Publications
Complex eruption processes and deposits of basaltic fissures: insights from the ~37 ka Budj Bim volcanic complex, Southeastern Australia
A rare preservation of a volcanic fissure system, the ~37 ka Budj Bim Volcanic Complex (BBVC) in southeastern Australia, offers unprecedented insights into complex eruption processes. The study reveals five distinct eruption stages characterized by vent-shifting along a dyke-fed fissure and rapid transitions between Strombolian and micro-Plinian activity, interspersed with phreatomagmatism. This complexity, driven by interactions with aquifers and near-surface faults, suggests deeper explosion depths potentially reaching 320 meters. The findings draw parallels with the 2014-2015 Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun eruption in Iceland but highlight increased intricacy due to its intraplate continental setting. This research enhances understanding of volcanic fissure eruption behavior and improves future eruption scenario assessments, particularly for the Newer Volcanics Province (NVP) and similar global systems.
LiDAR-derived high-resolution geomorphological analysis for archaeology: Case study of the Gunditjmara aquaculture engineering systems at Budj Bim, Australia
High-resolution LiDAR-derived Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) have revolutionized archaeological analysis, enabling the detection of previously undetectable sites due to their small size or deterioration. This study demonstrates their potential in identifying a diverse array of archaeological sites across the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Victoria, Australia. By focusing on advanced DEM analysis and visualization, the research highlights the importance of machine learning techniques, particularly when validated by Gunditjmara Traditional Owners and staff from the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (GMTOAC). The study underscores how these methodologies can reveal broad spatial distributions, functional relationships, and patterns of landscape use by past populations over time.
Mapping hidden heritage: Self-supervised pre-training on high-resolution LiDAR DEM derivatives for archaeological stone wall detection
A novel self-supervised learning framework, DINO-CV, achieves high accuracy (68.6% mIoU) in mapping hidden archaeological stone walls using high-resolution LiDAR DEM derivatives, even with limited labeled data (63.8% mIoU at 10%). This approach addresses vegetation occlusion and data scarcity challenges by learning invariant geometric features from multi-directional hillshade and topographic visualization. Applied to the UNESCO-listed Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Australia, it demonstrates potential for scalable, automated heritage mapping in complex environments, with implications for environmental monitoring and preservation.
Vanishing Waters
Traditional water systems, shaped by long-term human-water-landscape interactions, are disappearing due to neoliberal economies, urbanization, colonization, and environmental mismanagement. A comparative analysis of four case studies—Valli da Pesca Aquaculture System (Italy), Sassi di Matera Water Harvesting System (Italy), Budj Bim Aboriginal Eel Aquaculture System (Australia), and Hiti Pranali Water Stone Spout System (Nepal)—reveals their profound cultural, social, and ecological impacts when disrupted. While these systems face irreversible loss, communities demonstrate resilience through resistance, restoration, and reinterpretation efforts. The study raises critical questions about whether such systems should be revived functionally or preserved as fragile historical memories.
LMSeg: an end-to-end geometric message-passing network on barycentric dualgraphs for large-scale landscape mesh segmentation
A novel deep learning approach, LMSeg, achieves state-of-the-art performance in segmenting large-scale 3D landscape meshes, including complex cultural heritage structures like the UNESCO-listed Budj Bim dry-stone walls. Unlike existing methods, LMSeg combines geometric message-passing with hierarchical-local dual pooling, enabling accurate detection of small and occluded objects while maintaining scalability. Benchmark results on three datasets demonstrate its superiority over point- and graph-based baselines, with 62.4% mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) on the BudjBim Wall dataset despite using only 2.4 million lightweight parameters. This advancement addresses longstanding challenges in mesh segmentation for cultural heritage preservation and environmental monitoring.
Mapping Hidden Heritage: Self-supervised Pre-training for Archaeological Stone Wall Mapping in Historic Landscapes Using High-Resolution DEM Derivatives
A groundbreaking approach using self-supervised deep learning has achieved high accuracy in mapping dry-stone walls within the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The method, DINO-CV, leverages cross-view pre-training on high-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) derived from airborne LiDAR data, effectively addressing challenges like vegetation occlusion and limited labeled training data. Achieving a mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of 68.6% in test areas and maintaining 63.8% mIoU with just 10% labeled data, this framework demonstrates potential for large-scale, automated mapping of cultural heritage features. The approach not only advances archaeological documentation but also offers scalable solutions for environmental monitoring and heritage preservation in complex landscapes.
Indigenous Water Engineering and Aquaculture Systems in Australia: The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape and Baiame’s Ngunnhu (the Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps)
Australia's First Peoples have demonstrated millennia of sustainable water management through sophisticated engineering, including fish and eel trapping structures and weir systems. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Victoria and Baiame’s Ngunnhu (Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps) in New South Wales stand as some of the largest continuing sites of such practices globally. Recent scholarship and heritage listings, including Budj Bim's World Heritage status, highlight these systems' cultural significance and their potential to inform modern water governance. These ancient techniques, maintained through social and environmental stewardship, offer insights into sustainable innovation for addressing contemporary challenges in water management, Indigenous rights, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Aquaculture
Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, located in southeastern Australia, represents one of the world's most extensive and ancient aquaculture systems. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is centered around a lava flow from volcanic eruptions that occurred over 30,000 years ago. Over four decades, the Gunditjmara people have collaborated with archaeologists to document and map intricate kooyang trapping and aquaculture facilities, revealing a sophisticated interplay of cultural and environmental systems. The landscape's significance lies in its dual role as both an archaeological treasure and a living testament to the Gunditjmara's enduring connection to their land, with recent efforts seeing the return or acquisition of key lands by the Gunditjmara community.
