November - December 2021

Australian Geographic

The journal of the Australian Geographic Society

Australian Geographic2 min read
Close Encounters
LIKE OUR columnist Tim the Yowie Man, we love a good mystery here at AG. So we couldn’t pass up the chance to run an article by TV journalist Ross Coulthart about his investigative work into UFOs – or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), to give them
Australian Geographic1 min read
AG Subscriber Benefits
✓ Substantial savings off the magazine’s retail price ✓ Free VIP membership to the QBD Books Customer Loyalty Program (valued at $25) ✓ VIP access to Australian Geographic product sales throughout the year ✓ Discounts on travel and accommodation thro
Australian Geographic1 min read
Ag Society Fundraiser
Quokka populations have declined hugely during the past 100 years due to introduced predators, habitat destruction and disease. The species is now listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Rottnest Island off the coast of Weste
Australian Geographic2 min read
Notes From The Field
RENOWNED investigative reporter Ross Coulthart has been intrigued by UFOs since, as a teenager, he closely followed the 1978 New Zealand Kaikōura UFO sighting. Later, as a journalist, he found the public explanation by the Royal New Zealand Air Force
Australian Geographic1 min read
Australian Geographic
MANAGING DIRECTOR Jo Runciman EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Chrissie Goldrick CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mike Ellott SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT EDITOR Karen McGhee CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Maggie Cooper SUB-EDITORS Elizabeth Ginis, Susan McCreery SENIOR DESIGNER Mel Tiyce PRODUCTION
Australian Geographic5 min read
Your Say
We’ve been tidying up the family archives and came across some old photos that might be of interest. They were taken before I discovered the photographer’s mantra of “get closer, get closer still”. Nevertheless, they are a record of a remarkable job:
Australian Geographic1 min read
Whales Aloft
For more: nga.gov.au/ THE NEW COMPANION piece to the hot air balloon creation Skywhale, for which Australian sculptor Patricia Piccinini was commissioned to celebrate Canberra’s centenary in 2013, is Skywhalepapa. Patricia’s provocative, hyperreal sc
Australian Geographic2 min read
A Formal Affair
IT’S ABOUT THE intoxicating flurry of dressing up in fashionable evening gowns or wearing a dashing suit so you look your stylish best alongside those who’ve seen you at your dishevelled worst. And it’s all sharpened by the poignancy of farewelling s
Australian Geographic5 min read
Budgie Brilliance
THE DESERT IS quiet for now, except for the sounds of our boots crunching over dry grass and padding across thick red dust as we approach a water-hole outside Alice Springs that only locals know about. It’s a cold early August morning and we’ve ventu
Australian Geographic3 min read
Stalagmites Unlock The Past
THE TAPERING AND sometimes towering mineral deposits called stalagmites, which rise from cave floors, have an internal structure that, like the rings of tree trunks, can retain climate signals in a precise chronology. Now an Australian-based study ha
Australian Geographic3 min readCrime & Violence
Azaria Chamberlain Judgment
ON 17 AUGUST 1980, nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain was taken from a tent at Uluru (then Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory, leading to one of Australia’s biggest legal and media events. It would be another 32 years before a certificate stating th
Australian Geographic1 min read
Talking Australia
Rick is Australia’s leading expert on cane toads. He and his research team developed new methods to control the ecological impact of the invasive amphibians. In this episode he explains why the toads are spreading so fast and how his observations hav
Australian Geographic2 min read
Ball Lightning
DURING A THUNDERSTORM in Horsham, Victoria, in the late 1940s, Norah Collins got the shock of her life. Her son, Craig Collins, explains that Norah was at home knitting when “a bright ball of light floated in through the window”. It hovered over her
Australian Geographic1 min read
My Adventurous Life
DICK SMITH AC writes that he can only explain his “desire for adventure as a deep-seated need for challenge and adrenaline-pumping excitement that the risk-taking gives”. Dick, who founded Australian Geographic, has been taking risks his whole life,
Australian Geographic2 min read
The Australian Geographic Book Club
Firestorm is a confronting snapshot of the future, but its author, Greg Mullins, wants people to respond now. Greg, a former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner who’s battled bushfires on the frontline, warns in this book that things are only going to g
Australian Geographic1 min read
Nature Photographer Of The Year Exhibition
FROM THE DEPTHS of the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia to turtles on Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia and the majestic fjords of New Zealand, visitors can explore the remote corners of our vast region at the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of
Australian Geographic2 min read
Birding Basics
Peter on Twitter: @_peterrowland and Instagram: @_peterrowland MY QUEENSLAND FAVOURITES are the rainforests of Daintree and Lamington national parks. Both are great year-round, but the Daintree is particularly stunning during the Wet (November–March)
Australian Geographic5 min read
Frogs On The Brink
IT’S UNLIKELY THE northern tinker frog will ever be seen again. Once found in the 200km of mountainous rain-forests that stretch from north of Port Douglas to south of Cairns, Queensland, this little amphibian with a call said to be like soft metalli
Australian Geographic2 min readDiet & Nutrition
Is Food Today Less Nutritious?
