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
IMPRESSIONS JOURNAL ARCHIVE
Issue No.2-2020
ISSN 22093265
​The Bra Boy of Bondi Icebergs
The coronavirus presents all kinds of dilemmas for humankind. Some life-changing, some trivial. In this issue, Jim Piotrowski uses a light-hearted approach to consider some social effects on relationships as well as the craft of writing, in a distinctly Sydney short story. Read more
Issue No.4-2019
ISSN 22093265
HARD BORDER​
Brexit has been dominating the airwaves for the past three years and talk of hard and soft borders bandied about in a willy-nilly fashion. Few understand what the terms actually mean for Northern Ireland and Ireland. Read more
Issue No.2-2019
ISSN 22093265
CREATIVITY, ART & LIFE
Viewing the extraordinary artistry of sanctioned graffiti on a recent trip to Valparaiso in Chile, I was struck again by one version of the concept of geomancy. Is the formation of hotspots of creativity in time and space random? Read more
Issue No.5-2018
ISSN 22093265
A COMMITTED LEFTIE
A Committed Leftie Scholar, writer and book reviewer, Michael Wilding chats with Italian journalist, Rossella Venturi, in her last Author Interview in a series she's working on. Read more
Issue No.3 2018
ISSN 22093265
TOM KENEALLY: LOVE, LIFE, WRITING
Australia’s great grand patriarch of writing, Tom Keneally, remains as ‘common man’ as ever in his outlook on life, regardless of so many honours bestowed and worldwide glory gained. Read more
Issue No.1 2018
ISSN 22093265
WRITER'S DREAMS, EDITOR'S KNIFE AND SELLER'S RACK A candid interview with the Director of Sydney School of Arts & Humanities, Dr Christine Williams, by South Indian poet and academic, Syam Sudhakar Read more
Issue No.1-2020
ISSN 22093265
KNOCKACONNY​
Memories – a world away. The red and white bungalow was my parents’ pride and joy and in its prime in the 1960s. Read more
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Issue No.3-2019
ISSN 22093265
LUKE SLATTERY DOES JUSTICE TO 'MRS M'​
To Slattery, the story of early colonial Sydney is a still-relevant social experiment, so much so he wrote two books about it. His latest, Mrs M, is a fictionalized story of emancipist Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth. Read more
Issue No.1-2019
ISSN 22093265
WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?
Our first Impressions article for the year – and with it an acknowledgement of the great legacies left by writers who have influenced our lives and our ideas so significantly – and, so often, unobtrusively.
Issue No.4 2018
ISSN 22093265
SEEKING HARMONY FROM COMPLEXITY
Nicky Gluch's memoir, just published, is set in Israel in 2013-14. It will explore how the experience of living and studying there led Gluch to pursue a musical career. Read more
Issue No.2 2018
ISSN 22093265
BANKING MISCONDUCT: JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE In a fresh approach to the snags for the unwary being uncovered by the current Royal Commission into the financial services industry, one group of Economics thinkers has proposed an innovative proposal. Read more