Sydney School of Arts & Humanities
Impressions
No 2 - 2025
ISSN 22093265
I thought dinosaurs were extinct, but then ... look what I found!
We go to an awful lot of time and effort searching for months, even years sometimes, in hopes we will find their fossilised remains to be carefully examined and preserved in our museums. There is something inherently human in our need to never lose sight of these amazing beasts, as if their fate is forever tied up with ours, especially as we face the consequences of our own making.
The catastrophe that was about to unfold began one morning in early spring some 66 million years ago. Dinosaur babies staying close to their mothers' sides as they foraged for food, others heading for the river to drink and wash their huge bodies or tend to their wounds from the previous day’s encounters.
Huge Flying dinosaurs gliding overhead through the pristine air. 'Oh, isn’t this marvellous! What a beautiful place to roam and multiply our species!'
What they did not know was that a huge asteroid from a gravitational interaction with giant Jupiter was now on a collision course with earth and that within a matter of minutes the world they had lived happily upon for thousands of years was about to undergo a change so deadly it would completely wipe them out.
With lightning speed, as quiet as it was silent, the huge asteroid hit the Yucatan region in what we now call Mexico, setting off a 10-metre high seismic wave.
Within a few minutes this wave of extreme heat, not unlike the heat from molten rock, incinerated everything for miles around.
The eco system was completely destroyed along with the dinosaurs, their fossilised bones impacted by the blast in such a way that palaeontologists have no doubt as to the force of this deadly event.
The nuclear winter that followed lasted for thousands of years, with only those smaller animals who could burrow deep into the earth's surface escaping the fallout.
It's hard for us to imagine such an event happening today and yet when we watch images on our screens of the wild fires around the world - sudden devastating floods and cyclones - we have a small glimpse into the vast natural forces at work in the universe.
The warning: never get too comfortable!
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Story credits:
Text: Meg Mooney
Photos: C V Williams
ROAD TO RISHI KONDA
Road to Rishi Konda is a book of insight and charm. A series of tales simply told, it’s a gift for parents and teachers. At once fascinating and delightful, Geetha Waters’ stories centre on a girl growing up in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh in the ’60s and ’70s.
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These are youthful tales, yet are underpinned by Geetha’s deep understanding of childhood education, based both on her academic studies and in practice in her daily life as a mother and childcare professional.
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Written from a child’s perspective, the tales of awakening to life offer the reader an opportunity to appreciate how all children learn, as they draw on a deep well of curiosity that needs to be respected.
Geetha is concerned to throw light on the work of the philosopher J Krishnamurti as a revolutionary 20th century educator. He would warn his students about the impact of language & conditioning, urging the small girl Geetha and her friends to observe its impact on their minds and lives.
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Geetha Waters now incorporates the stories found in ‘Road to Rishi Konda’ in the STEP program for children and teachers in South India, a training module based on Krishnamurti’s interactive style of relating with children.