Were you always the kid outside catching bugs and possibly scaring the grown-ups?

Oh, definitely.

And, and, like, a lot of my childhood, um, I spent a lot of time in Bungonia as a kid, um, near Goulburn.

I moved around a lot, Lightning Ridge, um, Nowra, and there was always lots of animals around, and I was always catching them up and, and picking them up.

And, and, and like I kinda never really grew out of that.

I, I have this sort of goal as a leader, um, you know, I really try and relearn something that I've lost.

Like, so, and one of the things I used to be quite good at was handling venomous snakes because I used to do it as a job.

Can a name or a story passed down through generations tell today's scientists something that they didn't know about an animal?

What can you tell us about some of the science in traditional First Nations knowledge?

It's really important that all Australians acknowledge and realize that we come from the country's first people invented bread.

You know, we have the oldest man-made structures on Earth.

Um, science in terms from a traditional lens, it's still knowledge, just seen through a different pair of eyes.

And I think that what we need to do is we need to humanize science a little bit because we are all the s- we are all the same.

We all bleed the same.

Not one knowledge system is better than the other.

Can you tell us about your books?

Corey?

Yeah, um, uh, nice to hear from you, Merv, as well.

Uh, the H, uh, sorry, the H5N1 virus, which we've just had a confirmed case in Birpai country on Hawks Nest, um, most of these viruses, particularly the bird flus, as Carl referenced, in 1996, they actually come from poultry farms.

Because what happens is, is when we stress birds out, they release pathogens, and they also release viruses, and they mutate.

Now, the biggest concern for this particular virus is it spreading to marine mammals, because this virus in particular, um, hasn't... is jumped from poultry to sea birds, and sea birds are the best spreaders [laughs] of this virus 'cause they mi- they're migratory birds.

And the other concern there will be is that if this gets into mammals, you know, places like Lutruwita and, um, Tasmania, n- unfortunately some of the mammals on that island and down there will be affected by this virus if it mutates into marine animals.

So there is some anecdotal evidence that this virus is starting to mutate into a virus that can affect mammals a- and that's gonna be, um, problematic.

Um, I'm just wondering if that's something that we should be exploring now with obviously the, the, the population in those areas and the, the threat of loss of life, um, through bushfires, um, currently, if it's something that we should be, should be looking very closely at.