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Animals need trees
Many people consider themselves animal-lovers. Every day, strangers in the street exclaim at how gorgeous my two dogs are, and ask for a pat. Cat videos easily go viral on social media. Baby farm animals in petting pens are often the most popular attraction at...
Drawing on Queensland’s present to recreate New Zealand’s past
This story starts and ends with a duck. It also includes volcanoes, subtropical rainforest, an idyllic lake and a team of dedicated scientists. But let’s begin with the duck. I met the duck in Germany, in 2008. The lovely Ray, my palaeobotanist partner, was...
A great day at Jones Hill (near Gympie)
Forty-two years ago, Nonie Metzler's property at Jones Hill (near Gympie) was a cleared paddock where cattle grazed. Since that time, the eucalypt grassy woodland that once graced the site before clearing has been making a steady comeback. Firstly, through benign...
She didn’t need much.
She didn’t need much. While I was busy with my own small worries, my own daily life, this last two years, she was just quietly getting on with her own. I didn’t know it, but she was less than a kilometre from where I live, maybe a lot closer than that. For there are...
My first nature journaling workshop
I was a bit nervous early last Saturday morning. My first ever nature journaling workshop with a bunch of paying customers! I had previously trialed the format and exercises with a few of my more tolerant friends as guinea pigs. And they survived. They even liked it!...
Want to get started with nature journaling? This little guidebook will show you how.
Nature journaling is a relaxing and fun way to connect with the natural world. You don't need to be super-fit, or travel far to do it. Nature journaling improves your powers of observation and ability to see beauty and detail. It's useful for collecting wildlife...
An underwater nature journaling adventure
I love fish. Something about the way they stare and shimmer, and then quickly flick away from you when you’re snorkelling. The endless variety of shapes and sizes and forms. Their easy existence in a medium so foreign to ours. Well, it’s not really easy, there’s...
Nature journaling in the Noosa Botanic Gardens
This week I did a little nature journaling in the delightful Noosa Botanic Gardens, on the shores of Lake Macdonald, near Cooroy. For those of you who'd like to know more about nature journaling, I've started up a Facebook group called Nature Journaling Australia, so...
How to draw a grassland Part 3: What lies beneath?
Go for a wander in the grasslands of the Riverina and you might notice an abundance of holes in the ground. If you see critters scurrying in and out of the holes (like the meat ants in the picture above) at least you know what type of beast lives in them. But often...
How to draw a grassland, Part two: Ecology in pictures
Today's post gives you another sneak preview of the Riverina Grassland colouring book, and also describes the collaborative process I use to tell ecological stories through art. One of the things I love about my work are the discussions I have with collaborators about...
How to draw a grassland – Part One
Matt Cameron from the New South Wales Office of Environment has commissioned me to create a colouring book about the Riverina Grasslands, which are found in south central New South Wales and northern Victoria, and are home to many specialised plant and animal species....
Books: Bird Minds by Gisela Kaplan
If they were primates, we’d say they ‘had culture’ ‘were intelligent’ and ‘had complex cognitive abilities’. But as birds, these qualities are largely overlooked. And, what’s more, they are Australian birds. Australia, the arse-end of anywhere, that odd country of...
Tales of Science
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Nature journaling
Binna Burra in the springtime
The forest is full of birdsong and insects are buzzing on high. The trees are flushing new growth: so much bright, young, green. It lights up the darkness of the rainforest. A white-browed scrubwren hops along the forest floor from twig to fallen twig. Close to me,...
A sublime scarp in a country of coal
The Blackdown Tablelands lie between Rockhampton and Emerald, in central Queensland. We stopped there on the way up to Bimblebox Nature Refuge last month, and this is what I wrote. The coal trains wind their way across the land like black chains, heavy....
A great day at Jones Hill (near Gympie)
Forty-two years ago, Nonie Metzler's property at Jones Hill (near Gympie) was a cleared paddock where cattle grazed. Since that time, the eucalypt grassy woodland that once graced the site before clearing has been making a steady comeback. Firstly, through benign...
My first nature journaling workshop
I was a bit nervous early last Saturday morning. My first ever nature journaling workshop with a bunch of paying customers! I had previously trialed the format and exercises with a few of my more tolerant friends as guinea pigs. And they survived. They even liked it!...
Want to get started with nature journaling? This little guidebook will show you how.
Nature journaling is a relaxing and fun way to connect with the natural world. You don't need to be super-fit, or travel far to do it. Nature journaling improves your powers of observation and ability to see beauty and detail. It's useful for collecting wildlife...
An underwater nature journaling adventure
I love fish. Something about the way they stare and shimmer, and then quickly flick away from you when you’re snorkelling. The endless variety of shapes and sizes and forms. Their easy existence in a medium so foreign to ours. Well, it’s not really easy, there’s...
Forest portraits
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Cartoons
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Wildlife illustration
Is a woomera like a heron’s neck?
This post is co-authored by Gordon Sanson.¹ Early dawn light is creeping across a glassy-still wetland, as wreaths of mist curl upwards. A large white egret stands still, poised ready. Nearby a man is waiting for kangaroos to venture onto the lush grass near the...
Walk like a man: Was the giant kangaroo too big to hop?
Many years ago, Franz Kafka imagined a creature that was elusive, and remained tantalizingly out of reach, so that its exact nature was never quite discerned: The animal resembles a kangaroo, but not as to the face, which is flat almost like a human face, and small...
Egrets? I’ve had a few…
Over the last couple of months four species of egret have been frequenting Dowse Lagoon. Sometimes I see them together in the same muddy corner near the bird-hide. They are the great egret Ardea alba, plumed or intermediate egret Ardea plumifera, little egret...
Why is the house gecko noisy while most lizards are silent?
A recent visitor to our house - a keen naturalist from southern Australia - was startled the first time he heard the sound of an Asian House gecko, and was even more surprised that a gecko was responsible for the call. It is unusual for a lizard to be so loud. I don’t...
Of bugs and booyongs
The rainforest holds many secrets in its high vaulted green ceilings, swooping loops of vines, a million soft mossy pockets and damp rotting piles of leaves. So many tales to tell. Of tree and leaf, beast and bug, season and storm. This one is about the black booyong,...
Swamphens in winter
Last winter Dowse Lagoon nearly dried up completely. The water- and swamp-plants died back, and green pick was hard to find. Every day, groups of purple swamphens would forage in the grassy parks nearby. The lawn grass around here is the sort with underground runners....