It is the year 2060, and we are driving through Kullilli Country, also known as the Channel Country, a Bio-Region defined by its waterways. This ‘State’ was called ‘Queensland’ after Queen Victoria in 1859, and this was in the south-west corner. But really it is where Max’s people come from. At a turnoff on a dirt track there is a wooden sign, with ‘MUSEUM’ roughly painted in white, and an arrow. A few hundred metres down the track is an old tin shed, a shearing shed, surrounded by a few casuarinas. It looks abandoned. But there’s our museum guide Max, standing outside, waiting for us.

The work of the human scientist is a performance. Facts are not plain facts, sitting out there waiting for our recognition; they have to be brought into being with curiosity then some kind of funding, nurtured, celebrated and maintained in laboratories and seminars, and then propagated in the form of books.

Resistance, in Latin, means to ‘stand firm against’. The same word, in another cosmos, is resistor, an electronic component that absorbs energy across a potential difference. With such a voltage difference, the electrical energy passing through the resistor is transformed into heat.

The story about the foundation of the first colony in Australia is well known; it was about water. None being available at Botany Bay, the First Fleet sailed north, and in a little cove halfway down Port Jackson they saw what was to become known as the Tank Stream. Its original name is now forgotten. […]