THE REAL DIRT

Entries Tagged as 'Blog'

Biobanking: the One Goal Wonder

May 24th, 2010 · 9 Comments · Blog

About four or five years ago I got invited to attend a seminar to mark the impending arrival of Biobanking. It was supposed to mark the dawn of a new future for the development/conservation compact in NSW but even back then it looked a whole lot of hooey.
Today I got this baffling e-mail from, David [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

The Politics of Pumpkins

May 4th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Blog

I don’t much like pumpkins and I don’t much like the end of Summer. I always know when winter is coming because Prue harvests all the pumpkins and we have a mountain of them placed somewhere inconvenient. This year they have been turned into a sculpture in the exact spot where I like to sit [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

Music, Magic, Beauty

April 19th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Blog

On a Monday morning at the start of a busy week it’s hard to find a few minutes to just enjoy something wonderful and beautiful. A friend, Stuart Cohen, sent me his link to his work documenting the National Folk Festival, which was held in Canberra over the Easter [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

One Good Apple

February 11th, 2010 · 7 Comments · Blog

‘Dad look at this,’ my nine-year-old daughter said to me in awe. Polite, silent, internalised groan. Was it Bindi Irwin on television again? Some new lyric she’d finally heard in a Taylor Swift song? No, in her hand was an apple.
‘It’s the perfect apple,’ she said as proudly as if she was the smug chicken [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

ABBOTT – NOT NECESSARILY WONG

February 4th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Blog, Real Dirt Fast

By JAMES WOODFORD
I hate to say it but there is one small way Opposition leader Tony Abbott is right. His two most repeated and quoted recent comments on the environment may sound like hyperbole but he is in fact absolutely correct.
Whether it be an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax the new measure will [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

You Aren’t Necessarily What You Eat

January 25th, 2010 · 21 Comments · Blog

Vivienne left a comment recently on this website which said: ”Environmentalists should be either vegan or vegetarian”. I am neither. By Vivienne’s reckoning, I am automatically part of why the world is in trouble.
I am the father of four carnivorous children – a fact several people have told me is inconceivably at odds with a [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

A Mid-Lane Speedo Crisis

December 18th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Blog

 
At the end of a depressing week of bad news, I thought I would offer up a change of pace….
Every man has his story about his midlife transition to Speedos. Some hide behind the foil that they have no choice – an excuse like their surf club makes them do it. For others it follows [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Cape York Paradise: Marine Parks Work

November 25th, 2009 · 7 Comments · Blog

A few weeks back I saw a local newspaper story that featured my local member of state parliament down on the NSW south coast, in a boat off Batemans Bay.
He and a couple of local fishermen were grizzling about how hard it was to go fishing now there is a marine park in the area. [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

The Politics of Eggs

November 21st, 2009 · 5 Comments · Blog

Eggs are good but chickens themselves aren’t actually very nice. We only overlook their many foibles because they turn the chaos and filth of our compost bins into one of the most elegant and aesthetically pleasing objects in the known universe – an egg.
The other evening after watching Nathan Rees at the state ALP conference [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

WOLLEMI PINES: LONELY LITTLE GUYS WITH SMALL FRONDS?

November 14th, 2009 · 13 Comments · Blog

 
Ok I admit it. When I was a kid I was a stamp collector.
But I gave up scouring through the Australia Post philatelic magazine about the same time I stopped using my Malvern Star ten speed racer and let my VFL junior supporters’ membership lapse.
What I am saying is that I wasn’t the coolest [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·