Take me to the River
Join social ecologist and river restoration expert Dr. Siwan Lovett in conversations about the ideas, issues and opportunities that relate to our connections with nature and each other. This podcast offers open, honest and practical insights for us to reflect on in our daily lives.
Take me to the River
The Art of Healing Rivers: Kirstie Fryirs on Reading Rivers to Recover Them
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In this episode of Take Me to the River, Dr. Siwan Lovett sits down with renowned fluvial geomorphologist Professor Kirstie Fryirs—co-developer of the globally adopted River Styles Framework—to explore how rivers are shaped, damaged, and healed.
This jam-packed episode breaks down the science of river restoration through the lens of fluvial geomorphology. But what is geomorphology? As Kirstie explains, it’s all about understanding how rivers take shape — how water, mud, plants, and even animals like carp and platypus help form the way a river looks and behaves.
To make sense of this, Kirstie co-developed the River Styles Framework, a way of identifying different types of rivers, understanding their condition, and working out how they might recover. It’s now used all over the world to help river managers speak the same language when deciding how to care for waterways.
Kirstie challenges conventional thinking about river restoration, emphasising that knowing when NOT to intervene is just as important as knowing when to act. Through the concept of "recovery potential," she explains how each river must be treated individually with realistic expectations. In a world where rivers cannot return to pre-colonisation conditions, she shows us how to let rivers self-heal when possible.
A pioneer for women in the waterway industry, Kirstie became the second female professor of geomorphology in Australia. She shares her remarkable career journey from studying post-colonisation river disturbance in the Bega catchment to researching heavy metal contamination in Antarctica where she experienced true silence. She discusses her innovative teaching approaches and the advice that shaped her leadership style.
From icy Antarctic stations to the wild beauty of Tasmania's Franklin River, Kirstie's passion for rivers is infectious and you can hear it in every moment of this conversation. Whether you're a conservationist, scientist, or simply someone who loves waterways, this episode offers invaluable insight into river recovery — and the experience of being a pioneering woman in environmental science.
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Take Me to the River is an Australian River Restoration Centre podcast production, hosted by Dr. Siwan Lovett and produced by Chris Walsh and Jimmy Hooper, with support from the rest of the ARRC Team. ✨
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Hello friends, it's Shuan here. Thank you so much for following along our journey and for your love of rivers. We've been doing some really exciting things, from saving native fish, raising awareness about rivers that aren't getting enough to drink, and restoring the places we all love. Your support truly means the world to us. One of the best ways you can help is by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on social media to keep up with what's next. Happy listening.
SPEAKER_04:Have you ever heard silence? And just think about that for 30 seconds. Right? People go, oh yes, I've I've heard silence. And you go, well, think about that, right? In our everyday lives, you know, we've got leaves rustling, we've got cockatoos and even the hum of electricity, right? When you really, really think about it, right? So we're surrounded by noise all the time. You know, and even when we're out there on the river, you know, you've got the water and you've so there's nowhere that's really silent. And at works, I think I can genuinely say I heard silence. And I just sat there and I went, Oh wow, this is complete and utter silence. And almost to the point where you can hear your heart beating and your ears just ringing. Wow. And you go, Wow, that's really cool. Yeah. And so you sort of like you don't realise until you're in that sort of place, you know, how much noise there is in our environment. And and you can just feel yourself sort of like just calm right down. And your brain just sort of like, you know, instead of being on call all the time and your brain going, you just go, I can just sit here for 15 minutes, completely isolating.
SPEAKER_06:Completely, you know, no one's no one within Ku We.
SPEAKER_00:Hello and welcome to Take Me to the River, sharing stories and inspiring hope with extraordinary people who care for our rivers. I'm your host, Dr. Shuann Lovett. Today I'm talking to a good friend of mine, Professor Kirsty Friars. Kirstie is a renowned expert in fluvial geomorphology and river management, and in this conversation she shares her insights on the structure and function of rivers, how they adjust and evolve, and how we can best use geomorphology in river conservation, recovery and rehabilitation. Kirsty is probably best known as the co-developer of the River Styles Framework, a geomorphic approach for analysing rivers that has been adopted in many areas across six continents. Kirstie's research on natural flood management won an award at last year's Australian Stream Management Conference for Best Paper. Kirstie has extensive domestic and international collaborations in both academia and industry, and she's worked on many river science and management projects as part of multidisciplinary teams. She has also conducted research in Antarctica on heavy metal contamination at Casey and Wilkes stations and has co-written and co-edited several books on geomorphology and river management. She holds several research, teaching and postgraduate supervision awards, including the International Gordon Warwick Medal for Excellence in Research, and she's a certified environmental practitioner in geomorphology. She's also just a really nice person, and I'm excited to dive into her work and learn more about the River Styles Framework and her career in river management. Welcome Kirsty to my backyard. You may hear a few plains listeners, uh possibly a cockatoo and my dog Pippa snoring. But it's lovely to be here with you. How about you let our listeners know a little bit about yourself and how you've come to love rivers?
SPEAKER_04:Well, thank you firstly for having me in your backyard. It's a wonderful place to be. The garden has grown a lot since I was here last time. But I guess like most people who are river lovers, you know, it starts in childhood really, doesn't it? And I'm one of a family of four children. I've got three brothers, and all of our childhood was sort of spent in the outdoors. We did a lot of bushwalking in the Blue Mountains where my grandma lived, and all my cousins uh lived in Tasmania. So we do big long road trips and we do lots of hiking and camping as as kids, and I guess that's where my connection with with water and rivers really started was in the great outdoors, playing in the mud and and playing in water. So um yeah, when I was when I was at school, um I was quite good at at science and geography and and art. Um and so I had a real passion for for the outdoors and for for environmental sort of issues. And this was sort of in the 80s and 90s, um, so things like you know, Marbo and things like climate change were becoming more sort of mainstream. And so when I left school, um all I wanted to do was environmental impact assessment because that was the sort of the thing at the time. And so I went to uni at Macquarie University to do my undergraduate, and um I went straight into environmental science and environmental management. It was called physical geography at that time.
