The recent Australian-New Zealand IODP Consortium workshop organised jointly with the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney was the largest Australasian workshop for scientific ocean drilling on record with about 100 attendees from 12 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Japan, India, Germany, Great Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and the USA, with the youngest attendee being only 3 months old. The workshop led to 14 proposal teams working on specific targets with the intention of submitting pre-proposals by April 2018, and a further 10 teams working on ideas for site surveys and/or further data analysis leading to drilling proposals further down the line. Sydney Geoscience was well represented with Jody M Webster, Daniel Harris, Nicky Wright, Mandi Thran, Lena O’Toole, Bec Mcgirr, Bec Riggs, Dietmar Muller, and Simon Williams. Basin Genesis Hub members including Mike Gurnis, Stephen Gallagher and Dietmar Muller were involved in formulating or contributing to several drilling proposals including Puysegur Trench, New Caledonia and Andaman Subduction, and Southeast Indian Ocean deep circulation and sediment drift history, basement depth and mantle chemistry anomalies.
