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Australian forests and where to find them
That’s me, in the orange bus. It’s the 1970’s, this bus is our family campervan, and we’re driving through wet sclerophyll forest north of Healesville, in Victoria.
Welcome to the first issue of A Cartoon Guide to Australian Ecology: Australian forests and where to find them (Part One). In this blog series I’ll explore ecological patterns and processes big and small, using science and my own personal journey to tell the story, all through the visual language of cartoons.
Let’s get started!
Nature journaling Shakespeare’s plants
I'm very excited to announce 'Nature Journaling Shakespeare's Plants', four school holiday sessions for ages 8 to 16 years, at the lovely Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mt Coot-tha. Discover and record some of Shakespeare’s favourite plants by creating your own nature...
Unleash your creativity with this simple handmade book
A simple concertina book can be a great way to record your next holiday, road trip or nature journaling adventure.
I’ve also found that simple concertina books can unlock inspiration in kids and adults when a flat blank journal page may be too daunting or dull. Perhaps it’s the tactile nature of these books, the way that people tend to open and close them, and look at them from all angles, that stimulates different neural pathways in the brain.
A simple concertina book is essentially just a strip of robust paper (high GSM watercolour paper or mixed media paper works well) that is folded to form multiple small pages. But it feels like a little book, that unfolds alluringly, to tell a story….
Tales of Science
Leaf me alone! Are the Pink Slugs of Mt Kaputar pretending to be leaves?
21st February 2022, 6 pm The light is fading, and the wet stems of Ribbony Gums and Snow Gums are dark grey against a white overcast sky. The bare sloping rock face shines with water, water is sponged up by the verdant green mosses, and it saturates some fire-scorched...
The helpful and benignly addictive world of INaturalist.
The White-banded Hunter Hawkmoth, Theretra oldenlandiae The Navajo recognized and remembered over 700 different types of insects, to three levels of classification.1 Most of these insects did not have a practical ‘use’ for the Navajo (e.g. food). The vast majority of...
Spiky grubs, tiny bats and the giant stinging tree
Meet the punk caterpillar who's willing to take on some of Australia's most fearsome plants (the Gympie Stinger and Shiny-leaved Stinging Tree), and spends part of its life masquerading as a bat. In recent years it's also begun to devour the Giant Stinging Tree, in...
A Tale of Three Scrubwrens
Australia has an enormous variety of little brown birds. Some of these are scrubwrens, of the genus Sericornis (The name ‘Sericornis’ refers to the soft, silky plumage of these birds). Three species of Sericornis live in the forests of Lamington National Park, near my...
How do you describe a forest? (or woodland, shrubland, grassland…)
Forests are hard to describe. So much complexity, so much thriving life. Colours, light and forms change with the seasons, and over time. How to fit all that into words or pictures? The ways to describe a forest are infinite, and each approach will also be influenced...
Transitions
Recently, a friend told me that she was going to transition. From being a she to becoming a he. It’s something she’d wanted since puberty. I could hear the relief in her voice, and a happy anticipation of a new, precious and exciting life ahead. But many people find...
Nature journaling
Nature journaling Shakespeare’s plants
I'm very excited to announce 'Nature Journaling Shakespeare's Plants', four school holiday sessions for ages 8 to 16 years, at the lovely Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mt Coot-tha. Discover and record some of Shakespeare’s favourite plants by creating your own nature...
Unleash your creativity with this simple handmade book
A simple concertina book can be a great way to record your next holiday, road trip or nature journaling adventure.
I’ve also found that simple concertina books can unlock inspiration in kids and adults when a flat blank journal page may be too daunting or dull. Perhaps it’s the tactile nature of these books, the way that people tend to open and close them, and look at them from all angles, that stimulates different neural pathways in the brain.
A simple concertina book is essentially just a strip of robust paper (high GSM watercolour paper or mixed media paper works well) that is folded to form multiple small pages. But it feels like a little book, that unfolds alluringly, to tell a story….
Hooray: ‘A walk in the mountain forests’ is here!
I’m really pleased to announce that my new book A walk in the mountain forests is now in stock. It’s my tenth self-published book and is a rare thing in Australian publishing: a nature journal about Australian places, created in contemporary times. I hope you enjoy it.
Create your own garden journal
Bring further joy and depth to your gardening by creating your own garden journal. This year, thanks to the sponsorship of Brisbane City Council, I'll be leading a series of free nature journaling workshops for gardeners. The venue is the lovely 'Kitchen in the...
A drawing is more than a photo
How it all started. I saw a pair of peregrine falcons mating, and was compelled to jot down the sighting in a very simple way. A few weeks ago I started a daily drawing practice. Although I didn't realise it at the time. I just happened upon a pair of peregrine...
A new nature journal for the Taronga Western Plains Zoo!
The lovely Kelly Pfeiffer - whose encouragement was instrumental for the publication of my previous book Take this Book for a Walk in 2020 - recently commissioned me to create a nature journaling resource for Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, New South Wales. I...
