It’s 2pm and the Strand at Townsville is absolutely deserted. Everything is closed and the wind is beginning to roar. The sea is looking ominous and yet it is still hours until the first proper front of Cyclone Yasi is due to arrive. For the past few days we have been watching as the storm [...]
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, [...]
Tags: biobanking·conservation·developers
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 [...]
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 weekend. Before I began my day [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 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 [...]
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 [...]
Tags: chickens·developers·eggs