SPEAKER_00:I did geography and I loved it at school, and you very rarely hear about it now.
SPEAKER_04:No, that's right. And you know, it back then it was it was a mix of physical geography and human geography. And nowadays we've sort of separated them out, which is a real shame because they you know they interact, and of course, you know, the environment and humans and so on is a really important sort of uh area that that you know if we're gonna get stuff done on the ground, then we need people to be working in nature and the environment. So anyway, at uni, um that's all I wanted to do was geography. Um but then I got to second year and there was this weird course in the handbook on geomorphology. And um so I thought, oh yeah, that sounds interesting, you know, it's about landscapes and and and different, you know, coasts and rivers and mountains and glaciers and all that exciting stuff. I thought, oh yeah, I'll sign up for that. Anyway, I guess that was probably, you know, that was it. That was that that sort of set me up. I was hooked from there. So I had some really fantastic lecturers then, you know, Professor Gary Briley um there and and Trish Fanning. Um so Macquarie had a really good geomorphology sort of area that a lot of us studied in. And so um, yeah, I followed on in in geomorphology, the environmental impact assessment sort of put aside, and um I studied geomorphology, I did my honours degree um down in the bee catchment on post-colonisation river disturbance. Um and then after that I didn't get the greatest grade in my honours, so I wasn't competitive for a PhD scholarship. So I was appointed by Gary at that time on Alertec project. Oh my goodness. Yeah, which you were the program director for. And so I worked as a research officer for three years on that on that project, and that's when River Strayles was born. And so you'll probably remember that. I was just very young at that time, right? So this is in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And so I guess that really sort of set up, you know, the River Strails framework and and so on, which has now been going for 25 years.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, wow. So so listeners, that um weird sort of noise that uh Kirsty made, Lerdic, actually stands for Land and Water Resources. Oh, thank you, Cockatoo. Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation. Thanks again. And uh I worked there for about 15 years and had the pleasure of, as Kirsty just said, of meeting Kirsty when she was working on the River Styles framework with Gary. And I I was looking at your face just lighting up when you were talking about having great um people actually teaching you. Gary just had this charisma about him, doesn't he? Probably still does. He's in Auckland now, I believe. But he was able to, you know, share his enthusiasm with you about the topic. It makes such a difference, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely, yeah. And so, you know, um I remember Gary at that time, you know, he used to wear bandanas and and clogs, and so the floors in the lecture theatre were all tiled, and so you could hear this as you walk into the lecture theatre, and and you know, we'd all just sort of look at look at him and go, Who is this? You know, what's going on here? But yeah, I mean, you know, geomorphology more than anything else is really about storytelling.
SPEAKER_00:As a storyteller myself, Kirsty, I love hearing you describing geomorphology as a telling of stories. And it's fascinating that you were saying your honours was on the Beager River, because that was one of the first rivers I looked at when I started at Land and Water Resources RD Corporation. Uh, and it had huge issues with sand slugs at the time. So, can you explain to the listeners how geomorphology helps you understand what you're looking at when you look into a river and you see something like the Beager with all this sand, for instance?
SPEAKER_04:So, uh, geomorphology is defined as the processes that shape the Earth's surface. So, as geomorphologists, we're trying to interpret for river systems how water plus sediment plus vegetation plus ecosystem engineers interact to produce all of this wonderful diversity that we see in terms of different types of rivers and how they adjust and how they evolve. And so when we're out there in the landscape, we're using a range of different sort of investigation skills to try and interpret what that landscape is like and how it's adjusted and changed, particularly under the influence of things like human disturbance. And so we use field work, so we use, you know, we do surveys, uh we go and dig pits and we look at the sediments, which hold the archive, they hold the history of how that river has adjusted and evolved over time. We use historical resources to unravel or to track how things have adjusted and changed over time. And nowadays, of course, we can use remote sensing and and big data, which you know just sort of like blows your mind in terms of the capability that remote sensing and GIS can can give us. And then we can use that as a basis for sort of thinking about well, how has the river adjusted in the past? Why is it in the condition that it is today, and how could we forecast how that river might adjust in the future under different sorts of disturbances or influences? And so when we're out there, so in the beagre catchment, that was a lot of work to unravel or to investigate the history of river adjustment, what those rivers were like prior to colonisation, and then my work and also Andrew Brooks, who you will know, also worked in the in the beager catchment as well. And we were looking at post-colonisation, river change. And in that catchment, my work was in the upper part of the catchment, looking at the big valley fields. So prior to colonisation, they used to be swamps and chain of ponds environments, and then as a result of you know drainage of those swamps and clearance of the vegetation and so on, they became incised and they produced these massive gully networks, these big overwidened channels. And that's where all the sediment came from that eventually made it to the bottom end of the beager system and why we had that sediment slug stuck in that system, and it's still there today. It's still stuck in that system. Um, so that's where all that work originated, and so my honours project was was about looking at the longer term, so over thousands of years, history of those swampy environments, and then how that got altered and changed uh post-colonisation.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things I noticed when you were talking about you know the multiple lines of evidence and the range of factors that can influence a stream is ecosystem engineers. And I've got these you know little ideas of fish out there with pickforks. So can you tell me who who who is an e who or what is an ecosystem engineer in Australia?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so you know, ecosystem engineers are the the fauna, the aquatic fauna that that that live and that you know function within our river systems. Um in North American places they've got fantastic ecosystem engineers, uh beaver, right? So building a beaver dams and so on. Um in an Australian context, you know, our ecosystem engineers um we don't really have a huge number of them. You know, our fish are quite lazy, but we do have platypus, we do have uh wombats and so on that are part of that sort of riverine ecosystem, and so they interact with you know the sediment, the water, the vegetation, the wood, um, and so on, and are part of the functionality of river systems.
