Snowy Mountains

We need to be able to speed up how quickly we can build renewable energy in this country.

Right, so right now, are we building sources of renewable energy at the same pace that we're trying to build data centres? Like, for example, I read yesterday that Snowy 2.0 up in the Snowy Mountains has actually stopped because one of the big drilling machines has trapped itself underground.

It can't move forward.

It's actually broken down underground.

Phil is a fire ecologist and fire behaviour scientist, but importantly, he didn't come to fire purely from an academic background.

Before and during the early years of his research career, he worked in fire management and as a remote area firefighter around the Snowy Mountains.

So his understanding of fire comes from both working with it on the ground and studying it scientifically.

Over many years, Phyllis investigated some really fundamental questions about how fire actually behaves in Australian forests and how vegetation changes following fire.

Cracked drill head stalls Snowy Hydro 2.0 machine Florence for the next three months.

So maybe Susan can get down and dirty and help fix Florence the machine, which they need to drill their mud hole in the Snowy Mountains to push water uphill.

That great economic idea.

We've got to go.

popped up in one of your dreams, have I, Maddie? Just like questioning myself.

Okay, well, let's go to the snowy mountains.

G'day, Ben.

G'day,

sentence is outrageous.

And you're from the

Snowy Mountains, so you love a horse.

Come on, Ben.

And so that's your role is to teach us how to get our message across effectively and with coherence so that people can understand what we're doing but you tell me about your rural background yeah sure so

obviously i'm here participating in this event as a private citizen and this is a personal story it's not actually directly related at all to my professional role working for the abc so just to make that distinction Look, I grew up between Sydney and the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales with a parent in both places.

And I'd say that some of my happiest childhood memories related to those experiences in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, Jindabyne in particular, where my father had a small property and I had the privilege of... working cattle and riding horses and going to pony club all those years ago.

And that's never really left me, those amazing experiences that I had on the Monaro and in that community.

I then went on to study agricultural science at the University of Sydney, largely through Dad's influence and majored in agronomy.

Please, yes

... about Mount Kosciuszko next time you get it? In 1840, explorer Paul Edmund Strzelecki climbed the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales.

He reached the highest peak, measured it, and named it Mount p- Kosciuszko to honor a Polish hero.

Not about himself.

Right, right.

I just drove, uh, my electric vehicle down to the Snowy Mountains, which is about a five to six-hour drive, and one of the chargers is at the Snowy Hydro Visitor Centre.

Right.

So I visited it twice, once on the way there, once on the way back.

So there's a few in the Blue Mountains.

There's a few down like in the Snowy Mountains.

There's lots in Victoria.

They are everywhere.

and you just sort of pick and choose which races you want to go in.

And, um, I've got a race in four weeks time.

My only race really the rest of the year down at Tumba Rumba in the snowy mountains near Tumut.

And that's a 50 kilometer race.