As the COVID pandemic took hold in March, Ohio’s Brady Sluder went to Miami for spring break, despite urgent calls for people to stay home and socially distance.
If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying […] about two months we’ve had this trip planned.
A week later — now an international “celebrity” for all the wrong reasons — he was forced to issue a grovelling apology.
If you think Sluder’s partying was stupid, we share your feelings.
With the festive season upon us, as the pandemic continues, we can only hope covidiots listen to the rules. As many of us also head off on summer breaks, now is also a good time to reflect on stupidity in tourism.
We may be tempted to think a stupid person has certain demographic or psychological characteristics. However, anyone can behave stupidly, especially in unfamiliar environments — like holidays — where it is difficult to judge the right course of action.
The laws of human stupidity
In our recently published journal article on stupidity in tourism, we see stupidity as an action without insight or sound judgement. This results in losses or harm to the perpetrator and others. In a holiday context, it can negatively affect tourists themselves, as well as other people, animals, organisations, or destinations.
When bars were shut in Florida Spring Break revellers headed to the beach. Julio Cortez/AP/AAP
In 1976, Italian economist Carlo Cipolla published a definitive essay called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. Although we prefer to focus on stupid behaviour rather than stupid people, we agree with his five laws:
Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget dealing with or associating with stupid people always and everywhere turns out to be a costly mistake.
A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Why is stupid behaviour so dangerous? Because it is irrational and so the outcome is unpredictable.
How can we better understand our own stupid behaviour, or recognise it in others? Stupidity is generally caused by an excess of one or more of the following factors:
the person believing they know everything
the person believing they can do anything
the person being extremely self-centred
the person believing nothing will harm them
the person’s emotions (for example, fear or anger)
the person’s state (for example, exhausted or drunk).
Why stupid behaviour is more likely on holidays
Tourists can be affected by all of these factors.
Leisure tourism, by its nature, is a very self-centred and pleasure-seeking activity. People often travel to relax and enjoy themselves.
In pursuit of trying something new or escaping their daily routine, people may go to places with very different cultures or practices than their own, or try things they wouldn’t normally do — such as adventure activities. As a result, individuals can act differently while on holidays.
There also seem to be fewer social constraints. Tourists may not follow rules and social norms while travelling, because relatives, friends, colleagues, bosses are less likely to find out. Of course, tourists may not be aware of the commonly-accepted rules of where they travelling, as well.
All of the above increases the likelihood of stupidity. And one certainly doesn’t need to travel overseas to be stupid. A case in point is a tourist who snuck into Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which was closed-off in August due to COVID concerns in the local indigenous community. The woman injured her ankle and had to be rescued.
The importance of thinking first
So, what to do about stupid tourist behaviour?
Strict regulation, physical barriers, warning signs and other punitive measures alone may not work. This is seen in the case of a man who climbed over a zoo fence in 2017 to avoid the entry fee. He ended up being mauled to death by a tiger.
Education of tourists on how to behave during travels has some effect. But more importantly, tourists need to be self-aware. They need to consider what is likely to happen as a result of their behaviour, how likely is it that things will go wrong, and whether they would do this at home.
While stupidity is impossible to eliminate, it can be less frequent and do much less damage, if we take time to reflect on our behaviour and attitudes.
So, have fun during the holiday … but don’t be stupid!
Often in the lead up to Christmas, the tree with the curious common name “snow in summer” is in full bloom.
Snow in summer (Melaleuca linariifolia) is an Australian paperbark, and is endemic to parts of Queensland and New South Wales. It has spikes of creamy white flowers that grow in dense clusters at the ends of branches and twigs. When in profusion, they look very much like snow-capped foliage.
It intrigued me as a youngster and, not surprisingly, I associated it with Christmas and the images of the snowy festivals of the northern hemisphere, which were such a contrast to our own experiences.
Depending where you live, Melaleuca linariifolia tends to flower from late October until February, but in many parts of Australia they are in full flower in December. Once they start, however, you must be quick to catch sight of them — the impressive flower show doesn’t last more than a couple of weeks.
Hear the hum of insects
Naturally, snow in summer often grows near water and rivers, and can reach heights of ten to 12 metres (but is often lucky to make it to eight metres).
The flowers attract native birds and bees. Greg Moore, Author provided
Its dense canopy provides excellent habitat for native birds and mammals such as honey-eaters and possums, as it offers protection and great nesting sites. The nectar in its flowers attracts native birds, bees and other insects, and if you wander past when it’s in full bloom, you can hear the hum of insect visitors.
The fruits develop as hard woody capsules, which only release their seed after a fire or when they dry out. They are like little woody cups about five millimetres across, glued to the woody branches.
Like all paperbarks, the bark of snow in summer is wonderfully spongy and can be quite thick. You can peel it off in sheets, draw and write on it. It also had uses for Indigenous peoples, who would wrap the strips of bark around fish or meat and then bury the food under sand or soil for slow cooking.
