Some mornings when we have been inside a cloud, as it rises it leaves us lightly damp and not yet sunlit, but the valleys below me are bright. I imagine the wallaby inhabitants down there looking up to see the cloud cap lifting off my mountain. I can also imagine that my tree-rimmed clearing is [...]
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In any given day here I can be offered small moments of splendour or surprise. One day last week I had three. It began with a shining morning, where the low early sun set the leaves on trees and shrubs and even the bracken ferns to sparkle and dazzle. A solitary wallaby sat amongst the [...]
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For the last three years, each November I have noted in my Gould League Banksias and Bilbies Seasons of Australia diary (a wonderful book, now sadly out of print) that a solo White-necked Heron has visited my little dam. This year it didn’t come in November. But in the first week of December, there it was. This [...]
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At present there are lots of wallaby joeys old enough to be out and about on their own. They’ve grown past the long-legged spindly stage into one of equally cute chubbiness, and are less nervy and jack-in-the-box bouncy than their toddler siblings. One sunny morning when the valley below was still filled with mist, there seemed [...]
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There seemed to be too many ears in the lolling wallaby silhouette I could see from the verandah. I couldn’t work it out, so I walked closer. Then I could see that it was two adults cuddled together and a joey in the pouch of one. Of course I went back for the camera. Coming [...]
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Just when I thought it was cold enough for any sensible snake to have gone to sleep, so had relaxed my vigilance around the house yard… Out of the kitchen window, I spied my old mate, looking quite spry and healthy and not all sleepy. It was sniffing around the tankstand overflow pipe, which is [...]
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It’s that time of the year when the magpie young are relentlessly pursuing their parents, whining nonstop. They may be as big as the parents, but you can pick the young by their mottled brown and grey colouring; the adults’ crisply dashing colours are not actually just black and white if you look closely. Other giveaways [...]
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On my brief 2010 foray into southern Tasmania I was looking for wild edges, and I found a place called Roaring Beach that tugged hard at my mountain heart. It was much later that I discovered a wonderful website, perfectly named ‘Windgrove: Life on the Edge’ emanating from that same beautiful wild place — home of Peter [...]
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After six inches of rain in a week, all of us here on the mountain were fed up with the incessant wet. When the sun came out on Saturday, so did the hoppy animals. It dries out quicker in the open, like in my yard, so the roos and wallabies crowded in for drying space. [...]
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The carport on my old shed has been adopted by the roo family as a favourite shade spot, now that spring is feeling like summer more often. It’s nicely dusty too, so they can swish their tails and roll about to help with the annoying insects. The magpie attendant is there for the same purpose, I assume, [...]
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My friend Christa doesn’t live in the bush, but on her rural suburban riverside block she observes an astonishing amount of fascinating natural phenomena. The key is that she is keen to watch — and to wonder. Plus she takes great photos. As her wildlife is often quite different to mine, she sees things I [...]
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I have now completed a lattice gate to prevent the wallabies from coming onto the verandah and eating the plants from there. A few do still come up the steps and nibble what they can reach from there, so the summer vine cover is not as advanced as it should be. This one couldn’t [...]
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Here's the cover of my new book — Rich Land, Wasteland — How coal is killing Australia — which is now in bookshops.
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?'
Stories about the wild things who allow me to share their living space — and a plea to look after them before it's too late.
