Posting with posterous on Pelican- Cape York

I am off on a Pelican project and most of my posting is at this point through the active expedition posting site of posterous here,

but here are some photos so my good old blog doesn't feel quite so neglected...

The Archivalists

Inside the Library of the Cairns Historical Society.



The Skipper of Pelican had flown back to Melbourne after our meetings in Cairns with Hope Vale Elders and Balkanu about this year's project. I was due back in Brisbane as I had planned to visit my Mum and hopefully meet my brother in law, Mark with my daughter for the weekend. But I just could not get on the plane. My Mum had warned me that things were flooding near her and advised me to stay an extra day. My brother in law was not able to get time off work and my daughter had to stay in Melbourne.

I did not need much prompting to stay for some extra time on my own. Solitude is a rare and to be treasured thing. It is the reason I had time to wander in Cairns. During this time I found the Historical Society of Cairns and its Library and ended up spending the afternoon researching Sea Country and looking up information about Cape York. A lovely older gent took all my slips of paper and diligently searched as I found more and more material. Some of the material was from anthropologists, one of them being Ursula McConnel, who worked up the Cape in the early part of last century.

As I buried myself in the piles of materials I had to reflect on the riches that were saved and archived by these wonderful volunteers working in the Library. You could see they had no money, surviving on the tuppences they get from the entry fee to the Museum. The main guy had worked there for 24 years following his retirement as a paid librarian. I just wanted to post a huge thank you to all those passionate volunteers in all walks of life. Our world would be impoverished without the dedicated work of these mainly unsung diligent people.

Two Bays 2009

Invitation to Launch of 2009 Two Bays project.

Two Bays 2009 has come and gone. It was a difficult project to get up due to the fact that we got our funding only a few weeks before the project was to commence. This meant that the program suddenly grew from one week to two and a half and jumped in complexity overnight.


Common Sting Ray- photo Freddy Leeong

But even with the short lead time, I think nearly all participants were happy with the resulting overall project. The picture above is from the first day when we did some work at the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary. The Marine Park system in Victoria is now six years old. We had many scientists and people who are involved in the sanctuary come on board to help document the health of the sanctuary and take note of the animals living there. In less than two hours over 25 species of fish were seen and recorded. People who know the area are very exited about the health and biodiversity that this small protected space now reveals.


Divers entering the water from Pelican - photo Freddy Leeong

This year we again had a focus on the Boonwurrung knowledge of the area and directly involved Elders and young Koories in the program. Pelican Expeditions also received a grant from the Federal government to create curriculum out of the synergies between the Traditional Knowledge of the Bays and the science that we are doing during the project. We are also working with young Koories (Victorian Aboriginal) to make some digital stories about Sea Country. These stories will eventually become part of the curriculum and will also eventually go up on the Parks Victoria websites.