SPEAKER_00:And I think the introduced European carp does a bit of engineering, doesn't it? Because it's it's an I mean it's a all credit to it in the fact that it is an amazing um species because it can breathe through mud, but often the water is muddier where there is carp because they actually dig through the mud and and sift through it really for food, don't they?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, yeah, carp is a fantastic ecosystem engineer. Um, just not suited to Australian rivers and and how they function and how they evolve.
SPEAKER_00:So, with with your work on the beager, then, um, I always tend to think that, you know, not all rivers are the same. Actually, most people I speak to in Australia always say that their river or creek is special and it's different to everybody else. But you've come up with this river styles idea, you know, and I was explaining it to someone this morning, and I always think of you know, strike the pose, like Madonna, in terms of the style. Um, tell me a bit about this river styles framework that you've developed.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so I mean geomorphology, uh, when we're talking about geomorphology and river management, we're basically talking about trying to understand and interpret what's called the physical template of a river. Okay, so the physical template is that the structure of the river and also the processes that are operating to create all of that river diversity. And um trying to get this uh physical template in place and understand it provides really important foundations for understanding rivers and how they function, but also it's on top of this template that a whole range of other ecosystem processes occur. So, you know, nutrient cycling, uh, carbon cycling, uh, organic matter processing, um, and all of those interactions with all the flora and fauna that we see within river systems. And so the geomorphology we always say provides these foundation template. And the river styles framework is essentially um a set of procedures that we use to analyse and interpret that physical template.
SPEAKER_00:Right, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Um so it's not classification. Um, a lot of people misinterpret it as a classification scheme, it's a characterization scheme. And what we do is we have a set of procedures and we teach people how to observe and how to interpret the geomorphology of rivers. And so you can think of different river styles as like species, right? Different species. There's this whole range of diversity of rivers out there. And I think in New South Wales we've got, at last count, 47 different types and different styles of rivers, just in terms of their geomorphology. Um, if you take that out to sort of the global scale, I think we're getting up to you know 70 plus uh different types. So it's like the geomorphic diversity, and trying to think through how do you go about interpreting that platform or that that template, I should say, and thinking then about right, what is the health status or the condition of that template? So you can think of it in terms of the geomorphology being similar to the foundations of a house, right? So if you've got foundations that are in good working order and the plumbing's working and electricity is working, that makes that house habitable. Okay, so geomorphology being the structure and the function of rivers, if your house hasn't got a good structure and it hasn't got all those functions in working order, then that habitat is compromised. So that's essentially what we're looking at in terms of geomorphology is the foundation structure and function, and trying to then think about well, if that's not in good working order, then some of those other ecosystem processes start to fall down. And that's where you start to see deterioration in river health, whether it's ecology or water quality or some of those other sorts of cycling and ecosystem processes that are occurring. So that's what the river style framework does. Um, it produces that that I guess that inventory of the types of rivers or the styles that we've got. It then assesses well, what is the health status of all of the different reaches of these styles that we have within our catchment? And then we start to think about well, what's the likelihood of improving that condition over the next several decades? And this is called recovery potential. So thinking about you know, what's the likelihood that a river that might be in poor condition, that's of a certain style, improving towards, say, moderate or good condition over the next several decades? And what can we do as river managers to either say leave it alone and let itself heal, because it might already be showing signs of recovery, so we don't need to tinker. Or what could we do as river managers to strategically enhance that recovery and improve that condition over time? And maybe accelerate that so that it doesn't take as long as if you would left it alone. And then so once we've got those layers in place, we've got the style, we've got the health or the condition, we've got some idea about recovery potential, we can then apply that in river management and we can think about okay, well, where are we going to prioritize first? Where are we gonna get best bang for our buck? Or where can we work with the river to self-heal? And strategically thinking about where we should intervene or where we should maybe leave the river alone to self-heal.
SPEAKER_00:It's amazing, you know, as as humans we like to meddle as much as possible. And so when we go out on a farm, for instance, and say, actually, all you need to do is fence this off, it's sort of like, really? Uh yeah, okay. Obviously manage weeds, um, control stock. But it's that idea of recovery potential that often gets people over the line in terms of doing some work. How do you explain to people in really highly modified systems there it it's often hard? Um it's really it's really something I I find hard, that it's never going to go back to what it was. So when you talk about a recovery trajectory or potential, what sort of discussions do you have with people about where that river might be able to get to, given sort of what it's been through already?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, it's a very good question and um incredibly challenging to to communicate that in a scientific sense, but also you know, with community and practitioners and so on. I guess you know, one thing that that that we do is just be realistic, right? Our rivers are not going back to pre-colonisation, so they're not going back to those sorts of conditions. Um, and we always say, look, when we're assessing recovery potential, we're just trying to get the best possible river health or condition that we can achieve under contemporary, we call them boundary conditions, right? So we've got climate change operating, we've got, you know, human disturbance operating on river systems. And you know, the purist in me sort of says, well, you know, we've got weed management problems and so on, but the realist in me sort of says, look, we might just have to accept that that some of these things we're not going back to a pristine or to an intact, whatever word you want to use, uh, condition. So I think setting realistic expectations and setting, you know, targets that are realistic, and we just sort of define recovery potential as let's see if we can improve the condition to the best possible condition it can be under those current contemporary conditions. And so when we're talking to, you know, it doesn't matter whether we're talking to scientists or community or practitioners, I think setting that realistic uh expectation is incredibly important. And when we're analysing condition, our reference condition, we never ever say, oh, our reference condition is a pre-colonisation version, because that would mean that every river in the country is in poor condition. That's right. So, you know, our reference conditions are we call it an expected condition. So what would this river be like? How would it look? How would it uh be be behaving if it was in really good condition or excellent condition under contemporary conditions? And so that then sets, I think, a bit more of a realistic expectation. Sometimes I can see people sort of have a bit of a sigh of relief, you know, that that expectation is something realistic and that in a community context people can grab hold of that and go, yeah, I think I can achieve something here, right, to improve condition, and we'll do the best we can we possibly can under the circumstances. But I guess when we're talking about um recovery potential and and trajectories of change, that's where the geomorphologist sort of really earns their cash, I guess, because because we're reading the landscape and we can sort of undertake forecasting exercises, we know how the river's adjusted in the past. We have a sense of what its condition is today. And we can sort of then run scenarios and go, right, well, what might happen in a future under climate change where droughts and floods and fires are going to become more prevalent? Um, what might happen, you know, if we do some assisted rehabilitation um along these particular rivers? How is that going to enhance or improve the condition of those rivers? Or what might happen if we leave it alone? Is that river system going to start to recover on its own and therefore us as practitioners or as managers really only need to either monitor that and keep check on it, or maybe do interventions that try and accelerate or enhance that. And so forecasting what the the the different sorts of options, the different scenarios that are possible, and giving people realistic expectations, I think, about what that can be. And then that helps to then go, right, well, if we are going to intervene and put some sort of treatment, what's the what's the most appropriate treatment response? And it may well be simple as fencing off, letting the river self-heal on its own, because many rivers are they are self-healing.
