Summary: Lady Elliot Island is the southernmost island of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and a potential climate refuge. However, it is still recovering from a century of guano mining, whereby the island was stripped of life. Since revegetation started in the 1970's, however, there has been a steady increase in the number and diversity of birds on the island, such that now it is considered fundamental stronghold for many of the Barrier Reef's seabird populations. Where did these birds come from, how did they find this island, and is such recent recolonisation risky in terms of potential threats? I will discuss how our team is using interdisciplinary approaches of bioacoustics, genetics and GPS tracking in three species to learn about how birds travel between islands and how we can try to reconstruct the past.