RGSQ News

3rd - this short story won third prize in the Society’s 2026 Geography Writing Competition. The Competition’s theme in 2026 was “Changing Environments in Queensland”.

Debra Brown - Once I was Beautiful

I remember when this place had a different name. 

Long before your maps and picnic tables, before the neat patches of grass and council bins, the Quandamooka people called these lands home.  The waters of Moreton Bay shimmered then, clear, generous and alive.  Fish flickered beneath the surface; turtles and dugongs fed on sea grass and the shoreline breathed with life. It was a place of balance.  A place where I belonged.

I walked the edges of wetlands, elegant and patient, my reflection unbroken in the still clear water.  Each step was deliberate. My long-curved bill excellent for probing into the shallows looking for tiny fish or worms.  Each meal earned. The world was not loud. It did not smell of rot and plastic.  It was idyllic.

Then the machines came. Progress you called it.

They churned the seabed, tore at the sand, turned the clear shallows into clouds of silt.  Dredging, you call it.  Progress.  The waters thickened.  The fish thinned.  The places I knew, now gone, buried beneath mud and noise. They didn’t see it at first. Not the slow unravelling. Fish stocks dwindling. Seagrass meadows fading and with them, the turtles and dugongs slipping quietly away.  The wetlands were still there, waiting to heal.  Pathways we had followed for centuries simply ended.

So, I followed what remained.  I had no choice.

My food grew scarce as the ecosystem shifted around me. It wasn’t something you meant to do. You trusted that nature would absorb the changes, that it would endure. No one truly understood the chain of cause and effect, the quiet collapse of a home like mine.  They expected a lot from Mother Nature, believing she could carry every burden without breaking.

The irony is that when the sun comes out and the children want to run and play you spread your blankets across the grass in spaces now deemed ‘green enough’.  You laugh, eat and leave with little regard to the waste. 

When you go, I arrive, starving on land that once fed me without scraps.

I pick through what spills from your bins—greasy paper, half-eaten food, the careless excess of a world that forgot its balance. I do what I must, because this is what you have made of my home.

You wrinkle your nose. You point. You laugh. “Bin Chicken,” you call me.

I did not change - you did.  As wetlands were drained, as shorelines hardened, as waste replaced the rhythms of tide and soil, I adapted. I survived where others could not. I became a reflection of your choices.

It will be beautiful again - not because I changed, but because you finally chose to.

2nd - this short story won second prize in the Society’s 2026 Geography Writing Competition. The Competition’s theme in 2026 was “Changing Environments in Queensland”.

Jenny Woolsey - The Old Pineapple Farm

2019

This afternoon begins like any other. I pull on my socks and worn sneakers, lock the front door and head down the hill. My mind, once crowded with heavy thoughts, is beginning to soften with this prescribed exercise. Each day, I follow the same, familiar loop: along the creek, over the footbridge, skirt the shopping centre, puff up the hill to the traffic lights then turn left along the front of the pineapple farm before the final right turn at the church and back home.

I pause at Four Mile Creek. Today, the water is green and tranquil, holding the shadows like secrets. A fallen tree kisses the water and ducks drift lazily around it, unhurried. I’ve seen this creek in all its moods—sometimes swollen with rain, boiling over like a pot on the stove, other times shrivelled and cracked like an old leather boot left in the sun.

My second stop is the farm: the first one established in the area and the last to remain. Row upon row of grey-green spiky plants stretch across the paddocks, each one destined to bear a sweet, juicy golden pineapple. It feels like an anomaly here, surrounded by asphalt, roaring trucks, blaring sirens and the hard edges of suburbia. As a lover of pineapples, I delight in spotting the first hints of flower stalks, watching the bees buzz over the pinkish-purple blooms and witnessing the quiet magic of fruit swelling in the rosettes, changing from green to yellow and orange.

