Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.

In our new series, we explore influential Australian poems.

We can sometimes underestimate the challenges of others, especially when none have come before them to begin something – something that creates a legacy they probably never imagined. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history is littered with such people. One of these was the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993).

Oodgeroo (Kath Walker) was born in the Brisbane suburb of Bulimba to an Aboriginal man of Noonuccal descent from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) and an Aboriginal and Scottish mother. She lived on the island as a child. When she left school at 13, she moved to Brisbane to become a domestic servant. Oodgeroo had limited education, but she could read and enjoyed writing.

During World War II, she worked as a signaller for the army and performed administrative duties, becoming a Lance Corporal in 1943. The same year, she married Bruce Walker, an Aboriginal man from the Logan and Albert rivers region.

Later, as a single parent to her son, Oodgeroo became an office worker, then undertook household duties for prominent Brisbane doctors Raphael and Phyllis Cilento. Here, she was encouraged to write.

The 1940s was a time when the White Australia policy was in full flight. The only political party that did not support this policy was the Communist Party of Australia. Oodgeroo felt a strong connection to the communists’ lack of racially discriminatory beliefs. She flourished through the association, writing speeches and public speaking.

But it was after leaving the party Oodgeroo really began to delve into writing. She joined the Brisbane Realist Writers Group, a collective of left-wing authors founded in 1944. The poet Judith Wright recommended Oodgeroo’s work and her debut collection We Are Going appeared in 1964. It was the first ever book of poetry published by an Aboriginal person.

Tenacity, passion and hope

We must place this achievement in the context of the times. Where none had gone before, Oodgeroo stood, and it was only the beginning. What tenacity, passion and hope does that take? To push through where no one looks, speaks, behaves like you?

Where previously you had to expect closed doors, Oodgeroo used writing and a strong desire for change to break open those doors. That act has allowed others to follow.

Aside from this courage, it takes a great creative mind to write such powerful poetry and win such acclaim. Oodgeroo had a strong connection to the natural world and she found solace in forming words to match her feelings. We Are Going remains one of the most significant books in First Nations literature.

There were critics who likened her poems to “nursery rhymes” in their sound and structure, but they missed the true meanings instilled in them. Oodgeroo’s verses are full of anger, sadness and resilience as they look to the future. Take, for example, A Song of Hope, the final poem in We Are Going, which begins:

Look up, my people,
The dawn is breaking,
The world is waking,
To a new bright day,
When none defame us,
Nor colour shame us,

Nor sneer dismay.
Now brood no more
On the years behind you,
The hope assigned you
Shall the past replace,
When juster justice
Grown wise and stronger
Points the bone no longer
At a darker race.

Managing the delicate balance of deficit and positivity, the poem traverses space and time, from “our father’s fathers” to “our children’s children”, in a way that brings us back to the desire to push for more, for better. It envisions a “new Dream Time”, when “all doors open / That long were closed”.

Oodgeroo was proud of being a protest poet and she broke new ground in Australia, using poetry for political protest at a time when it was meant to be for art’s sake.

Oodgeroo had many attacks levelled against her by critics of the day. But her first book sold 10,000 copies, making her the bestselling Australian poet since C.J. Dennis, and she used her public recognition and her identity as a protest poet to campaign for the 1967 constitutional referendum to enfranchise Indigenous Australians.

Oodgeroo spoke of discrimination in a way that did not alienate; she mentioned “justice” in a manner accepted for the times. Her remembrance of past traumas allowed the dawning of hope for what the poem calls a “glad tomorrow”.

In today’s context, “hope” is often seen as almost too gentle a word when considering Indigenous rights. There are many First Nations people who use anger, frustration and rage to propel themselves in their activism for better rights within Australia.

That frustration and rage can assist in times when one is tired, but envisioning a different way can also empower one to rest, regroup, and then continue. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist within the writing of poetry and prose in a contemporary era.

Art as activism, activism as art

We live in an era of division, when some express a desire to go backwards to a time of “monoculture”. But we are also witnessing a celebration of First Nations literature, art, science and education previously hidden. The literary arena is now fortunate to have many First Nations writers all over Australia, as well as publication houses and awards specifically for these creatives to flourish.

We would not have writers of the ilk of Alexis Wright, Tony Birch, Evelyn Araluen and Alison Whittaker if not for Oodgeroo and many others who came before. Araluen’s connection to Oodgeroo’s work exists in her discussions of political clarity, reclamation of land and the re-inscribing of the concept of Country. Both poets seek to do away with a mythologised pastoral history and establish sovereignty within their words.

Whittaker’s poem Many Girls White Linen has similarities with Oodgeroo’s We Are Going and No More Boomerang in its critique of colonial surveillance and Australia’s fascination with the policing of Aboriginal bodies.

Birch’s work is not predominately in poetry, yet it is grounded in a political resistance that asserts Country as identity and protector, rather than pastoral ownership. Wright’s novel Plains of Promise takes its title from a line in A Song of Hope.