IS IT TRUE that Big Ag has totally ruined our soil, using up almost all of its goodness, so there’s barely any nutrition left in our food? Well, no. But like all good myths, it carries a small grain of truth. Typical claims include that you would hav
Australian Geographic1 min readHome & Garden
Oz Words
ONE ROOM in the home is almost always referred to with a euphemism – often the loo or WC. To Americans it’s “the bathroom”, “john” or “rest room”. Even “lavatory” is a euphemism, from the Latin for “washing”. “Toilet”, itself, is from a French term f
Australian Geographic1 min read
Looking Up
Why not grab a hot drink, sit back and look for meteors (shooting stars)? Many occur randomly, but some belong to yearly showers, such as the Phoenicids (which seem to originate in the direction of the constellation Phoenix). They’re active from late
Australian Geographic2 min read
Scars Of Cataclysm
MOST OF US are used to the idea that astronomers can look back in time by observing very distant celestial objects whose light has taken billions of years to reach us. It’s a useful tactic that allows us to probe the entire 13.8-billion-year history
Australian Geographic3 min read
Tassie Salmon’s Dilemma
TASMANIAN ATLANTIC salmon has long been marketed as the nutritious and healthy food of a sustainable industry. Millions of the non-native fish are farmed in large circular pens dotted around the island state’s coastline and open to the ocean’s ebb an
Australian Geographic1 min read
Wild Australia Diary Entries
About 200km from Adelaide, the Coorong and Lower Lakes play host to 100,000 wading birds in the spring months up to November. Species such as the common greenshank, red-necked avocet, sharp-tailed sandpiper and black-winged stilt stop here to refuel
Australian Geographic2 min read
Bandicoots Bounce Back
IT’S AN EXTRAORDINARY conservation success story – particularly for a country with the worst rate of modern-day mammal extinctions. A three-decade battle to bring the eastern barred bandicoot back from beyond the brink in Victoria has been won, with
Australian Geographic6 min read
National Treasure
“IN COME THE DOLLARS, in come the cents,” sang the animated Dollar Bill to the tune of the traditional Aussie bush ballad “Click Go the Shears”. The year was 1966, and the jingle was part of an extensive advertising campaign preparing Australians for
Australian Geographic2 min read
A Brief History Of Australia’s Coins
NSW Governor Captain Philip Gidley King declares 10 international coins official currency on 19 November 1800. Indigenous peoples used bartering and First Fleeters previously had no need for money. By punching holes in 40,000 Spanish coins, convicted
Australian Geographic5 min read
Plants Of Future Past
IT STARTED AS a seed of an idea. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a couple of plants from different parts of the world to show the Gondwanan connection, biologist Dr Tonia Cochran wondered as she began planting a garden of ancient plants on her Bruny Isla
Australian Geographic2 min read
Receive Our Book NATIONAL PARKS
AND SAVE 20% when you subscribe or renew As a subscriber you automatically become a member of our charitable foundation, the Australian Geographic Society, which supports conservation, scientific and environmental research, community projects and Aus
Australian Geographic11 min read
Southern Sanctuary
TO SEE A VIDEO of platypus in Lake Elizabeth go to: australiangeographic.com.au/great-ocean-road-platypus The dead-calm water, dotted with skeletal trunks of lifeless trees, adds to the mystical setting. I’m sitting in the front of a canoe, scanning
Australian Geographic1 min read
Otway Range region
A variety of walking tracks head into forest areas and along the coast, taking in stunning scenery and fascinating heritage sites. They include: 1 Melba Gully–Madsens Track Nature Walk (1.2km return). Melba Gully is one of Victoria’s wettest places.
