For the first time since April 16, I filmed new moths on the garage at Central Avenue. The lights had been left off, thus killing my supply of any kind of moth. I filmed one large moth laying her eggs on the side wall, a rather unpromising spot.
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.
For the first time since April 16, I filmed new moths on the garage at Central Avenue. The lights had been left off, thus killing my supply of any kind of moth. I filmed one large moth laying her eggs on the side wall, a rather unpromising spot.
I thought it about time to see if I could encounter Harvestmen during the day, so I went to the Knoll on the 15th and drew a blank, but yesterday in Joalah, I filmed four male and two female Harvestmen on a rock next to the path near Curtis Falls. Even more spectacularly, today I filmed six males in a group on a rock on level ground in Palm Grove. A seventh male was just round the corner. Both here and in Joalah, I thought my eyes wouldn't be up to spying the arachnids
My last piece for the year, about Abispa ephippium, commonly called the Australian hornet, in reality a Potter wasp, duly appeared in the Tamborine Mountain News. They were as good as their word and have published me fortnightly.
Following a meeting Vanessa Stanley, Kat Danger Sawyer and I had at my place about collaborating on an artwork, Vanessa emailed me details of a public art project at Queensland Museum on Brisbane's South Bank for which she wants us to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI). The three of us had met earlier in the year at a discussion in Beaudesert at the conclusion of a joint exhibition of work by Vanessa and Jaap and then at Vanessa's beautiful and interesting artwork for the Brisbane Festival at the Powerhouse arts centre in Brisbane. Inter alia we discussed the idea of projecting my videos on walls in Brisbane, but the Museum project gives us an early opportunity to work together.
Our night filming took place during a rain shower and under wet conditions, so that everyone present was more concerned about fighting off leeches than spotting animals. Dan's girlfriend Jenny, kindly removed a number of leeches from my clothes. Standing still filming and holding a spotlight is a recipe for leech encroachment. I filmed a different semi-slug to the ubiquitous Black-spotted variety. Strange to think that when I first encountered it, I thought the Black-spotted Semi-slug might be a rarity. It remains one of my nightime favourites. I didn't film a Brown Tree snake that we saw. When I got home and took my trousers off I discovered I had 4 leeches camped round my waist, 3 in front and 1 behind. PS I am proud of the fact that I managed to stem the flow of blood in such a way that neither my make-shift night wear or my bedclothes had blood on them when I woke up next morning.
Today I celebrated my 70th birthday, enjoying reaching the biblical allotment of three score years and ten. Twenty four of us sat down to a terrific dinner at an excellent Indian restaurant, just up the road. We were all on the outer side of four tables forming a square, so everyone could see everyone having a good time, which for me added to the pleasure of the occasion. As did the fact that Nicole, Simon's fiancee, was able to meet my friends and they her, an all round resounding success. Co-incidentally on the day, I received a letter stating that I had been awarded the RADF grant. The work can begin after January 10 next year. A most unexpected and gratifying birthday present.