The thick, spongy bark of Melaleuca linariifolia can be easily torn off in large strips. John Robert McPherson/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
From farms and nature strips to pharmacies
As far back as the 1970s, snow in summer was planted in urban nature strips and as an effective landscape screening plant. While many of those 1970s nature strip trees are gone, those that remain still put on quite a show.
They were also planted widely as a wind break on farms because of its low growing habit and dense canopy. But farmers may have been left disappointed as the trees burnt well in fires and tended to collapse as they reached the end of their useful lives, which could be as short as 20 years.
It has been widely used horticulturally and there are compact forms, such as those named “snowstorm” and “sea foam”, that grow only to about two metres and make hardy garden shrubs.
Snow in summer is native to eastern Australia, but has been planted widely elsewhere, such as in California, US. John Rusk/Flickr, CC BY
For the gardeners, Melaleuca linariifolia is easy to propagate from both cuttings and seed. It has quite an extensive root system that can cause problems if you have leaky pipes. They love water — in fact, they’re what botanists call “luxury water users”, and have little or no control of how much water they take from the soil.
They grow well in almost any soil and it doesn’t matter if they’re occasionally waterlogged, as they tolerate periods of inundation. If you want a plant that will drain a swamp, Melaleucas in general are up for it.
Like many members of the Myrtaceae family — which includes eucalypts and tea tree — Melaleuca linariifoliais are rich in essential oils. One of these, Terpinen-4-ol is found in high concentrations in snow in summer and is an antioxidant and powerful antiseptic.
It can be used as disinfectant and to treat skin problems as it is non-irritant. There is great scientific interest at the moment in its use in anti-bacterial and anti-viral medicines.
Snow is summer typically blooms for only around two weeks every year. Shutterstock
By any other name
Just to avoid confusion, some of you may know of other plants as snow in summer. The most common is Cerastium tomentosum, which is a low growing ground cover with small white trumpet-like flowers. It is a southern European plant, but has been widely planted in gardens around the world. Likewise, Melaleuca alternifolia is also called snow in summer and was once considered to be a variety of Melaleuca linariifolia.
Melaleuca linariifolia was one of the first plants I planted in my own first (and only) backyard in the late 1970s.
I always anticipated its flowering and would make sure our children saw the flowers, explained why it was called snow in summer and usually noted the number of days to Christmas. It is one of the trees they remember still.
A nature reserve in India could soon be the only location in the world to host wild populations of four major big cat species – tiger, lion, leopard and cheetah. Kuno-Palpur, in central state of Madhya Pradesh, may not be one of India’s best-known sanctuaries but it is certainly becoming one of its most controversial. In early 2020, the country’s supreme court agreed that wildlife authorities there could reintroduce the cheetah to India, 70 years after its local extinction.
Cheetahs once roamed across much of India and the Middle East, but today the entire Asian cheetah population is confined to just a few dozen animals in remote regions of Iran. The reluctance of the Iranian authorities to part with any of these rare creatures has led India farther afield in its attempts to secure a founder population. Currently, the favoured option is African cheetahs available from Namibia, which has the world’s largest population.
Kuno-Palpur was identified as the preferred location for India’s relocation programme as it has large grasslands, ideally suited to the cheetah’s need to build up speed without worrying about trees or other obstacles. These grasslands were formed, in large part, through the removal of villages and rewilding of agricultural land to make way for the relocation of the Asiatic lion.
The Asiatic lion is itself an endangered species. Like the Asian cheetah it was once common right across India and the Middle East, but it now only survives as a single population of almost 700 in Gir Forest, a national park in the state of Gujarat, western India. Fears that a single disruption event – such as a disease outbreak or poaching epidemic – may be sufficient to consign the entire species to extinction, prompted the search for a second home for these big cats. This search ended in the identification of Kuno-Palpur, almost 30 years ago.
Asiatic lions are smaller than their African cousins, have smaller and darker manes, and all live in one forest. Andrew M. Allport / shutterstock
In 2016 India’s supreme court, citing unacceptable delays, ordered the lion relocation process to be completed within six months. At the same time, the court dismissed a parallel application for the reintroduction of cheetahs, reasoning that it would be paradoxical to elevate the claims of an exotic subspecies (African cheetahs) over those of an endemic (Asiatic lions).
Today there are still no lions in Kuno-Palpur, although it does retain a stable leopard population. This non-compliance has been widely attributed to parochial politics, wrapped up in what has been described as Gujarati pride. Despite the fact that all wildlife is deemed a national resource under the Indian constitution, Gujarat appears determined to hold on to its state monopoly on the creatures.
Then, in early 2020, the court made an unexpected U-turn and gave the green light for cheetah reintroduction to begin. Some experts questioned the science behind the decision. For example they point out that the cheetah is a wide-ranging species, known to travel across areas up to 1,000 sq km in a single year. Indian parks tend to be much smaller than those in Africa, offering less chance for such free movement. And, while the habitat is currently suited to cheetahs – and lions – some fear that it may ultimately evolve into dry, scrubby forest more suited to tigers.
