Dinosaur Picnic in the Botanical Gardens, Saturday 10th November 2018, 11.00am to 2.00pm.
A free event for the whole family sponsored by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
The advancement of knowledge
A free event for the whole family sponsored by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
Set in the 1770s, the eccentric lead character Dr Thomas Beddoes is convinced that consumption can be cured by inhaling the breath of cows. Aided by his brilliant young assistant, Humphry Davy, he embarks on a series of experiments to prove that miraculous cures can be effected by inhaling nitrous oxide. But his friend, the foppish Joseph Banks who has recently returned from his voyage with James Cook, is less convinced. When Banks discards his dandified exterior and sets out to befriend the King and organise the establishment of Botany Bay as a penal colony, the friendship rapidly deteriorates.
In the end both men are bitterly disappointed. Beddoes must finally admit his experiments with gas have failed and nitrous oxide, ‘laughing gas’, is useful only to fuel riotous parties. Banks has poached the brilliant Davy from him, and his wife Anna runs off to London to be with Davy. Banks himself, even though he pulls the strings of Empire, is immobilised by gout, enraged that the experiment that is Australia appears to be failing, and realises that the sense of adventure and original discovery he once experienced in Tahiti are forever over.
The play traces the path of Joseph Banks from fop to gigantic president of the Royal Society, and his manoeuvring to set Humphry Davy on the path of eventually becoming President of the Society. In a harmonious marriage of science and the arts, the play examines the notion of science at a time when anecdotal evidence and natural philosophy was giving way to scientific method, the empirical method of knowledge acquisition involving careful observation, experimental testing and measurement of deductions drawn from the hypotheses.
The play is also full of humour and includes the enactment of early laughing gas experiments and tooth-pulling.
Thee play reading was followed by cake to celebrate the Society’s 175th Anniversary.
RSVP by 31 October 2018. Invitation to the book launch on Tuesday 6 November at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery at 5.30pm:
Click here to view the article by Mary Koolhof in The Mercury on 28 October 2018:
Take advantage of the prepublication discount until 30 October 2018
©
Chair: Prof Ross Large (Royal Society of Tasmania)
9.00 – 9.15 Welcome & Introduction
9.15 – 9.45 Why evolution matters – reflections on deep time and the history of life – Prof John Long
9.45- 10.15 The story of Early Complex life before Dinosaurs – Dr Indrani Mukherjee
10.15-10.45 Morning Tea – appearance of Rosie and Rex Dinosaur replicas
10.45- 11.15 Australia’s Dinosaurs and their World – Dr Stephen Poropat
11.15 – 11.45 Exciting Dinosaur Trackway Discoveries from Kimberley region, WA – Dr Steve Salisbury
11.45 – 12.15 Dinosaur expert panel Q & A
12.15 – 1.30 Lunch (provided free for those with a full day or 2 day ticket)
Chair: Dr Karen Orth (GSA Tas. Div.)
