Journal
Articles
The storm
THE PASTURE IS dry. Dust on her boots, burrs in her socks, sweat under her breasts, neck, pits, crotch....
Transforming landscapes
I stood rooted to the ground, for I realised this almost certainly would have been the first time in 150 years of degrading European management that a reed-warbler had returned to this valley. The powerful song of that small bird became a metaphor of hope for me. It was a symbol of the power of regeneration and the capacity of self-organisation in a landscape. It was a living example of what could be achieved.
It’s scary but nobody cares
I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD why Australians bother with the drop bear myth. It’s like a morgue trying to freak out...
Ghost species and shadow places
Runner up for the Bragg/UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing Shortlisted for the Eureka Prize for Science Communication I WANT TO...
Autobiography
Come in, dead Emily. Judith Wright, ‘Rosina Alcona to Julius Brenzaida’ All these lines we funnel, have need of. The dead trouble...
Remaking nature
IN LATE 2014, Greg Roberts, a semi-retired journalist, was birdwatching along River Road in his local patch of Yandina...
How to draw a tree
DEPENDING ON YOUR definitions, this particular essay has taken three months to write and the book of essays that...
Encounters with amnesia
NATURE WRITING HAS never been more popular. In recent years it has become an international publishing phenomenon, with titles...
Bobby Moses
HUNTER DAY PARKED the police car on the side of the road under a 200-year-old ironbark. He left the...
One true note?
Language, like the wind, is hard to pin down. It relies on movement for its existence, as we rely on breath for life. The sound of language also often reminds me of water. It forms, runs, braids, pools, knocks, rustles, rushes, flows… Like a river it is always moving, even when it appears to be still.
Winston
I heard they grew Winston Churchill in a Petri dish, from stem cells and DNA. Identical, or so they said. He lives in...
Moments in Vanuatu
Australian students live in the South Pacific and yet so much of Australia’s scholarship, and the daily deluge of our news and media, points us to places that are far distant – often Europe or North America. This study tour aimed to disrupt these flows of information and ideas from the north, and place our students here, where we all live, in the south.
