Australian nature meets science and art. By Paula Peeters
Along a path strewn with brown fire-killed leaves; dried, drought-killed leaves, and scattered with charcoal and ash – I find this: Opulent pink flowers, freshly tumbled, two hundred or more. While above me springs the parent tree. Leafless, its bare … Read More
This year’s conference bag design for the Ecological Society of Australia is revealed.
I’m finding it a bit hard to be cheerful these days. Heat, smoke, prolonged drought and more fires. Frustration at the lack of action on climate change, while its effects are becoming more and more obvious. My beloved Lamington National Park is still closed, so I can’t go and lose myself in its leafy depths. But life continues, in all its beauty. When I take the time to look about, and look closely, I find many reasons to be cheerful.
Flame trees, jacarandas and silky oaks, are flowering wildly, against the smoke. Two months since we nearly lost our house in the Binna Burra bushfire, and fires continue to burn all around us. Our lives are saturated with smoke.
I visited the Barambah Environmental Education Centre (about 50 km west of Gympie, Queensland) back in August. I ran a nature journaling workshop for the staff, and did some field work for a series of illustrations for a little book … Read More