Sean Ulm

And one of the things that really startled me in the first few pages is the discussion of human beings being here for 65,000 years and the cave in the Northern Territory called Majabibi.

And you ask the question, where was this cave 65,000 years ago?

And the answer is 350 kilometres inland.

What was the implication of that?

You're being very gentle.

It's clearly more than 65,000 years ago, I would have thought.

As we speak, the evidence from various parts, say, of the islands of Indonesia, cave paintings...

bones, all sorts of things, giving more and more clues, and some not published yet from other parts, even in Australia.

So in other words, the story of human beings in Australia seems to be mounting to be of much greater age.

Now, when you call a book The New Inventors, you're talking about all sorts of things, technology, science, and the meeting of two, maybe more, given the range of different societies around Australia.

more different traditions of science.

And we sometimes forget that even with the European science, you had all sorts of other different influences.

Did I mention the Vatican?

And who knows what else?

Talking about matters that were not accepted later on because the evidence mounted up.

How did you deal with the fact that there are different

sometimes clashes of the culture of science and invention in this country because of the human history.

Was it straightforward or did you see clashes?

Was it a variety of examples?

Isn't it interesting because I've been up a mountain with two scientifically minded indigenous people looking at their own traditions.