The Best Australian Science Writing 2014

THE BEST
AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE WRITING 2014

A
SHLEY
H
AY
is the author of four books of narrative non-fiction (including
Gum: The story of eucalypts and their champions
) and two novels. Her 2013 novel
The Railwayman's Wife
was shortlisted in the fiction category of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, in which it won the People's Choice Award. She was literary editor of
The Bulletin
and her science writing – covering subjects from mosquitoes and robotics to historical collectors and ‘hobbits' – has appeared in many publications, including
The Monthly
,
Australian Geographic
and
Griffith REVIEW
. Her work was awarded one of the inaugural Bragg Prizes for Science Writing in 2012 and shortlisted for a Eureka award.

THE BEST
AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE WRITING 2014

EDITED BY

ASHLEY HAY

For Nigel Beebe, and for Huxley Hay Beebe – A.H.

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© University of New South Wales Press Ltd 2014

First published 2014

This book is copyright. While copyright of the work as a whole is vested in University of New South Wales Press Ltd, copyright of individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Title: The Best Australian Science Writing 2014/Ashley Hay, editor.

ISBN: 9781742234182 (paperback)

9781742247137 (ePDF)

9781742241883 (ePub/Kindle)

Subjects: Technical writing – Australia.

Communication in science – Australia.

Science in literature.

Other Authors/Contributors: Hay, Ashley, 1971–, editor.

Dewey Number: 808.0665

Design
Josephine Pajor-Markus

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The publisher welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Contents

Contributors

Foreword: Clear and simple

Ian Lowe

Introduction: Stories, definitions and the art of asking questions

Ashley Hay

A short walk in the Australian bush

Ludwig Leichhardt

Survival in the city

Nicky Phillips

Planet of the vines

William Laurance

Is there room for organics?

James Mitchell Crow

This. Here. Now. The climate catastrophe

John Cook

Weather and mind games

Tom Griffiths

Weathering the storm

Peter Meredith

Firefront

Ian Gibbins

Antarctic ice: Going, going …

Nerilie Abram

They're taking over! The jellyfish move in

Tim Flannery

From Alzheimer's to zebrafish

Michael Lardelli

Joseph Jukes' epiphanies

Iain McCalman

Popular mechanics: A short story

Gareth Dickson

The CAVE artists

Dyani Lewis

High-tech treasure hunt

Sarah Kellett

The carnivorous platypus

John Pickrell

The eye in the sand

Rebecca Giggs

The now delusion

Michael Slezak

Reached by committee, nineteen eighty-three

Paul Magee

Material of the future: Sticky tape, honey and graphene

Lisa Clausen

Pitch fever

Trent Dalton

Uniquely human

Thomas Suddendorf

The pet-keeping species

Peter McAllister

Penis size may be driven by women (Oh, and it matters …)

Rob Brooks

Eleven grams of trouble

Frank Bowden

TB and me: A medical souvenir

Jo Chandler

Massimo's genes: Medicine at the genetic frontier

Leah Kaminsky

Life, the universe and Boolardy

Richard Guilliatt

Liner notes,
Voyager
Golden Record

Meredi Ortega

Beyond the ‘Morning Star'

Alice Gorman

The oldest known star

Bianca Nogrady

The quantum spinmeister: Professor Andrea Morello

Stephen Pincock

Here be dragons

Vanessa Hill

Advisory panel

Acknowledgments

The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing

Contributors

N
ERILIE
A
BRAM
is an Australian Research Council QEII Fellow at the ANU. Her research looks at how Earth's climate has behaved in the past, and what that tells us about recent climate changes. She does this by developing past climate records from natural archives such as tropical reef corals and Antarctic ice cores.

F
RANK
B
OWDEN
is an infectious diseases physician, professor of medicine at the Australian National University and a senior administrator with ACT Health. He teaches evidence-based medicine and infectious diseases to medical students and has a special interest in population health, junior doctor training and the music of Brian Eno. His book
Gone Viral: The germs that share our lives
was shortlisted for a Queensland Literary Prize in 2012.

R
OB
B
ROOKS
is director of the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre at UNSW Australia. He is an internationally recognised expert on evolutionary biology and sexual conflict, and winner of the Australian Academy of Science's Fenner Medal. He won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award for Science Writing for his book
Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How evolution has shaped the modern world,
and the 2013 Australian Government Eureka Prize for Science Communication.

J
O
C
HANDLER
is an award-winning journalist and writer. After a long career in daily newspapers, she is now freelance, focusing
on science and medicine, climate change, human rights, women's issues and development. An extract from her book
Feeling the Heat
– dispatches from the climate ‘frontline' – earned her the inaugural Bragg UNSW Press Prize for science writing in 2012. She has also won a Walkley, a Quill, and a Eureka Prize. This is her third appearance in
BASW
.

L
ISA
C
LAUSEN
is a Melbourne-based writer. She was a journalist on newspapers in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne before joining the South Pacific edition of
Time
, where she covered stories in Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Vanuatu and across Australia for more than a decade as a senior writer. She now writes about Australian history, science and the environment for leading publications such as the
Monthly
and Fairfax's
Good Weekend
magazine.

J
OHN
C
OOK
is the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. He created the website <
www.skepticalscience.com
>, which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. John is the co-author of
Climate Change Science: A modern synthesis
and
Climate Change Denial: Heads in the sand
and has written a number of peer-reviewed papers on climate change and the psychology of misinformation.

T
RENT
D
ALTON
writes for
The Weekend Australian Magazine
. A Walkley Award winner, he has been the national News Awards Feature Journalist of the Year three times and was Queensland Journalist of the Year in 2011. His journalism has twice been nominated for a United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Award. His writing also includes several award-winning screenplays, including
Glenn Owen Dodds
, which won the prestigious International Prix Canal award at The
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France and saw Dalton named Best Writer at Aspen Shortsfest 2010.

G
ARETH
D
ICKSON
was born in Melbourne and graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland in 2009. He is currently undertaking a PhD, also in Creative Writing, at the University of Queensland. He has published stories and poems in numerous journals and magazines, both in Australia and abroad, including the
White Review
, which shortlisted ‘Popular Mechanics' for their annual short story prize in 2013. He currently divides his time between Brisbane and London.

T
IM
F
LANNERY
has written 32 books including the award-winning
The Future Eaters
and
The Weather Makers
, now available in over 20 languages. The author of more than 130 peer-reviewed papers, he has also made numerous documentaries and regularly reviews for the
New York Review of Books
. In 2007 he was named Australian of the Year. A founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, he became Australia's Chief Climate Commissioner in 2011, and in 2013 he founded the Australian Climate Council, which he now heads.

I
AN
G
IBBINS
, an internationally recognised neuroscientist, has recently retired as professor of anatomy at Flinders University. His poems have been widely published in print and online, and he often performs his work accompanied by his own electronic music. His first full poetry collection
Urban Biology
was published in 2012 with an accompanying CD. Ian's work spans the art–science domain and includes numerous collaborations with artists in diverse fields. For more information, see <
www.iangibbins.com.au
>.

R
EBECCA
G
IGGS
writes about ecology and environmental imagination, animals, landscape, politics and memory. Her essays and reviews have appeared in
Aeon
,
Overland
,
Meanjin
,
Going Down Swinging
and the
Guardian
, while her stories have been widely published and anthologised in collections including
Best Australian Short Stories 2011
and
The Best of the Lifted Brow
. Her first non-fiction book will be published by Scribe in 2015. She teaches in the English Department at Macquarie University.