Poo palace; walk-in woolly gut; Tassie’s noisy nightlife; FungiGirl; and a life-sized Australovenator dinosaur
Highlights from the final day of National Science Week
Researchers, experts, and other interesting talent available for interview around the country.
NSW: Follow food from lips to lavatory in the giant inflatable Poo Palace – Newcastle
NSW: Meet a life-sized Australovenator dinosaur at Science in the Swamp – Centennial Park, Sydney
ACT: Dancers with disability explore bee science through performance – Canberra
VIC: CSI eDNA: solving eco-crimes with environmental DNA – Melbourne
WA and national: Space farmers and cooks wanted! Sow astro seeds and test complex off-planet crop growing conditions to nourish astronauts on Mars and beyond. Plus, lab experiments for highschoolers coming up in Perth.
NSW: Meet the team who crafted a giant walk-in gut to explore the gut-brain connection – Gymea
TAS: ‘CallTrackers’ wanted to record noisy nocturnal wildlife – online tomorrow
NATIONAL: Australia is big and full of wild things! Help wanted to find and photograph our flora and fauna
NT: How the birds got their colours: Dreamtime through circus and dance – Darwin
QLD: VR farming, AgBots and strawberry sundaes on the Ekka’s science trail – Brisbane
Coming up – Science Week extended…
- TAS: Tracking cats, robot cars, drones, fossils, and other bright ideas – Hobart
- SA: Female fossil rockers take a palaeo-music show to Adelaide
- NT: Biodiversity Buzz: Top End Eco Science Fair in Darwin
Read on for direct contact details for each event, or contact Tanya Ha, tanya@scienceinpublic.com.au or 0404 083 863; and Shelley Thomas, shelley@scienceinpublic.com.au or 0416 377 444.
Also today:
QLD: Reconnecting with the birthplace of Reef stewardship – Mission Beach
VIC: Walk with wildlife – Apollo Bay
NT: Hue of the brew: science of colour and beer – Darwin
QLD: Geolocate opals using their luminescence – Brisbane
More about the event highlights
Step inside the Poo Palace – Newcastle, NSW
Experience the journey that food goes on, and ask the experts about digestion, farts and faeces, gut health and good bacteria.
The Poo Palace is a giant inflatable re-creation of the digestive system where children take a sensory adventure through the gastrointestinal tract, from lips to lavatory.
It is made up of 4 modules that mimic the journey food takes along the digestive tract (mouth, stomach, small intestine, large intestine).
Children learn firsthand how food moves through the body, and through live experiments with researchers from the Hunter Medical Research Institute.
Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/hunter-science-festival-3/newcastle/
Science in the swamp: superpowers of nature – Centennial Park, NSW
Explore plankton’s critical role in conservation, ID a frog, learn how Indigenous knowledge systems harness nature’s superpowers, use solar scopes to observe the sun, or wander the wetlands.
‘Science in the Swamp’ also features Ginger the life-sized Australovenator dinosaur, a spider show, explosive experiments, slime station, optical illusions, a scavenger hunt and more.
The free family event is a partnership between Centennial Parklands and a series of science exhibition providers. The 2025 theme explores extraordinary adaptations of plants, animals and ecosystems – revealing how ‘superpowers of nature’ sustain life on Earth.
Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/science-in-the-swamp-2025/centennial-park
Dancers with disability pollinate science and inclusion – Canberra, ACT
Explore the importance of bees for ecology, biodiversity and our food train through ‘BuzzACT’, a dance-and-science show for children.
Canberra’s inclusive dance performance group, The Chamaeleon Collective, comprises 70% of artists living with disability, chronic illness and/or PTSD.
Launched in 2020, The Chamaeleon Collective, is part of The Stellar Company, founded by dance artist/choreographer/producer, Liz Lea. The initiative provides professional mentoring and career pathways for emerging artists with and without disability.
Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/buzzz-act/majura-park/
Join the real-world cast of CSI: eDNA – solving eco-crimes with environmental DNA – Melbourne
Think David Attenborough meets CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Don your lab coat, safety goggles and gloves and help a team of scientists solve eco-crimes by collecting and analysing environmental DNA (eDNA).
Step into a mock crime scene full of physical evidence, environmental samples and contextual clues that need to be deciphered. The eco-crime could relate to water pollution, endangered species trafficking, biodiversity loss, climate change or deforestation.
Learn how to collect environmental samples from water, soil and air, avoiding crime scene contamination with scientists including ‘eDNA Detective’ Mariea Pacheco (applied field ecologist), and ‘FungiGirl’ Ema Corro (mycologist). Then, conduct eDNA extraction and analysis using the world’s first portable DNA laboratory, the ‘Bento Lab’, before crunching genetic data and using DNA barcoding.
