Each month a butterfly flits and futters through the pages of Simon Grove’s natural history, Seasons in the South, providing an apt metaphor for a journey across a widespread and over-changing Tasmanian terrain.
The butterfly of the month travels high and low, interacting with myriad lifeforms on the way. It not only experiences the wonders of flora and fauna but weaves the natural world into a rich tapestry of Tasmania’s wildlife from the tiniest insects, to soaring wedge-tailed eagles.
Grove has a particular fascination with butterflies but he sees the bigger picture. The butterflies are merely a device to help him describe in detail, and clarity, the natural world spread before us in the pages of this book, aided by illustrations by Keith Davis.
The narrative might involve a flight though the 12 months of the year, anchored by the changing seasons, but it drifts beyond a single year to describe events that cannot be constrained by the straitjacket of the calendar.
One such event is the author’s battle with cancer over a five-year period in which “being in the moment” with nature helped him through the harrowing experience, together with the love of his family and friends, and the dedication of medical professionals.
This experience draws on the full title of the book: Seasons in the south: a Tasmanian naturalist’s journey of discovery – and recovery.
Simon Grove is senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and, wearing this cap, we can expect him to describe the incredible world of insects that most nature lovers hardly give a second glace.
He takes us on adventures to find them in billabongs and marsh, wet and dry forest, and the sandplains and heathlands where iconic grasstrees flourish. It is among the grasstrees in a hunt for grasstree-specific insects that he delights in finding the greasy strait-faced hoverfly, an insect which had me immediately consulting his index for the Latin name, Orthoprosopa grisea, for further study.
This book is not just about insects, however. Other adventures take us on kayak trips out to sea, on a wet-suit dive to explore a gulch – a fissure in a rocky coastline – to discover the marine life there.
Again, such is the detail that the reader will be grateful for the index, which Grove describes as a “gateway of knowing”.
As he writes, while pretty much everywhere can make claims about how special their natural heritage is, Tasmania’s tangible links with its Gondwanan past – biological, climatological and geological – make it especially distinct.
These links certainly contribute to the sense of “deep time” he feels when immersed in the Tasmanian landscape.
“It’s not hard to feel as though time has stood still for millions of years. Gondwana is gone, but, in Tasmania , its spirit still hangs in the air, feeds the rivers, sculps the land, and nurtures nature.”
Seasons in the South, published by Forty South, can be ordered at www.southernseasons.com.au