24 Mar 2026 FILM DIARY

Today I added two photos to my albums. The first was of a red flowering gum leaf which had fallen onto the grass verge from one of the slender trees which lined the road. It caught my eye because of its shape and the subtle beauty of its colours against the vibrant setting of the hues of the grass. The species is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia and typically grows to a height of ten metres.

The second was of the huge clearing in the rainforest bordering Eagle Heights Road, which I decided to photograph a year after it was wrought by Cyclone Alfred. The cyclone made landfall a little north of Brisbane. Whenever I drove past, I sensed its scale. I took the photo a few metres in from the road. I thought that the leach I noticed crawling on the carpet between the bedrooms, had hitched a lift on my shoe, but seeing its engorged state made me look for evidence of a bite. The sock above the ankle of my right leg had a patch of blood on it. This was my first leach bite in more than five years.