This farm belongs to the Blatchford family. Percy and Lily bought the land in 1937 and their son Leslie carried their legacy forward. For thirty years, I’ve watched Leslie plough, water and harvest - steadfast, season after season.  I heard he passed recently.

A large, glossy property development sign catches my attention. Its wooden stakes are hammered into the fertile soil. This wasn’t here yesterday. It advertises The Landing; 106 housing lots and 76 townhouses built on 15 hectares. The farm’s been sold!

My heart sinks. I stare at the Blatchford’s sprawling, white Queenslander set back from the road, embraced by weathered wooden sheds. What stories are contained in this house? What lessons could it tell us about the land and the people who tended it?

It’s not long and the construction fencing is erected, the farmhouse hauled away and the pineapple plants torn from the earth. 

2022

Three years on, no trace of the Strathpine farm remains except for the pineapple-shaped playground and street names that nod politely to the family.

2025

I still pull on my socks and sneakers and take my walk each afternoon. My mind is no longer depressed. I pause at the creek to soak in its serenity. A sunning water dragon scurries into the long grass. Then, on my final leg, I take a moment at The Landing to remember the old pineapple farm that once thrived here and the family who tended it with love and devotion.

1st - this short story won first prize in the Society’s 2026 Geography Writing Competition. The Competition’s theme in 2026 was “Changing Environments in Queensland”.

Tina Wingham - Sheep Station Creek

Warmer, warmer, this could be it… until it wasn’t.

It had been this way for ages. Always a little too far to the left, or a little too close to the dirt track beneath the layers of old gum leaves. Sometimes someone appeared near the creek where the soil stayed soft after rain. Other times, children wandered closer to the road, boots crunching over the dry branches their voices echoing through the trees. They was always someone close enough to stir hope inside me, but never close enough to find the exact spot.

Years ago, I loved coming to these woods, breathing in the sharp scent of eucalyptus after a storm. Ironbark and grey gum trees towered overhead, their branches twisting together as they fought for scraps of sunlight through the thick canopy. Golden beams broke through in scattered ribbons, warming patches of earth before disappearing again beneath the shadows. I loved to dance between those beams as a child, leaping over fallen branches and rotting logs as I made my way towards the creek.

The forest was alive in so many ways that the town never was. Ants marched in endless lines across the dirt, carrying fragments of leaves ten times bigger than themselves. Kookaburras laughed from hidden branches while cockatoos screeched loud enough to rattle even the stillness. Sometimes kangaroos lingered in the distance, freezing the moment they spotted movement before bounding away through the bordering scrubland.

This was my happy place. Out here, surrounded by birdsong and the rustling of leaves, I felt free. The woods never judged me, never demanded anything from me.

But like always, good things never last. Slowly, surely, my woods began to shrink. Trees disappeared first, marked with bright paint before machines arrived to rip them from the earth. Then came the fences, the roads, and finally the houses, packed tightly together as if they were swallowing every molecule of space. I understood why it happened. People needed homes. Families needed space to grow. Still, every year, my sanctuary became smaller,

quieter,

weaker.

When I first arrived, the forest stretched across more than 231 hectares. Now barely a fraction remained. Yet even after all this time, the smell of wet gum leaves after the rain still drifted through the air. The winding stone paths still curved safely around animal dens and hidden holes. Some parts of the woods refused to die.

Oooo, warmer, warmer, hotter, hotter.

This was it.

Metal struck something beneath the earth. The sound rang through the forest like a bell.

At last, someone was digging in the exact right spot.

I had finally been found. My body would bring closure to whatever family I had left. Thank God for progress, because without the new road cutting through my beloved woods, I might have remained here forever, buried beneath roots and leaves, silently waiting for permission to finally pass on from this earth.

Congratulations to the authors below whose stories have been short listed.

Debra Brown - Once I was Beautiful

Janet Humphreys - Weathered Humpy

Tina Wingham - Sheep Station Creek

Jenny Woolsey - The Old Pineapple Farm

Beverley Young - Yarum

Congratulations to the authors below whose stories have been long-listed.