SPEAKER_00:So when you're talking about the scenarios, you know, living within the worlds of government grants as we do, often you know, magic has to happen within three years, which is totally ridiculous because that's is going to take probably 50 to 100 years for many areas. How do you um provide advice to people uh that enables them to you know hopefully get a grant, but also to um place it within the longer term context of how long it takes for a river to recover?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. So we always say um we need to be ready. So when the opportunity arises for a grant, you can go, yes, well we we know that we're going to go and target either this particular reach or this particular catchment because all that hard work's already sort of been done and it's been set up already. So the forecasting and the analysis of condition and recovery potential is sort of already sitting there waiting for the most prime moment to go, yep, okay, if we have the opportunity to get a grant or to work with a particular community group or work in a particular catchment, um, then we're ready and we can put those plans in front of people, um, or we can put those realistic expectations in front of people and say, yep, all right, when we get the opportunity, we're gonna go for it. So, you know, a good example is after the big floods, the 2021-22 floods, and lots and lots of investment very, very rapidly um after those floods to fix you know the rivers. And um it was very, very interesting because in some places I was doing community forums after those floods, and there was a real sort of despondency in the community. People were tired, and you know, rightly so. You know, they'd had fires, they had the drought, um, and they had these big floods. And so people were like, we've been investing, you know, 20 years in riparian restoration or rehabilitation in these systems, and they felt like a lot of that work had been wasted. And there's these massive investments going on in you know, stream bank and riparian uh rehabilitation after the floods. And so in places where a lot of that recovery was already occurring, um, or in places where they had a good idea, a strategy in place, so being ready, they could grab hold of those opportunities and apply for a grant for you know rehabilitation along certain reaches or working with different communities and practitioners. So I guess the answer is be ready. Yeah. Um so when those opportunities happen, you might have to wait a while, but when those opportunities happen, you can you can grab them so you're not sort of scurrying around uh because you simply don't have the time, and you're right, the turnover uh and the turnaround time on those things is is is really really quick. So knowing what you would like to do and and knowing when to intervene is really really important.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I I think that there is a a growing understanding from the funding bodies about what can and can't be achieved in the short time frames. I know that you know what you were talking about, setting realistic expectations, um sharing the knowledge that you have and being very frank about what can and can't be done. That's certainly how we're going about things now. And and for us, with all the work we do with river restoration, we're now starting to say it's all very well to put the trees in, but you actually then need to support the landowner who then has to manage feral animals, it has to, you know, cope with weeds, has to ensure that its fencing stays intact if there's a flood, and just be there to support that person through what they're trying to do because it's it's not as simple as just whacking in a few trees to actually bring it bring a river back. So I think that's really important. Another thing that struck me just hearing you is how River Styles then has provided a common language amongst those people that have done it, and that must mean you've got a whole community where you can say, or it's an upstream um section of river with going into a swampy meadow or whatever it might be. Is that the case? Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And you know, now that river styles have been around for quite a while, there it does have a language of its own, but it's fascinating that um yeah, you find in the the weirdest of places, you know, words and terms sort of pop up. And I'll give you two examples. Um so doing community forums and town halls um in Beeger and in the Hunter and other places and so on, and you do a you know a presentation on about even just river diversity, you know, this wonderful diversity of rivers that we see in these catchments and so on. And people come up to you at the end, and we've had, you know, little old ladies and grandmas go, I live on a partly confined river, you know. And so I guess showing people um that diversity and also showing them things like the condition and that you know reaches are parts of catchments and thinking at the catchment scale. People really get it, right? And they just want the words, they want the they want the the way of communicating that. Um and as geomorphologists we we love to invent you know new jargon and new words, but I like to think of it as a common language. You know, and another example is we've we've been teaching Riversdale short courses in a whole range of different international contexts, and some of them are multilingual classes. So we're running a a short course in the Philippines and um in the northern part of the Philippines, and we had English, we had Australian English, you know, we had we had Kirsty English, um, we had um Gary English, um, we had Filipino, and we had uh a whole range of local indigenous um languages in the room. And so pedagogically, you know, I I originally thought, oh, this is gonna be really quite challenging. But actually it was fantastic because you know, we'd be talking about geomorphology and we'd use these terms, you know, pools and riffles and benches and levees and partly confined rivers, you know, all those sorts of words. And then people were sort of connecting with that, and it became the the common language that we could all uh talk about rivers, no matter what language we were speaking. And so we were teaching this sort of we were teaching river styles and how to do the interpretation using these these procedures and so on. And my uh my words and and my my sentences were being translated into Filipino, and then the Filipino people were translating that into the local, you know, indigenous um languages. And so we do a lot of group work, right? We don't stand up front and just do lots of lectures, so lots of group work, and it's this really noisy classroom, right, with all of these different languages um cropping up, and I thought, wow, this is fascinating. But then occasionally you'd hear from the other side of the room, oh that's a bench, you know, or oh, that's a partly confined planform controlled river, and then there'd be a whole range of other languages around that, and so that was a real that was a really important learning, I think, because even though We do get sort of criticized for creating language and creating that that sort of jargon is a connector as well. And it's a connector across different languages.