Australian Geographic1 min read
The Gadubanud
THE ROAD TRIP: Built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932 and dedicated to soldiers killed during WWI, the Great Ocean Road stretches 243km between Torquay and Allansford, and is one of the most iconic road trips in Australia. BEST TIME OF YEAR
Australian Geographic9 min read
Behind The Smile
SCROLL THROUGH THE Instagram account of tennis great Roger Federer and among his snippets on great matches and life on the pro circuit you’ll find a photo of him taken in 2017 on Western Australia’s Rottnest Island with a quokka. Since that image wen
Australian Geographic2 min read
Quokka
Scientific name: Setonix brachyurus Family: Macropodidae Subclass: Marsupialia Distribution: Restricted to the South West region of Western Australia. The species occurs on Rottnest and Bald islands and on the mainland in small groups near Two People
Australian Geographic1 min read
More Quokka Facts
• Quokkas were the second marsupials recorded by Europeans in Australia, after tammar wallabies on the Houtman Abrolhos islands were described by the crew of the Batavia in 1629. • In 1696 Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh mistook quokkas for giant ra
Australian Geographic12 min read
Perhaps The truth Is Out there
Bill Lynn couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was just on dusk on 25 October 1973 inside the top-secret base known as US Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, on Western Australia’s remote North West Cape, when he noticed a huge dark orb ho
Australian Geographic2 min read
Westall High School, April 1966
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD schoolgirl Joy Clarke was in her science class at Westall High School on the morning of 6 April 1966 when another girl rushed into the classroom, shouting excitedly to Mr Greenwood the teacher, “Mr Greenwood, Mr Greenwood, there’s thi
Australian Geographic10 min read
Following Fossil Footsteps
But with my nine-year-old daughter, Tiah, in tow, a multiday history lesson seems ambitious. That is, until I mention we’ll be digging for dinosaurs. Instantly, Tiah’s eyes light up and without hesitation she’s in. We’re embarking on a six-day, 900km
Australian Geographic1 min read
Muttaburrasaurus Langdoni
Age: Early Cretaceous Region: QLD/NSW Length: Up to 9m Height: 2.5m Muttaburrasaurus (muta-burra-sore-rus), named in 1981, is our largest ornithopod. Known from a partial skeleton and a second skull from QLD and several teeth from NSW, this powerful
Australian Geographic3 min read
Overlanders Way
DRIVE: The journey is 149km (1hr 30mins) on Flinders Highway (A6) to Julia Creek. VISIT: Beneath the Creek at the Julia Creek Visitor Information Centre for dunnart feedings at 10am and 2pm, weekdays, or 10am weekends, from April to October. Centre i
Australian Geographic7 min read
With The Camera At Anzac Cove
AT FIRST GLANCE, Australian World War I service records might be considered the exclusive and arcane province of military historians trying to piece together the “big picture”. But the carefully catalogued collection of enlistment papers, paybooks, m
Australian Geographic1 min read
Australovenator Wintonensis
Age: Middle Cretaceous (100–95mya) Region: Queensland Length: 6m Height: 2m Weight: 300–400kg This speedy theropod, named in 2009, had huge claws on its front limbs and slendertoed feet and has been described as the cheetah of Cretaceous Australia. I
Australian Geographic1 min read
Why Travel With Us?
