CANBERRA - It's difficult to ignore a man like Tim Flannery when, as he has done in recent years, he speaks out so strongly on an issue like man-made climate change.
The newly-appointed Australian of the Year has an amazing background of academic achievement and hands-on involvement in the living world around us.
Everyone seems to have a Tim Flannery story, whether it be from running into him in a rural town where he has based himself for a nearby fossil dig, or trekking with him through Papua New Guinea and Indonesian Papua, soaking up his Murray-Darling television journey with comedian and writer John Doyle or simply enjoying one of his many provocative non-fiction books.
He has done a stint at Harvard University in the US, he's well known throughout Melanesia where he did much of his early field research and exploration and has won writing and film awards from Adelaide to New York.
He has an easy-going Australian manner and can communicate the benefits of his stimulating vision to the man in the street.
Timothy Fridtjof Flannery, who celebrates his 51st birthday on Sunday, was born in Melbourne and educated there at St Bede's College, going on to obtain degrees at La Trobe and Monash universities and then doing his doctorate at the University of NSW.
He has since been associated with universities around the world and has notably held senior positions with the Australian and South Australia museums.
His communication skills led him into television in the early 1990s, notably with programs such as Islands in the Sky, The Fossil Fruit Bat Flies Again and a screen version of The Future Eaters.
Dr Flannery's work on the mammals native to this part of the world undoubtedly shaped his later intense interest in the emerging problems of climate change.
He has worked on projects in Australia, which has lost around half its major mammal species due to the impact of industrialisation, and in the forests of PNG, where the impact of humans has been small in contrast.
Dr Flannery has even named for science several new species and sub-species of tree kangaroos.
His close involvement with this subject - including writing The Vanishing Mammals of Australia with his wife Paula Kendall - led him ultimately to pen his thought-provoking books on climate change, The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers.
Clearly, he is not prepared to sit by and watch this destruction of the natural world and he has been prepared to criticise Australian governments for ignoring climate change.
He has signalled that, despite his new position, he will continue to speak out against any "wrong-headed" policies on the subject.
The famous BBC nature program host Sir David Attenborough once said of him: "Tim Flannery is in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone."
His river journey, Two Men in a Tinnie, with comedian and writer John Doyle, pointing out the beauty and devastation of the Murray-Darling system, was a more recent and popular TV show.
Dr Flannery has written academic treatises and on a broad range of subjects in book form.
Throwim 'way Leg (translating broadly as "journeying") recounted his adventures in PNG. The Explorers took a different view of Australia's early explorers with interesting extracts from their diaries, and 1788, based on the diaries of Watkin Tench, betrayed his fascination with the early days of European settlement.
His books have won many literary prizes.
Along the way, he has advised the Australian and South Australia governments on population and conservation issues.
Professor Flannery is currently working at Sydney's Macquarie University where he is building a research unit within the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences focusing on biodiversity, evolution and climate change.
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