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 entries are selected items from the diary I keep whenever I film. To check location references, click on ‘Tamborine Mountain’ on the top information bar then hit the ‘Tamborine Mountain’ button on the map.

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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Film Diary / 26.08.2015

In the morning I filmed a male Satin Bowerbird tending its bower in a bushland garden belonging to friends of mine. At one point a female appeared and I got brief footage of the two of them. In the afternoon I was on one of my regular visits to the ‘bird feeding’ garden and filmed Little Corellas, a galah and a Blue-faced Honeyeater.

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Other / 18.08.2015

This evening Steve’s sixteen year old daughter Taylah finished filming me for a school project on Australian identity for which she chose me and my very Australian biodiversity video archive. Taylah filmed Steve and I working on retitling videos for the National Film & Sound Archive and then interviewed me about how my work is being preserved for present and future generations of Australians. She and Steve came to my place on Saturday the 15th to film and interview me at my computer and filming at the Botanic Gardens where Taylah interviewed me some more. I saw some of Saturday’s footage which looked very good and eagerly anticipate viewing the completed video.

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My Travels / 07.08.2015

An email from my cousin Leila in London proclaimed the arrival yesterday (ie the 6th of August) of a postcard I wrote at Chief’s Camp on the 10th of June. It was postmarked Botswana, July the 29th . I had given it and the two other postcards I wrote on the same day, irrevocably up for lost. I now await news of their delivery in Australia.

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Film Diary / 25.07.2015

Days when I film a new bird species are few and far between. The previous occasion was in April this year when I filmed a Marbled Frogmouth. On my rain-interrupted walk I noticed a bird I took to be a Topknot Pigeon feeding in a nearby garden whose owner provides food for large numbers of a variety of birds. I had heard about but never seen the pigeon (the sighting was confirmed when I consulted my Slater’s Field Guide to Australian Birds). The pigeon was fortunately around when I returned with my camera and I filmed it for say 30 seconds give or take, resolving to try again in the afternoon. This I did, but the pigeon was a no show. However I managed to add to my footage of Crested Doves and Blue-faced Honeyeaters before filming some Little Corellas, a species which I had seen on the coast but never on the mountain. They look like a smaller version of the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, but with less pronounced, white crests. I can’t recall when I last filmed two new bird species in one day.

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Not The Brisbane Line / 15.07.2015

Although I wrote the potted history of protecting open space in south east Queensland in 2006, I doubt that much more land if any has been added to the paltry 16% in public ownership in the region nearly ten years ago. PS The 2015 figure is 17%.

 PROTECTING OPEN SPACE IN SEQ

A POTTED HISTORY

Following the demise of the Regional Open Space System (ROSS), I represented the QueenslanConservation Council on the SEQ Open Space Review Committee from its inaugural meeting in 1996 and then on the Regional Landscape Strategy (RLS) Advisory Committee, until I resigned out of a sense of futility in 2000, after the State Budget yet again delivered no funding beyond the running costs of the Regional Landscape Unit (RLU). The committee was composed of landholder, farming, tourism, developer and  conservation representatives  plus state and local government officials.

The brief history of open space protection in SEQ can be stated thus:

Wayne Goss                          the ROSS      backed by the premier and funded to allow land acquisition

Rob Borbidge                        the RLS         failed attempt to kill off the RLS at birth,modest funding for RLU only

Peter Beattie                          the RLS        … Read Complete Text

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Other / 06.07.2015

Today I went to the Queensland Museum in Brisbane to hand over my Image Library to Michelle Ryan. The support documents with species identification and locations were much appreciated. It is interesting to note how often I wrote ‘roadside’ as the location. A deed of gift will be prepared for me to fill in and sign which should prove straightforward. I await further instructions concerning data to be supplied by Steve. It is a relief that the library is in its new home.