SPEAKER_00:And when you're in a multilingual classroom, you don't really have much choice other than to try and create some sort of common language so that people it's a wonderful story because you you're actually co-creating a language which will be with that group of people and you can take that experience elsewhere. I I think we do do that. You know, in in you know Australia's massive and you you know you go through several countries in Europe all with different languages, whereas here we say, oh no, we all speak the same language. We actually don't. The basic fundamentals might be there. But I know when we were developing our pairing guidelines for the cotton industry, and then some for the sugar industry, then some for the wool industry, and then some for the dairy industry, they all had to be modified to reflect the language that they use about their experience as dairy farmers and their experience as a cotton farmer and what they call a drain, someone else might call something else. So I do think it's important that we sort of try to take that time to understand who we're working with and get to know the language that's there. Um we're so quick in Australia to pick people up when we say, you know, a town name incorrectly. Uh so you know, it's not as if Australians are gonna just get a get away with it either.
SPEAKER_04:No, and and it's fascinating, it works the other way as well. So, you know, even in in in geomorphology in an Australian context, we have this this floodplain feature, this geomorphic unit that's called a flood runner, right? So that's a geomorphic unit, and we use that term all the time. But the rid the origins of the word flood runner come from local farmers who have observed, you know, the short circuiting of a floodplain pocket during flood flows. And so that term originated in the community with the local landowners and has been adopted by the geomorphologist. So it works both ways in terms of creating that that common language as well.
SPEAKER_00:So from the descriptions you've given, it sounds to me like River Styles provides you with an opportunity to take a really collaborative approach to river management. What do you think are the biggest issues facing river management at the moment?
SPEAKER_04:Well, of course, you know, there's resourcing and institutional arrangements and so on that that, you know, in many ways as individuals we can't sort of really control. Um, but I think there's a couple of challenges that that we as individuals, whether we're scientists or practitioners or community, can really uh think about that challenge us in terms of our ability to, I always say knowing when to opt out of the process, and it comes back to one being ready, but secondarily, it might be best to leave the river alone, right, to allow it to self-heal and to recover. Um, and so knowing when a river is at a point where we can leave it alone takes bravery, right? It takes bravery to say, we don't need to do any more at this point. Let's just see how the river responds. Because rivers are dynamic entities, right? They've got these processes and behaviour going on. Um, right, so they're always adjusting and changing, and you hope that the treatments that you're putting in are putting the river onto one of those recovery trajectories. Um, but knowing when to opt out is a massive challenge. So when to stop tinkering, and that doesn't mean walk away, that means monitor, observe, make sure that you know things are going okay, that things are improving their condition over time. So knowing when to opt in and then but more importantly, when to opt out, I think is a massive challenge. Thank you for the industry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, agreed, agreed, and it is that word bravery, isn't it? I know that we love to tinker. In fact, early on in the in this discussion, you were talking about going to the beach. And you know, when you go to the beach, kids, we always dig channels and then we put stuff in the channel to divert the water. Like that is just something every child does. So we just love engineering and tinkering. So, yeah, sometimes saying to people, I know Laurie who I worked with very closely, you know, she's out there giving advice to farmers, she says it's almost like they feel ripped off when you say, just leave it alone. It's like, really? I can just leave it? Yep, you can just leave it alone. Yeah, um, and giving them permission to do that and the knowledge to do that is also I think really important so that if they're called on it by someone else, they can actually say, Well, no, this is how we actually are going to fix this river or bring this river back to some semblance of life, um, which is what we're trying to do with our work up on the upper Murumbidji. Um such a great conversation, thank you so much. I don't want to leave this conversation without talking to you about Antarctica. I had no idea you'd ever been to Antarctica. So, what did that research involve? Heavy metal contamination? I know. I know, I know.
