Speeches
Thursday, 25 June 2026
Dinner to acknowledge the nomination of the Flinders Ranges for UNESCO’s World Heritage Listing and 80th Anniversary of the discovery of fossils of Spriggina
Rod and I are delighted to welcome you to this state dinner not only to mark the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the fossils of Spriggina, but, importantly, also to celebrate the nomination of the Flinders Ranges for UNESCO’s World Heritage listing.
I particularly welcome our four overseas guests from the University of California Riverside.
The beauty of the Flinders Ranges is immediately obvious to anyone who has enjoyed the privilege of visiting them. But the global significance of Reg Sprigg’s discovery at Nilpena has only been fully revealed through decades of painstaking fieldwork and rigorous scientific study and analysis.
So much of this has been carried out, or led, by Mary Droser. She and her team have raised the profile of Ediacara and Nilpena through research, presentations and publications, and perhaps just as importantly she has become part of the community of the Flinders Ranges and indeed South Australia.
We come together this evening from many places and many perspectives. But we share one common goal, a goal for the nomination to succeed and to bring wider recognition to what we all here know: that the Flinders Ranges is globally significant.
Well, not just globally significant, but in the words of the 2021 World Heritage submission, “There is nowhere else known on Earth where the emergence and subsequent diversification of animal life, and the climate and environmental conditions that supported habitable Earth, is represented by such a continuous and highly accessible geological record,..”[1]
I can’t imagine that anyone who stands before the breathtaking ramparts of the Flinders Ranges could remain unmoved by either their grandeur or the story they tell:
- The dawn of animal life preserved through the fossils held in ancient rock and their profound contribution to our scientific understanding of life on Earth;
- The landscape that is the country of the Adnyamathanha people, custodians of cultural knowledge and heritage stretching back tens of thousands of years;
- The biodiversity of the flora and fauna which has adapted to the harsh climate;
- The increased tourism potential for generations to engage with and appreciate this geological, cultural, and environmental treasure. For people to not only see, but to understand.
It has been a decades long process to reach this point culminating in a 342-page submission with nearly 4,000 pages of supporting materials.
I thank everyone who has given their time, expertise, and energy to the project. It has been a long journey, but one marked throughout by commitment, passion and a sense of shared purpose.
It started in 2014 when Jason Irving attended the World Parks Congress, met a colleague, the late Graeme Worboys and they agreed: Let’s do this!
Since then, many others have joined the mission and too agreed: let’s do this.
Along the way there have been milestones worth mentioning today – agreeing on a narrative, the creation of the Nilpena Ediacara National Park, the conversations with traditional owners who have given free, prior and informed consent, the dialogue with station landholders, and the extensive scientific research giving all of us confidence to pursue the dream.
In the past 12 months alone we have seen:
- Finalisation and submission of the nomination dossier;
- Successful completeness review and acceptance by UNESCO for assessment;
- Formal announcement of the Bid by the Australian and South Australian Governments.
The Flinders Ranges is undoubtedly a place of profound importance to many people, first and foremost to the Adnyamathanha people.
I acknowledge and commend the deep and enduring commitment of the Adnyamathanha people to the care, preservation, and management of their country.
I thank them for their consent to the submission of this nomination. Your generous sharing of cultural knowledge and time, along with your unwavering desire to see your Country protected and recognised is fundamental to this World Heritage nomination.
The successful completion and acceptance of the nomination by UNESCO is an outstanding achievement for all involved – the team of authors and scientific experts, the Department for Environment and Water’s project team, the aforementioned traditional owners, the landholders here today who have given their consent and the local community whose passionate support and generous donations have carried this project forward.
The significance of gaining World Heritage Listing cannot be overstated. It is the highest global recognition of the importance of a place, granted only to sites so inherently valuable that they are priceless and irreplaceable not only to their host nation, but to humanity as a whole.
We are not there yet, but I hope, as I am sure you do too, that there will be marvellous news to share early next year.
Friends
I acknowledge Mary Lou Simpson’s role in establishing the Flinders Ranges Ediacara Foundation.
I am pleased that so many members of the foundation are with us today because the foundation has played a pivotal role in supporting the establishment of Nilpena Ediacara National Park.
You will continue to play a pivotal role in the on-going education, outreach, and communication that World Heritage Listing invites.
In this way we can encourage and inspire people – especially our young people – to appreciate this significant wonder and ensure it can be cared for in perpetuity.
It is a privilege to have in Government House, given pride of place in the ballroom this evening, Ediacaran fossils including Spriggina floundersi, our state fossil.
They are always of immense interest to visitors, including the Governor of the Okayama Prefecture, South Australia’s sister state in Japan, Governor Ryuta Ibaragi who marvelled at the display on his visit here last year. He had learned about the Ediacaran period in high school in Japan.
His interest was so genuine that on my recent trip to Japan, I presented Governor Ibaragi with a Dickinsonia fossil from Nilpena Ediacara National Park.
He was overwhelmed.
Friends
We must be grateful for the enquiring curiosity of the late Reg Sprigg a legendary pioneering geologist and conservationist for the discovery 80 years ago of the world’s oldest Ediacarian fossil animal, now named in his honour Spriggina floundersi.
I had the pleasure of being introduced to Reg 45 years ago by my late mother, Jennifer Cashmore, during a visit to Wilpena Pound. I was delighted that Rod gave me for Christmas the book Rock Star an extraordinary story of the man who gave so much to our State and, one would have to say, to the world.
World Heritage Listing of the Flinders Ranges will be a fitting tribute to everyone in this room, and others, who have worked so hard to make it so.
It will be a fitting tribute, at long last, to how Reg Sprigg’s discovery transformed understanding of the origins of complex life on earth.
Rod and I join with you in hoping it will be so.
[1] Ref: 6524 p 16