places such as Adelaide, people noticed that birds headed north every autumn and returned, in good condition, the following spring.