Springbok hunting in Namibia. Elana Erasmus / shutterstock
There is also credible evidence that tigers are already dispersing to Kuno-Palpur as animals from a reserve in neighbouring Rajasthan seek to escape territorial over-crowding. This suggests there is a functioning wildlife corridor between the two reserves, a stated priority for Indian conservation.
This is not a simple issue to resolve. As the supreme court is increasingly called upon to adjudicate between the various factions, so these conundrums are likely to intensify in the future. There is no science available currently to suggest that cheetahs, lions, tigers and leopards can coexist comfortably in the same habitat. It has never occurred anywhere else before, so there is no real-life experience to draw upon.
In my research for a forthcoming book on tigers I found India’s wildlife is becoming increasingly commercialised and much of what we accept as rational conservation can just as easily be viewed through an economic lens – one that reflects the benefits of tourism. On the surface, the cheetah scheme feels more like a vanity project than a conservation imperative; no doubt a boon for wildlife tourism but maybe also a presenting a threat of intra-species and human-wildlife conflict.
Aardvarks are notoriously elusive, nocturnal mammals. They generally hide in their underground burrows during the day and emerge at night to feed exclusively on ants and termites. Aardvarks are widespread throughout most habitats of Africa south of the Sahara, except deserts. But their actual numbers are not known because they’re so elusive.
Aardvarks top the bucket list of many wildlife enthusiasts, but few have been fortunate enough to see them – until recently. Daytime sightings of aardvarks are becoming more common in the drier parts of southern Africa. But seeing them in the daytime does not bode well because it indicates they might not be finding enough food.
To understand how aardvarks cope with hot and dry conditions, we studied them in the Kalahari, one of the hottest and driest savannah regions in southern Africa in which aardvarks occur. Our study took place at Tswalu, a private reserve in South Africa that supports research through the Tswalu Foundation. We equipped wild, free-living aardvarks with biologgers (minicomputers) that remotely and continuously recorded their body temperature (an indicator of well-being in large mammals), and their activity. Each aardvark also received a radio-tracking device, allowing us to locate them regularly. Tracking the aardvarks provided clues on how they changed their behaviour in relation to environmental stressors in the different seasons and years of our three-year study.
Our study found that in drought periods, aardvarks struggled to find food. It was difficult for them to maintain their energy balance and stay warm during the cool night, so they shifted their active time to the day. Some died from starvation. Given the aardvark’s importance to ecosystems, these findings are a concern.
Aardvarks usually emerge from their burrows at night (left), but during drought periods, they are increasingly seen during daytime (right). N. Weyer
Aardvarks are important ecosystem engineers
No other mammal in Africa digs as many large burrows as the aardvark. Dozens of mammals, birds and reptiles use aardvark burrows as shelter from extreme heat and cold, protection from predators, or a place to raise their young. In many of South Africa’s conservation areas, temperatures have already risen by 2℃ over the past 50 years. Further warming by 4-6℃ by the end of the century has been projected.
With deserts and drylands expanding across much of Africa, climate change might threaten the aardvark itself as well as the many animals reliant on aardvark burrows as a cool shelter from rising temperatures.
During typical years, aardvarks were active at night and were able to regulate their body temperature between 35-37℃.
However, this pattern changed during two severe summer droughts that occurred in the Kalahari during our study. During the droughts, aardvarks shifted their activity to the daytime and their body temperature plummeted below 30°C.
Using remotely-sensed vegetation data recorded by NASA satellites and our own camera trap footage and logger data, we showed that these dramatic changes in body temperature and activity of aardvarks were related to the availability of grass, on which their ant and termite prey rely. When grass was scarce during droughts, the ant and termite prey became inaccessible to aardvarks, preventing them from meeting their daily energy requirements. As their body reserves declined, aardvarks were unable to sustain the energy costs of maintaining warm and stable body temperatures and shifted their activity to the warmer daytime.
Shifting activity to the warmer daytime while food is scarce can save energy that would otherwise be spent on staying warm during cold nights. But, for our aardvarks, even these energy savings were insufficient during drought, when the ground was bare and the ant and termite prey inaccessible. As a result, seven of our twelve study aardvarks and many others died, presumably from starvation.
A bleak future for aardvarks in a hotter and drier world
On the Red List of Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, aardvarks are currently categorised as a species of “Least Concern”. However, we consider aardvarks to be threatened in the drier parts of their distribution in Africa, such as the Kalahari, where climate change brings about droughts. Disappearance of aardvarks from these ecosystems could have devastating consequences for the many other animals that rely on the aardvarks’ burrows.
We hope that our findings will raise further awareness about the consequences of climate change and inform future wildlife conservation and management decisions. Such steps might include assessments of the actual population status of aardvarks across Africa, or mitigation measures to preserve species that depend on burrows for refuge in regions where aardvarks might go locally extinct. More extensive measures, like water-wise reserve management, increasing sizes and connectivity of nature reserves in semi-arid regions, and reducing emissions to mitigate climate change, are just as urgent.
