Category: General
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THE SEA FARMERS OF WADEYE
Theodore Kormin-Kormin Dooling was pretty stoked about getting his commercial fishing license. He showed it to me with all the pride he could muster and somewhere underneath that long thick beard I sensed a smile. There’s now hope in Wadeye, an Aboriginal settlement about an hours’ flight down the coast from Darwin. Thanks to support from the Thamarrurr Development Council (TDC) and Aboriginal Sea Company (ASC), Theo and his mates have been employed as Sea Rangers and are getting an opportunity to provide an income for their families by harvesting mud…
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FROM ALEPPO TO JOONDALUP
Good friends are hard to come by; endearing friends even harder. But for those of us who lived and worked in Aleppo, Syria in the early 1990s friendships can be eternal. Our friends from our Syrian days, Scott and Andrea Christiansen and their daughter Caya, are visiting Padma and me. And our friends Joop and Gina van Leur flew in from Tamworth in New South Wales. So we organised a gathering to welcome them and share memories of our times in Aleppo and catch up … some hadn’t seen each other…
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BIOPHILIA
I learned a new word today: biophilia. I was standing at our beach at low tide as the sun was rising to my back and I wondered why I found the scene was so calming, so serene. So just for fun I pulled out my phone and asked my mate ChatGPT, not expecting to get a proper answer to what I thought was a rather abstract question. In fact, I got a rather extraordinary in-depth reason which delved into the rhythm of waves, the colour blue, the white noise effect, the…
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HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE
Longest night … shortest day … take your pick. I watched from my study this evening as the sun dipped into a bank of clouds and then disappeared into the Indian Ocean. Mother Nature signalled the sun’s maximum tilt away from the Sun with a spectacular display of colour. It’s a bittersweet day, which is probably more bitter than sweet for me since it means that the long, hot dry summers with cloudless skies are getting closer. I love winter. Love the long, cold evenings. And I love watching clouds bringing…
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A BLANK CALENDAR … SO A BEACH WALK
With the exception of a couple routine doctor appointments, a visit by a screen door repairer, and some Aussie visitors in August, I’ve got nothing on my calendar for the rest of my life. No travel plans, no meetings, no weddings, no holidays, no social engagements. Nada. Nothing. Zippo. I like that. Particularly since Padma and I have had such a full calendar the past 14 months. That doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing to do. Retirement didn’t suit me so I’m working almost full time on consultancies and freelance work. And…
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IT’S FLOWER TIME
When Padma and I planned our two-month Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour, I made sure we’d be back in time for the Western Australia wildflower show. As I discovered last season, Western Australia is a biodiversity hotspot for its flora. The first wildflowers start blooming in July and reach a climax in September … but in a state the size of Western Europe the flowering dates vary greatly. Regrettably, I’ve been chained to my desk since we returned four weeks ago and I just haven’t been able to get out…
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OUR YEAR IN PERTH
One year ago today, right about this time in the evening, Padma, Joseph and I arrived in Perth and joined a police-escorted convoy to our Hotel Quarantine. One year ago tonight. So much has happened since then … but why repeat it in yet another of my long-winded stories … it’s all here on my Facebook posts. Just scroll down my timeline … Instead I wanted to share a photo I haven’t shared with anyone before. Here’s a twilight photo of our adopted city which I shot a few months ago…
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ELLIS BROOK VALLEY RESERVE
Our local motoring club posted an blog entitled ‘10 of Perth’s most vibrant wildflower hotspots’. The first hotspot on the list was 40 minutes from home. Padma and I were keen to enjoy the Spring weather so we took an afternoon jaunt to Ellis Brook Valley Reserve. The blog post said the Reserve was one of ‘Perth’s most plentiful locations for wildflower’ and was packed with 500 species of wildflowers. The blog was pretty much spot on. It was indeed an impressive reserve. It was a Monday afternoon and very quiet…
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BRAIN FOG
Photo: Drosera porrecta. A species of sundew without a common name. Endemic to Western Australia. Carnivorous. Has traps consisting of sticky-glandular, flypaper-like leaves. Hard to find. Will have a white flower later in the year. Once upon a time I was a naturalist in the state and national parks of the United States. I would spend my summers taking park visitors on guided walks and help them appreciate the joys of nature. If a visitor would ask me about a plant – any plant – I’d rattle off the common name,…
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