Will Hodgman has emerged all smiles from a meeting with the Governor

Mr Hodgman said he would be making comment “as soon as he is able.” His meeting with Governor Peter Underwood lasted 20 minutes.

It is understood he provided the Governor with a written letter outlining why he believed his party could deliver stable government. Caretaker Premier David Bartlett earlier emerged from a brief meeting with Mr Underwood and said he had given the Governor written advice in keeping with his promise to the Tasmanian people to hand government to the Liberal Party in the event it won a greater proportion of the statewide vote.

Governor Underwood called Mr Hodgman to a meeting at 2.45pm.  Mr Bartlett this morning hinted the state will have a new Premier by the end of the day. Mr Bartlett spoke at the declaration of the poll ceremony for Denison.  He started by paying tribute to retired Liberal rival Michael Hodgman as “an undisputed gentleman who will be missed by the electorate”.  Mr Bartlett indicated that the veteran Liberal would soon get his wish to see his son Will as premier of Tasmania. “As certain as one can be, at the end of the day there will be something for you to celebrate,” Mr Bartlett said.  However, no new leader can be announced until after the election writs have been handed to the Governor  – expected sometime this afternoon, possibly as soon as 2pm. Greens MP Cassy O’Connor implored her colleagues to co-operate constructively in the new parliament, in which no one party has a majority.

Newly elected Tasmanian Greens MHA Paul O’Halloran extended a co-operative hand to his Liberal counterparts at the declaration of the pools in Braddon.   Mr O’Halloran said he and Liberal Jeremy Rockliff agreed on most political fronts. “On almost all things we agree and I look forward to working with him,” Mr O’Halloran said.

Mr Rockliff said he would push for Braddon to receive services which reflected the wealth it created for the State during his next term.

He congratulated Labor MHA Bryan Green for capturing the confidence of the electorate after a tough term, which included a demotion from Deputy Premier to backbencher.  Mr Green said his re-election meant a lot on a personal level.

High-profile candidate and newly elected member Adam Brooks said he was Liberal’s new kid on the block and he would take on whatever role Will Hodgman gave him with gusto.

Returned Labor MHA Brenton Best did not attend the declaration of the polls ceremony.

Tourism Australia find ‘Best Job’ helper Barbie Defeo

TOURISM Queensland has finally tracked down the winner of a global competition to find a helper for Best Job in the World island caretaker Ben Southall.

The tourism body has avoided an embarrassing redraw after Californian Barbie Defeo stepped forward to claim her prize – a seven-week, all expenses-paid holiday in the state for her and three friends. The online competition closed on October 9 but Tourism Queensland could not find the winner, drawn from more than 23,000 entries from about 150 countries. Tourism Minister Peter Lawlor revealed on Saturday that Ms Defeo worked as a compliance manager in Huntington Beach, southern California. "She discovered she had won after reading that an American women was yet to claim the prize," Mr Lawlor said in a statement. "She then checked her emails which confirmed she was the lucky winner of the Best Experience in the World (competition). "I’m told she was ecstatic and in complete shock. "She will bring her husband and two teenage daughters and it will be her family’s first trip to Australia and the southern hemisphere." Ms Defeo’s only responsibility is to help Mr Southall write about Queensland in guest blogs. Tourism Queensland said this week it would re-draw the competition if the American winner failed to claim the prize before October 23. Ms Defeo said she had been following Mr Southall’s blog since he took up the dream job of island caretaker on July 1. "This will be our first visit to Queensland so there is just so much we want to see and do,” she said in the statement released by Mr Lawlor.

"My family and I love the outdoors and can’t wait to go bike riding, swimming and snorkelling.

"Most of all we’re really looking forward to meeting Ben and exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef." Mr Southall, a 34-year-old charity fundraiser from Hampshire in England, will receive a salary package of $150,000 for a six-month contract to promote tourism in Queensland. He’s living in a three-bedroom beach home overlooking the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Australia – Found: A reef, 650 million years old

Three scientists have located in the middle of a desert the remains of a giant underwater reef – with a plateau 10 times higher than the Great Barrier Reef – in the Northern Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia.