Caring for Waterscapes in the Anthropocene: Heritage-making at Budj Bim, Victoria, Australia
A sophisticated ancient Aboriginal aquaculture system, practiced by the Gunditjmara people of western Victoria for thousands of years, was one of the world's oldest and most extensive. This system involved swamp engineering and eel farming in the volcanic landscapes of Budj Bim but was disrupted within 150 years of European colonization due to violence, dispossession, and hydrological changes. Recent collaborative efforts have enabled the Gunditjmara to restore the Budj Bim wetlands and revive their cultural practices, demonstrating resilience in adapting to historical and environmental changes. The study uses critical theory and concepts related to waterscapes and hydro-social relations to interpret these efforts, highlighting the community's capacity to negotiate change and care for both past and future heritage.
Breeding dynamics of overabundant koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations subject to fertility-control management
Fertility control can effectively reduce overabundant koala populations to sustainable levels, even when compensatory breeding mechanisms may partially offset its effects. A study analyzing data from two management programs—one using surgical sterilization and the other levonorgestrel implants—found that both methods successfully lowered population densities in Budj Bim National Park (Victoria) and Kangaroo Island (South Australia). The research revealed that female koalas' breeding success is strongly influenced by body condition, with sexual maturity determined by age and body weight rather than reproductive experience. Reduced population density likely decreased intraspecific competition for food and territory, leading to increased breeding success in untreated individuals at one site. Despite these compensatory responses, sustained fertility control remains a viable long-term strategy, provided annual targets are met. The study also supports levonorgestrel implants as the preferred method due to their lower invasiveness and cost-effectiveness.
Sustainable Indigenous Water Rights
A paradigm shift is needed to dismantle the myth of aqua nullius and secure Aboriginal Water rights, addressing ongoing gaps and injustices in Western water policy exacerbated by colonial racism. The Gunditjmara's successful UNESCO World Heritage listing of Budj Bim eel traps and the Yarra River Protection Act (2017) highlight the recognition of Aboriginal connections to water but also expose weaknesses in Australian water policy. Sustainable Indigenous culture requires legal, social, and cultural enactment of Aboriginal Water rights, necessitating a reevaluation of current frameworks.
An ‘authentic’ Aboriginal product: State marketing and the self‐fashioning of Indigenous experiences to Chinese tourists
A key insight from this study is that the marketing of Indigenous tourism experiences, particularly those tailored for Chinese tourists, is often constrained by arbitrary government policies and notions of 'authenticity,' rather than being guided by local Indigenous aspirations. The research reviews Victorian state policies on Indigenous tourism and examines a case study involving the Gunditjmara people's tourism initiatives at the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. It reveals that while Chinese tourists generally show little interest in Indigenous experiences, state governments persist in promoting such products under the assumption they align with Chinese preferences. This approach not only overlooks local Indigenous entrepreneurship but also perpetuates a rigid framework that limits meaningful economic engagement for Indigenous communities.
Cultural sites
Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, located in southeastern Australia, represents one of the world's most extensive and ancient aquaculture systems, developed by the Gunditjmara people over six millennia. This complex system of channels, weirs, and dams, built on lava flows, demonstrates a sophisticated approach to trapping, storing, and harvesting kooyang (short-finned eel). The landscape is not only a testament to advanced engineering but also reflects the Gunditjmara's deep-time narrative, emphasizing their continuous presence in the region for at least 32,000 years. Today, the relationship between the Gunditjmara and their land persists through oral traditions and cultural practices, underscoring the significance of this site as both an economic and social foundation for indigenous societies.
Early human occupation of southeastern Australia: New insights from 40Ar/39Ar dating of young volcanoes
New high-precision 40Ar/39Ar dating reveals that the Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanic complexes in southeastern Australia erupted approximately 36,800 years ago. This finding provides a minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria, aligning with other archaeological evidence from Tasmania, New South Wales, and South Australia. The study leverages advanced dating techniques to improve temporal constraints on early human occupation, offering insights into global migration patterns. Additionally, it suggests that oral traditions linked to Budj Bim may represent some of the oldest in existence, bridging geological data with Aboriginal cultural heritage.
The Field Guide to the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape app: A Partnership Between the Gunditjmara Community and Museums Victoria
A groundbreaking collaboration between Museums Victoria and the Gunditjmara community resulted in the creation of the Field Guide to the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape app, the first of its kind to integrate traditional knowledge with scientific biodiversity data. The app features over 250 species from the Budj Bim Cultural Heritage Landscape, including 854 previously unrecorded species discovered during a 2011 Bush Blitz survey, with traditional names, uses, and stories for two-thirds of them. This innovative project combines Gunditjmara expertise with scientific findings, offering educational value to local communities, researchers, and visitors while serving as a model for similar initiatives globally.
Kurtonitj stone house: Excavation of a mid‐nineteenth century Aboriginal frontier site from Gunditjmara country, south‐west Victoria
A groundbreaking excavation at the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria reveals new insights into Aboriginal stone house construction and occupation during the mid-19th century. The study, published in Archaeology in Oceania, documents the first detailed excavation of such a site, uncovering a cache of 34 iron nails dating to approximately 1840–1870, which suggests occupation during periods of violent and negotiated resistance against European pastoral expansion. Taphonomic analysis indicates that stone artefacts predate contact objects, hinting at earlier use or construction. The findings challenge assumptions about the timeline of stone house development and offer clues about their integration with eel trapping facilities over 6600 years.
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