Just over a year ago, theatre artist Yolande Brown and her then nine-year-old son woke early in Kosciuszko National Park to count bogong moths.

Joining Dr Linda Broome, a threatened species expert, they set out across the alpine region to open bucket light traps, each temporarily holding the native nocturnal species known for flying 1000 kilometres during their annual migration from warmer climes.

Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts in The Bogong’s Song. Credit: Edwina Pickles

“As soon as you opened the bucket, there was this scent,” Brown says. “It smelt like nectar because they’d been pollinating the flowering plants in the area.”

The day before, Brown, a descendant of the Bidjara clan of the Kunja nation in central Queensland, had joined Broome in counting mountain pygmy possu

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