In November 2022 I had an interesting conversation with Bobby Bascomb about Ancient Stories of Sea-Level Rise for the Living on Earth podcast series. I talk about Australian and American stories, explaining that we can demonstrate many of these to have endured (by word of mouth) for more than 7000 years (not a misprint), and that therefore we need to look anew at such geomyths for more information about deep human pasts.
In September 2022, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours chatting with Irish folklorist and scholar, Chris Thompson, about Irish mythology and its conspicuous parallels with ancient Indigenous Australian stories and others. An edited version of the conversation can be heard here.
If you understand Czech, you may be interested in the episode of Za obzorem on Český rozhlas Plus (Czech national radio) in which I talked about climate change in the Pacific Islands; it was on 26th June 2022 and can be heard here.
On 15 January 2022, a massive shallow-undersea eruption at the Hunga-Tonga / Hunga-Ha’apai volcano in Tonga (South Pacific) occurred that sent shock waves through the atmosphere, caused sonic booms and tsunami waves that smashed across nearby island coastlines. You can get a sense of the power of this eruption from the time-lapse video below.
15 January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha’apai eruption, Tonga, South Pacific (NASA Earth Observatory)
On 20 January 2022, I talked about the causes of this eruption and its precedents in a discussion entitled Volcanic Eruptions and Tsunamis in the Pacific, available on YouTube here (little bit in Fijian, most in English), as part of the wonderful series Talanoa with Dr T.
And in November 2021, I again featured on Talanoa with Dr Tarisi to talk about the ancient history of Bua Province in Fiji. The entire talk is available here. Flyer below.
Following publication of my new book, Worlds in Shadow, I featured in August 2021 on Late Night Live with the erudite Phillip Adams, whose thoughtful and addictive programs I have enjoyed for years. You can see his catalogue here.
Also in August 2021, I featured on Talanoa with Dr Tarisi, a popular podcast for everyone interested in the Pacific Islands, to talk about the geology and early human history of Kadavu, a group of volcanic islands in southern Fiji. Which is why Kadavu is often nicknamed Niu Ziladi Lailai (little New Zealand) because if you are sailing south to Kadavu and miss it, the next place you will reach (with a bit of luck) is the North Island of New Zealand! Kadavu is a line of old volcanoes from three-million year old ones like Dravuni and Ono in the northeast to Nabukelevu (Mt Washington) in the southwest which has been active within the three thousand years people have lived in Fiji (pictures and map below). I also talked about where the first people probably lived on Kadavu … and finished talking about the unusual structures we found in mid-2019 at Madre (mountain) on the island of Ono. You can see a photo of the partly-collapsed dolmen in the article here.
In June 2021, I was honoured to be invited to appear on Talanoa with Dr Tarisi to talk about the excavations I directed at the Naitabale site on Moturiki Island in central Fiji (Lomaiviti). In the course of our 70-minute discussion, we covered the extraordinary finds of Lapita pottery here (some pictured below) and how they demonstrated the existence of a 3000-year old trading network in Fiji, involving Moturiki, central Lau, Kadavu and Rewa. We also talked about Mana, the name given to the perfectly-preserved remains of a 50-year old woman buried here about 800 BC; so well preserved was her skull, it was possible to reconstruct her head (see below); note that, in fulfillment of our agreement with Uluibau landowners, all the remains of Mana were returned to the site and reburied with great ceremony.
In February 2021, following the publication of an article in Science asking whether a possibly 37,000-year old story about the Gunditjmara (Aboriginal) eruption of Budj Bim Volcano in the Australian state of Victoria could really have endured for some 37,000 years, I was invited to appear on the Moncrieff Show on the Irish national broadcaster Newstalk. You can hear the ten-minute chat with Tom Dunne here.
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Especially after The Edge of Memory was published in August 2018, I found I was getting more media exposure than that to which I was accustomed. You might be interested in some of this, along with some of the other recent outreach in which I was involved.
In February 2019, I was honoured to be invited by the National Museum of Australia to join its Clever Country Roundtable, designed to help set an agenda for its newly established Indigenous Knowledge Centre. At this event, I was honoured to meet Dr Lynne Kelly, author of The Memory Code and, most recently, Memory Craft, a person whose thinking has inspired and informed my writing. Here is a photo of Lynne and myself.
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The previous month I had been in Fiji, working with the Fiji Museum and communities on the southern island of Kadavu. My team included my colleague Dr Shannon Brincat and my doctoral students Daniela Medina Hidalgo and Loredana Lancini. We just happened to arrive in Suva, Fiji’s capital, on the day that the new Director of the Fiji Museum, Sipiriano Nemani, had been confirmed, and there was an evening celebration on the Museum veranda. In the picture below, you can see Loredana and Daniela on the left talking with Elia Nakoro, Head of Archaeology at the Fiji Museum, and its Media Officer, Jerry Veisa, who is serving the kava.
A few days later, we headed to Kadavu Island and spent an intense ten days with different communities. Myself and the Museum staff were interested mainly in visiting the ancient hill forts (koronivalu) that dot almost every mountain peak in these islands. With Loredana, who is a historian, we also collected oral stories from various informants, especially stories about the most recent eruption – about two thousand years ago – of the massive volcano named Nabukelevu that dominates the island’s western extremity. Daniela spent much of her time talking to the farmers who grow magnificent taro, yams and kava in the islands’ fertile volcanic soils. Sunburned, sated with fresh fish, we eventually returned to Suva by boat, the sea as flat as a Fijian panikeke. Photo below.
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Soon after the publication of my book, The Edge of Memory, in August 2018 I was invited to appear on radio and television. My hour-long session In Conversation with Richard Fidler was thoroughly enjoyable and is available online here. I was also invited onto Matter of Fact with Stan Grant on ABC National Television – you can see the excerpt here.
I also featured in Outspoken Maleny, a Queensland-based forum organized by Steven Lang that brings writers to the country town of Maleny to talk to invariably packed houses of engaged and articulate people. I was fortunate to be on the same bill as Gillian Triggs, former President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, whose frank memoir, Speaking Up, had just been published. Photo below.
I have done a fair bit of filming for television in the last few years, perhaps the most notable piece being my multiple appearances in the episode on Legends of Atlantis, part of National Geographic Television’s clever and innovative Drain the Oceans, first broadcast in June 2018 and available on Netflix or on YouTube here.
A month earlier I was part of an outreach event organized by the Sunshine Coast Council (Australia) that saw myself and Roselyn Kumar taking legions of schoolchildren and their parents along an especially interesting bit of rocky coast to explain its geological history. Photo below.
