Dr. Ann Göth has always been a traveler with a wanderlust for places where nature reveals its amazing beauty and hidden wonders. She now lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, son and two budgerigars, where she settled down after a Heidi-like childhood in the Austrian mountains and having moved across the world. While studying Biology in Austria, Ann and her boyfriend took a two-year break to venture to Tonga in the South Pacific, where the two explorers hoped to help save an endangered ‘volcano bird’ from extinction. Her book, “Volcanic Adventures in Tonga”, is a memoir and adventure story about this expedition. Since then, Ann has worked with mine detection dogs for the UN in Geneva and created displays for the Braunschweig Natural History Museum in Germany before moving to Australia. Here, her love of the ‘volcano bird’ lead her to study a related species, the Australian Brush-turkey. This bird uses a compost mound instead of a volcano for incubation. Fascinated by young birds that don’t need parents to grow up, she completed a PhD on their development and in 2008, published the book “Mound-builders” with Prof. Darryl Jones . In 2023, she wrote the comprehensive brush-turkey book “Amazing Annoying Birds” and also illustrated and wrote a kids book on these birds (Bush-turkey Needs a Friend). Life as a biologist lead her to jobs as a lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney and as a Threatened Species Officer for the NSW government. Nowadays, she aims to pass on her passion for nature and science as a high school teacher at Meriden School in Sydney, and she continues to write books about urban nature in Australia (‘Wild Neighbours’ will be published October 2026). She also uses presentations all over the city to convince Sydneysiders that Australian brush-turkeys are fascinating and worth watching, even if they dig up people’s gardens in the process of building their mounds.