Robin Williams

The good thing about being in Australia is there's not that many of us, so we've still got to do a lot of stuff.

And there was a big gap in terms of how Heinrich events might influence the Southern Hemisphere and Australia in particular, or the Australian region.

And it took a long time to sort out.

It wasn't like we were looking for Heinrich events.

We got a record.

And then we had to figure out what it meant, and it just so happened that's the way it lined up very nicely.

So what do you do in the field work?

Or do you have all your samples sent to you so you just sit comfortably in this laboratory?

Or do you range by a lake, as you said, next to a forest, working out what the sludge might be made of?

Well, I'm a geologist, so I got into geology so I can go out and get down and dirty.

So we spent 10, 15 years tooling around northern Australia looking for good lakes, all the way from Cape York through to Wolf Creek Crater in Western Australia, which is of course dry, and all stops in between, trying to develop these records of changes in vegetation, climate and fire.

And that's what I'm in the job for.

I say, did you know when you were beginning your work, say as a student, and then I'm doing chemistry, therefore I'm sitting in a lab squirting all sorts of liquids, or I'm a geologist, I'm going to work for a mining company.

All those predictable things lapse when you look around as to what you could possibly be doing, ranging from icebergs to forests like you.

Well, I always thought I was going to be an exploration geologist, and my first job was actually in Borneo looking for gold.

They ended up throwing somebody out of a helicopter a few years after I was there.

No, they didn't expect it, but it was certainly terminal.

That was years after I was there, but it's actually...

kind of boring if you're at the bottom you're just putting dirt in bags day in day out so i came back and did a phd and ended up where i am today but it's been a random walk of opportunities all of which i tried to ensure allow me to do good work and go to interesting places and not have to kill people

Not have to kill people.