Friday 15 August – Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/csi-edna-solving-eco-crimes-with-environmental-dna/brunswick/
Space farmers wanted – national online
It’s Day 530 on the moon base and you’re eating packaged slop again… until a delivery of nutrient-enhanced microgreens arrives from Earth. Your mission is to sustainably grow and harvest edible plants in an extreme environment. But first you need to learn the basics of plant biology, food chemistry and farming approaches that minimise water, energy and resource use.
The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space is supersizing its mission to develop out-of-this-world future foods by enlisting public participation in ‘Grow 4 Launch’ experiments.
Participants will receive a microgreens kit complete with seeds, hydroponics gear and test tools, alongside guidance on how to alter plant sensory traits (colour, taste, smell and texture) and investigate conditions that help sustainable growth.
The project also invites participants to submit recipes, results and ideas for a Spacefood Cookbook which will also feature contributions from astronauts, nutritionists and chefs.
Multiple dates and locations. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/grow-4-launch-grow-test-imagine-the-future-of-food-in-space/
Coming up – Thursday 21 August and Friday 22 August. High schoolers can join ‘Grow 4 Launch’ workshops at the University of Western Australia in Crawley: https://www.scienceweek.net.au/event/grow-4-launch-workshops-grow-test-imagine-the-future-of-food-in-space-6/crawley/ on Saturday
Step inside a giant, woolly gut – Gymea, NSW
Textile artists and community members have knitted a giant walk-in gut to explore the gut microbiome and its impact on mental health.
It’s part of the ‘Gut Feelings’ exhibition, the brainchild of three artists behind a collaborative science-based crafting initiative that builds on the success of the Neural Knitworks project.
For the past two years, the team has presented numerous workshops and informal knit and stitch sessions across Sydney. This has brought people of all ages and abilities together to create textile microbes and intestinal villi and find out about the gut-brain connection.
Community members involved in ‘Gut Feelings’ have engaged with researchers and followed scientifically-informed patterns to knit, crochet, weave and stitch more than 4,000 villi, 450 gut epithelial cells, hundreds of microbes, a life-size figure showing the longest nerve in the body, and an assortment of food.
Researchers who participated in the project are from UNSW Sydney, University of Sydney, University of Technology and ANSTO. Others from Flinders University (South Australia) and the University of Western Australia have provided research images on display alongside the crafted installations. The free exhibition at Hazelhurt Arts Centre aims to immerse visitors in ‘a playful yet serious’ exploration of the gut-brain axis.
Friday 15 August – Tuesday 2 September. Meet the ‘Gut Feelings’ team at a special talk on Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/gut-feelings/gymea/
Lead artist Pat Pillai, textile artist Rita Pearce (life-size figure) and art educator Mary Hayman (walk-in gut) are available for interviews.
Tell us what you hear at night – online, Tasmania
Bookend Trust is recruiting citizen science ‘CallTrackers’ to record proof of life of noisy nocturnal wildlife, including ultrasonic chirps of nine bat species and booms of the rare and mysterious Australasian bittern.
Participants will use state-of-the-art sound recorders to capture wildlife calls, helping scientists and conservationists track changes in populations and habitats over time.
Online workshops will be held during Science Week providing information on how to book a survey spot, borrow and use recorders, upload recordings to the Acoustic Pipeline website, and make identifications. Trained ‘CallTrackers’ go into the field from September to March across Tasmania.
Monday 18 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/discover-calltrackers-online-2/
Available for interview: Dr Clare Hawkins, a threatened species zoologist who established the NatureTrackers program of citizen science projects coordinated by the Bookend Trust, and astrophysicist-turned-wildlife acoustician Dr Jim Lovell, who is ‘CallTrackers’ Citizen Science Coordinator.
Help wanted to find where our wild things are – national
Australia’s science agency is recruiting a citizen science army to help find and photograph species found nowhere else on Earth.
There are 15 million species in CSIRO’s collections. But with such a vast country, scientists need help finding where and how widely these species are spread.
‘CSIRO Wild Watch’ marks the first national science experiment aimed at supersizing research data in the Atlas of Living Australia.
The agency wants schools, families and community groups to sign-up, head outdoors and snap photos of flora and fauna. They’re particularly looking for sightings of shark and ray eggs, yellow/orange lichen, snails, wattle, and Australian flowering heaths (Epacris).
Australia is home to more than half a million species, with the majority (70%) found nowhere else in the world.
