In late June, Jane Goodall visited New Zealand and addressed 3 large sold-out audiences in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland. We were lucky enough to get tickets to attend her talk in Auckland which coincided with Edin’s last exam for the semester. My first recollection of her work was the December 1965 National Geographic article I read as a child and the pictures totally enthralled me. Years later my wife found a copy of the exact magazine amongst some old books in an antique shop and gave it to me for my 50th birthday – a fantastic gift. When Edin was in middle school she had to do a presentation on a person who they admired and present it in costume. She chose Jane Goodall and presented on her work while dressed in khakis and green shirt!

It was with great excitement that we waited to file into the Aotea Centre to hear her speak. I think the thing that impressed me most was her humanity. Simply caring about the world and all its inhabitants and being aware of what we do on an individual level to minimise our impact on it. A stark contrast to the common approach of exploiting things for as much short term personal gain as possible.

I really enjoyed this little story from when she went to Cambridge to study after having done her first field work with chimpanzees; “I was devastated to be told that I’d done everything wrong and the chimpanzees should have had numbers and I couldn’t talk about them having personalities, minds or emotions, because those were unique to us. “Luckily I had this wonderful teacher when I was a child who taught me that professors were wrong, and that was my dog Rusty.

After the talk a huge crowd waited to have books and magazines and various unusual items, including and entomology display box, signed by Jane. At 80 she has an amazing energy level and happily signed her way through the throng, smiling and posing for pictures with her admirers.