Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AN () (): The Hawkesbury has said farewell to Windsor's Robert Francis Carpenter, known to many of us as Bob, the co-founder of One Giant Leap Australia Foundation along with his wife, Jackie. Bob was born on 19 August 1948, serving in the Defence Force and receiving a Medal of the Order of Australia in 1989 for his service to the RAAF as flight engineer leader at Richmond. While he had always loved flight, schoolteacher Jackie opened his eyes to space, and together they set out inspiring the next generations of astronauts and scientists, taking Australian students across to NASA's Space Camp. When I met NASA's Pamela Melroy in parliament last week—she's the deputy administrator at NASA—she described Bob and Jackie as the dad and mum of space education in Australia. One Giant Leap has got kids involved in a vast array of STEM programs: Seeds in Space, the Gadget Girlz and Space for a Day, to name a few. It's one of many legacies of Bob's life, and his influence was evident at his funeral in the Riverstone Schofields RSL, overflowing with model aviators, One Giant Leap students and his former RAAF mates. Jackie and the team will ensure his work lives on, but he will be dearly missed.

Koalas in the Blue Mountains World Heritage area continue to provide surprising hope for the endangered species's survival. Science for Wildlife researcher Dr Kellie Leigh says that less than a decade ago the general view was that there weren't many koalas in the Blue Mountains and, if they were around, they were at low density and not of great significance. But her project, running since 2014, has found koalas breaking all the rules, living above 800 metres, on sandstone country where soils are poor and the size of the gum trees is limited. Plus, the koalas are free of chlamydia, which has ravaged other populations, and they've been found to have the highest genetic diversity in the nation. That makes them pretty special, even with the big losses during the Black Summer fires.

Now, ecologist Dr Lachlan Pettit is investigating the suitability of the Blue Mountains area for avoiding the worst of temperature rise due to climate change, given the effect that heat has on koalas. Dr Pettit says the habitats of the World Heritage area, which can't be cleared for development, are critical because there are deep gullies and old-growth forests which provide a lot of shade and cooling. Estimates are that the koala population has fallen by 62 per cent in the last 20 years, so our Blue Mountains is going to be a vital habitat for their survival. That makes it even more important to ensure the integrity of the Blue Mountains World Heritage area, not just for koalas but also for all the other biodiversity.