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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Other / 03.04.2013

An email arrived from the local council Cultural Projects Officer, confirming the safe arrival of our latest RADF grant application and stating that it will shortly be distributed to the RADF committee.

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Film Diary / 31.03.2013

After I had obtained permission from the owner, Peter Hendry who identifies my moths, set up a screen for a trapping session on a beautiful mountain property with rainforest that adjoins Joalah National Park. Peter had hardly finished before it began to pour. Peter cannot trap and I cannot film in rain. For three hours we waited for the weather to clear. By 8.30 pm Peter was able to fix the lamp above the screen, crank up the generator and the night’s entertainment began. Peter was particularly interested in collecting rainforest moths. I filmed more moths at one location than I had ever filmed before, though the overhead lamp cast exaggerated shadows on the screen.  Peter wants to trap here again. Next time I will bring my spotlight to better illuminate the moths I film.

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Other / 22.03.2013

I needed a script (prescription), popped into the surgery and made an appointment to see my doctor within the half hour. He took my blood pressure, which was good and for the first time ever, weighed me and measured my height. I consider myself slightly over weight and this was confirmed. But the most astonishing information was that my height was 175cm, whereas on my passport and driving licence it has always been 178cm. Thinking about it, I believe I actually measured 177.5cm. Reader, I have shrunk. I didn’t want to believe it and questioned the accuracy of the doctor’s measurement. But of course people shrink as they get older, so my shortening was no surprise to him.

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Other / 12.03.2013

After deciding to apply for a RADF grant to create 100 + new flora and fauna videos of some 1 ½ to 2 minutes duration, I contacted Cynthia Parr, Chief Scientist at EOL, asking her to provide a Statement of Significance in support of my application. Following an exchange of emails, I today received the Statement, for which I am extremely grateful to Cyndy.

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Film Diary / 01.03.2013

I had a look at the moth footage I shot on 21 February which confirmed the feeling I had at the time of filming; that I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. I thought I was capturing the underside of the moth’s folded wings, but I was actually recording their outer surface. I had never seen such patterns on a moth. They resembled individual block prints on a textile or a pattern covered by a green glaze on a precious ceramic artefact.

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Film Diary / 21.02.2013

Last night we went to MacDonald  National Park to see if we could film, in spite of the park being closed to the public following the passage of ex-cyclone Oswald. The gravel path near the entrance was washed away and debris littered the ground. The going was most unsteady, so we abandoned our quest after walking about 150 metres. We agreed to try Palm Grove, having already accessed The Knoll and Joalah after the storm. It too was closed, but we ducked under the tape and kept walking. There appeared to be no damage to the path. After a while we saw an exquisite green moth hanging from a twig. Hugh and I went back to the car to get my camera while Mark stayed with the moth, which I duly filmed on my return. We continued on our way, encountering several pademelons which were too elusive for me to film.

My worst premonition was confirmed when we saw the vast bulk of perhaps the mountain’s grandest tree, the leaning Moreton Bay Fig, blocking the path. Tragically it had been uprooted by Oswald. Today, I returned to film it and pay it homage. The tree had… Read Complete Text