Finally, any solution to the plight of climate change on free-living animals requires a better understanding of their capacities to cope with drought. Therefore, many more long-term comprehensive studies are needed on the physiology and behaviour of the vulnerable animals living in hot, arid regions of the world.
Nora Marie Weyer’s disclosure statement has been updated.
The link below is to an article that takes a look at a bushwalk in the Warrumbungle National Park. It is a personal account (not by me) of a walk in the Grand High Tops area of the park.
Last month I came across a heartbreaking sight: a group of people standing around a young female kangaroo with horrific injuries. She appeared to have been hit by a car and had dragged herself away, only to collapse into our local creek.
A police officer had gently lifted her out to the bank where her injuries became apparent. A shattered leg, broken arm, and bruising indicating massive internal trauma. She was panting – exhausted and in pain. Fortunately, she had no young joeys in her pouch.
I offered my help as a wildlife specialist. This was a tragic, but common scenario. An estimated 10 million animals are hit on Australian roads every year.
Australia’s road toll is so high it threatens whole species. Road mortality is the second biggest killer of endangered Tasmanian devils with around 350 killed every year, and the biggest cause of death of adult endangered cassowaries in Queensland.
Noojee, all grown up at Healesville Sanctuary, whose face healed a little crookedly. Healesville Sanctuary, Author provided
The holiday season is upon us and people are now able to travel to see family and friends again. This means the unusually-quiet roads during COVID-19 lockdown — which may have lulled wildlife into a false sense of security — are frighteningly busy. So here’s how you can be wildlife-aware this December.
Who is hurt?
As Australia’s population expands, wildlife are pushed into smaller areas, with more roads criss-crossing their habitats. The most visible victims of road expansion are larger mammals such as possums, wombats, kangaroos and koalas. However, millions of smaller animals including echidnas, birds, reptiles and frogs are also injured or killed each year on our roads.
The vast majority of insurance claims for animal collisions involve kangaroos, with wallabies and wombats the next most frequent. Smaller animals often go unreported or unnoticed.
Humans are also at risk in these collisions. Every year people crash their vehicles hitting, or trying to avoid hitting, animals on the road, with 5% of fatal accidents caused by collisions with animals. Of those, 42% tried to swerve to avoid the animal. Those who do hit wildlife may also suffer serious injuries, with motorcyclists particularly at risk.
A familiar sight to many people hitting country roads this holiday season. Shutterstock
Some animals may be hit trying to help a fallen friend or juvenile, as I have seen in galahs and ducks. Others may be hit while feeding on carcasses on the road, like wedge-tailed eagles, owls and Tasmanian devils.
Now, as the holiday season begins after months of reduced travel, wildlife hospitals are braced for a new wave of admissions.
When smaller animals like echidnas are hit, it often goes unreported or unnoticed. Shutterstock
How do you avoid a crash?
Be aware that large marsupials such as wombats, wallabies and kangaroos are most active at dawn and dusk. However, many birds, lizards, snakes and echidnas move during the day. At night, others like frogs, possums, quolls and devils start to roam.
Wildlife warning signs are only installed in high danger areas, so always pay attention to them. Try to limit your travel between sunset and sunrise, especially near forested or high wildlife areas. If you must drive, stay within the safe speed limit and slow down in areas with wildlife.
Use high beam headlights when safe and watch the sides of the road carefully — animals can often be seen ahead before they flee in front of a vehicle. As you approach the animal, return to normal headlights to avoid dazzling them or causing erratic behaviour.
Many marsupials are active between dawn and dusk, be sure to drive slowly. Marissa Parrott, Author provided
What to do if you see an injured animal?
First, always ensure you are safe. Stop in an easily seen location away from traffic, use your hazard lights and if possible wear bright clothing. Remember, injured animals may be frightened and in pain, and some could be dangerous if approached.
In emergency cases, where the animal’s injuries are obvious, some can be carefully caught and wrapped in a towel, then placed in a well-ventilated, dark and secure box for quiet transport to wildlife veterinary hospitals for care. The links above give tips on how to handle some wildlife emergency cases where needed.
But it’s important you do not approach potentially dangerous animals like snakes, monitor lizards (goannas), bats (flying-foxes or microbats), large macropods (kangaroos or wallabies) or raptors (eagles or hawks). Instead, call and wait for trained and vaccinated rescuers. Wildlife Victoria, for example, assisted 6,875 animals hit by vehicles in 2019 alone.
This is Toby, a common long-necked turtle, who had a fractured shell after being hit by a car. He was treated by vets and released back into the bush. Healesville Sanctuary, Author provided
Innovation for conservation
In Tasmania, where an estimated 500,000 animals are hit on roads every year, a Roadkill Tas App is identifying road kill hot spots to assist research and conservation efforts.
In high kill areas, virtual road fences are being trialled. These posts are activated by car headlights at night and produce sound and light to frighten animals away from the road before a vehicle arrives.
If you know of dangerous areas for wildlife, contact your council to see if warning signs or ways to help wildlife can be installed.