SPEAKER_04:Completely uh nothing to do with fluvial geomorphology whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00:That's perfectly fine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um but you know, what I realised was that, you know, all of those sort of generic skills really, I would really, really, really needed them. Yeah, no. Uh down to you know, survival tactics in the in the cold environment through to, you know, planning, um, time management, you know, all of those sorts of skills. Um so it came about, I'd always sort of said to my colleagues, um, look, if there's any any opportunity to go south, I'd love, you know, just just give me a call, I'll be on the on the ship. Anyway, it was about a decade ago now, and um Damien Gore, who's one of my colleagues, uh, he works in environmental quality, um he was doing a lot of contaminants uh site assessment work in Antarctica, and there was this opportunity to uh go south uh for two seasons, two summer seasons, and do contaminated site assessment, um, but also to look at um how to treat landfill waste. So in Antarctica, up until I think it was about the 80s or 90s, um, all waste generated on stations was put into landfills around the stations. And so nowadays it's all called RTA, return to Australia. So any waste or any rubbish that's that's generated is either treated on site or returned to Australia. But because of that historical legacy, there's quite a lot of landfills and also sites around where stations had been abandoned. So Wilkes is a classic example of that. It's an old station uh that's been left intact essentially on the continent. And so we were part of the Australian Antarctic Division Human Impacts and Remediation Team. And so there were two key things that we were that we were charged with responsibility of doing was doing experiments on um how to stabilize heavy metals that were running off from these landfill sites into the marine environment. And because geochemical reactions occur differently under really cold temperatures. Yeah, yeah, we were doing a lot of experiments about how to uh stabilise those heavy metals. So that was on station at at Casey, and so we were setting up drums with all of this, you know, heavy metal waste steel and all this other sort of stuff, um, and then adding secret herbs and spices and then and and uh seeing what the chemical reactions were and whether we were getting any runoff. So that was one component, but another component was um we spent some time at Wilkes Station, which is the abandoned station, um adjacent to Casey Station. And in the 1960s that station was set up, um, and when the new Casey station was built, Wilkes was basically left as is, almost with you know, plates and knives and forks and so on on the tables. Oh, that was like set up to the new station. And so this station is still there and it's buried under under the snow. Um and you can see sort of the outlines of the buildings and so on. So we went in, we were doing a contaminated site assessment because all of that waste has basically been left in that environment. So we were just doing a an inventory of the uh the the chemicals that are there, the heavy metals that are there, tr testing you know the stuff that's been left behind to see whether it was leading to runoff of heavy metals. And then subsequently over the last 10 years they've thought more effectively about how to treat some of those different uh contaminated sites, um, you know, using a range of different treatment techniques. But we were just doing the baseline contaminated site assessment. So, yeah, that were the two main programs. You know, you've sort of like, well, you're going south and you think, wow, this pristine, beautiful, wonderful, and it is, it's an amazing environment. You almost can't describe it. It's it's it's a fascinating place. It's not a scary place, but you you've got to be on your guard, you know, the whole time. Um, but here we were going in looking at human impacts and waste and so on in this sort of like beautiful environment. So um, yeah, it was it was absolutely awesome.
SPEAKER_00:There must have been some hard times as well. How remote were you? Like you were seriously remote. How many people were on the station at the same time?
SPEAKER_04:Um so Casey is not hugely remote. It it's one of the stations where um you can fly in on the on the plane. Uh the first season we went down on the on the Aurora Australis, and that was a a two-week journey on the Southern Ocean, which was which I loved. Oh look at you! Yeah, it was it was wonderful. And then you landed at at Casey. Uh the second year we we we flew in and we and we flew out, which is a which is an experience in itself. Um, but you know, so Casey, we were living on on Casey Station in the summer it can get up to about a hundred people um on station. So, you know, completely self-sufficient. So, you know, everything from cooks and and and so on to tradies, you know, the plumbers and the electricians and then the scientists and and so on. So it's a whole community, and you're completely self-sufficient and you're completely reliant on each other uh for for the whole summer season. Um so Casey's not particularly remote. Wilkes is a little bit more remote, um, so we were a very, very small team that went out to that station. So we had to, um, there was myself and and another person, um, and we were we were based out there at the Wilkes Hilton, as it's as it's uh colloquially known. Um so it's one of the old huts from the station out there. So we went out on a hag, which is one of those um like trucks with the what do they call with the tractors on them. So they took us out there, um, they brought out our brought out our gear and stuff on a on a rubber dinghy, and we'll just landed there um to go off and do all of our contaminated side assessment stuff. So very, very different experience. Um completely sort of isolated um at Wilkes. And I think I always say to people, have you ever heard silence? And just think about that for 30 seconds, right? People go, Oh yes, I've I've heard silence, and you go, Well, think about that, right? In in our everyday lives, you know, we've got leaves rustling, we've got cockatoos and even the hum of electricity, right? When you really, really think about it, right? So we're surrounded by noise all the time, you know, and even when we're out there on the river, you know, you've got the water and you've so there's nowhere that's really silent. And at Wilkes, I think I can genuinely say I heard silence for about I don't know, 15 minutes. So it was a dead calm day. Um, it was sort of twilight evening. The penguins had, you know, shut up. Um and I just sat there and I went, Oh wow, this is complete and utter silence. And almost to the point where you can hear your heart beating and your ears just ringing. Wow. And you go, Wow, that's really cool. Yeah. And so you sort of like you don't realise until you're in that sort of place, you know, how much noise there is in our environment. And and you can just feel yourself sort of like just calm right down. And your brain just sort of like, you know, instead of being on on call all the time and your brain going, you just go, Wow, I can just sit here for 15 minutes, completely isolating. All right, completely, you know, no one no one within CUE of of where I am. So a little bit scary in that regard. Yeah. But um, yeah, so sorts of experiences that are hard to explain, I guess. And when you come back, you get off the plane in Hobart or you get off the ship or whatever, and you and like you just even just crossing the street, you gotta really stop and go, right, you almost need to ramp yourself back up in to to bring yourself back into that environment and just take care so you don't get run over. That's right. Silly things like that. Um, yeah, but yeah, awesome experience.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, I I just yeah, all credit to you. That sounds incredibly brave to me. Uh I was thinking as you were sitting there, you know, you got to have the whole sensor sense, isn't it, sensory deprivation tanks where you get put in a tank and you float and you have nothing around you? Whereas you just got to, you know, sit in the odd iceberg and look out over the sea in that topic. Wow. Yeah, without the pesky penguins, they're they're noisy creatures. Are they? And they stink. And they stink, yeah. Yeah. I often I have been to a few of these colonies and gone, you know what, you really pong.
unknown:That's right.