 Author                         Story Title

Susan Booker               Full Circle          
Debra Brown                Once I was Beautiful
Dianne Grech               Harry is a Hermit
Dianne Grech               Masterpiece or Monstrosity
Janet Humphreys         A Fertile Place
Janet Humphreys         Weathered Humpty
Valerie Laycock            Slow and Steady
Sarah Lutz                    The Line on the Wall
Eva McConnell              An Ideal Day in Wynnum
Eva McConnell              Remembering Minden
Andrew McInerney        Bleach
Bianca Millroy                Dust and Thunder
Claudia Ocean              Grandmother Tree
Geoff Prigge                  Why Indeed?
Niko Satria                    The Last Mango from Grandad
Edwina Shaw                In Cloncurry
Tina Wingham              Sheep Station Creek
Jenny Woolsey            The Old Pineapple Farm
Beverly Young             Yarum
Xinji Xia                       The Reef Guardian

An El Nino will most likely be controlling our weather in the second half of this year. Despite the recent April and May rains, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has confirmed that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is now in an El Niño phase.

El Niño events are part of a natural cycle in the Pacific Ocean that can affect global weather. The last El Niño was a moderate to strong event that developed in our spring 2023 and lasted into early 2024. El Niño often brings drier conditions to central and eastern Australia in winter and spring.

Although in a warming climate past patterns are less reliable as a predictor of future impacts, most current models suggest this year’s El Nino event is likely to be strong to very strong.

Forecasts show El Niño conditions are likely to persist well into the latter half of 2026. Rainfall is likely to be below average in southern and eastern Australia, temperatures above average in most areas, except parts of the north, increased frost risk due to clearer skies and lower snow depths in Australia's Alpine regions. Check out the BOM references below.

References:

BOM, 16 June 2026 El Niño: what it means for Australia's climate

https://www.bom.gov.au/news-and-media/el-nino-what-it-means-for-australias-climate

BOM Video Understanding ENSO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzat16LMtQk&t=17s

Contributed by: Iraphne Childs

The topic, and the presenter, drew a large audience to learn more of the mysteries of map design. It appears that whilst there are notable and familiar projections on which to base maps, the options are without limit and decided by the cartographer according to the purpose of the map.

Keith took us through the choices between them, showing how detail from a spheroid is represented on a flat sheet through the geometry of a cylinder, cone or disc, in one of many variations, to achieve correctness in shape, direction, area, or scale – but not all at once.

“There was a wealth of fact information, carefully researched and attractively illustrated, so that the complexities of the subject became clearer and solutions easily appreciated.”

We learned to check a map’s projection details which set out what it can and cannot show reliably. It is not surprising that since a map can be trusted only within a design specification, it can present a slanted view of reality – let the reader beware. The classic misrepresentation of Mercator’s Greenland compared to Australia is a case in point. Another, illustrated in an equal-area world map, is the huge size of Brazil which tends to escape notice.

Keith’s talk contained entertaining asides, like the fact that the Prime Meridian has moved due to precession, 200 meters from the painted line at the Observatory which millions of visitors stand astride. He faced a barrage of sharp questions afterward and showed the depth of his scholarship in his answers.

Another great day for the Group and a deeper insight for its members into one of the most interesting aspects of cartography.

Photo credit: Kay Rees

By Les Isdale FMSIA

Map Group Presentation Wednesday 11 March 2026; article published in RGSQ Bulletin Vol 61 no 03 April 2026 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR THOMAS SIGLER, Deputy Head, the UQ School of the Environment, has been appointed as a Member of the National Committee for Geographical Sciences by the Council of The Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. His appointment is for a three-year term, running from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028. The National Committees provide independent scientific advice and support for Australia’s engagement with international science. Thomas is a world-leading academic researcher in urban and economic geography. He is an RGSQ member and a member of the RGSQ Scientific Studies Committee. Congratulations, Thomas, as you contribute to the work of the National Committee over the coming years!