Oodgeroo was the first Indigenous woman in Australia to use poetry as a political tool. She emboldened (considering the context of the time) seemingly small yet important acts of writing as resistance – something we see in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature of today. She used the fame her writing gave her to advocate for Indigenous rights, organising petitions, giving speeches and directly lobbying politicians.

She was the national campaign coordinator of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and co-founded the National Tribal Council. She is regarded as a principal architect of the 1967 referendum. She was also the first Aboriginal Australian to run (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the Queensland state parliament.

This is just a small list of her significant acts. Oodgeroo was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1970, which she returned to the Governor General as Australia prepared to celebrate the 1988 Bicentenary to bring attention to systemic injustice and the struggle for Aboriginal land rights. It was around this time she ceased using the name Kath Walker, in favour of her Indigenous name.

Nothing Oodgeroo did was small. First Nations’ people in Australia see her activism as part of her art, as her art was part of her activism.

As Aboriginal women in academia with a love of writing, we imagine Oodgeroo’s position as a groundbreaking poet to be similar to Aboriginal academics who began their university careers when nothing was there for them. No supports translating knowledge, no comfortable spaces with like-minded and familiar-looking faces, and no great institutional desire for them to be there.

It not only takes immense talent to push through these invisible barriers to create a space; it also takes great courage. Oodgeroo knew how valuable education was, and now her words are heard throughout these institutions in Australia. The legacy she has left is at the core of our belief we teach, give knowledge and, if we are lucky enough, wisdom for others to grow from.

Writing poetry and prose is a deeply personal act; it holds an intimacy of something deep inside that needs to be spoken of and needs to be heard. Not all poetry needs to be pretty, hopeful, raging or perfect. But it does need to be in a voice that demands to be witnessed.

Now, more than ever, we need both the frustration and passion to nourish our movement, along with the hope things may be better for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We want more Oodgeroos, more Araluens, more Whittakers into the future, more writers and poets who can propel the language, culture and poetry that has sustained us throughout history.

Oodgeroo’s life and work created a legacy that will continue to be built upon by First Nations’ writers and creatives. “So long we waited / Bound and frustrated,” she wrote in A Song of Hope, with her eyes looking to the future:

See plain the promise,
Dark freedom-lover!
Night’s nearly over,
And though long the climb,
New rights will greet us,
New mateship meet us,
And joy complete us.

Tess Ryan, Indigenous Academic Lead Australian Catholic University, Australian Catholic University and Kelly Humphrey, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Recent reports have highlighted AI-generated “doctors” spreading dubious health advice to millions of social media users. Fabricated wellness trends can travel just as quickly. A supposed “pink jelly” weight-loss treatment, for example, reportedly fooled at least one celebrity.

These examples gain credibility in different ways. Influencers can appear familiar and sincere, while AI-generated doctors can look like qualified professionals. Neither familiarity nor the appearance of expertise tells us whether a medical claim is accurate.

Turning to friends and family for health advice is understandable. They may know our circumstances in ways that a healthcare professional cannot during a brief appointment. They can provide emotional support and practical help, and their advice is usually well meant. But somebody can care about us, speak honestly and still be wrong.

Truth and trust

My own research and wider research on digital health misinformation shows that trust can play an important part in deciding which claims people accept. Trust in clinicians and scientific institutions is generally associated with lower susceptibility to false health claims. Misinformation can nevertheless spread through trusted social networks when people share it because they want to help or warn others.

Social media influencers can reproduce some of the signals of friendship without having a personal relationship with their followers. They address followers directly, share details about their lives and communicate in an informal style. Over time, followers may develop what researchers call a parasocial relationship: a one-sided sense of familiarity with a media figure. A recent meta-analysis found that parasocial relationships can influence health attitudes and behaviour, although their effects vary across different contexts.

AI-generated doctors use a different route to credibility. Accounts designed to resemble real clinicians can borrow the appearance and language of medical authority without providing any reliable way to check who created the content, what qualifications lie behind it or whether the advice is supported by evidence.

Personal stories are especially persuasive. Someone describes being ill, discovering a treatment and recovering. The account is easy to follow and often more memorable than a discussion of probabilities.

Even a completely truthful anecdote cannot show that a treatment caused the recovery or that it will be safe and effective for other people. Symptoms may have improved naturally. The person may have used several treatments at once, received an uncertain diagnosis or left out relevant details. Experiments have found that anecdotes can influence medical decisions even when people are also given stronger statistical evidence.

Fear, hope and accuracy

Emotion can add to the effect. Fear or hope may draw attention to a claim and make it feel urgent. Emotional tone does not show whether the information is accurate. Research suggests, however, that heightened emotional responses can increase susceptibility to digital health misinformation.

Identity can also shape judgment. Advice from another parent or fellow patient may appear more credible because the speaker seems to understand our experience. Rejecting the advice may then feel like rejecting a community to which we belong. A systematic review found that existing beliefs, knowledge, trust and reasoning styles can all affect how people evaluate health claims.

