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If life sends you lemons, butterflies may follow
We've always had a lemon tree, in every place that we've lived. "The most useful fruit tree you can have," says Ray. But the other great thing about cultivating lemons is that a beautiful butterfly tends to follow. Caterpillars of the Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly...
Winter wanderings
Winter field trips can be cold but exhilarating. This winter I had the good fortune to travel down to northern Victoria and southern New South Wales, to reacquaint myself with those landscapes under grey subdued skies. The trip was half work and half pleasure,...
Lions, Tigers and Bears – Oh my!
Meet Mujambi the lion, who lives at the Adelaide Zoo. I met him recently when I went to the Zoo to draw some of the animals. Mujambi is 13 years old, small for a lion, and the lioness eats his dinner when they are put in the same pen. It's doubtful he would have...
The Rainforest Birds of Gondwana
Here are the rainforest birds of Gondwana – starting with the top of the tree canopy, and ending with the forest floor: The call of the Pied Currawong echoes through the forest, loud musical wails and ringing notes, from way up on high. A swish of black-and-white...
A bird lesson, a velvet worm, and a furry friend in the shed
This place where I live has a million stories, maybe more. Everyday I glimpse another fragment of plot, perhaps meet another character. Last Sunday a Lewin's honeyeater gave me a cook's tour of her larder (the genders of this species look the same, so it could have...
Free Riverina Grasslands colouring book to download
Two summers ago I set off to the Hay Plain in southern New South Wales to explore and draw the remarkable Plains-Wanderer and its grassland habitat. Ray and I stayed in the old homestead at Oolambeyan National Park while I did the preliminary work for the Riverina...
Topknots at Tullawallal
We usually only glimpse the topknot pigeons flying high and fast overhead, a steady workmanlike beat of strong grey wings and a flash of pink beak. But last week they were in the treetops at Tullawallal. It’s the highest point of the forest near Binna Burra, crowned...
Rose-crowned fruit dove – nature study
I'm still 'getting to know the neighbours' in Beechmont. I mean the plant and animal neighbours! And I suspect this might take a lifetime, what with the amazing and beautiful diversity up here, and the extensive Lamington National Park right on out doorstep. This is...
Hunter Valley happenings
Hello and Happy New Year! I hope your 2018 will be full of good things. This post is about some good things that happened to me last year thanks to the Ecological Society of Australia. The first was a commission to create a conference bag design for EcoTas2017, the...
Springtime in the forest, and a Hunter Valley workshop
Rain seems to be the essence of springtime this year in Beechmont. After an early dry start, the almost continuous rain and showers have conjured up carpets of pinkish new raspy fern fronds, a flush of tender bright green leaves in the rainforest (and many blushing...
‘She didn’t need much’ wins nature writing prize
My little story about a squirrel glider has been awarded equal first prize in the inaugural Brisbane City Council Nature Writing competition. Yay! She didn't need much was first posted on this blog in July 2016, and you can read the full story below. Thanks to the...
Meet the rainforest neighbours
Nearly 3 weeks ago I planned to draw A plant a day for a week. Part meditation, part nature journaling, part learning new species. Well, life got in the way, as it does. I didn't draw a plant every day. I didn't always stick to my own rules. Sometimes I got frustrated...
Tales of Science
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Nature journaling
Winter wanderings
Winter field trips can be cold but exhilarating. This winter I had the good fortune to travel down to northern Victoria and southern New South Wales, to reacquaint myself with those landscapes under grey subdued skies. The trip was half work and half pleasure,...
Lions, Tigers and Bears – Oh my!
Meet Mujambi the lion, who lives at the Adelaide Zoo. I met him recently when I went to the Zoo to draw some of the animals. Mujambi is 13 years old, small for a lion, and the lioness eats his dinner when they are put in the same pen. It's doubtful he would have...
A bird lesson, a velvet worm, and a furry friend in the shed
This place where I live has a million stories, maybe more. Everyday I glimpse another fragment of plot, perhaps meet another character. Last Sunday a Lewin's honeyeater gave me a cook's tour of her larder (the genders of this species look the same, so it could have...
Topknots at Tullawallal
We usually only glimpse the topknot pigeons flying high and fast overhead, a steady workmanlike beat of strong grey wings and a flash of pink beak. But last week they were in the treetops at Tullawallal. It’s the highest point of the forest near Binna Burra, crowned...
Rose-crowned fruit dove – nature study
I'm still 'getting to know the neighbours' in Beechmont. I mean the plant and animal neighbours! And I suspect this might take a lifetime, what with the amazing and beautiful diversity up here, and the extensive Lamington National Park right on out doorstep. This is...
Hunter Valley happenings
Hello and Happy New Year! I hope your 2018 will be full of good things. This post is about some good things that happened to me last year thanks to the Ecological Society of Australia. The first was a commission to create a conference bag design for EcoTas2017, the...
Forest portraits
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Cartoons
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Wildlife illustration
Sneak preview of the Bimblebox Wonderland colouring book
On my recent visit to Bimblebox Nature Refuge I was entranced by small details of nature. Dried grasses in spears and curls; round flowerheads of the woolly mat-rush on spikes; lumpy humps of termite mounds; woodland birds foraging on the ground and in the trees, and...
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...
A frog’s tale
This is Fleay's barred frog, one of several species of large frog in the genus Mixophyes that occur in or near streams associated with Australian wet forests. Now when you look at a frog, you might think that it's a short-lived, rather ephemeral creature....
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...