Science Network WA
TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN
THE World Wildlife Fund and Indigenous rangers have commenced a survey of three Kimberley rock wallaby species.
World Wildlife Fund ecologist Darren Grover says the animals’ habitats have not been surveyed for up to 10 years, and there are concerns about declining numbers in the wild.
Science Network [read this story]
This story was also republished in The Kimberley Echo on 11 July 2013.
Science Network WA
TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN
Climate change could lead to sea turtles successfully breeding further south, a scientist says.
While instinct drives a mother turtle to lay her eggs at her own hatching place, cyclones sometimes take her a long way away when she is ready to lay.
She may have to make an emergency landing – and laying – on another beach when she is caught short.
Hotter summers are likely to make new beaches warm enough to incubate turtle eggs in future.
Dirk Hartog Island has the southernmost loggerhead turtle rookery.
Science Network [read this story]
This story was republished in The Northern Guardian on 13 November 2013.
Science Network WA
Text by GEOFF VIVIAN
THE CSIRO has been monitoring air quality at Lake Argyle in the Kimberley, and in Darwin and Jabiru in the Northern Territory, for 10 years.
CSIRO’s Dr Ross Mitchell says the research began because it became clear that aerosol has an important but poorly understood effect on climate.
From Broome Advertiser
“What we’ve done is to provide the climate modellers with a very firm basis on which to build and test their models of how the fire regime and the subsequent emission of smoke aerosol can be realistically represented in the global climate models,” he says.
“The smoke that we are talking about comes from the seasonal burning of the tropical savannah.
“That includes the Kimberley region of Western Australia, the top two thirds of the Northern Territory, and adjacent areas of Queensland.”
Dr Mitchell says most of the fires are deliberately lit for land management, with the majority of the smoke generated during the late dry season between August and November.
This story first appeared in Science Network WA on Sunday 4 August 2013. You can read the rest of the article if you click here.
Broome Advertiser republished it on Thursday September 5 2013.
A team of scientists is travelling to the eastern Kimberley to sort out the vexed question of rock art dates.
From The Kimberley Echo 2 September 2013
The hot question is when prehistoric artists stopped painting in the Gwion Gwion style, and when they started painting Wanjinas.
Science Network WA first published my interview with archaeologist Fiona Hook on 8 August 2013, it has since appeared in the Broome Advertiser and Kimberley Echo newspapers on 29 August and on The West Australian’s regional website on 2 September of the same year.
The latter has the best headline, albeit with dubious grammar.
The Kimberley Echo
Text and picture by GEOFF VIVIAN
Halls Creek has not had enough houses for a long time.
Click on this image to read the story
Many people live in caravans at workplaces and parked in other people’s driveways.
Halls Creek Shire had fallen into the practice of renting houses out to services it wanted to attract to the town.
Unfortunately this meant it was unable to fill important vacancies of its own when there was nowhere for outside applicants to live.
The shire evicted Russell Tremlett when it needed the house he was in for a new staff member.
From The Kimberley Echo
A serious cultural debate keeps popping up since Worora elder Donny Woolagoodja first displayed a giant Wanjina at the Sydney Olympics.
Vesna Tenodi
Several non-Aboriginal artists felt that Wanjina images, until then confined to Kimberley caves, were theirs to reproduce and re-interpret. Elders of the Worora, Ngarinjin and Wunambul tribes disagreed, and have expressed distress and disappointment at what they see as outsiders’ appropriation of their sacred imagery.
Dutch musician Randolph Smeets – aka the Phlod Nar – created a suite of musical pieces, even though he had never visited the Kimberley.
You can find my 2009 WA Today story about Randolph and his work here.
Croation-Australian gallery owner Vesna Tenodi had likewise never visited the people of Mowanjum. Nevertheless she commissioned a giant sculpture of Wanjinas carved in the side of a massive stone block, outside her gallery in Sydney’s Blue Mountains.
You can find my first KimberleyPage story about Vesna and her cultural adventure with the Wanjinas here. More stories about the unfolding drama are here.
TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN
TRADITIONAL Owners are helping scientists from UWA and CSIRO conduct a genetic survey of insects in Kimberley vine thickets for bio-molecular analysis in bulk—a technique that comes under the heading of ‘eco-genomics’.
The team has sampled flying and crawling insects from 36 vine thickets in coastal and
The Kimberley Echo 4 July 2013
island locations between Derby and Kalumburu.
At each site a tray is prepared with the specimens laid out and digitally photographed before they are all placed into a combined ‘DNA soup’ for bio-molecular analysis.
CSIRO evolutionary biologist Dr Owain Edwards says the method is being developed in response to a legislated requirement for environmental approvals before resource projects can commence.
He says traditional taxonomic methods used on single sites are time-consuming, and in a poorly studied region like the Kimberley, give no indication as to whether a newly-discovered species is locally endemic or more widespread.
Science Network [read this story]
This story has also been republished in The Broome Advertiser and Kimberley Echo newspapers.
THE WA Government has listed an ecological community on Broome’s outskirts as Priority 1 PEC (Priority Ecological Community).
The dominant species is a small tree that grows on the top of relic sand dunes in the Broome Peninsula.
It is commonly known by the Bardi name Mangarr and in English as wild prune (Sersalisia sericea)formerly (Pouteria sericea).
“It is an important and renowned local bushtucker species and does not occur in such frequency and longevity in other locations,” says ecologist Louise Beames.
Science Network [read this story]
This story first appeared in Science Network WA on 10/4/2013 and it has been republished by Broome Advertiser on 4/7/2013
GEOFF VIVIAN
from The Western Review November 1994
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There are several good reasons for avoiding opinion pieces.
One is the fact that opinions do change!
I wrote this in the mid-1990s before glassings came into vogue in Northbridge pubs.
Disclaimer: the author no-longer holds these views.
Well, some of them perhaps.
Two stories from The Koori Mail.
Click on this image to read the story
In the first, a consulting archaeologist and a KLC heavyweight say it is getting easier to destroy archaeological sites in Western Australia.
In the second, the National Native Title Council CEO weighs in along with the WA Aboriginal Affairs minister and another consulting archaeologist.