People may also have sound reasons for distrusting healthcare institutions. Dismissive treatment, discrimination, rushed appointments and poor explanations can damage trust. Research on trust in health organisations suggests that mistrust may be a rational response to institutional failure or unequal treatment. Telling patients to trust experts will not repair relationships that healthcare systems have damaged.

So how can we assess a health claim without dismissing personal experience?

1. Examine the claim separately from the person making it

A source may be sincere, charismatic or visually convincing without having the expertise to judge whether a treatment works. Check their relevant qualifications and whether their identity can be independently verified.

2. Look for supporting evidence and independent agreement

Do the NHS, an appropriate professional body or a reputable medical charity offer similar guidance? A single study rarely settles a medical question, so substantial claims should be supported by a wider body of research.

3. Check for commercial interests

Look for products, affiliate links, paid partnerships or private treatment programmes. Financial involvement creates a potential conflict of interest that readers should know about.

4. Be cautious about sweeping promises

Claims that a treatment produces rapid results, works for almost everyone or has no meaningful risks are unlikely to reflect the uncertainty and individual variation involved in medicine.

5. Know the warning signs

Treat secrecy claims and advice to abandon prescribed care as serious warning signs The greater the potential harm, the more important it is to check the advice with an appropriately qualified professional, such as a pharmacist or GP.

Individuals cannot carry the whole burden of detecting misinformation. Social media platforms influence which claims are amplified, while health services influence whether people feel heard and respected. Researchers are increasingly calling for a systems approach to health misinformation that combines clearer public information, responsible platform design, effective regulation and trustworthy clinical communication.

Friends and relatives can provide valuable support and personal testimony can reveal experiences that medical research may miss. Judging whether a treatment is safe and effective, however, requires evidence that extends beyond any one person’s story.

Anna Stone, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of East London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Five decades ago, Bali’s coastline was adorned with traditional fishing canoes with colourful carvings of mythical elephant-fish. Where did they go?

The disappearance of these canoes tells a much bigger story about how tourism, collecting and coastal change are reshaping Indonesia’s living maritime heritage – and why preserving these traditions matters.

The boats that once lined Bali’s beaches

Before Bali became one of the worlds’ most popular tourist destinations, fishing villages lined the beaches of Benoa, Nusa Dua and Sanur, along the island’s southern coast.

Generations of fishers built and sailed jukung pelasan – traditional timber double-outrigger sailing canoes with colourful carved gajah mina (elephant-fish) prows.

The gajah mina is a creature in Balinese Hindu tradition with the head of an elephant and the body of a fish. Symbolising unity and harmony between land and sea, it is said to protect crews during voyages and provide safe passage.

These were not just fishing boats; they were central to daily life in southern Bali.

The jukung were symbols of status and community identity. They embodied generations of craftsmanship, spiritual belief and maritime knowledge. They expressed the economic, social and spiritual life of Bali’s coastal communities, and reflected the enduring relationship between its people and the sea.

Today, however, only a handful remain.

My latest research, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, found only six intact timber jukung pelasan remain on beaches surveyed.

Their rapid decline over the past half century offers a window into the profound changes that have reshaped Bali.

Prosperity came at a price

The transformation began in the 1970s and 1980s. As Bali’s tourism industry took hold, hotels and resorts replaced stretches of beachfront once home to traditional fishing villages. Many fishers left the sea for more stable work in tourism. As livelihoods declined, so too did the timber jukung.

At Sanur, I spoke with a retired boat builder who told me there’s simply no demand left for timber fishing boats, as nobody fishes anymore.

The traditional boats, he said, couldn’t be repaired the old way: the trees once used for hulls were felled decades ago to make way for tourist beach resorts, and the bamboo needed for spars and outriggers no longer grows large enough. What little suitable bamboo remains is prohibitively expensive.

This boat builder is not alone. A former fisher also told me he now takes tourists out on fibreglass replicas for sunrise breakfast sails.

Indonesia’s tourism industry shows no signs of slowing. The nation’s revenue from tourism grew by 6.3% in the first quarter of 2026. In 2025, Bali generated 55% of the nation’s national tourism earnings in 2025 – with tourism accounting for about 60% of the island’s own gross domestic product.

Yet this prosperity has come at a price. Changing coastlines are adding to pressures facing the few remaining fishing communities.

Boats without a beach

As traditional fishing declined, many timber jukung disappeared from Bali’s beaches. Some were replaced with fibreglass boats. Others were sold to collectors overseas – who preserve the boats, but remove them from the communities that gave them meaning.

Today, only a few examples can be found outside Indonesia, such as in Darwin’s Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Seattle’s Burke Museum and at the Institute of Ancient Chinese Ships in Ningbo, China.

Australians know Bali as a holiday destination. With more than 1.5 million Australians visiting Bali each year, we remain the island’s largest source of foreign visitors, contributing 23.44% of total arrivals in 2025.

