It has been a long courting season for the bowerbird in Blackheath’s Memorial Park. I began monitoring his ‘boudoir’ in mid August 2018. Without doubt it was one of the most beautiful, symmetrically arranged collections of blue treasures I had ever seen. WOOING IS A WEARYSOME BUSINESS
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WELL HELLO AGAIN GANG-GANGS! After not seeing Gang-gang cockatoos in my Blue Mountains garden for several years I was delighted when a lively group arrived a couple of weeks ago. There were lured by the ripening seeds on my various wattle trees (acacias). They have been returning
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WHAT A STAR! I have the gentle climber Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminodes ) growing all around my garden (ten plants at last count). It is extremely hardy, and survives our Blue Mountains frosts and snowfalls without the slightest problem. In the photo below it is tumbling down
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In 1924, fundraising began for a carillon at Sydney University, to remember the undergraduates, graduates, and staff who died in World War One. When they hear the glorious peals of the carillon, young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. Justice Street. The project was
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Susan Glaspell wrote A Jury of Her Peers in 1917. It is one of the most powerful short stories I have ever read. The three female characters have remained in my heart and mind since I first came across this early piece of feminist literature over twenty
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I have a very strange orchid in my Blue Mountains garden. Its botanical name is Gastrodia sesamoides. This leafless, Australian native has been dubbed the Potato Orchid, as the tubers the plants grow from were roasted and eaten by Aborigines (particularly the Wurundjeri people of central Victoria). They
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‘EAT AWAY, CHEW AWAY, MUNCH AND BOLT AND GUZZLE, NEVER LEAVE THE TABLE TILL YOU’RE FULL UP TO THE MUZZLE.’ by A. Pudding What a genius and a national treasure Norman Lindsay was…and is. He lives on through his work, and for generations of Australian children
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It has taken over 200 years for we Aussies to start shifting away from a European style Christmas, with its heavy roast dinners and plum puddings. Mind you, there was a push for something more suitable leading up to Federation, when our national spirit was on the rise.
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There was a large gravel pit on the dairy farm I grew up on outside Ulverstone, in north west Tasmania. I don’t think the income from it was huge, but it must have been a big help to my parents when they bought the property in
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‘I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.’ Eleanor Roosevelt. Dorothy Parker was certainly correct in her quote about curiosity, and thank goodness for that. Such wise
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