Peter’s Blog

I need to place on record my feeling that overwhelmingly throughout my life, my contact with my fellow men, women and children has been a total delight.
It is a recurring pleasure which I experience each day and is among the precious things which makes my life rewarding and worth living, not least because moments of the keenest enjoyment can as readily occur with a complete stranger as with family and friends.

 

 

The Film Diary includes photos as well as video frames because it contains the blog’s biodiversity content. It is also the blog’s second biggest category, after Other. The video content dates from 2008 to 2021, when I ceased videoing. The photographs date from 2014 to the present.

 

The Brisbane Line was the e-bulletin of the now defunct Brisbane Institute, to which I contributed the articles featured, between 2006 and 2012.

 

Not The Brisbane Line contains my other essays from 2005 to the present.

 

 

A cherished dream, my book   One small place on earth …  discovering biodiversity where you are,   self-published in August 2019, has been long in the making. Jan Watson created its design template nine years ago. The idea of doing a book seems to have occurred during my stay with Clive Tempest, the website’s first architect, when I was visiting the UK in 2006. By the time Steve Guttormsen and I began sustained work on the book in 2017, much of which I had already written, the imperative was to create a hard copy version of a project whose content is otherwise entirely digital.

 

 

People may wonder why there is little mention of climate change – global warming on my website. There are two related reasons. Firstly, if former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2007 remark that climate change is the “great moral, environmental and economic challenge of our age” is true, we have not acted accordingly before or since. Rudd’s statement is only true if we collectively live as if it is true, Rudd included. Instead, our politics has wasted decades favouring business as usual, and a global economy excessively dependent on fossil fuels – in the wilful absence of a politics intent on achieving a low carbon economy. Secondly, although it is open to individuals to strive to live the truth of Rudd’s remarks, the vast majority of people, myself included, do not. I salute those who do. The precautionary principle alone makes me regard climate change as a current planetary crisis, but because I have only marginally changed the way I live, and still wish to fly, I am not inclined to pontificate on the subject.

 

 

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My Travels / 11.04.2023

I saw Gina in her office and paid for my USA tour. The balance of the trip covering a day tour, transfers by car and hotel accommodation is due on May 5, when I will complete my visa application with Gina’s help. A few weeks ago, I found out that mobile phone providers in the US no longer service 3G phones, unlike providers here and in Europe. I feared that I might now have to buy a smart phone, then realised that I could just buy a simple 4G phone. Checking what is available, I opted for a Nokia flip phone and asked Steve for help in obtaining it. The latest model doesn’t appear to be available here. Ideally, I would like to get the phone at the beginning of May.

 

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Film Diary / 10.04.2023

This morning I photographed a planthopper on the picket fence in Driscoll Lane. With wings spread, it was no bigger than my thumbnail. Peter Hendry emailed its identity later in the day. It is an Australian species, known as a Passionvine Hopper. It occurs from northern coastal and adjacent inland Queensland to western coastal South Australia and Tasmania. Today’s image is a much closer and clearer shot of the insect, than the one I took at the end of January, which it replaces in my Other Fauna album. I didn’t think I would see the insect again so soon – underlining the benefit of living where I film and photograph, allowing me to get another chance for a sighting and a better shot. Until I encountered this species, the wings of all the planthoppers I have filmed or photographed previously, were folded. 

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My Travels / 27.03.2023

This year we have been enjoying an Indian Summer. I left Brisbane on 23.3.23, wearing shorts. From take-off, patchy clouds, which extended to and partly hid, Carnarvon Gorge, gave way to clear blue skies all the way to Longreach. An email I received from Nicole on March 12, listed a total of 165 mm of rain in Longreach on the three previous days, far more than we had on the mountain. No wonder the ground looked greener than I have ever seen it before. The weather during my stay was warm and sunny; the sky a vibrant blue, with any afternoon clouds dispersing by night-fall. Pepper was her ever affectionate self. Birdlife was plentiful as usual. Kites riding the thermals and then swooping low to the ground, their shadows swiftly preceding them. This time in the garden, yellow-throated miner birds, sparrows and the various doves, were joined by a little kingfisher and a fig bird. A pretty dragon, totally new to me, which I thought was a juvenile, appeared on the rear steps and climbed onto the hammock, ignoring Pepper’s presence. I saw the dragon on the lawn two days later and was told that it was a habitué… Read Complete Text

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My Travels / 06.03.2023

Today I booked my return flight from Brisbane to Longreach for our October road trip. I have found that Barcaldine Travel can usually get a good rate for the fare, which was the case this time.

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My Travels / 02.03.2023

Nicole sent me an email with the October dates of our road trip to Charleville, Quilpie, Eromanga and Welford National Park. We will be travelling within the northern part of the huge section of Queensland stretching from Charleville west to the South Australian border and south to the New South Wales border.

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Film Diary / 13.02.2023

This morning, I photographed a moth at the garage in Central Avenue, which Peter Hendry promptly identified as an Australian species. For almost a year, moths at this once prolific site, have been few and far between after the owner changed the light bulbs yet again. It was one of three or four moths I saw, attracted by the heat and humidity. I had other moths of the genus in my album, but not this one. Which made the occasion all the more of a red-letter day.