Collisions on the road is the biggest cause of death of adult Cassowaries in Queensland. Shutterstock
In the case of my poor little injured kangaroo last month, I worked with the police to make the difficult, but only, decision possible with such traumatic and untreatable injuries. As she was put out of her misery, I thought of all the wildlife hit by cars and left to die.
We can all do our part. Slow down, watch for wildlife, and avoid travel between dawn and dusk. Remind friends, family and tourists to watch for our wildlife. If you do hit an animal, or see one on the road, please stop to help and check pouches if safe. A tiny life may be waiting for your help these holidays.
Find more tips here for helping local wildlife in need this summer from Zoos Victoria.
Marissa Parrott, Reproductive Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science, Zoos Victoria, and Honorary Research Associate, BioSciences, University of Melbourne
In 2017, I came across an extraordinary document in Sydney’s Mitchell Library: a handwritten list of 178 Aboriginal place names for Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River, compiled in 1829 by a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John McGarvie. I was stunned. I stared at the screen, hardly believing my eyes.
After years of research, my own and others, I thought most of the Aboriginal names for the river were lost forever, destroyed in the aftermath of invasion and dispossession. Yet, suddenly, this cache of riches.
A page from Rev McGarvie’s 1829 list of Aboriginal names for places on Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
I could see McGarvie had taken a lot of care with this list, correcting spelling and adding pronunciation marks. The names appear in geographic order, so they also record where he and his Darug informant/s travelled along the riverbanks. Perhaps most important of all, McGarvie often included locational clues, like settlers’ farms, creeks and lagoons.
An extraordinary idea dawned on me: what if we could restore these names to their places on the river? And then: what if these beautiful, rolling words — like Bulyayorang and Marrengorra and Woollootottemba — came back into common usage?
Naming Country
Place names have enormous significance in Aboriginal society and culture. As in all societies, they signal the meanings people attach to places, they encode history and geography, they are way-finding devices and common knowledge. Place names are crucial elements of shared understandings of Country, history, culture, rights and responsibilities.
Often place names are parts of larger naming systems — they name places on Dreaming tracks reaching across Country. Singular names can also embed the stories of important events and landmarks involving Ancestral Beings in places and memory. Anthropologist and linguist Jim Wafer points out their use in songs, which are memory devices, or “audible maps … travelling song cycles that narrate mythical journeys”.
Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River, flows through the heart of a vast arc of sandstone Country encircling Sydney and the shale-soil Cumberland Plain on the east coast of New South Wales. The river has a deep human history, one of the longest known in Australia.
Axe grinding grooves on Dyarubbin. Joy Lai
The ancestors of Darug, Darkinyung and Gundungurra people have lived in this region for around 50,000 years. Their history, culture and spirituality are inseparable from their river Country. A mere two centuries ago, ex-convict settlers took land on the river and began growing patches of wheat and corn in the tall forests. Darug men and women resisted the invasion fiercely and sometimes successfully.
Between 1794 and 1816, Dyarubbin was the site of one of the longest frontier wars in Australian history. Invasion and colonisation kicked off a slow and cumulative process of violence, theft of Aboriginal children, dispossession and the ongoing annexation of the river lands.
Jasmine Seymour, Women of Dyarubbin. Jasmine Seymour
Yet despite this sorry history, Dyarubbin’s people managed to remain on their Country, and they still live on the river today.
McGarvie’s list contrasts strikingly with the modern landscapes of the Hawkesbury and Western Sydney. Once, every place on this river and its tributaries had an Aboriginal name. Now only a handful survive on maps and in common usage.
With some important exceptions, the Traditional Owners, the Darug, rarely see themselves represented in key heritage sites, or in the everyday reminders and triggers of public memory – like place names.
Yet Western Sydney is now home to one of the biggest populations of Darug and other Aboriginal people in Australia. Could McGarvie’s list be a way to begin to shift the shape of our landscapes towards a recognition of Darug history and culture?
Living on Country
This idea stayed with me, so I contacted Darug knowledge-holders, artists and educators Leanne Watson, Erin Wilkins, Jasmine Seymour and Rhiannon Wright: the response was instant and enthusiastic. We designed the project together and were thrilled when it won the NSW State Library’s Coral Thomas Fellowship
The project’s Darug researchers want most of all to research, record and recover environmental and cultural knowledge and raise awareness of Darug presence and history in the wider community.
Because the Darug history of Dyarubbin is continuous, the project includes an oral history component, recording 20th century Darug voices and stories of the river.
Looking back, it seems uncanny that McGarvie’s list reappeared when it did — after all, we are in the midst of an extraordinary period of Aboriginal cultural renewal and language revitalisation.
It was obvious that McGarvie’s words could be more than a list of names: it could be the key to a bigger story about the Dyarubbin, the Darug history that was lost, submerged below what historian Tom Griffiths calls “the white noise of history making”.
But to do this, we needed to put the words in their wider context: we needed to see the river whole. So, besides reconnecting the list to Traditional Owners, the project explores Dyarubbin’s history, ecology, geography, archaeology and languages.
