 I haven't always known I was a Rarajiri woman. It was a very poorly kept family secret, but it actually does explain how I ended up where I am today in some way. But let me take a little step back. So what I do is I do stormwater research and I do stormwater research because one day when I was younger than you or probably I was playing in my favourite spot. I do stormwater research and I do stormwater research because one day when I was younger than you or probably I was playing in my favourite spot in the creek, which run through the back of my parents house. And it used to be this lovely clear pond. It was big enough that you kind of could dog paddle from one side back and I'd always known there was this big ground pipe there, but it never seemed really any major problem. Until one day I went back to that site for swim and couldn't see this bottom like I used to be able to. I was like, OK, this has happened before. Went back the next day. Still couldn't see the bottom of the little pond. Never was able to see the bottom of that pond again. Horrified, mortified, can still feel in my body today how distressed I was at that time. And it turned out that that concrete pipe that I kind of ignored for a long time was a stormwater pipe. And that the pond that I liked, the pool that I liked to play in was the discharge point for that pipe. And as more concrete came in the suburbs, more rainwater got washed away, wasn't allowed to go into the grass anymore, got washed onto the concrete into the pipe and ultimately into my swimming spot. It took me a long time to work out. That's what that was. Because, you know, when you're young, things don't always make sense. And then as you get older, you go, oh, that's what that was. And that's what happened. And so that's part of the reason why I have ended up doing so much research on stormwater, because as a young person it just really changed my life. And physically I still feel that today how difficult that was for me. I had to walk past that site all the time. It was how I went to and from the bus stop. And then I got to get over the pain of losing my favourite smooth spot. Still played in that creek, played in that creek for my whole life. When I go back to my parents' house, still play in that creek. You might all know schoolies rather than going to the Gold Coast. My friends and I, we played in the creek for schoolies. That's how much I love that creek. So fast forward, finished year 12. Didn't do very well at school, have to say. Didn't really like school. Wasn't that great at school, but still got accepted to, was well down my list of choices. The last one, this thing called hydrology. And I was quite young when I finished school. And when I was filling out my form to go to uni, I was like, oh my God, I'm only 16. I'll only be 16 when I start uni. That's way too young to know what you want to be when you grow up. Way too young. So I took a year off. I had a gap year, long before gap years were trendy. And my gap year lasted about 10 years. It's more of a gap decade. Let's call it the gap decade, shall we? And in that time, I did lots of things. And one of the things that was actually very important to getting me to uni was I travelled to Thailand. And in Thailand, I fell in love with the language and spent some time in a place called Chiang Mai, learning some Thai so that when I could travel around, I could speak with people and find out what was going on and eat really well. And decided I liked the language so much that I wanted to go and learn it in Australia. And it turned out at that time you could only learn it at a university and only one of two universities in the country and one of them was Canberra. It took me a couple of years to steal myself, but I did and came to Canberra and enrolled in a degree that would allow me to learn Thai. As part of that first year, you get to do lots of other subjects before you have to make a decision about what you want to do mostly to finish your degree. So I chose to do geography. Again, another love affair began. So I ended up doing a double degree, one for Thai and one for geography. And in both of those degrees, I have done science, Indigenous science and water and used my language skills across both degrees. I loved my study, hated high school, loved university, have never quite left. So did 200 graduate degrees together, spent some time in the public service, decided I want to come back to uni, did another degree in Asian studies where I looked at Indigenous sciences and I compared how the Indigenous science in Thailand called Pung Banyatong Kin, how that looks at what in English and the Western science model we called stormwater and was amazed to discover that there's no such thing. Because to use water and you have to pollute it, but to leave it polluted was just just like what you consciously make water polluted for no purpose other than like it does. People I spoke to in Thailand could not understand what I was trying to say about stormwater. And then so I finished that degree, that was great fun. And then I went and did a masters of geography where I looked at water in a different way like how water moves underground in a thing called the upper rate zone, which is a zone of transition between surface water and groundwater and got to do that in Thailand. So it got to use my language skills. And that was all very exciting. But this thing about stormwater and that only it seems like Western science talks about stormwater was niggling away at the back of my mind. So I enrolled in a PhD to look at how you can use Indigenous sciences in urban water management. And what I do now is I try to bring ways of doing Indigenous science. So centering country relational accountability into urban water management in the stormwater channels. And I also use Indigenous practices. So leaky weirs and working with natural processes. So that's how I got to where I am. That's kind of a story for you. See you later.