Matthew Higgins ‘Adventures with Rosie.’

Rosenberg’s Monitor is a large goanna that is rarely seen in the ACT.  It is listed as a threatened species in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.  This presentation looks at these beautiful reptiles in an ACT context, focusing on a project that recorded key activities of the monitors on Mt Ainslie in central Canberra. 
Matthew Higgins has been working in Canberra as a professional historian for 30 years.  He has worked with the Australian War Memorial, the Australian Heritage Commission, and the National Museum of Australia where he was a senior curator.  He has completed many freelance projects (including oral history interviews for the National Library of Australia), and has contributed articles to the Canberra Times for more than 30 years and is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is Rugged beyond imagination: stories from an Australian mountain region (NMA Press 2009) which was shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year Award 2010.  Matthew's work on the ACT Border in 1996 was recognised with an ACT Heritage Award.  Among his short films are several nature documentaries, one of which won a national audience-vote best film award in the CSIRO Scinema Film Festival.  Matthew is passionate about the Australian high country and he bushwalks and cross-country skis as often as opportunity allows.