Trevor Hamley is the author of "Vodka in a Vegemite Jar – an Australian on a Soviet Antarctic Expedition". After finishing an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at Monash University, Trevor joined the Australian Antarctic Division as the glaciologist - to winter at Casey in 1978. He then commenced a career in engineering construction before re-joining the Antarctic Division to participate in a Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1983/84. Trevor completed a Master of Science degree in Glaciology at Melbourne University in 1987.

This talk describes Trevor's 1983 visit to Vostok, a Russian Antarctic Station and the coldest recorded place on earth (-89.2C), as well as an over-snow trek of 3,000 kilometres across the Antarctic from Mirny to Dome C and return. It is very important to understand the science of the Antarctic, particularly the East Antarctic Icesheet which stores about 90% of the Earth's freshwater ice or roughly 70% of all the Earth's freshwater.

Trevor reveals that at every turn the Dome C traverse was beset by adversity yet achieved its scientific objectives. Mechanical and scientific equipment succumbed to the harsh Antarctic conditions, where temperatures plunged to -60C. An appendectomy was performed 1,000 kilometres from the safety of a permanent station, an unprecedented feat in the annals of Antarctic expeditions. Each leg of the journey became an exhilarating episode. But the narrative does not merely recount the logistical aspects of the traverse; it delves into the intricacies of glaciology and the profound issue of our time: climate change.

This recording is available to members only under the Members Forum on the RGSQ website.

Photo credit: Kay Rees

Contributed by Graham Rees

Map Group presentation 27 November 2025, RGSQ Bulletin Vol 61 no 01 February 2026 

by Catriona Ling

This short story won first prize in the Society’s 2025 Geography Writing Competition. The Competition’s theme in 2025 was “the significance of the environment in human life”.

The river defines the city, the Brown Snake, curling its way round city and suburbs. The water glancing off jetties and rowing sheds, skyscrapers and heritage house lawns, swirling beneath docks and walkways full of runners and walkers. The ebb and flow of the tides mirrored by human activity as the day progresses.

The colour of the water changes like the scales of a snake in the sun, brown, blue, flashing silver in the light, orange in the morning sunrise.

Lights of the city reflect onto the surface of the water at night, glinting and dancing, but during the day sandy beaches are revealed and the tide sucks in and out of mangroves along the shores.

Amidst the chatter of the early morning walkers, a bird sits on a nest, solitary in her silence until one glorious morning the chicks appear and she fluffs her breast next to the nest in the relief of job done.

Pelicans and seagulls follow the small fishing boats trailing nets past Teneriffe. The kayakers bob in the wake of the CityCats dashing commuters into the city whilst the KittyCats scoot across the waterway like illustrations from a children’s’ book.

Flotsam and jetsam, and the less romantically named general rubbish, drifts in and out of the mangrove roots sticking skywards in small forests, the mix of a healthy and unhealthy waterway.

Brown tinted water, whirlpooling and rushing, is testament to the hidden currents lying beneath the supple surface. The water looks undrinkable, but the trees that stand along its banks give a much clearer indication of the life giving force. Native and imported species thrive nurtured by the muddy torrent. Gums mix with the Jacarandas, whilst an African Sausage tree guards a creek junction, transported to the Australian sun, and sustained by the water below.

Shags sit drying their wings in the sun, the sun catching the accents in their feathers that turn the black to shining green and flashes of orange.

Maiwar, the Brisbane River, humanity has named the waterway, and tried to bend it to man’s will. Tried to trap its waters, corset it with walkways and jetties, stone banks and wooden piles, but the power of the water, of the river itself, is proven by the majestic curves of the path it carves through the slowly yielding land. Each deep bend testament to centuries of slow pressure as the Brown Snake bends the land to its will.