Saturday 9 August – Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/csiro-wild-watch/
Available for interviews:
- Kate Maiden, CSIRO National Science Experiment lead
- Ruth Carr, CSIRO Director of Education and Outreach
- Other scientists
Interview footage of Kate Maiden, and video footage and photographs of young people completing the experiment are available for media use.
How the birds got their colours – Darwin, NT
Dreamtime through circus and dance
Yugambeh Elder Luther Cora and Arc Circus tell the Dreamtime story of ‘How the Birds Got Their Colours’.
This Indigenous-led outdoor performance forms part of the Darwin Festival in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
Wednesday 13 August – Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/how-the-birds-got-their-colours/the-gardens
VR farming, AgBots, and strawberry sundaes – Royal Queensland Show, Brisbane, QLD
Discover them all at the Ekka. Gumboots optional.
Children of all ages can join the ‘Ekka Learning Trail’ – a self-guided tour that showcases Australian Curriculum linked educational activities grounded in AgScience topics.
Saturday 9 – Sunday 17 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/the-royal-queensland-show-ekka/bowen-hills/
Tracking cats, robot cars, drones, fossils, and more at Festival of Bright Ideas – Hobart, TAS
- Become a Nature Tracker for Tasmanian threatened species and learn about observational surveys and acoustic monitoring.
- Meet Young Tassie Scientists exploring topics from plants to planets, DNA and deep-sea creatures.
- Go fossil finding or see drones.
- Tap into 50,000 years of the Palawa traditional knowledge.
- ‘Drive’ a Sphero Indi, the cool little robotic car that reacts to colours.
- Come face-to-face with Tassie wildlife, both land and marine creatures.
- Play with mini solar-powered cars and boats.
- Meet the feline friends and ferals from Ten Lives Cat Shelter and find out how to reduce the impact of cats on the environment.
- Try the ‘Upside Down Goggle Challenge’.
- Connect with makers and tinkerers from Hobart Hackerspace.
- These are just some of the speakers, activities and displays at the Festival of Bright Ideas, Tasmania’s largest public STEM event, at Princes Wharf 1 on Hobart’s waterfront.
Saturday 23 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/festival-of-bright-ideas-5/hobart/
Friday 22 August. Schools Day. Event details: www.festivalofbrightideas.com.au/schools/
Female fossil rockers on tour – Adelaide, SA
Aussie girl-geek band The Ammonites completes the final leg touring a palaeo-musical show across the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.
The trio – Danni, Morgan and Blair, who graduated from Dinosaur University – are the alter-egos of performers Bridget Tran, Kate Neville and Montana Vincent. With the help of renowned singing palaeontologist Professor Flint, their show explores Australia’s prehistoric past, while shining a light on challenges facing women in science and inspiring girls to follow their lead and dream big!
Professor Flint will also bring a ‘show and tell’ table of Australian fossils on tour. Plus, audiences will get the chance to dive into a 580 million-year-old inland sea, thanks to the University of South Australia’s 360 VR reconstruction of the ancient Ediacaran seafloor.
Saturday 23 August. Event details: https://www.scienceweek.net.au/event/the-ammonites-rock/oaklands-park/
What’s the (bio) buzz? – Darwin, NT
Tuck into bush tucker and learn about Indigenous plant and animal knowledge, purchase native plants from an array of 120+ species, and explore soil chemistry, pest management and the importance of habitat preservation.
‘Biodiversity Buzz: Top End Eco Science Fair’ brings together experts in environmental science, botany, zoology, microbiology, ecology and social sciences at Darwin’s Jingili Water Gardens.
The free, family-friendly event includes interpretative walks, tips on boosting biodiversity in your home garden, the science of plant classification, a guided children’s scavenger hunt, and native wildlife encounters from birds to bees, butterflies and bugs.
Bio Buzz aims to enhance community knowledge about Top End ecosystems and encourage locals to safeguard terrestrial, freshwater, marine and estuarine biodiversity.
Saturday 23 August. Event details: www.scienceweek.net.au/event/biodiversity-buzz-top-end-eco-science-fair/jingili/
About National Science Week
National Science Week is Australia’s annual opportunity to meet scientists, discuss hot topics, do science and celebrate its cultural and economic impact on society – from art to astrophysics, chemistry to climate change, and forensics to future food.
First held in 1997, National Science Week has become one of Australia’s largest festivals. Last year about 3 million people participated in more than 2,000 events and activities.
The festival is proudly supported by the Australian Government, CSIRO, the Australian Science Teachers Association, and the ABC.
In 2025 it runs from Saturday 9 to Sunday 17 August. Event details can be found at www.scienceweek.net.au.
