After a few weeks away, I was keen for the rainy days to end so I could walk about and see what had changed since Autumn had become Winter. And at 8ºC on the verandah, Winter it sure was. A sunny day, the wallabies busily stripping my shrubs as usual, revealed that some of my [...]
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Last week I left my highlands to travel to the flatlands. The very, very flat lands. So flat they are grand, in scale and scope. I went at the invitation of the tireless Anne Kennedy of the Great Artesian Basin Group and the Coonamble Action Group and I went to talk at the Coonamble Show [...]
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I’m not a ‘good flyer’, but once the panic at takeoff subsides, I am always agog at the fantastic cloud landscapes we pass, like these escarpments and plains and scudding ‘sheep’. I’m glad to be home but the Tassie tour was well worthwhile. My ‘Rich Land, Wasteland’ talks to audiences in Cygnet, Hobart, Burnie and [...]
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Last Friday, 1st February, we raced ahead of an impressive storm front that was curving in a pincer shape towards the Maules Creek area. It was the first time I’d been past the edges of Leard Forest, and I was bowled over by the beauty of this long-established farming valley, with the Nandewar Ranges’ woolly [...]
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I swished in over watery roads across the Liverpool Plains yesterday, flying the Eco-Warriors’ flag that I was given in Brisbane last year. This symbol for worldwide cultural change has the the yellow tripod for unity, the red, yellow and black of the Australian Aboriginal flag, representing indigenous cultures worldwide and the beginnings of all humanity, and [...]
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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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Between Lithgow and Mudgee in NSW lies the Capertee Valley, the widest canyon in the world. Part of it narrows spectacularly to the old shale oil town of Glen Davis. From 1938-1952, a shale mine, shale oil works (for gasoline) and a nearby purpose-built town of up to 1800 people occupied the valley. It’s hard [...]
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For so long, it seems, we have had dry mornings. Sometimes cold and sometimes not, but never dewy and certainly not shrouded in white wetness like my favourite wake-up sight: Cloudland. I’ve been missing them. As I returned from a walk up the hill to release the bush rat from my live trap (he’s destroying [...]
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About 80 kilometres west of Toowoomba lies some of the richest cropping land in the country — ‘Prime,’ ‘Strategic’ — and any other classification that means the best. This is Cecil Plains. I’d like you to consider visiting there very soon — as part of a blockade/rally to support the local farmers making a stand [...]
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A little over a week ago I was home on the mountain watching the morning sunlight stream through my damp green forest, marvelling and grateful as always. I am now in so foreign a landscape as to seem like another planet. On Thursday night, after speaking in Barcaldine, I followed my hosts’ dust cloud through [...]
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There is always something grand about the skyscapes of Victoria’s wide open spaces. I can remember being struck by them on my first trip to the state, back in 1978. This dramatic beauty (above) was offered to me early on a very windy morning, on higher ground about 5km from Bacchus Marsh. And yet, back [...]
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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.