Forest portraits
The scribbly gum woodland at Freshwater
Freshwater National Park smells burnt, but it looks lush green. I can hear the sleepy chortles of lorikeets, somewhere up in the bloodwoods. It’s late afternoon, on a hot January day. Maybe they’ve had too much sun, or too much nectar, or both. Scribbly gums rise like...
Nothofagus: a portrait of the Antarctic beech forest
Nothofagus, the southern beech, has always held a certain mystique for me. As a child I was an avid reader, and lived in an imaginary world. I was always searching for the forests of Middle Earth, Narnia and Sherwood. Stands of Nothofagus came much closer to this...
Enter the jungle – a portrait of wet rainforest
I explored my first rainforests when I was 14 years old and the experience probably changed my life. On a cold autumn morning at Binna Burra, I awaited the dawn bird walk, an enormous pair of very unsophisticated binoculars slung around my neck. Dingoes were howling...
Portrait of an endangered scribbly gum woodland
Drive from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, between the Glasshouse Mountains and Bribie Island, and you will pass through vast areas of exotic pine plantations. But it wasn't always this way. Once there were miles of scribbly gum woodlands with a diverse heathy...
Sunlight and shadows – a dry sclerophyll forest portrait
The most widespread and abundant forest type in Australia is probably dry sclerophyll forest - the tallest trees are eucalypts and their relatives (Corymbia, Angophora, Lophostemon), and below them are sparse shrubs, heath and/or grasses and herbs. This forest...
Blackbutt beasties, and forest portrait number two
Many beautiful beasties live in wet sclerophyll forest, including those that dwell or nest in the hollows of venerable old trees. Gliding possums that eat leaves, blossoms or trees sap; owls, tree-creepers and parrots; bats, snakes and antechinuses¹. As I started...
How to draw a forest (Part 2) – my first forest portrait
When it comes to doing art I’m largely self taught, so I always hesitate to call myself an artist. But I do like a challenge. Trying to draw forest portraits would require me to brush up on everything I had ever learnt about colour and tone and whatever else goes into...
How to draw a forest (Part 1) – or seeing the wood for the trees
Look for depictions of forests in art and you won’t find many. Sure, there are plenty of landscapes with trees. But look closer and you’ll notice there are only a few trees, probably to one side of the picture, and the rest is open country. Or it is a parkland, some...
Cartoons
An early morning adventure, featuring a very good boy
One of the lovely things about living in Beechmont is that we never really know what we're going to find on our early morning dog walk...
How we saved summer
A message of hope from the future. If you like this, please share!
A message from a Queensland koala
I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do for wildlife conservation if I was still working for the government. And because I think that changing human behavior is absolutely essential for wildlife conservation… and because I’ve noticed this year that people seem to like cartoons… this is what I came up with. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Reasons to be cheerful
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.
Impressions of Barambah
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 about the centre. Here are some...
Beechmont Nature Journal 22nd September 2019
In this cartoon, spring has come to Beechmont, while Binna Burra has become like Shangri-la: mysterious and inaccessible.
Beechmont Nature Journal 14th September 2019
A cartoon about last weekend’s unprecedented fire at Binna Burra. It’s wobbly because that’s how I feel right now. But all around our house the birds are singing and I heard a koala bellow just before I posted this. So life goes on, and I’m hopeful for the future.
Return of the bellbirds?
Bellbirds are cute, they make beautiful chiming noises, but they also kill trees. And now they’re back at Binna Burra, after a long absence. What will happen next?
Wildlife illustration
Free Dynamic Lagoons colouring book to download
I’m thrilled to announce a new colouring book about Australian wildlife. Dynamic Lagoons: Colour the world of the upland wetlands celebrates the wonderful ‘Upland wetlands of the drainage divide of the New England Tableland Bioregion’ an ecosystem that is listed as threatened at State and National level.
Marine and coastal wonders of Woollongong / Dharawal land
The tote bag design for the ESA's 2022 conference - inspired by some coastal and marine plants and animals of New South Wales, and Dharawal country in particular. I was really grateful to be asked once again by the Ecological Society of Australia to create a...
New ‘Gondwana Rainforest Birds’ tea towel design
The new Gondwana Rainforest Birds tea towel design has just landed in the Paperbark Writer store. It features close-up ‘portraits’ of 15 native birds species found in the Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage Area that spans parts of south east Queensland and north east...
A drawing is more than a photo
How it all started. I saw a pair of peregrine falcons mating, and was compelled to jot down the sighting in a very simple way. A few weeks ago I started a daily drawing practice. Although I didn't realise it at the time. I just happened upon a pair of peregrine...
Free grassy woodland colouring book to download
Wondrous Box-Gum Grassy Woodlands: A colouring exploration of a diverse ecosystem celebrates the threatened ecological community of the same name. This book was commissioned by the Molonglo Conservation Group, with the support of the ACT Government and National...
Free colour-in sheet: Small rainforest birds
This colour-in page features some small birds that hang out in the rainforest where I live. Plus a cuckoo waiting to lay its eggs in their nest when it gets a chance. The plant is Neolitsea dealbata, also called 'Doe's Ears'. Can you see why? Download the high...