July - August 2024

Australian Geographic

The journal of the Australian Geographic Society

Australian Geographic3 min read
From the Editor
SINCE STEPPING Into this role, I haven’t been able to get into the field nearly as much as I once did – or would like to. But when The University of Sydney offered me an opportunity to visit their research station on One Tree Island (OTI) on the Worl
Australian Geographic2 min read
Obsessed With Obsession
WRITER LIZ GINIS grew from toddler to teen in the green pastures and eucalypt forests of the Bellinger Valley on the NSW Mid North Coast, making her the ideal writer to cover our story on the Great Koala National Park (page 74). “My family property i
Australian Geographic1 min read
Australian Geographic
EDITOR Karen McGhee SENIOR DESIGNER Mel Tiyce GROUP PICTURE EDITOR Nicky Catley CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Maggie Cooper STAFF WRITER AND SUB-EDITOR Esme Mathis DIRECTOR OF CARTOGRAPHY Will Pringle PROOFREADER Susan McCreery COPY EDITOR Jo Hartmann AUSTRALIAN
Australian Geographic6 min read
Your Say
$50 WINNER I buy AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC semi-frequently but over the past year or so I’ve not been able to grab as many copies as I used to. When I was purchasing it more regularly I was constantly thinking I’d like to reach out and offer some First N
Australian Geographic1 min read
Big Picture: Southern Lights Spectacular
I HAVE WITNESSED my fair share of aurora australis here in Antarctica, having worked eight expedition seasons in the past 14 years. But the solar storm on 25 March 2024 led to the most beautiful auroral display I’ve ever seen. I knew the geomagnetic
Australian Geographic7 min read
Geobits: Bite-sized News And Events
Palaeontologists from Museums Victoria have retrieved the fossilised remains of an extinct short-faced kangaroo from a cave system on Gunaikurnai Country near Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria. With 150 bones – amounting to 71 per cent of the origin
Australian Geographic3 min read
Tim The Yowie Man: The Man Buried Three Times
BY DEFINITION, A final resting place is final, isn’t it? Well, not always, it seems. It certainly wasn’t for Ned Kelly and his fellow felons hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol. Their remains were exhumed from the Gaol’s mass cemetery in 1929 and reinterred
Australian Geographic4 min read
Snapshot: Capturing despair
IMAGES OF THE Chaos and damage wreaked on Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day 1974 are common and widely published – shattered houses, crumpled aircraft, buckled power poles and ships aground. But this one was
Australian Geographic3 min read
Treading Lightly: For The Love Of Mallee
WHAT A THRILL it is to have been asked to write about conservation travel for AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC. Most of my life has been dedicated to either conservation or travel and this column gives me an opportunity to share what I’ve learnt about both. In
Australian Geographic6 min read
Australia Portrait: Cue the Music
ACCLAIMED VIOLIST, CONDUCTOR and composer Aaron Wyatt is pragmatic about his Noongar heritage. “To totally paraphrase [former prime minister] Julia Gillard, it’s not everything about me but it’s not nothing about me. It’s just one of many parts of wh
Australian Geographic6 min read
Protecting Our Pollinators
HONEY RUNS THROUGH Cedar Anderson’s veins. A third-generation beekeeper, the 44-year-old is at the forefront of a global movement championing bees and protecting their habitats in the face of a worldwide biodiversity crisis. In 2015, together with hi
Australian Geographic2 min read
Earth View Perspective: The Real Natural History Of Our Tall, Wet Forests
IF YOU WERE wading ashore in Australia in 1788 and walked into the forest, what would this forest have looked like? Would it have been an easy stroll because the forest was open and park-like with widely spaced trees and grassy ground cover? Or would
Australian Geographic3 min read
Need To Know With Dr Karl Kruszelnicki: Drunk From The Inside
AMAZINGLY, SOME PEOPLE can manufacture alcohol inside their body from the food they eat – carbohydrates, to be specific. Some do it so well, they can raise their blood alcohol level to eight times the legal driving limit! Fairly accurately, it’s call
Australian Geographic3 min read
Defining Moments: Protecting the GBR
BACK IN THE 1960s two Queensland-based conservation societies – the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (WPSQ) and the Queensland Littoral Society (QLS), now the Australian Marine Conservation Society – helped spearhead a national movement to
Australian Geographic3 min read
Space: Gamma-ray lighthouses