Yet Australia’s relationship with the island goes much further back than most people realise.

The shared seas between Australia and Indonesia have long connected people through fishing, trade and cultural exchange. For centuries, Indonesian seafarers crossed these seas aboard traditional boats, carrying people, knowledge and commodities. By 1754, Macassan traders were harvesting trepang (sea cucumber) in Australian waters, linking northern Australia to markets across Asia.

Beyond the boats

Maritime heritage isn’t simply about preserving traditional boats. It’s also about safeguarding the knowledge that made it possible: how to select timber, shape the hull, lash the outriggers and read the sea.

For generations, those skills were passed from boat builder to apprentice and from fisher to child. A boat preserved in a private collection can’t do this on its own.

Working with the remaining Balinese fishers and boat builders to record their knowledge, techniques and traditions is as important as preserving the boats themselves.

My ongoing research involves recording traditional Balinese maritime techniques, terminology and stories, working alongside archaeologist Widya Nayati from Universitas Gadjah Mada.

The goal is not just to help preserve Indonesia’s maritime past, but to sustain the living knowledge that connects communities, boats and the sea. The future of Bali’s maritime heritage will depend not only on those who inherit these traditions, but on those who value and support them.

Sarah Ward, Researcher, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever wondered why it feels so good to sing in the shower? Or why turning up the radio up in the middle of a traffic jam and singing out loud can put you in a better mood?

Singing does something measurable to your body and brain, whether you are alone, harmonising in a choir, or singing with your friends at a karaoke bar.

Scientists have been interested in this “singers’ high” phenomenon for many years.

And a consistent picture is emerging from the evidence: singing can stimulate your hormones, quieten your nervous system, improve your immune system and boost your feeling of belonging, all at the same time.

Singing reduces stress

One of the most consistent findings is that singing has been shown to lower cortisol, the hormone most often associated with stress.

Several studies, using saliva samples taken before and after singing sessions, have found significant drops in cortisol in both solo and group singing, such as choir rehearsals.

Part of the explanation is biomechanical. The act of singing requires long controlled exhalation, similar to a breathing pattern (called pranayamic breathing) known to activate the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem down into the abdomen, is the main neural pathway in the parasympathetic nervous system. This is responsible for slowing down heart rate, lowering blood pressure and helping digestion.

This is why it is often called the “rest and digest” pathway, calming us down when activated, in contrast to the sympathetic system which activates the “flight and fight” response when we’re stressed.

A detailed review of this breathing process found that slow breathing with extended exhalation, reliably stimulates the vagus nerve, shifting the body out of a stress response, and into a calmer state.

You don’t need to join a choir for this part. It works whether you are singing by yourself in the car after a long work week, or practising your karaoke song in the shower.

It’s a painkiller

Singing can also trigger the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.

One study measured this effect indirectly, using pain-threshold tests. The researchers believed a higher tolerance for pain after an activity might suggest greater endorphin release.

Across several experiments including active singing, dancing and drumming, they found all activities raised the pain threshold of participants, whereas passively listening to music did not.

Oxytocin, the hormone linked to bonding and trust is part of the story too, though evidence here is less tidy. Some studies have found oxytocin rises after group singing (especially if you are good at it). Others found it fell after group singing.

Another study concluded the data is not clear enough, and the effect of singing on oxytocin may depend on how socially intimate and low-stress the setting is.

What is fairly consistent, however, is that mood improves and people report feeling closer to one another after singing together – even when the underlying biochemical effects are mixed.

Singing may improve your immune system

Beyond mood and stress hormones, there is emerging evidence that singing can also have a measurable effect on the immune system, which fights infections.

One small study looked at singing sessions with cancer patients and their carers. It found that not only did participants’ mood improve after singing – including reductions in cortisol – their saliva samples also showed their cytokine levels had increased. Cytokines are chemical messengers that play a crucial role in the immune system, controlling inflammation.

Chronically high cortisol is known to suppress immune activity, so if cortisol drops after singing, this is also likely to have a positive effect on immune function.

The authors of this study emphasise that this is preliminary evidence, needing longer-term follow up studies.

Benefits for your brain and belonging

So does it matter how and where you sing? The stress-reducing, breath-based effects of singing seem to hold up whether you are singing alone or in a group. But group singing wins hands down for social bonding.

A large randomised trial of community choirs in older adults found that six months of group singing significantly reduced loneliness and increased their mood, compared with a control group.

Other studies have found that singing can also simultaneously engage different regions of the brain involved in listening, language, emotions and motor skills. This can improve brain connectivity and lead to healthier ageing.

The takeaway

You probably already knew singing felt good. But it isn’t just a pleasant distraction. It can reduce stress, calm your nervous system and make you feel closer to those around you. But if you prefer to sing alone in the shower or your car, this has many of the same benefits too – so go ahead and sing your heart out.