SPEAKER_04:And then the seals are going off and uh anyway, so yeah, that was a that was an amazing experience.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, how's that experience um informed your teaching, do you think? Because you've come back and you that your career's really, if it's a decade ago, the last ten years you've really progressed in terms of you know going up the um up to the professors at professorial level. Yes, I know. Well that was a bit of a surprise.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, well deserved. 2018, yeah, that happened and um only the second female professor of geomorphology in the country, which I didn't know at the time. Wow, so which is a bit a bit shocking really it took till 2018, but anyway. A trailblazer? Yes, well, only the second one. Um oh look, you know, when I when I was when I finished my postdoc, um, you know, I was going for a bunch of academic positions and none of them were were coming off. And at that point I thought, right, that's it, I'm I'm done with academia. I went and actually uh studied towards being a high school geography teacher. Wow. So I did did a lot of pedagogy uh training back then and that's really that's really helped me out. I use that all the time. Um so you know, all the way through my postdoc and PhD and then you know, through my lectureship and so on, I've really drawn on that pedagogy training. I'm fascinated by how people learn how they uh what they see, what they interpret, uh the use of visuals rather than just the written word is a big thing in my teaching. Um so you know, it's great that I've been to Antarctica and seen a bunch of different rooms because I've got a great photo collection that you would have an amazing photo collection. So I've really transitioned just in the last few years into what's called active learning. So no more lectures, you know, standing in the front of the class for an hour or doing these sort of you know, very long practical sessions, really doing some of that active learning, using a whole range of different learning resources uh to try and teach people because gymophology is not an easy thing to teach. You know, it's not it's not just a a checklist, it's not just something that you can sort of just pick up through formulas or equations. There's no sort of you know, it's not because you're observing the environment, you're observing rivers and you're trying to interpret how they're adjusting and what those processes are. Most of the time those processes are invisible because they're not happening every day. So trying to teach people how to make the interpretation from what they're seeing um and from what they're understanding from their either their field work or the remote sensing work or or whatever it is to get that interpretation skill to to read the landscape, as we say, um, is really really challenging. And so I think from from my perspective, and it's in my undergrad teaching and it's in my professional short course teaching, and I teach micro-credentials now, that that that observation, the storytelling, and the use of the visual part that is just really, really useful when you're trying to explain complex concepts and get people to think about interpretation. It's not just about gathering data and hoping that the data sort of says, yes, well that's what's happening. It's about evaluating and interpreting that information to come up with that assessment.
SPEAKER_00:And that's about giving people the skills then to look at these multiple lines of evidence you were discussing, but to also engage their other senses. It's sort of that touch, feel, listen, see. You know, I I know that uh in the Koorong um well last year um at the Stream Management Conference we went to uh see Nick uh Whiterod's place that he works at the Koorong, and he's got this amazing model that apparently is is tiny, tiny um granules of glass, but you can s you can actually project images onto it and move the glass around to create different shapes, and it can be and it can be overlaid with topographical information or geomorphological information, and it's fascinating because you get to do that moving. Have you got anything like that that you use?
SPEAKER_04:No, haven't haven't um got any of those things, but yeah, I've seen those sorts of it's probably similar to a flume or something where you can't like we're just talking about the beach, you know. Yes, that's it, that's it. Where you can try and, you know, you adjust things, you put your little sticks in, you know, and and and see how the different processes occur. So yeah, um I haven't used that in in my teaching because we haven't got those resources, but certainly drawn on a whole range of of different types of resources, yeah. I love you know historical air photos, uh, you know, and those sorts of things. They're absolute gold mine of of of information and you can just see it. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Um or if you're in the field, you know, and you're looking at a a stack of sediments in a fold plane and you go, right, well, how did those sediments get there? That's the interpretation from the visual to the interpretation of thinking about process. Yeah. So how did those things get created and how are they getting reworked or form or reformed, and how has that changed over time? That's the interpretation sort of skill that we're trying to teach. And not everybody can do it. It is it can be very, very challenging to get people to observe and see things in the landscape and then put that interpretation lens on top of it. It can be very, very difficult. And it takes time and practice to sort of get that skill up.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things we were talking about at the beginning before we started recording was about your leadership style. And you were talking a bit about some advice that you were given. Do you want to share that with us? Oh dear.
SPEAKER_04:Um, so I've been given lots of advice over my um career, but I'm not sure how to say this in a non-negative way.
SPEAKER_00:It's not negative, just go ahead. It's expensive. Or at the end, but I would have been on a negative note. No, no, don't you worry.
SPEAKER_04:But you know, early on, you know, there weren't many uh female role models in particular not in geomorphology anyway, and um even in sciences in general. Today is actually the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow there you go. So there you go. Go us.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, go us. Um yeah, and and so you know, of course, you know, I had mentors and so on, and I had my sort of like my my board, my my committee of of mentors. I don't have one mentor, I have this sort of like committee of mentors in my head that I draw on and I go, oh gee, I wonder how they would have dealt with that particular situation. Anyway, there were you know, there was a usual sort of you know advice that that I can't really repeat, but you know, one one bit of advice was um Kirsty, no matter what, just maintain your femininity. Yep. Alright. Yeah. And I always draw back on that, you know, if I get into a difficult situation or I feel like I'm getting a bit cranky and grumpy or something, um, I go, right, no, just just be yourself. Yeah, you know, um, maintain that femininity and people can take that or leave that, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a piece of advice that that has stuck with me over time.
SPEAKER_00:And you're a strong female uh role model now. What do you pass on to your students?
SPEAKER_04:Oh my goodness. Yeah, well when you put it like that, it sort of um scares me a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:Don't worry, I get scared when people tell me I'm a leader as well.