1.30-2.00 Spectacular Dinosaur Trackways from South Korea – Andy Spate
2.00-2.30 Beyond the ‘mid’ Cretaceous; new insights into the nature and composition of Australia’s dinosaurian fauna – Dr Steve Salisbury
2.30-3.00 The Winton Formation: A Window into a Lost Dinosaur World – Dr Stephen Poropat
3.00-3.30 Afternoon Tea
3.30-4.00 The Rise of Vertebrates in Australia – Where the Dinosaurs came from – Prof John Long
4.00-4.30 Darwin’s visit to Hobart – Impact on his evolution theory – John Davidson
Chair: Prof John Long (President. Royal Society of South Australia)
9.00 – 9.15 Welcome & Introduction
9.15 – 9.45 Can you dig it? Digging for Dinosaurs through time – Dr Phil Bell
9.45- 10.15 What Wiped out the Dinosaurs, a Story of Mass Extinctions – Dr Karen Orth
10.15-10.45 Morning Tea – appearance of Rosie and Rex, Dinosaur replicas
10.45- 11.15 Dinosaurs in Tasmanian Triassic? – Phil Sansom and Dr Clive Calver
11.15 – 11.30 What Dinosaurs Looked Like – a brief history of dinosaurs from the earliest illustrations to the present – Dr Brita Hansen
11.30 – 12.00 Augmented Reality and Rebuilding Dinosaurs – David Shering
12.00-12.15 Panel Q & A
12.15 – 1.30 Lunch (provided free for those with a full day or 2 day ticket)
Chair: Dr Anita Hansen
1.30-2.00 Ocean chemistry and Mass Extinction events – Prof Ross Large
2.00-2.30 Images of Science – constructing scientific and cultural visualisations of dinosaurs – Dr Brita Hansen
2.30-3.00 Dinosaurs and Opals from Lightning Ridge, NSW – Dr Phil Bell
3.00-3.30 Afternoon Tea
3.30-4.00 The rise and fall of stromatolites: the influence of trace elements and temperature – Dr Ross Corkrey
4.00-4.30 Atmosphere Oxygen and Evolution of Life – Prof Ross Large
4.30-5.00 Wrap up
Full 2 day registration (inc lunches) ($250)
Full single day registration (inc lunch) ($130)
Saturday Morning Student ($15)
Sunday Morning Student ($15)
Saturday Morning Adult ($25)
Sunday Morning Adult ($25)
Saturday Morning Family Ticket (2A & up to 3C) ($50)
Sunday Morning Family Ticket (2A & up to 3C) ($50)
Note: Student / Child age 10 years up to senior secondary, grade 12.
www.metrotas.com.au/timetables/hobart (see the maps below)
Nicole Hellessey is a PhD student with the Institute for Marine and Antarctic studies. Nicole was lucky enough to be chosen as an inaugural participant of the Homeward Bound Project in 2016 to raise awareness for women in STEM fields. Nicole is now a passionate advocate for women in science and an upcoming science communicator with the Young Tassie Scientists. When she’s not busily working on her thesis or in the lab, Nicole is a single parent and medieval enthusiast.
Nicole is researching Antarctic krill diets and how they change seasonally, inter-annually, regionally and with the environment. Nicole’s end goal is to help the krill fishery to become more sustainable by understanding when and where to harvest to maximise their omega3 outputs whilst minimising their krill catch. Nicole will be discussing the basics of krill biology and the krill fishery and how they both may change into the future. Everything from krill size and sex, to how much the fishery really harvests from the Southern Ocean will be put under the microscope and open for debate.
Shasta is a current PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, where she is looking into the impact of wildfires on alpine invertebrate communities. After graduating with Honors in invertebrate ecology, Shasta interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, assisting in the identification of new species of beetles from the Amazon. They even named an insect named after her.
As a ‘Young Tassie Scientist’ she teaches school kids the difference between bugs and beetles, and how to grow up to be a scientist. As an independent Science Communicator she talks about insects as technology, on farms, under your skin and on your plate. Shasta is the entomologist on call for ABC radio Hobart and a member of the Australian Entomological Society Conservation Committee.
There are 1 million species of insects named in the scientific literature. But there are an estimated 5.5 million species of insects globally. That leaves a conservative 80% of species unnamed. Looking at insects in a quiet place like Tasmania it is likely, if not necessary, that you’ll name a species or two. A scientific name, as unique and specific as the species themselves is an international label used to file and access the knowledge we possess about any particular species. So what does that process of filing and acquisition look like when the file does not have a label; when people start stuffing papers into neighboring files or stuff has simply not been filed at all? A treasure hunt ensues! A (hopefully) thrilling account of the sleuth work involved in identifying the Tasmanian golden sun cockroach.
