Don Bentley was one edition behind the times, lost in a world of newsprint and ink. The term “new media” was as foreign to him as the name they now gave the swaying trams in Melbourne. What was it? Urban mass transport? Light-rail? He didn’t care, and he didn’t care when people he knew in journalism, those who had embraced these new ideas, spoke of “dead tree media”. Newspapers could never die, they were dependable and certain like the wonderful old No. 35 trams that still … [Read more...] about Rivers of gold
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Lightness from dark
The winter solstice brought a grey sky and a violent storm. Then a splash of sunshine, in an instant shining a light into the darkness, to the spring that beckoned in six weeks’ time. My primal animal instincts, and not the calendar, told me things could only get better after a particularly severe winter. They told the golden whistler, too, who for a brief moment sang his beautiful, descending melody before he fell silent again in the gloom of the fading light by late … [Read more...] about Lightness from dark
Wildwords, a history of “new nature” writing
Writers have been among the most astute observers of the natural world and the human place within it. The first wildlife writers – or writers of “nature notes” as they were more likely to be called in earlier centuries – found their inspiration embraced by forest, mountain and stream. Nature writers today, however, are more likely to be found in suburb and city. Like many of the animals, birds and butterflies they capture in word, they have migrated to an environment … [Read more...] about Wildwords, a history of “new nature” writing
Frigate birds head south
The “twitchers” of the Tasmanian bird-watching community are all abuzz – or should I say all a-twitter – about the sighting of two seabirds never officially recorded in the state’s waters. The birds are lesser and great frigate birds which are normally found on islands and seas within the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. The birds – a flock of them in one instance – were spotted on the east coast of Tasmania about the same time the terrible storms struck the south-east and … [Read more...] about Frigate birds head south
Sadness turns to joy
The drought had finally broken and a pair of dusky robins told me so along the upper reaches of the Sandy Bay Rivulet just below Fern Tree. The robins flitted through the branches of stringybark and dogwood, as a raging torrent of water rushed down the rivulet, heading towards the sea. It had been a bleak summer and autumn for birds where I usually find them in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington. The drought had driven just about every ground-feeding, insect-eating … [Read more...] about Sadness turns to joy