SPEAKER_04:It's got that, yeah, it's sort of got that layer of responsibility. Yes. Um, I don't know, what do I say? I I say take ever or take every opportunity when it opens up. Okay, there's maybe not everyone, but but you know, if something pops up, if it even if it's, you know, at undergrads, you know, people saying, Oh, look, I'd really like to help help out in the field if there's any opportunities or to volunteer for something, just to broaden that experience, or even just going and seeing the landscape. So in that time when I was working on the Lurdeck project when River Styles was uh being developed, that was a like a three-year project before I was competitive enough to even go near a PhD. And that provided me with an amazing opportunity to just drive around the landscape, right, up and down the coast, eastern seaboard, and just see all this different types of rivers. And even just having that opportunity, you know, people won't ask if you keep saying no. So if something's put in front of you, you know, even if it's a volunteering sort of uh thing, or going and speaking to somebody um in a completely different field or an opportunity to just experience and drive around the landscape, then you know, grab it. Yeah. Because it all adds to that uh experience. You can add it on your CV, you know, yeah, and it just builds it builds your ability to see the landscape, to interpret the landscape, and then think about how all different sorts of people interact with that landscape and their values and and where they where they where they feel most comfortable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's part of that uh social geography you were talking about, because we are social beings, aren't we? And so you know opening yourself up to that experience and taking those opportunities to meet other people, see other rivers, see other landscapes.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. Fantastic. And that would be it's probably a terrible thing for me to say as a as a scientist, right? You know, you sometimes get critical, oh that's all a bit too qualitative or that's all a bit too, you know, no, I know too gentlemen. It's all science, it's just social science. You're a you're a you're a geomorphologist and you're a scientist, is that yeah, there's a there's a there's a bit of tension there sometimes, but yeah, yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Ultimately it is yeah, that people and nature interaction. Absolutely. Well they always say river management, it's not about the environment, it's about people. Yep, it is definitely. So as we come to the end of the podcast, which has been so enjoyable. Oh, thank you, Pippa. She just uh gave a good um wiggle there. Uh there are three questions that we ask every guest. And so the first one is do you have a favourite river, waterway or body of water? Oh, of course. You do? Oh, that's good to know.
SPEAKER_04:What is it? Um, so my favourite river is the Franklin River in Tasmania.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow, yeah, that I mean, gosh, that's a good choice.
SPEAKER_04:Always has been, always will be. Yep. And um because you know, we had a lot of family in in Tasmania, did a lot of, you know, camping and hiking and and and other sorts of activities in Tasmania for you know decades when we were kids and stuff. And um it was on one of those trips, I think we were in Strawn, and um picked up the Peter Dombrovskis book and the posters. Yeah. And there was one there which was Rock Island Bend on the Franklin, you know, the very famous image from the Miriams campaign. And I remember I was a really quite small child that campaign, right? The save the Franklin River campaign with Bob Brown, he's one of my heroes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so on. So, you know, as a as a sort of a teenager, I didn't have a poster of rock stars on that on my wall. I had the poster of Rock Island B. Oh wow and I've still got it. Yep. And um I went, I've got to go there. Right. So I was studying, I hooked up on that second year course called Strange Geomorphology, and I thought, I've got to go to Rock Island Bend. I didn't realise how remote, you know, or what a wilderness it was. Anyway, but so I looked into it and I eventually um signed up for went on two commercial rafting trips. So I ran rafted the the full length of the Franklin from the from the top end, and I've forgotten the entry point, um, right down through to the Gordon River at the bottom end. Yeah. Um and I thought, right, but I've got to be fit. Yeah. So you know, had enough fitness to be able to do that, um, have enough money to do it. Um, but just an amazing experience. Yeah, there's something about the Franklin, it's got some sort of mystique or it's got some sort of soul or something about it, and it's got that that feeling about it. And it's got all the activism and it's got the environmental movement, and and and it's just an amazing place, and it's remote. Yeah. Um, and so again, I guess it's one of those, you know, you've got to survive on the river. Yes, yeah. You've got to take care of yourself, yes, um, as well, and you've got to be you've got to be cautious in some circumstances, but even just seeing those places, and we got to Rock Island Bend, and it was it was on a sunny afternoon, yeah, and I didn't recognise it because it didn't look like the Peter Dombrovskis picture.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_04:Didn't have the mist. Didn't have the mist around. Oh wow. And I almost missed it because we'd sort of like been paddling, paddling, paddling, and then they went, Oh, there's Rock Island Bend. Oh wow. Anyway, uh I did get a picture, which was really good. Um, but yeah, it wasn't like the picture, but it was still it was still amazing. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the picture taken through your camera lens.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was on slide film at the time. Slide film at the time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. We'll put a picture up, um, listeners of that on the show notes so you can see see the inspirational rock bend that Kirsty's talking about. So I think you've probably answered this, but um, I'll just check. Where do you feel most connected to country and to nature?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, anywhere that's in the bush beside a river.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a beautiful feeling, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. And just that it's so and even, you know, going and you know, holidays are ruin ruined forever. Always going and looking at a river somewhere. Yeah. But yeah, just sitting sitting by the river and it's just had a calming influence. Yeah. It's that thing about water, isn't it? It is, definitely.
SPEAKER_00:Running water. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. And so finally, what drives you to do what you do? Oh goodness.
SPEAKER_04:Um well, I guess I'm I'm passionate about the environment and making a difference, living the world in a better place than you know, when we inherited it, and we're really just custodians. So trying to do the best we can uh in terms of particularly, you know, improving river health and river condition. But I also I'm driven by you know training the next generation as well through some of that pedagogy. So training the next generation of of of students, but you know, practitioners as well, and and opening their eyes to this beautiful discipline called geomorphology.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I I think I need to go back to uni now. Oh well, you can come and do one of the micro-credential unis. Who knows? I might do that, Kirsty, never though. No plug. We will put um information there about the River Styles course as well for those of you who are interested. Well, um well, Kirsty's gonna leave us now. She's off to Science Meets Parliament. And I can assure you, if you talk with half the passion that you have today about what you do, you will definitely get through to our parliamentarians how important it is to care about rivers and live your temperature. Thank you, Red. Thanks very much, Kirsty. Have a great rest of your day. The Australian River Restoration Centre is a charity restoring rivers and helping others to do the same. You can support our work by checking out our shop, where we have some of the best gifts and conversation starters to help raise awareness about restoring our rivers. Best of all, your purchase makes a real difference. All proceeds go directly towards our work for restoring rivers and protecting these treasured species.