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Reasons to be cheerful

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

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 14th September 2019

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.

Materialism

Materialism

These mountains are my home, these forests are my refuge, these rainforests are my sacred place. But climate change is taking this away from me. If my house burns down, I can rebuild it somewhere else. But I can’t rebuild this landscape the same as it was. Not while the weather continues its relentless march into new territory that’s hostile to humans and rainforests alike.

Ideas sheet for nature journaling

Ideas sheet for nature journaling

In the spirit of sharing something handwritten and messy, and to give you more ideas for your nature journaling adventures, here’s an ‘Ideas sheet’ I created a few months ago. It was only meant to be a ‘draft’ that I was going to work up into something ‘nice’. But I ran out of time, started giving it out at workshops, and people seem to like it. Maybe they find it helpful because it’s messy? I don’t know, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Rainforest Ball

The Rainforest Ball

How did the rainforest trees find which animals could carry their seeds far and wide? By inviting everyone to The Rainforest Ball, of course! A story to celebrate National Tree Day, from my book ‘Stories from the Wildworld’.

Return of the bellbirds?

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?

Beechmont Nature Journal, April 30th 2019

Beechmont Nature Journal, April 30th 2019

Autumn in Beechmont brings clear, calm days. Rose robins squawk softly from the trees, while yellow robins inspect the pea and bean seedlings emerging in the vegie patch. Soft rain and bright sunshine brings out the greens. The dogs are frisky now the hottest weather...

Tales of Science

The toadfish, the toe-cutter, and the great swimming head

The toadfish, the toe-cutter, and the great swimming head

  I once met a man who could hypnotize toadfish. He would stand ankle-deep, on the mudflats of Bramble Bay, with his heels together like Dorothy. And the little common toadfish would swim into the 'V' created, and become still. Not many people like toadfish, but...

Walk like a man: Was the giant kangaroo too big to hop?

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…

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...

The strangler fig: everyone’s favorite killer

The strangler fig: everyone’s favorite killer

A rainforest tree is subject to many mortal perils: shade, cyclones, fires, chainsaws. One of the most grotesque and extended deaths is carried in a tiny seed, rained down from above by complicit birds and bats. Many such seeds drop harmlessly to the forest floor, or...

Why is the house gecko noisy while most lizards are silent?

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

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,...

Nature journaling

Beechmont Nature Journal 14th September 2019

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.

Ideas sheet for nature journaling

Ideas sheet for nature journaling

In the spirit of sharing something handwritten and messy, and to give you more ideas for your nature journaling adventures, here’s an ‘Ideas sheet’ I created a few months ago. It was only meant to be a ‘draft’ that I was going to work up into something ‘nice’. But I ran out of time, started giving it out at workshops, and people seem to like it. Maybe they find it helpful because it’s messy? I don’t know, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Return of the bellbirds?

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?

Beechmont Nature Journal, April 30th 2019

Beechmont Nature Journal, April 30th 2019

Autumn in Beechmont brings clear, calm days. Rose robins squawk softly from the trees, while yellow robins inspect the pea and bean seedlings emerging in the vegie patch. Soft rain and bright sunshine brings out the greens. The dogs are frisky now the hottest weather...

Forest portraits

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Cartoons

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Wildlife illustration

Tallowwood forest

Tallowwood forest

30 September 2017 The dark green teeth of the prickly rasp ferns wave upwards in the warm northerly breeze, up from the dry crunchy litter of curled eucalypt leaves, and the twigs that spring and snap when you walk. A pile of kindling, ready for the merest drifting...

Playing with watercolour pencils

Playing with watercolour pencils

Watercolour pencils are great for nature journaling, since they combine the accuracy of a pencil with the vibrant colour and flexibility of watercolour pigment. But I've found them tricky to use because the colour of the pencil applied dry to the paper can change a...

Dipping into the Murray-Darling wetlands

Dipping into the Murray-Darling wetlands

River Red Gums, raucous with white corellas screaming from their upper branches, their gnarled trunks splashed grey-and-cream, rise up out of a flooded wetland. The water is strewn with green wetland plants, and smeared yellow with floating pollen. Ducks and moorhens...

Wonders of Western Australia

Wonders of Western Australia

This morning, I'm feeling a bit sad that I'm not in Freemantle, Western Australia. The opening sessions have just started at the Ecological Society of Australia's annual conference, with a buzz of ecologists: old and young; enthusiastic and weathered; well-published...

Animals need trees

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...