Kathleen Mikkelsen, Lecturer in Biomedicine, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You’re probably familiar with the idea that in the world of big tech, “we” are the product.

Our data is the currency being traded every time we navigate our social media feeds. Tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer valuable services, but it comes at a price. They host our email, photos, backups, files, calendars, reminders and contacts.

If you also include all the smaller startups and niche solutions, you’ll quickly see your security cameras, electronic locks, home appliances and even your toothbrushing schedules are all online – far removed from any physical box or device that you have any control over.

But there is a way to break free from big tech. It’s called “self-hosting”.

Your life, online

Many of these large tech providers do a good job of securing your data and enabling you to access services across devices and platforms. They allow novice users with almost no technical skills to interact with and share their data at little cost.

However, being reliant on these companies isn’t risk-free.

Google, Amazon and Meta have been implicated in unexpected or questionable uses of data.

Having high-value data concentrated in well-established systems also provides cyber criminals and scammers with obvious targets to spam, imitate (spoof) or hack.

Users are also completely at the mercy of these companies should they decide to raise their fees, change their terms of service, or even discontinue access.

What exactly is self-hosting?

Self-hosting is a general catch-all term for taking control of your own data.

This shifts your data from big tech giants and moves it to self-managed applications. Your data is on your own systems and you have complete control over who can access it.

Many self-hosted applications are open-source and, thanks to community support, they can be relatively easy for a tech-savvy user to download and install.

Self-hosting isn’t new.

Squirrel Mail (a web-based email client) predated Gmail by several years. Gallery, a photo hosting application, came before Flickr and Picasa. Even WordPress was originally offered in 2003 as a self-hosted download before the WordPress.com blogging service became available in 2005.

Over the past decade, self-hosting has seen a rapid increase in the range of options available.

Today, moderately technical users can self-host a mind-boggling range of web-based applications, including media storage and sharing, blogs, websites, productivity and office apps, video conferencing, home automation and security, games and ad-blocking.

To get an idea of how much is out there, Awesome-Selfhosted publishes links to free and open-source self-hosted projects.

Self-hosting has also become more accessible with cheap, single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.

These tiny computers can be as small as a credit card and usually have lower-powered central processing units and no ability to expand memory, graphics or networking; they sacrifice computing “power” and flexibility for size, energy-efficiency and price.

Other common household network appliances such as network file storage, media servers and internet routers have become powerful enough that users can install custom applications to run many self-hosted services.

Another route to self-hosting is through device manufacturers such as umbrel and Zima, both of which provide physical hardware with dedicated self-hosting operating systems.

However, there is still a considerable learning curve for non-technical users.

Benefits and risks

Self-hosting provides freedom from big-tech, surveillance and/or costly subscriptions. It allows you to know exactly where your data is, and how it’s managed.

But it does come with some risks.

The most immediate risks come from technical mistakes and backup issues that can cause a self-hosted solution to lose data.

If your photo library is running on a single computer in your linen cupboard, you are reliant on that computer being powered up, backed up and available whenever you need it.

Similarly, any mistake you make in configuration or management could affect the availability of your data through access controls or even data erasure.

Another issue that users need to consider is whether they want their data available “on the move”. In most cases, home routers allow you to expose individual devices to the internet. This can allow you to access your self-hosted data while you are away from home. Unfortunately, if you can access your data, in most cases, so can cyber criminals.

Exposing self-hosted services in this way requires diligence, consideration and a certain level of expertise to minimise the risk of breaches – risks that may be amplified by poorly maintained applications.

Should I bother?

Self-hosting allows you to have greater control over how, when and by whom your data is used. For some, this is a vital requirement and worth the extra effort required to make it all work.

If you have an old computer available, why not give it a try? It may seem daunting, but self-hosting comes in many flavours, and you can choose how far you go with it.

Nikolai Hampton, School of Science, Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Nausicaa is a tall, gutsy teenage princess who finds a naked and helpless Odysseus washed up on her shore, gives him her brothers’ clothing, and instructs him on how to appeal to her mother, Queen Arete, for help to get home to Ithaca. She is crucial to his eventual return home after 20 years’ absence.

But she doesn’t appear in Christopher Nolan’s film at all – and her absence is part of a broader debate about how his version reduces or simplifies the role of women in the epic poem. In the Guardian, classicist Emily Hauser mourned the absence of the “delightfully brash princess”, along with nuance and complexity.

“There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material,” wrote classics professor Emily Wilson, whose translation of The Odyssey is a critically acclaimed bestseller, this week. “But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem.”

This applies to several key characters, from the enchantress Circe, who turned Odysseus’ men into pigs, to Odysseus’ wife Penelope. But what about the absent Nausicaa? Who was she? And why was she important?

Nausicaa, Odysseus’ teenage saviour

Nausicaa lives on the island of Scheria, where she and her fellow Phaeacians, an isolated and peaceful people, rarely encounter strangers. The goddess Athena visits the teenager in a dream and encourages her to wash her dirty laundry. She tells her the best young men of Scheria want to court her, and that Nausicaa and her bridesmaids will need clean dresses.