The 20-km wide reef is about 650 million years old and is the only known reef complex of this age. The next closest aged series of reefs found to-date are around 800 million years old and located in Arctic Canada.

The discovery is particularly significant because the reef existed for five to 10 million years during a period of tropical climate squeezed between two major ice age events where ice was present even at equatorial latitudes, reports Sciencealert.

Scientists Jonathan Giddings, Malcolm Wallace and Estee Woon of the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne believe that peculiar fossils of possible multi-cellular organisms found in the reef could be the earliest examples of primitive animal life discovered to date.

“Unlike the Great Barrier Reef, this reef was not made by coral. It was instead constructed by microbial organisms and other more complex organisms that have not been previously discovered,” said Wallace, an associate professor.

“The discovery is already attracting significant interest from leading scientists around the world. A lot of people will be intrigued as to why this once underwater reef is now located in a very barren part of inland Australia,” said Giddings.

“With the movement over millions of years of Australia’s tectonic plates, the reef has now been turned 90 degrees skywards from its once horizontal position. This has exposed the whole one km depth of the reef, from what was once its shallow water section right down to its deep water section.

“In effect, these tectonic forces have resulted in very ancient history being pushed up to the present. Today’s advances in satellite imagery are also helping us to see the reef very easily. Geologists had seen this mass before but had not really recognised it as once being a reef,” Giddings added.

This extreme climate change from ice age to tropical conditions and back to ice age occurred approximately 750-550 million years ago, hundreds of millions of years before the advent of dinosaurs.

These findings will be presented at the Geological Society of Australia’s Selwyn Symposium in Melbourne Sep 25.

Australia – taking science lessons to the outback

Each year retired university professor Phil Higgins packs up his plane and heads off on an outback odyssey, sharing his love of science with students in remote areas.

What started as a distraction from sadness in his own life is now bringing great joy to hundreds of children. The labour of love grew out of a family tragedy for Professor Higgins and his wife Suzanne.

“I taught university for 32 years I think and then retired and then looked for something different because I had a little bit of trauma,” he said.

“My eldest daughter died of cancer and I sort of needed something to get the grey matter working on different things.”

The 64-year old Victorian set off on his first outback pilgrimage eight years ago after getting a pilot’s licence.

More than 60,000 kilometres and 1,200 students later, he has plenty of fans, including Luke Bermingham.

Eight-year-old Luke and his younger sister Ellen live on Lissadell Station south of Kununurra.

It is one of nine pit stops for the professor this year as the teaching tour heads west to the Kimberley.

“To get a professional specialist out among the kids is pretty hard and it’s pretty expensive and you’ve got to find them,” Professor Higgins said.

“Who’s going to uproot everything, get in the plane each day and fly to a dot on the map?”

Something special

Six extra classmates from other remote stations also make the trip to Lissadell.

After all, having a scientist drop in with a plane full of homemade gadgets is something special for children who often have lessons over the phone.

Professor Higgins covers plenty of ground in the few days he spends at each place. Optics, physics and chemistry are all on the curriculum.

And there is still plenty of chemistry when it comes to Phil and Suzanne Higgins.

“We first dated in 1964 and we ended up getting married in 2001, so you can’t rush these things,” he said.

“There’s a whole sequence of events in there and we were both single again in the 90s.

“We accidentally bumped into one other again and Suzanne loves flying and loves the outdoors, loves the outback and so, here we go.”

Optical rewards

Professor Higgins says the most rewarding part is when he sees the reaction in the children’s eyes.

“You can tell from a student’s eyes when they’ve understood something and when they can’t,” he said.

“That’s a big joy in it, to see the kids go ’Yes, yes, I’ve got it’.”

It may not be the retirement Professor Higgins planned on, but he believes his daughter would have been delighted.

“I reckon she’d be pleased as punch and I reckon she’d be trying to get in the back seat,” he said.

“I reckon she’d be really proud and she’d be bragging to her friends a bit … Well, that’s what I hope anyway.”

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