07 Apr 2026 FILM DIARY

I decided to photograph the huge clearing in the rainforest bordering Eagle Heights Road, wrought by Cyclone Alfred a year previously. I was intrigued by its scale, glimpsed as I repeatedly drove past. The cyclone crossed the coast a little north of Brisbane. I took the photo at the edge of the clearing, noticing the amount of debris covering the ground all the way to the far side. It is hard to do the subject justice. This was my second attempt to photograph the clearing. My first attempt was a few metres in from the road through a gap in the vegetation. 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 my right ankle had a patch of blood on it, my first leach bite in more than five years.