When she awakes, Nausicaa asks her father, King Alcinous, to loan her a mule-wagon so she and her female slaves can take the laundry to the seaside to wash. She offers to wash her father’s and five brothers’ outfits too, claiming she wants them to have clean clothes to work in and go dancing.

Nausicaa drives the wagon herself and joins in the manual labour of washing the laundry in a river that flows into the sea. She is near the spot where Odysseus has been washed ashore on a raft after leaving the island of Calypso, the lovelorn nymph, who sheltered him for seven years before being forced to let him go.

While the laundry dries in the sun, the girls play catch with a ball. Homer says Nausicaa is so tall, she stands out from the others, like the virgin goddess Artemis surrounded by nymphs. Their play wakes Odysseus, who jumps up from the bushes, naked and covered in grime. The slave girls run away, but Nausicaa stands her ground.

Odysseus praises her beauty and assures her whoever marries her will be the luckiest man by far: there is nothing better than a husband and wife whose minds live in harmony, who live in one house and make their enemies jealous. He is projecting his own desire to return home to his wife Penelope, but guesses accurately what will make this teenage princess trust him.

Thoroughly impressed, Nausicaa promises to give him clothing, food and drink, and a good wash.

After Odysseus bathes himself (at a distance, he’s shy), Athena does something special: she makes him look hot! She “made his hair grow curling tendrils like a hyacinth” and pours beauty on him just like pouring gold over silver. She makes him “look bigger and sturdier”.

Nausicaa is “shocked” and admits to her slaves: “I hope I get a man like this as husband, a man that lives here and would like to stay.” Flirting, she compliments Odysseus’ good looks.

Her next task is to save his life. She instructs him to enter her father’s palace without her, find the Great Hall, pass her father King Alcinous and go straight to her mother Queen Arete, who will be spinning wool by the hearth, and clasp her knees.

The wool-spinning alone is a sign of Arete’s status. She performs the most essential task of the household’s self-sufficiency and sustainability – making thread to weave on a loom into textiles – in the most public part of the palace.

Arete, the previous king’s daughter, has the people’s respect. What’s more, she wove the clothing Nausicaa has just loaned Odysseus. Homer says Arete recognises the clothes and is the first person to speak to Odysseus directly: “Where are you from? And who gave you those clothes?”

But she already knows: Nausicaa has given Odysseus her stamp of approval by sending him to her mother wearing them.

Arete and Alcinous receive Odysseus as their guest. It is to the Phaeacians that Odysseus narrates his adventures – such as the encounters with the Cyclops and Circe – and not, as in Nolan’s screenplay, in a lotus-induced state to Calypso. And it is the Phaeacians who escort Odysseus back to Ithaca and his family.

Penelope is shrewder in the poem

Most significantly, Odysseus’ meeting with Nausicaa is a dry run of his reunion with Penelope. He succeeds in persuading Nausicaa to trust him, helped by his good looks.

But his wife will prove shrewder. After Odysseus has killed all 108 suitors on Ithaca, he finally meets his wife as himself, not in disguise. Athena makes him look hot again, as she did on Scheria – curly hyacinth hair, beauty like gilded silver.

Penelope is not won over by this appearance. She tests his identity in another way, tricking him into revealing his knowledge of their immovable marriage bed and its construction around a tree – something replaced in Nolan’s film with a pendant of Athena that Odysseus carries around with him.

In Homer, the knowledge of the bed is more special, since it exemplifies the husband and wife whose minds live in harmony: the very thing Odysseus guessed Nausicaa wanted for herself someday.

“I love that not only is this about a very clever and ingenious man, it’s also about a very clever and ingenious woman, who’s his match in every way,” Madeleine Miller (author of a novel on Circe) told the New York Times about Penelope’s role in the Odyssey, in the lead-up to the film.

(In Nolan’s version, whose script Wilson claims she would have been “ashamed to have written”, Penelope is “barely more interesting” than the doll he has Odysseus carry to represent her.)

Miller said in Homer’s Odyssey, Circe comes to an understanding with Odysseus and invites him to stay as long as he needs. She offers “a place of peace and a haven”, where she helps him “recover from trauma”. Nolan omits the fact that Odysseus sleeps with Circe – and stays with her (and his men) for two years.

It’s a shame Nausicaa was left out of Nolan’s Odyssey: she is a good example of how Homer’s Odyssey is “a woman’s poem”, as many scholars have recognised.

But Nolan is faithful in one way to how Calypso and Circe appear in Homer: there is every indication they will continue on with their lives once Odysseus leaves their company. Had he included Nausicca, too, she would be another woman who is not just part of Odysseus’ adventures, but have independent narratives of their own – which happen to include Odysseus in it.

