Great Southern. Great Science. The 2020 Great Southern Science Symposium
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If you thought an Albany music event, a Middleton beach café or even the footy was the place to be seen, think again! The Great Southern Science Symposium 2020 was a meeting place for a whole bunch of researchers, project managers and other innovators pushing the boundaries of what might be possible.
Scientific thinking has been going on ever since humans began poking around on this planet. In his Welcome to Country, Larry Blight likened the six-season calendar to an expression of meteorological science based on data collected over millennia.
Geologists threw us into the deep end of time through multi-layered stories embedded in a grain of sand. ‘The Tale of a Gondwana Zircon Crystal’ is a story waiting to be written and broadcast as an aid in rekindling a knowledge-based awe of our natural surroundings. Once people know the whys and hows of this stuff, it can’t be ‘unseen’. Its why the study of science in some form at senior high school level is so important to encourage a discerning mind with an awareness of the scientific process: the pathway of observation, testing the observations and refining knowledge. Then continue making this science fabulous and available to young adults.
A grain of sand transitioned to being a soil particle as we moved to agricultural presentations. Current practices and aspirational outlooks were presented through the lens of a ten year strategic plan. Increasingly, physical & biological data is being collected to complement the more advanced chemical picture; tillage slope threshold experiments continue; implementation timing of agronomist recommendations is being addressed as an issue in some sectors.
We quickly learnt not to mention Regenerative Agriculture, and even Sustainability was seeming risky. Can I give a shout out here to Resilience? Resilient and Dynamic Systems: Ever changing and able to bounce to a new and satisfactory equilibrium with minimum intervention.
Moving through the slipstream of presentations, we shifted from the recycling of planetary material on a deep time scale to observed changes in natural life systems. Despite private fantasies, we aren’t going back to pre-Captain Cook Australia anymore than we are going back to the continental Gondwana land mass.
Our challenges include dealing with changing climate and getting the little bits of restoration to add up to a big bit on a scale needed for ecological function across the sweeping vastness of the Gondwana Link landscape. The importance of social systems is recognised and may prove to underpin everything.
From the reincarnation of zircon crystals to the alchemy of ecosystems, science delivers a wow factor. Whether the science in the Great Southern has been collected by traditional custodianship of country or post-colonisation academic hypotheses, we need to keep pushing these ideas out.
I noticed moments where I had questions brewing for presenters, along the lines of how we deal with overt attacks on science, which often draws me to Carl Sagan’s ‘The Demon Haunted World’. An answer was inherent in the scope and details of presentations, that we focus on the positives and address the gaps. Another book ‘For Small Creatures Such as We’ has found its way into my current reading pile, written a generation on by Sasha Sagan. Celebrating our wonder for the world around us and our humanity in interpreting it.
Things can be turned around when the will is there and resources available. Looking across the foyer and through the window of our AEC venue, Princess Royal Harbour was pointed out as one example of a great restoration project. I’d witnessed something similar in Sydney Harbour with the clean-up for the Sydney Olympics showing what was possible when the will is there and resources available. Previously murky sea water became pleasantly translucent even in downtown Circular Quay.
Despite being farmed and fragmented, alchemy is still happening out there in the woodland forest. A challenge is in providing the opportunity for it to return where it is absent, into the connective tissue of landscape size life systems. Our esteemed ecologists working in a biological hotspot within a hotspot, stated Ecology IS Alchemy. As much as I love science, I love magic even more.
When some despair was expressed at the perceived financial and psychological inaccessibility of land to further enhance Gondwana conservation linkages, a voice of encouragement came from the back of the room: “We’ll get ‘em”. This reassurance could be transferred to any worthy endeavours coming up against obstacles.
With a woosh I was transported to my next destination by a diesel engine. Returning to my hometown via a stop-off at a fluoro-lit sanitised shop with piped music, all designed to lull me into irrational purchasing. I remained fully grounded and impenetrable, by the alchemy of the science experienced in that room on our southern shores.