Travelling with Australian Geographic inspires people to care about the planet by providing meaningful opportunities to explore it. Our travel experiences are rich in nature and adventure, and our travel partners specialise in hard-to-reach places an
Australian Geographic2 min read
Captains Micheline Jenner AM and Curt Jenner AM
MARINE BIOLOGISTS Curt and Micheline Jenner have been conducting exploratory research into whale population biology and distribution since 1987 on the east and west coasts of Australia and in Hawaii. Micheline and Canadian-born Curt first met as whal
Australian Geographic2 min read
Australia’s Great Southern Coastline
SET SAIL ABOARD state-of-the-art expedition ship Coral Geographer on this Australian Geographic partner voyage into the wild nature, rich history and unique food experiences of Australia’s southern coast. Here, sweeping beaches and idyllic seaside to
Australian Geographic1 min read
Join the Jenners
• Australian Geographic Society Lifetime of Conservation Award winners Curt and Micheline Jenner head up the Centre for Whale Research in WA, and, between them, have studied everything about whales, from population biology and migratory pathways to t
Australian Geographic2 min read
Adventure into Yolŋu Homeland Culture, East Arnhem Land, NT
THIS TOUR IS a genuine cultural adventure and visits one of a selection of remote Yolŋu homelands. Suitable for all ages, we welcome families with children to share in this life-changing experience. There will often be Yolŋu children at the homelands
Australian Geographic2 min read
Galápagos Islands Adventure – In Darwin’s Footsteps
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC and Hurtigruten Expeditions have partnered to offer you this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Join us on a journey of ecological discovery as we go from Quito, Ecuador in Charles Darwin’s footsteps to experience the natural wonder
Australian Geographic1 min read
Chrissie Goldrick
Chrissie is Editor in Chief of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC and chair of the Adventure and Conservation advisory committees of the Australian Geographic Society. She came from a background in UK television news and newspapers to work in the photo department
Australian Geographic2 min read
The Best of the K’gari (Fraser Island) Great Walk, Queensland
THE BEST OF K’GARI (Fraser Island) Great Walk showcases select stretches of the iconic, 90km walking track over three days. You’ll experience the unimaginable beauty of diverse landscapes, from the coastal bushland, through the heart of the rainfores
Australian Geographic2 min read
Antarctica & Falklands Expedition
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC and Hurtigruten Expeditions have partnered to offer you this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Explore Antarctica during its summer, touring icebergs and visiting penguin colonies ashore. You’ll also go to the Falkland Islands, vis
Australian Geographic1 min read
David Haslingden
David is the chair of the Australian Geographic Society, and his company RACAT Group owns Australian Geographic, along with several other media companies. He was raised on a sheep and cattle farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains and his father
Australian Geographic2 min read
Bruny Island Birding & Wildlife Tour, Tasmania
THIS COMPREHENSIVE TOUR of Bruny’s much-lauded highlights – flora, fauna and history – is also all-inclusive of Tassie’s fabulous food and beverages (and features lots of it!). Relaxed and informal, it makes use of Inala Private Reserve, a 600ha Land
Australian Geographic1 min read
Ross Sea, Antarctica Expedition
Explore well beyond the Antarctic Circle down to the historic heart of Antarctica and the world’s largest marine sanctuary, the Ross Sea, on pioneering expedition cruise company Heritage Expeditions ultimate bucket-list adventure, In the Wake of Scot
Australian Geographic1 min read
Top End Wildlife Adventure, NT
Australia’s tropical outback – the Top End – is a wild land where brolgas fly across the sunset, huge crocodiles laze on riverbanks and sandstone shimmers with the world’s oldest art. But even here wildlife faces threats. Shorebirds (waders) fly to A
Australian Geographic1 min read
Bird Research On Island Haven
A gem of the natural world, Lord Howe Island has dramatic scenery, lush subtopical forests, rare flora and fauna, pristine beaches and colourful marine life. Both breathtaking and unique, Lord Howe Island elicited this praise from Sir David Attenboro
Australian Geographic4 min read
AusQuiz
1 The Arunta believe kangaroo spirits are expelled by human blood from what objects? 2 Which SA amateur astronomer discovered 18 new comets? 3 Which Aussie invented the black box flight recorder in 1953? 4 Near which major city is Lake Alexandrina? 5
Australian Geographic1 min read
Ross, TAS
THE “MOST BEAUTIFUL of Tasmania’s 19th-century colonial towns” is how Ross is often described. As well as having one of Australia’s most impressive bridges, Ross is special because its small number of cafes and gift shops are unobtrusive, discreet an
Australian Geographic2 min read
Places Of Interest
The 1836 convict-built stone bridge is a highlight of any visit to Ross. Designed by John Lee Archer and commissioned by George Arthur, lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land, it’s one of the country’s oldest bridges and demonstrates fine skill. De
Australian Geographic1 min read
Ross timeline
• Well before Europeans settled here, the district was home to the Tayarinutipana people. • The first Europeans arrived in 1807 when surveyor Charles Grimes landed on Van Diemen’s Land. Travelling from north to south, he mapped sections of what becam
Australian Geographic3 min read
Ardrossan Whale Memorial
RESIDENTS OF the small community of Ardrossan on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula woke on the morning of Monday 8 December 2014 to a distressing sight. On Parara Beach, just outside the town, six huge sperm whales lay dead or dying on the muddy sand

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