K.O. Chong-Gossard, Associate Professor of Classics (Ancient Greek & Latin), The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the early hours of August 5 (UTC), an abandoned SpaceX rocket stage is expected to slam into the Moon at around 8,700 kilometres per hour.

Launched in January 2025, the rocket sent two commercial lunar landers toward Earth’s nearest neighbour.

With its work done, the rocket lacked the fuel to return to Earth or move into deep space. It remained in an unstable orbit until gravity finally set it on a collision course with the lunar surface.

The crash itself poses no danger. However, it signals a looming regulatory problem. As governments and companies race to build a permanent presence on the Moon, there is almost no practical framework for coordinating activities that permanently reshape the lunar environment.

A rare scientific opportunity

For astronomers, the accident is a scientific opportunity. As scientists know the rocket’s size, speed and roughly where it will hit, the impact presents a rare chance to to study exactly what happens when something impacts the Moon.

The crash will provide data to improve computer models of how craters form and how lunar dust behaves.

Researchers expect the collision to excavate a crater roughly 20–30 metres across and eject a cloud of lunar dust, known as regolith, several kilometres above the surface.

What happens on the Moon stays on the Moon

Along with the dust cloud, the impact will also raise a tricky question: who gets to decide when humanity permanently changes the Moon?

Unlike Earth, the Moon has almost no atmosphere and no weather. As a result, any marks we leave behind will remain for a very long time.

More than 50 years after the Apollo Moon landings, footprints remain visible. If left untouched, they may persist for thousands of years.

The results of crashes or accidents will last just as long.

The Moon is a shared neighbourhood

Space agencies, private companies, and researchers are all operating on the Moon at the same time.

Several countries have announced ambitions for long-term lunar scientific stations. Commercial companies hope to deliver cargo, prospect for resources, operate lunar communication satellites, and eventually support a sustained human presence.

As activity increases, so too does the possibility that one mission could unintentionally affect another. A cloud of high-speed lunar dust created by a landing could damage equipment such as nuclear-powered lunar bases or satellites, contaminate experiments, destroy a site of cultural significance, or even risk the lives of people on the lunar surface.

If a poorly planned mission swept away humanity’s first footprints on the Moon or damaged the Apollo lander, it would be a loss of heritage for all humanity.

By good fortune rather than good planning, the rocket’s upcoming collision is expected to occur near the isolated Einstein Crater, away from many significant lunar sites.

Nobody owns the Moon, but some can still change it

SpaceX has unintentionally acquired the power to permanently alter the Moon. There is almost no international process for deciding whether, when or where that should happen.

At the centre of the discussion is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the foundation of international space law with 138 state signatories.

Under this treaty, no country can claim sovereignty over the lunar surface. Instead, the Moon is regarded as a place to be explored and used for the benefit of all humankind.

While the treaty prevents ownership, it says remarkably little about practical lunar governance or regulating the lunar environment.

Unlike Earth, the Moon has no equivalent of UNESCO World Heritage protection, domestic heritage laws, or environmental regulation.

It is each country’s responsibility to supervise their own space companies to ensure they comply with national and international law. That means the American government is, in theory, on the hook for SpaceX’s mistakes.

Lunar accidents could also open up a company to financial liability and associated risks. Damages to equipment or bases could be in the millions of dollars. Accidental deaths could create criminal liability. Damages to a cultural or scientific site could risk international diplomatic incidents.

More transparency and coordination needed

So how can the Moon be a usable space for companies, governments and scientists, while also still being protected for all humanity?

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space are already exploring future solutions. There are working groups examining how countries can regulate space resources and better coordinate activities on and around the Moon.

But these institutions face a difficult reality. UNOOSA has only around 40 staff with a global mandate, and the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space meets for only a few weeks each year.

Concurrently, commercial enterprises are throwing vast amounts of money at their race to the Moon meaning the law has not kept pace with the needs of the lunar environment.

From principles to practice

The international community does not need new laws. It needs to put the ones it has to work.

Article XI of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty already calls on states to share information about their space activities. That voluntary measure is fast becoming an operational necessity.

A simple starting point would be a lunar registry where states voluntarily identify planned activities, surface infrastructure, and sites they consider culturally significant. A similar satellite registry is managed by UNOOSA. This complimentary lunar registry would capture the operational details that the satellite registry was never designed to capture.

Aviation has a system of Notices to Airmen to advise pilots and flight operators of flight hazards, and other time-sensitive information. Shipping has Notices to Mariners.

The Moon needs something similar: standardised Notices to Lunar Operators. These would flag landing sites, rover routes and dust-generating activity before missions launch.

Calls are growing for a fourth UN Conference on Outer Space. This would be a forum where governments, industry and scientists could actually build these tools.

While this rocket cannot be stopped, the next accident might be avoided. Whether that happens will depend less on rocket scientists and more on the space lawyers and diplomats.

Gregory Radisic, Fellow at the Centre for Space, Cyberspace and Data Law; Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Law, Bond University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Few episodes occupy a darker place in maritime history than the wreck of the Batavia.

