From the category archives:
I know that the wallabies truly feel at home in the yard now by the way they sleep here in the warmth of the late winter days, letting me walk past so close to them. Some of the very newly outed joeys are skittish but they soon learn I’m no threat. This mother is so [...]
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If you became homeless because your house was being demolished, obviously you’d have to find a new home to live in. It’s no different for other animals; we all need shelter, a home, habitat. However, I suppose we wouldn’t be allowed to choose the amenities block or the bandstand in a public park, let alone [...]
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While the wallabies have more than made themselves at home here in my yard-that-was-once-a-garden, the kangaroos have been wary, staying over in the far orchard end and taking off if they saw me. But I recently spotted this young one through my window; being up near the shed, it was unusually close to my cabin, but [...]
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In my last book, Mountain Tails, I wrote a piece called ‘Kookaburra kingdom’. They don’t actually rule amongst the birds here; the magpies do. But I have a penchant for alliteration, as you see. At least this post is more accurately named. There are a lot of kookaburras here. For big birds, I am often [...]
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I have mentioned before that wallaby mothers carry their joeys long after they really don’t seem to fit in the pram or pouch any more. They also keep allowing them to drink their specially tailored mother’s milk from their allotted nipple for a very long time. This was brought home to me the other day [...]
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I’d just cut back the woody stems of the verandah vines — the ornamental grape and the wisteria. A scattering of brown tendrils and dry curling leaves had landed on the verandah and I began to sweep them off. Only, one decided it didn’t want to be swept and began lurching away. It was so delicate [...]
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It had rained for days, and when it wasn’t raining it was damp and grey and cold. Miserable, in fact. The hillsides were oozing and the track was a running stream. But just as dry firewood was becoming a concern, this day threw a final heavy shower at the mountain and then the sun came [...]
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The wallabies took very little time to adjust to my moving back in to their domain. There are lots of mothers carrying young in pouches. Some of the joeys are very small and pink, and some, like this one, are really too big. It is so cramped in that low-hanging pouch that you can see [...]
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Home on the mountain at last, I was greeted by a heavily pruned garden ruled by wallabies. Of course it was lovely to see the wallabies, but… they have been eating plants I had never expected to appeal to their taste buds. Strongly aromatic plants like rosemary and lavender have been stripped, and are regularly [...]
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A Tasmanian has stolen my heart. I might have met him once, decades ago, in my own state; in fact I’m sure I saw him twice at my place. But now Tasmania is the only place we can meet. At the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park they also have a small area for the other carnivorous [...]
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Near the bottom of the east coast of Tasmania is the Tasman Peninsula, a ragged blob of land reached via another, smaller blob, the Forestier Peninsula. They are a whisker of land away from being islands like Bruny, close to the coast — and to Hobart. Having little time to find even a smudge of [...]
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Out in the real forest it is always a matter of double-take with our cleverly camouflaged creatures; I think I see a dark shadow sway, a tree trunk bend. Kangaroo? Wallaroo? One blink and they might be gone. As majestic as the trees that give them cover, this is how I best like to see [...]
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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?'
