I am lying in a bunk bed, a Tasmanian devil gnawing on a pademelon carcass under the floorboards, and I am trying to think of a song. Only I can’t remember how it goes. I’m sure it’s something to do with a star. I try to hum the tune in the hope that words will reveal its title, and I don’t care if the devil hears. I’m trying to think of this song to stay awake; to ward off nervousness and apprehension. I’m a city animal and I am out here in the environment of the devil, as … [Read more...] about The theatre of screams
New Nature Writing
I strayed from the path of traditional, or pastoral, nature writing years ago when I discovered not only urban landscapes rich in wildlife, but anthropomorphism, irony, and bottles of red wine and bourbon with birds on their labels. As a young reporter, I had been impressed by the New Journalism of the 1960s which took reporting into the realm of the novel and short-story and a few decades on I found what were termed New Nature Writers breaking with tradition and exploring similar territory.
Although I still treasure the book that was my introduction to words about nature, Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selbourne published in 1788, I now find inspiration in one of the new journalists, Hunter S Thompson. Thompson might not have written of nature as such but his words “I write with rage and ink” have an irresistible resonance that carries far beyond the suburbs to the wooded hills of the horizon.
A flight through psychedelic skies
Pigeons frighten me. They are the stuff of nightmares. They don’t come in the dead of night, pecking, cooing and fluttering, bobbing their heads; waking me. The spectre of the pigeon comes by day in Hobart, strutting in the shopping mall, in alleyways and lanes. I’ve been a bird-watcher all my life but the feral pigeon is one bird I can’t get to grips with. When I see pigeons in the city, I wonder why I am a bird lover at all, they make me recoil in horror. Perhaps it’s the … [Read more...] about A flight through psychedelic skies
The man on the mountain
I was the man on the mountain, standing on a rocky outcrop as the snows of a blizzard swirled around me. Seduced as I often am by the mountain’s beauty, I had driven to the Springs for a walk to Sphinx Rock. The sun had shone strong and hard on the Organ Pipes when I set out and, as so often happens, the weather changed during the 20-minute drive from Hobart to the Springs. First cloud, then freezing rain and within minutes a raging blizzard. By this time I had reached … [Read more...] about The man on the mountain
Hair of the fox
Don Bentley sprawled out under the spreading boughs of a stringybark gum. He had a bottle of Barking Owl shiraz and a ham and cheese sandwich and was seeking a quiet moment to himself on his day off from work: a spot of lunch and a few glasses of good red, the birds singing around him, spring in the air. It had been an impossibly hard week at the Chronicle newspaper and he needed to chill out. Bentley didn’t even take a book or a newspaper up to the Waterworks Reserve in … [Read more...] about Hair of the fox
The birdbath
AMID life, John Simmonds was thinking of death. If he believed the television screen in the corner of his room, life was all smiles and blue skies. It was vibrant, and action-packed and fast-paced with happy endings. And here he was in a wheelchair, a paraplegic. John Simmonds, tired of television, would look out of his window at the birdbath positioned in the centre of the garden lawn. Over the years he increasingly looked to the birdbath, looked away from the television … [Read more...] about The birdbath