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Keep your cat indoors

Keep your cat indoors

I love cats. But I love birds too. Unfortunately, many pet cats like to kill birds. Cat bells don't always work. The solution? Keep your cat indoors, and construct an outdoor play pen that they can't escape from. This will also protect your cat from neighborhood...

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

It's been a whirlwind finish to 2018. Stories of the Wildworld was published in November, and many copies were mailed out for Christmas presents by the year's end. This year many new ways to Help the Wildworld will be added to this website, including shareable...

If life sends you lemons, butterflies may follow

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 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!

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

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...

Free Riverina Grasslands colouring book to download

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

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

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

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...

Tales of Science

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Nature journaling

Winter wanderings

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!

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...

Topknots at Tullawallal

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

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

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

The kingfishers that don’t fish

The kingfishers that don’t fish

Every summer, in our street, there was a loud insistent “pip-pip-pip” that rang out, at intervals, nearly all day. The Sacred Kingfishers were nesting in a large old tree near the corner. The tree is gone now, and I need to walk further to be within earshot of the...

Bimblebox Wonderland colouring book – on sale now

Bimblebox Wonderland colouring book – on sale now

After many long days of designing and drawing, I'm very pleased to announce the publication of Bimblebox Wonderland. It's the first colouring book for adults based entirely on a wild Australian woodland. Order your copy here. In September I was immersed in the small...

Rewilding Weeloo, the enigmatic bush stone-curlew

Rewilding Weeloo, the enigmatic bush stone-curlew

  Cold wind buffets my breath as the small boat bounces along the waves. We are heading towards a tiny, sun-bleached rocky nub of an island, one of the many that cluster about the sprawling, inverted triangle of Eyre Peninsula, like small fish shadowing a large,...

Sneak preview of the Bimblebox Wonderland colouring book

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: 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

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....