Last week Tony Burke let us all down by rushing in and approving Whitehaven’s Maules Creek coal mine and Idemitsu’s Boggabri expansion. And this despite the report exposing the Whitehaven ‘offsets ‘ for what they are: so ‘off’ as to be useless, if not fraudulent, and likely to be investigated because of it. He says [...]
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Being on the edge of the Leard Forest here at camp, apart from maps I didn’t have much of an idea of its scope and what it might lose if Mr Burke doesn’t do the right thing by it. This morning Murray drove us around this state forest under threat from creeping coalmining. It’s varied in height [...]
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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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While in Victoria I spent an amusing few hours on a community radio (3MDR) show with host Ann Creber. This dynamic pixie of a woman also hosted me for several days at her home, which she shares with husband David, two large poodles, Nina and Georgie, and hundreds of antique dishes and pots and pans [...]
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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.
