00:00I'm happiest when I'm with plants and I'm happiest when I'm around people who love plants
00:05as well. One of the great Australian mysteries is after a bushfire the Australian bush, wherever
00:10you are, turns into this wonderful field of colour with seeds germinating and we all thought
00:17it was the heat and the ash. It actually turned out to be the smoke. And this was the discovery
00:22we made for Australia after a lead from some South African colleagues. When we finally
00:27cracked it in that spring of 1992, we knew this was one of those amazing and very rare
00:34moments in the sciences when you can say the word Eureka and it really means something.
00:39Australian horticulture has been changed by smoke. We now restore landscapes. We do better
00:46mine site restoration with that discovery. We went on after that to go and discover the
00:52nature of the molecule in smoke. We named it caracinolide from the Noongar word, our local
00:57indigenous group, carac for smoke. So caracinolide has now become a molecule worked on by scientific
01:05groups around the world because it has remarkable qualities in controlling plant growth. The biggest
01:11contribution my science has made is opening people's eyes to the diversity and the richness
01:18of what we have in this continent. But more importantly, that when we thought we knew it all, we only
01:26knew
01:26a small part. Bridging science with action is critical. We are all very good as scientists and publishing
01:35our papers, getting our accolades from our peers, but we forget the coal face. We forget the species that are
01:43languishing. We forget the communities that want to save them. Working now with indigenous communities
01:48has opened my eyes to how indigenous science and western science fuse together can really give us the
01:55next stage, which is building a restored, healthy environment where all species, human and native, can live in harmony.
02:03To live in harmony.
02:04Then when I am feelingquiades, the Melissa.
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