Early maps showing the old river farms helped us work out where the Darug place names belong and digitally map them. They also record long-lost landscapes of swamps, lagoons and creeks — important places for Aboriginal people that have since been modified or disappeared altogether.
Brown’s Lagoon Wilberforce 1844. NSW State Archives and Records
The “Returns of Aboriginal Natives” are lists of Aboriginal people living in New South Wales in the 1830s, including the groups who lived on various parts of Dyarubbin and its tributaries. Reverend McGarvie’s diaries show he knew many of these Darug people.
The letters and journals of Hawkesbury settlers are thoroughly colonial-centred, yet they contain hints about the ways Darug people continued to live on their Country throughout the 19th century.
For example, they befriended some of the settlers, like the Hall family at Lilburndale, and cultivated these relationships over generations. The Hall family papers in the Mitchell Library hold some powerful and poignant traces: store receipts for goods Darug people were purchasing from them, and lists of the work they did at Lilburndale.
The archaeological record for this region is astonishingly rich. Dyarubbin and its tributary Gunanday (the Macdonald River) are part of a much larger archaeological zone, reaching from the Blue Mountains and the Wollemi in the west, up to the Hunter Valley and Lake Macquarie in the north. Many of the major recorded archaeological sites have sacred, spiritual and ceremonial significance, especially those located on high places.
Gunanday (the Macdonald River). Joy Lai
Closer to the river, Paul Irish’s archaeological mapping has revealed how much Darug cultural landscape survives today, within the “settler” landscape.
From Richmond in the south to Higher Macdonald in the north, the river corridors alone are lined with more than 200 archaeological sites, including engravings, grinding grooves and rock shelters, some with scores or hundreds of images in ochre, white clay and charcaol.
Darug women Jasmine Seymour and Rhiannon Wright visit a painted rockshelter. Joy Lai
Perhaps the most important aspect of the project are the field trips — getting out on Country, following in the footstep of McGarvie and his Darug friends, to see how all of this comes together. For Aboriginal people especially, visiting Country is a spiritual experience: they sense past and present converging, and the presence of their Ancestors.
Words for Country
What about the words on McGarvie’s list? What can they tell us? Linguist Jim Wafer and I worked with the Darug team members on a glossary, scouring dictionaries of seven local and adjacent Aboriginal languages for glosses, or meanings.
Many of these remain tentative; some words have two possible glosses. This project is, after all, only the beginning of what will hopefully be a much longer journey of discovery.
Nevertheless, McGarvie’s list has unlocked a wealth of information as well as intriguing and suggestive patterns — the place names open a marvellous word-window onto the Darug world of Dyarubbin in late 1820s.
They can be roughly grouped in four interrelated and often overlapping categories: the natural world of plants and creatures, geography and landforms, stone and earth, salt and fresh water; the social world of corroboree and contest grounds, camps and places to source materials for tools and implements; a metaphoric pattern — using words for parts of the body (mouth, arm, finger, eyes) for places on the river; and names with spiritual meanings, signifying sacred places.
Are there larger patterns in McGarvie’s list of place names? Here again, mapping the names, relocating them on Country, revealed something about how Darug people thought of Dyarubbin: as a series of zones, each which particular characteristics.
For example, on the west side of the river between Sackville and Wilberforce are 16 named lagoons or words meaning lagoons, including four different words which appear to signify different types of lagoons: Warretya, Warang, Warradé, Warrakia.
It was Warretya (lagoon) Country. Rich in birdlife, fish, turtles, eggs and edible plants, lagoons were very important places for Darug people, especially women, who harvested the edible roots and shoots of water plants such as cumbungi, water ribbon and common nardoo.
Aunty Edna Watson, Yellamundi. Aunty Edna Watson
There were lagoons on the opposite side of the river, too, but here the series of place names around Cattai Creek tell us that this was Dugga (thick brush/rainforest) Country.
Massive Riverflat forest once lined all of Dyarubbin’s alluvial reaches; in sheltered gullies this forest graded into rainforest. Other place names in this area suggest the tree species which grew in these forests: Boolo, coachwood, Tamangoa, place of Port Jackson figs, Karowerry, native plum tree, Booldoorra, soft corkwood. And there are places named for implements, like clubs (Kanogilba, Berambo), and fish spears (Mating), which may have been fashioned from the fine, hard timbers of some of these trees.
These Dugga place names suggest something significant about Dyarubbin’s human and ecological history, too. The settler invasion is often assumed to have completely destroyed earlier landscapes, converting the bush to cleared, farmed fields. But these tree and forest names suggest that parts of the great forests survived for over three decades, and that Darug people went on using them.
Perhaps most significant and evocative are the place names which signal sacred zones on Dyarubbin. There are two different words meaning “rainbow”: Dorumbolooa and Gunanday.