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN If time suddenly began running backwards? Of course, it can’t do that, but the question is one that recently crossed the minds of a team of astronomers in the USA. TO understand why, we have to go back to 1967, when the first of a c
Australian Geographic5 min read
Sense Of Place: A Place Of Last Resort
THIS IS A holding place, stockpiling the cells of Australia’s most threatened species for resurrection in a potentially desolate future – a frozen archive held in suspended animation as an insurance policy against biodiversity loss. Welcome to the Ia
Australian Geographic7 min read
Our Early Weathermen
THE SPLENDIDLY NAMED Basil de Burgh Newth was part of a small group of mainly young men who, at the end of the 19th century, lived year-round on mainland Australia’s highest point – Mt Kosciuszko, in New South Wales, where a weather station had been
Australian Geographic6 min read
Rescuing the Chuditch
AUSTRALIA’S MOST ENDANGERED AGS FUNDRAISER EVER HEARD OF a chuditch? Judging by the species’ huge natural range, which includes every mainland state and territory, it should be as familiar to most Australians as the emu or koala. But unless you live
Australian Geographic8 min read
Looking for Tjakura
WE FAN OUT across the landscape between spiky clumps of spinifex. Heads down and moving as one, we carefully scan the ground in front of us for traces, for clues. We’re all looking for the burrows of a very special animal. I’m here at Uluru-Kata Tjut
Australian Geographic5 min read
A Wild Polo Tussle
GEEBUNG, THE COUNTRY polo club, and the Cuff ’n’ Collars, from the city, battle annually for glory, watched by as many as 3000 spectators, more people than attend the opening of the local ski season. The country team ride their own stockhorses, used
Australian Geographic8 min read
More Than Quokkas
Less than 1 per cent of Australia’s population lives on the small islands dotted around our continent. This number is growing as more people head across the water after the onset of COVID, rejecting costly city living and office-based work. But is “i
Australian Geographic16 min read
Clear-cutting Koala Country
ASHLEY LOVE IS a bear of a man: tall and solid, with a mop of white-grey hair. He’s also the founding father of the proposed Great Koala National Park (GKNP), although eliciting information from him about the park is akin to spotting its namesake nes
Australian Geographic13 min read
Around Australia In 44 Days
AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY EXPEDITION REPORT THE EARLY 20TH century was a time of pioneering aviation achievements. There were, for example, the first flights from England to Australia in 1919, a nonstop transatlantic flight in the same year, and
Australian Geographic12 min read
A Beautiful Disaster
THERE AREN’T MANY places as idyllic as a tropical coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). These hard-to-reach places – natural mounds of white coral sand and rubble that often sprout lush green vegetation fertilised by seabirds – are among the pla
Australian Geographic14 min read
Unique Experiences With Our Trusted Travel Partners
Travelling with Australian Geographic inspires people to care about the planet by providing meaningful opportunities to explore it. Our experiences are rich in nature and adventure, and our travel partners specialise in small-group experiences. Austr
Australian Geographic2 min read
Aus Quiz: Test Your Wits
1 Under what species of tree does the swagman camp in “Waltzing Matilda”? 2 What is Australia’s largest lizard species? 3 Who was the first Australian-born person to go into space? 4 The Twelve Apostles in Victoria are made from what type of sediment
Australian Geographic4 min read
Aussie Towns: Lancelin, WA
LANCELIN’S GREAT APPEAL lies in its holiday ambience. Once a quiet, sleepy fishing village with a single hotel and a couple of caravan sites, Lancelin has slowly evolved over the years into a popular seaside resort town. Just a 90-minute drive north
Australian Geographic3 min read
Traces: Loveday Internment Camp, SA
DURING WORLD WAR II, civilians in Australia deemed “enemy aliens” – mostly those of German, Italian and Japanese descent – were housed in internment camps. The largest of the camps was Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia’s Riverland region, ab
Australian Geographic7 min read
Your Society
WE ARE THRILLED To announce a brand-new public event for Australian Geographic; our first ever Australian Geographic Awards for Nature presentation night. We now know who the three recipients of the $100,000 funding pool will be, and we look forward

Australian Geographic

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