A research project that focuses on a region of the world that is definitely not making the news cycle for anything even remotely associated with conservation efforts, yet alone a UNESCO site.

Meet our Nth QLD rep Maree Treadwell: Vice-chair of Wildlife Tourism Australia; Australasian Bat Night Coordinator for the Australasian Bat Society; President of the Bats and Trees Society of Cairns; and Coordinator of the Spectacled Flying-fox Recovery Team.

When I was fifteen, I was lucky enough to have a history teacher who explicitly instructed us to look beyond the celebratory and the palatable in our textbooks and also find the narratives that made us uncomfortable. Not everyone is that fortunate in the classroom, but thoughtful, rigorous Interpretation can serve that same end.

I grew up travelling across Australia, watching my dad deliver cultural dance shows in schools and communities. For a short time he was also the cultural entertainer at the Art Gallery of NSW. These experiences created a passion in me for storytelling and the arts.

One of my online bios somewhere says “wanderlust, wildlife and words” and I think this still sums me up well. I’m lucky enough to divide my working life across finding ways to connect Zoo Visitors with conservation and the animals in our care and working on a threatened species program, with the occasional music festival thrown in for good measure

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
I take this to be a call to check in and make sure I’m working on projects that matter. How am I doing my bit to help make the world a ‘better place’.

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
I take this to be a call to check in and make sure I’m working on projects that matter. How am I doing my bit to help make the world a ‘better place’.

When you pause to read the title for this post ‘The world is not … well … it’s not real!’ you might wonder whether this was some invitation to a trippy night of substance induced frivolity and fun? If that’s your thing then it might well have made plenty of sense.

“I was the seven-year-old who understood in meticulous and arguably quite morbid detail how an Egyptian mummy was created down to the last incision and amulet.” Alice McKenzie Ebbels is currently a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House and the recipient of our 2024 IA Young Achiever Award.

Please feel free to share and use these images for any non-commercial enterprise. Please ensure that the following attribution is included with every usage: Image by Kylie Christian 2024.

Recently, InterpatMX hosted the September 2024 Global Excellence in Heritage Interpretation webinar. Check it out!