From the category archives:
It’s Autumn, and my yard is being coloured– by more than autumn leaves. The indigenous Bleeding Heart Tree (Omalanthus populifolius) that I raised and planted shows how it got its name with its bright red veins that seem to drip to colour the lower leaves. The first bunches of wattle blossom have burst out of [...]
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I’ve been on the road a bit lately, researching for a book. It means I get to use my cute little tent, camping in new places. I do like the freedom of being able to stop as and where I like — affordably. My first night was spent at Coolah, where for $7 I got [...]
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The significance of ultra-abstract art often eludes me; I might appreciate it as design and colour, but it doesn’t speak to me. I don’t warm to it, relate to it, as I can to the merely abstracted, stylised, simplified, where the origin is vaguely discernible. In the latter the artist’s treatment of it stimulates my [...]
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A spell of rain, summer heat, and we have steamy weather that signals to fungi to explode. The first day of sun I walked up the track, feeling sure I’d see some new fungi. Less than I’d expected, but spectacular enough, for low down on the burnt-black trunks of many of the stringybarks were intense [...]
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My little Red Cedar (Toona australis) trees are putting forth new leaves. These are of bronzed burgundy red, although the trees are not named for that, but for the rich red of the timber when cut. Two-by-two, one pair above the last, on opposite sides of the stem, they raise themselves higher. I walk [...]
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Winter gold flourishes in the Wollombi Valley as I drive through on a dull day. Wattle, acacia, mimosa — our national flowering tree has many names and many species. Not all have blooms as richly yellow as these soft powderpuff clusters, but most are hardy and quick-growing, if short-lived. Where land has been disturbed they [...]
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As Autumn becomes Winter, under perpetual grey skies, the intermittent thin drizzle keeps the saturated ground weeping down the hillside. In all the dimmed-down garden and bushland, one light shines each day to greet and cheer me with its brightness. My Liquid Amber tree is incandescent with warm colour, from yellow to purple and every [...]
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While south-east Queensland and the New South Wales north coast were hit by wild weather and floods – again – here it was much milder. Yet when high winds follow long wet spells, the ground is saturated and trees are at risk on these ridges and slopes. Those with less extensive holds from their roots [...]
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Librarians are some of my favourite people, being book lovers like me. However, the grey-haired spinster in a drab cardigan no longer fits the bill. Nor are libraries just places of shush and half-asleep old men. Take young, cheery and goatee-d Adam Holland and his Wyong Shire Library in the enormous Westfield Tuggerah Shoppingtown on the [...]
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I’m being given the gift of many rainbows this winter, but they’re not in the sky. On my mountain, low cloud rising and and low sun setting makes for some spectacular combinations. This striped beauty lasted only seconds before the last fine drifts of misty cloud dissipated. Being stuck too much at my desk at [...]
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Thanks to Margie Jenkin for her review of The Woman on the Mountain in the latest edition of Island, Tasmania’s justly famous magazine of arts and literature. A good review is always gratifying, but this is the best of the lot by a long way and it makes the hard work of writing worthwhile. Margie [...]
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My block has lots of old stringybark trees, survivors of many fires, firmly grounded with their thick trunks and spreading roots. From their wrinkled ankles to their splayed feet, they look like planted elephants. But then, if you’re a Tolkien fan, tell me how many toes an Ent has? I wouldn’t be at all surprised [...]
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Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.
A candid meander through my life up here on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question 'Why do you live way out there?'