The great Eel Being
Both are located in places with dramatic cliffs and sharp river bends. These words are probably linked with Gurangatty, the great Eel Being, who is associated with rainbows, and who created the river and its valley in the Dreaming, leaving awesome chasms and sinuous bends in his wake. McGarvie’s list reconnects us with the sacred river.
Leanne Watson, Big Eel. Leanne Watson
Such words remind us of something obvious, and profound. If Aboriginal people are to be at the centre of their own stories, we need to look beyond European history and landscapes, beyond European knowledge and ways of thinking, and towards an Aboriginal sense of Country — the belief that people, animals, Law and Country are inseparable, that the land is animate and inspirited, that it is a historical actor.
Leanne Watson’s painting Waterholes, inspired by the project, expresses this sense of Country. Her painting represents the beautiful lagoons around Ebenezer near Wilberforce and all the nourishment and materials they offered people. Now we can name some of those lagoons: Boollangay, Marrumboollo, Kallangang.
Leanne Watson, Waterholes. Leanne Watson
What now? Two exhibitions are planned for 2021: one at the State Library of NSW, and the other at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery. Staff at NSW Spatial Services/the NSW Geographic Names Board have generously offered their skills and time to create a digital Story Map, which will allow readers to virtually explore Darug Dyarubbin.
A series of illustrated essays, or “story cycle”, to be published on the online Dictionary of Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales, will present more in-depth narratives. Ultimately, we plan to launch dual naming projects, which will restore these names to Dyarubbin Country.
These are truth-telling projects: they will tell the story of invasion, dispossession and frontier war. But they will also explore Darug history, culture, places and names, and the way Dyarubbin and its surrounding high lands still throb with spiritual meaning and power, and the “ancient sovereignty” of Aboriginal people.
As last summer’s horrific bushfires raged, so too did debate about what caused them. Despite the prolonged drought and ever worsening climate change, some people sought to blame the fires largely on arson.
Federal Coalition MPs were among those pushing the arsonist claim. And on Twitter, a fierce hashtag war broke out: “#ClimateEmergency” vs “#ArsonEmergency”.
Fire authorities rejected the arson claims, saying most fires were thought to be caused by lightning.
We dug into open data resources to learn more about the causes of last summer’s bushfires in Victoria, and further test the arson claim. Our analysis suggests 82% of the fires can be attributed to lightning, 14% to accidents and 1% to burning off. Only 4% can be attributed to arson.
Lightning, not arson, caused most Victorian bushfires last summer. Twitter
What we did
We started with hotspots data taken from the Himawari-8 satellite, which shows heat source locations over time and space, in almost real time. We omitted hotspots unlikely to be bushfires, and used a type of data mining called “spatiotemporal clustering” – where time dimension is introduced to geographic data – to estimate ignition time and location.
We supplemented this with data from other sources: temperature, moisture, rainfall, wind, sun exposure, fuel load, as well as distance to camp sites, roads and Country Fire Authority (CFA) stations.
Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) holds historical data on bushfire ignition from 2000 to the 2018-19 summer. The forensic research required to determine fire cause is laborious, and remotely sensed data from satellites may be useful and more immediate.
By training our model on the historical data, we can more immediately predict causes of last summer’s fires detected from satellite data. (Note: even though we were analysing events in the past, we use the term “predict” because authorities have not released official data.)
DELWP’s data attributes 41% of fires to lightning, 17% to arson, 34% to accidents and 7% to hazard reduction or back burning which escaped containment lines (which our analysis refers to as burning off).
Causes of fires from 2000-2019. Lightning is most common cause. The number of fires is increasing, and this is mostly due to accidents. Own work
To make predictions for the 2019-20 bushfires, we needed an accurate model for causes in the historical data. We trained the model to predict one of four causes – lightning, accident, arson, burning off – using a machine learning algorithm.
The model performed well on the historical data: 75% overall accuracy, 90% accurate on lightning, 78% for accidents, and 54% for arson (which was mostly confused with accident, as would make sense).
The most important contributors to distinguishing between lightning and arson (or accident) ignition were distance to CFA stations, roads and camp sites, and average wind speed.
As might be expected, smaller distances to CFA stations, roads and camp sites, and higher than average winds, meant the fire was most likely the result of arson or accident. In the case of longer distances, where bush would have been largely inaccessible to the public, lightning was predicted to be the cause.
Spatial distribution of causes of fires from 2000-2019, and predictions for 2019-2020 season. Own work
What we found
Our model predicted that 82% of Victoria’s fires in the summer of 2019-2020 were due to lightning. Most fires were located in densely vegetated areas inaccessible by road – similar to the historical locations. (The percentage is double that in the historical data, though, probably because the satellite hotspot data can see fire ignitions in locations inaccessible to fire experts).
All fires in February 2020 were predicted to be due to lightning. Accident and arson were commonly predicted causes in March, and early in the season. Reassuringly, ignition due to burning off was predicted primarily in October 2019, prior to the fire restrictions.
