With much on my mind re this coal book, the ongoing issues and the ensuing talks and tours, I am up early to start work. One recent benefit of this — apart from stopping my kaleidoscope brain from its pointless shuffling — was that I caught the moon on its way to bed, full and [...]
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I look up as often as down, on the alert for the surprises that my surroundings so frequently have to offer me. Thankfully the sky is ever changing; I agree with the Cloud Appreciation Society who ‘pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’, since ‘Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony [...]
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Rainbows are always a wonder and sunsets often are. I don’t think I have seen them give a simultaneous performance before. This occurred out west, after a storm. If you look closely you can see the fainter ‘double’ rainbow. The colours were striking, especially since inside the arc of the rainbow seemed more pink than [...]
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Re-visiting my friends with the peacocks, I struck these quite ridiculous birds at their show-off time, which is also when they make more noise — at times like a cat ‘caterwauling’, at others like a donkey. Never like the divas they dress up as. The white peacock was the first to display for me — [...]
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By day the weather has been wild and windy, making my escarpment edge trees roar like jet planes as they whip and whirl under the onslaught — and protecting my clearing. Early morning, it can be quiet, but ominous. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning…’ And while there’s been no rain, the sky [...]
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Moisture, light and air — nothing substantial, and yet what they create when they combine can be magical and memorable. The wind-teased clouds in this sky made a grand if fuzzy-headed bird, tail feathers trailing, gliding like an eagle overhead, intently watching the earth below. A perfectly still, dewy early morning, when clouds hug the [...]
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I like a painting where there’s a focus for the eye but also depths and secrets, possibilities that keep you looking and musing, even if it’s hanging on your wall for years. My skyscape canvas is not as vast as out in plains country but the mountains create more varied layers of clouds. This is [...]
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You may have noticed that I am fascinated by what’s above me as much as by what’s down here on my lowly level. Early morning curry-combed clean bright clouds greeted me the other day; I dare to think I have identified them as the mid-level clouds, Altocumulus stratiformis undulatus — nearly parallel lines of cloudlets [...]
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Each year the Lilliums in front of my verandah shoot up anew, aiming for the roof but not quite making it. Still, at about three metres, their height is impressive and their bells bloom well above the verandah railing, allowing their heavy perfume to reach me at my desk, despite the dense greenery between us. [...]
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Travelling home after two months on the road, for once I chose to be kind to myself, to unwind slowly and not to let time pressures make me rush past all the interesting turnoffs — as usually happened. Gippsland’s Wilderness Coast is somewhere I definitely want to return to, in another winter, with weeks to [...]
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I like the mystery of mist, of fog, of cloud that comes down to join the land. But as a rarity, not a norm. The Macedon area in Victoria is on a high plain, about 700 metres up, above which rise its ranges. ‘Naturally cool’ is the shire slogan. And it is, on many levels. [...]
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When you get to a camp spot late in the day you don’t have time to look around much, beyond finding a flat spot for the tent, setting it up and scavenging leftover firewood at cold campsites. I saw enough of Lime Bay, in the State Reserve near the northern tip of the Tasman Peninsula, [...]
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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.
