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!
Story credits:
Text: Meg Mooney
Photos: C V Williams
Geetha Waters
Geetha Waters’ childhood always revolved around the subject of education principally because of her environment. Her mother was a high school teacher in Kerala and her father worked in a private school based on J. Krishnamurti’s teaching in Andhra Pradesh.
Geetha attended the Rishi Valley school for twelve years, then was offered a scholarship for one year to its sister school, Brockwood Park, in England. She returned to India after that gap year to commence tertiary studies. However, after unexpectedly meeting her sweetheart at a crossroads in Trivandrum, Kerala, the couple decided to get married, and Geetha migrated to Australia where she completed a Bachelor of Arts with the Diploma of Education at Macquarie University.
Her interest in education continued as she watched her children grow to adulthood in a foreign land. Geetha Waters now works at the Krishnamurti Centre at Summer Hill, Sydney, where the teachings of Krishnamurti are offered to those who aspire to understand Jiddu Krishnamurti’s holistic vision of the world.
Her memoir Road to Rishi Konda is a series of stories centred on a girl growing up in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh in the ’60s and ’70s. Her second collection of stories, Waking the Mind, is a reflection on Krishnamurti’s impact on her education, based on her experiences at a school he founded in South India.
For more information on Geetha check her blogs here.