Peter Lynch is a graduate of the Canberra School of Music (performance), Monash University (musicology) and The University of Melbourne (education administration). He has taught at the Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne, the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music, and the Conservatorium of Music, University of Tasmania. From 1999 to 2008, he was Director of Murray Conservatorium, Albury. In that capacity, he established two orchestras, a number of smaller ensembles and presented numerous public concerts featuring staff and students together with recitals by many of Australia’s finest performers and composers. For forty years, Peter examined in Australia and overseas for the Australian Music Examinations Board. As a classical guitarist, he has performed, broadcast and recorded as soloist and in ensemble with some of Australia’s most highly regarded musicians. These include Prudence Davis and Jeffrey Crellin (Images) and Jane Rayner (Cloud Eight: Australian Music for Flute and Guitar). His MA thesis on Gertrude Healy, the noted Australian violinist, was recognised by way of an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and he is now awaiting the outcome of the examination of his PhD on liturgical music in four Australian monastic communities. Peter and his partner Bronwyn, when not busy in their cottage garden, work in a voluntary capacity at the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart Archives and Heritage Collection.
The Second Vatican Council heralded a period of immense and often unprecedented change for all Roman Catholics, particularly with regard to matters liturgical. Against the backdrop of Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated by Paul VI on December 4, 1963, and subsequent Vatican legislation, this research investigated, through an ethnographic methodology, the responses to the challenges and opportunities that arose through the process of liturgical reform within the Australian monastic context. The communities selected for this study were the Discalced Carmelite Nuns at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew, Victoria; the Trappist Monks at Tarrawarra Abbey in the Yarra Valley, Victoria; the Benedictine Nuns at Jamberoo Abbey, New South Wales; and the Benedictine Monks at New Norcia, Western Australia. The research focused on the liturgical music of each of these communities as it evolved over the period from 1960, two years prior to the commencement of the Council, to 2015, marking 50 years since its conclusion. It demonstrated that, through their collective commitment and the expertise of individual musicians from within their ranks as well as further afield, they resolved, to a large extent, the inherent tension between the demands of liturgical reform, particularly with regard to the vernacularisation of their liturgies and the concomitant necessity to develop sympathetic musical constructs, and the preservation of the treasury of sacred music, especially Gregorian chant. In so doing, they not only succeeded but excelled in meeting the challenge of the reform.
Patrick Quilty had a long and distinguished career in Earth Science and Antarctic exploration. His many contributions to the Royal Society of Tasmania have been very significant and highly regarded by members and Council. In 1986 he was elected the senior vice-president of the Royal Society of Tasmania, when the Governor was president. He became president of the Society again in 2010 and was the Chair of the RST Foundation for several years besides being member of the Awards Committee. In 1996 he received The Royal Society of Tasmania Medal for his scientific achievements and service to the Society. In 2011 he convened the highly successful two-day Mawson Symposium for the Society.
Patrick obtained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and PhD from the University of Tasmania. He spent six years in the oil industry as a palaeontologist with West Australian Petroleum (WAPET), followed by five years as a lecturer at Macquarie University. His first visit to Antarctica was in 1965/66 with the University of Wisconsin, followed by a field trip to Macquarie island in 1968, with a party that identified the island as a unique piece of uplifted oceanic crust. From 1981 to 1999 Pat was Chief Scientist for the Australian Antarctic Division and ANARE. He made a total of 14 working trips south, including three summers in the Vestfold Hills investigating fossil whales he had originally discovered in 1989, and participated in three ANARE marine science voyages.
During his period at the Australian Antarctic Division, Patrick was very active in international Antarctic leadership, serving as a vice-president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for four years, and chairing the organisation of the 20thmeeting of SCAR in Hobart in 1988, as well as symposia on the Vestfold Hills (1984) and Macquarie Island (1987).
Patrick Quilty has published over 200 scientific papers, including six in the last three years with several more in the final stages of submission. He became an Honorary Professor in Earth Sciences and IMAS at the University of Tasmania in 2010 and has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at California State University. His many awards include Member of the Order of Australia (AM), U.S. Antarctica Service medal, Inaugural Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Tasmania, and the Phillip Law Medal of the ANARE Club. Two Antarctic geographic features and five fossil species have been named in his honour.
Honorary Professor Patrick Quilty was a warm hearted and generous man, who epitomised the mission of our Society (the advancement of knowledge), and devoted much of his valuable time to Society matters. He will be greatly missed by our members.