by Paula Peeters | Mar 8, 2016 | Writing
They look back at me, these opulent rams, their pale blunt faces and curling horns embedded in outrageous excesses of wool. Long dead now, once they were the pride of this place. Now they stare out of black and white photos, with faux-painted backgrounds,...
by Paula Peeters | Feb 17, 2016 | Writing
The osprey sees all. High above the town on a metal wire bowl, atop a mobile phone tower. From her crookedly pile of driftwood nest, she surveys the scene. A scattering of fibro shacks, low blocky brick apartment buildings, squat lowset brick houses, clustered near...
by Paula Peeters | Jan 6, 2016 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
A pair of fairy wrens are in our garden – their calls are shrill, sweet and curiously penetrating. And for the first time ever, I think they might stay. This is terribly exciting. When we moved here eight years ago, we transformed a backyard of kikuyu grass into...
by Paula Peeters | Oct 3, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
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,...
by Paula Peeters | Sep 17, 2015 | Writing
I’ve just spent more than a week living in a eucalypt woodland in central Queensland. For 8 days I saw no concrete, no bitumen. I didn’t check the internet, or watch any TV. I slept in a tent pitched on pale orange sand, with native grass tussocks all around, dried to...
by Paula Peeters | Aug 4, 2015 | Tales of science, Writing
Me: Hello little logrunner, how are things with you? Logrunner: (scratch, scratch)…oh…you talking to me? Me: Yes, I’d like to know what it’s like to be a logrunner. Logrunner: (cocks her head, looks at me with a big dark eye) Not sure if I’ve really thought about it....