Spatio-temporal distribution of cause predictions for 2019-2020 season. Reassuringly, fires due to burning off primarily occurred in October, prior to fire restrictions. February fires were all predicted to be due to lightning. Own work
Quicker fire ignition information
Our analysis used open-data and open-source software, and could be applied to fires elsewhere in Australia.
This analysis shows how we can quickly predict causes of bushfires, using satellite data combined with other information. It could reduce the work of fire forensics teams, and provide more complete fire ignition data in future.
The code used for the analysis can be found here. Explore the historical fire data, predictions for 2019-2020 fires, and a fire risk map for Victoria using this app.
This analysis is based on thesis research by Monash University Honours student Weihao Li. She was supervised by the author, and former Principal Inventive Scientist at AT&T Labs Research, Emily Dodwell. The Australian Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers supported Emily’s travel to Australia to start this project. The full analysis is available here.
Two days before Christmas last year, a fire reached our heritage-protected bush property in the Adelaide Hills, and destroyed our neighbour’s house. For the next two weeks we were on constant alert to keep the fire in check.
Grass trees are some of the first plants to regrow after a bushfire. Wikimedia, CC BY
A few weeks later, I flew over fire-affected areas in the Adelaide Hills and had my first aerial view of the devastation. Fighting fires around my home, and what I saw on this flight, convinced me to get involved with helping recovery in the aftermath of the fires.
In the past year, I’ve taken high-resolution aerial data to monitor the recovery of fire-affected areas and help with post-fire efforts. This work includes clearing access tracks into burnt forests, locating unburnt areas within burnt forests to serve as refuges for wildlife, or simply documenting the degree of destruction.
I now have a unique dataset – a combination of very high-resolution and detail from three sensors: aerial photography, airborne Lidar (a way to measure distances with laser light) and hyperspectral imaging (looking at the landscape and vegetation with hundreds of narrow wavelengths).
Flying at just 250 metres above the ground, it’s possible to generate complete three-dimensional views and animations of the landscape and its features at resolutions in the 10cm-range.
Usually such airborne data is only available to government agencies, industry and sometimes researchers, but rarely to the general public. So we decided to make the data publicly available, so anyone can download it. It will help you appreciate the level of destruction, and how it varied for different landscapes.
My property, for example, is showing strong regrowth, but most of our neighbour’s block burnt so intensely that even now, after nearly one year, there’s very little regrowth even in terms of ground cover.
Here are a few examples of the landscape’s recovery around Kangaroo Island, generated from our data.
Bushfires decimated almost half of Kangaroo Island. The image sequence above shows a small area on Kangaroo Island before the fires and about one, three and nine months afterwards.
Before the fires, the landscape was dominated by dense bushland, which the fires nearly completely destroyed. The first signs of regrowth were visible after three months, and even more so after nine months.
The imagery is so detailed you can inspect the regrowth even for individual trees and scrubs. And in the slider below, you can more clearly compare how well the bushland regrew between February and October this year.
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Much of Australia’s native flora have evolved to cope with fire. Grass trees are among the first species to recover, and the Lidar data below demonstrates just how dramatic this recovery is.
Thousands of grass trees (“yuccas”) on Kangaroo Island grew up to seven metre-high flowers in the months after the fires. This is a typical phenomenon for this species after fire, and we were lucky enough to see this first hand on our bushland property, too.
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The video below shows the regrowth in and around a tree plantation on Kangaroo Island, directly after the fires and then after nine months. You can clearly see the intense regrowth on the ground and near the bottom of the burnt trees.
Usually firegrounds are observed via satellite imagery, imagery captured from high-flying survey aircraft and, more recently, using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). None of these observations can map the landscape at the exceptionally high detail over large areas and with the combination of sensors as we have flown.
High-resolution aerial photographs at pixel sizes as small as five centimetres can be put together in a mosaic, covering many square kilometres. Combined with Lidar, and the hyperspectral scanner, we get detailed animations, such as those in the video, which can zero in on various intricate aspects, such as vegetation health.
How these datasets can help bushfire recovery
With a some moderate funding, we can continue these regular mapping flights next year and beyond to learn how these areas develop. We can put this into context with other factors, such as burn severity, soil structure and vegetation type.
Such detailed datasets would assist researchers assessing flammability and fuel load (dried vegetation) which, in turn, would help prevent and even fight future fires.
Flammability and fuel load, alongside the slope of the landscape, are key parameters in computer simulations of fire behaviour. High resolution datasets depicting landscapes before and after bushfire can verify the simulation results, and help to improve the performance of the models.
Our datasets can also be useful for people needing to access areas directly after the fires, such as identifying where burnt trees have fallen, or are just about to do so.
For our own bushland block in the Adelaide Hills, these detailed imagery and datasets means we can study the regrowth from the Cudlee Creek Fire almost a year ago, as well as from previous fires. For example, some areas were burnt in the 2015 Sampson Flat Fire and had already regrown over the four years — only to be burnt again.
Continuing such flights would require a comparatively low amount of funding. However, this is currently not available in the standard government grant system. You can download data from the mapping flights over Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island.
Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side 
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