Wrecked off the mid-west coast of Western Australia in June 1629, 159 years before the First Fleet entered Sydney Harbour, the disaster offers a stark alternative to romanticised tales of exploration.

Batavia’s story is instead one of greed, mutiny, heroic resistance and mass murder, exposing the violence and ambition that accompanied early European ventures into Australian waters.

The ship’s story is also one of a massive global supply chain – part of which has remained hidden until now. In our new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, we trace the origins of some of the Batavia’s most important cargo: massive sandstone blocks.

The tiny crystal preserved in these rocks help paint a detailed picture of lives, labour and global connections nearly 400 years ago.

An immensely valuable cargo

The Batavia was the flagship of the Dutch East India Company. On its maiden voyage from the Dutch Republic to Java, it carried 341 passengers and crew, together with an immensely valuable cargo.

Among it was what mariners called “paying ballast”. This was heavy material that served two purposes: stabilising the ship and carrying commercial or practical value at its destination.

In the ship’s hold, this included thousands of bricks and large, carefully carved sandstone blocks intended for a monumental gateway or portico in the Dutch East India Company’s colonial capital, Batavia (known today as Jakarta).

During the voyage, junior officer Jeronimus Cornelisz plotted to seize the ship and its treasure. After Batavia struck Morning Reef, roughly 60km west of the modern-day town of Geraldton, Commander Francisco Pelsaert departed in an open boat to seek help.

In Pelsaert’s absence, Cornelisz seized control of the survivors scattered across the nearby islands. He sent Wiebbe Hayes and a group of fellow soldiers to a distant island, expecting thirst to kill them. Cornelisz’s mutineers then began systematically killing the remaining survivors. More than one hundred men, women and children were murdered.

But Hayes and his soldiers found water. Survivors who escaped Cornelisz reached Haye’s group on makeshift rafts and warned them of the killings. They fashioned weapons, built a stone fort, and repeatedly repelled the mutineers. The remains of their stone fort on West Wallabi Island are regarded as Australia’s oldest surviving European-built structure.

When Pelsaert’s rescue ship appeared on the horizon, Hayes raced to reach it before the mutineers. He boarded first and revealed what had happened. The mutiny was over.

Through it all, hundreds of sandstone blocks lay within Batavia’s wreck, silent witnesses to the bloodshed unfolding across the islands. The stones survived; most of the people who sailed with them did not.

Nearly 400 years later, those stones are revealing the extraordinary logistical networks that supplied the Dutch East India Company.

Gaps in the record

At the dawn of global capitalism, the Dutch East India Company created one of the richest corporate archives of the early modern world.

Yet even its meticulous records have gaps. We know the Batavia carried a prefabricated stone portico. But we don’t know precisely where the stone came from or how materials from different quarries were assembled into a single overseas shipment.

To investigate, we examined Batavia’s sandstone cargo, now held by the WA Shipwrecks Museum. The blocks looked remarkably similar to each other, and centuries beneath the waves changed more obvious clues to their origins, such as colour, mineralogy, and the cement that holds the sand grains together.

To understand their source, we therefore turned to a more durable record hidden within the rocks. Sandstone carries tiny crystals known as zircon, often eroded from many older rocks.

Each grain contains a uranium–lead clock that records when the crystal grew. Together, their ages create a distinctive geological fingerprint of the ancient landscapes that supplied the sand.

Comparing geological fingerprints

We compared the geological fingerprints of the Batavia portico blocks with sandstone from German quarries known to have supplied building stone to the Netherlands during the 17th century. Some of these quarrying and trade networks had much deeper roots, extending back to Roman times.

The fingerprints revealed that similar-looking blocks came from different sources. One matched Bentheim sandstone; the other matched Obernkirchen sandstone.

Both zircon fingerprints were strikingly different.

Bentheim blocks contained abundant 3-billion-year-old zircons derived from ancient rocks in Scandinavia, whereas Obernkirchen blocks are richer in younger zircon, eroded from the 300-million-year-old Variscan mountain belt to the south, in what is now central Germany.

The quarries are about 140km apart and connect to different river systems. The stones travelled through separate inland transport networks before converging at a Dutch East India Company hub, most likely Amsterdam, where they were shaped and assembled into a single shipment for Batavia.

Numbers carved into the blocks acted as assembly marks, a 17th century precursor to flat-pack instructions.

No surviving document records this precise journey. But geology exposes a sophisticated and coordinated supply chain linking quarry workers, stone cutters, river transporters, merchants, and sailors across northwest Europe.

More than decorative cargo

Batavia’s portico blocks are a testament to the infrastructure of an empire: European stone gathered, standardised, and shipped across the world to build the Dutch East India Company’s colonial headquarters in Java.

Nearly four centuries later, the blocks show that stories can indeed be written in stone, recovering traces of networks of labour, trade and human connection.

Anthony Clarke, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University and Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.