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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Book / 27.11.2020

My book is due to appear on the ALS Library Supplier new book list next month, however ALS emailed an order for two books from libraries I had contacted by phone.

 

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Film Diary / 25.11.2020

Morning walk, Driscoll Lane, again. This time I had my stills camera with me and was able to photograph another splendid tachinid fly, which was on the picket fence. It was brown, whereas the one on the power poll earlier this month was an iridescent green. I just had to return with my video camera, but the fly had flown away.

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Book / 23.11.2020

A Queensland-based library supplier, emailed an order for a library in the Northern Territory. Suppliers don’t mention libraries with their orders, but I worked out the library because the librarian told me she had ordered the book via that supplier. I listed 4 Northern Territory libraries.

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Film Diary / 20.11.2020

This morning I photographed and filmed my 5th species of bag or case moth. It caught my eye, low on the picket fence in Driscoll Lane, when I was on my walk and once I saw it move, I photographed it. I returned with my video camera and filmed it making its way to the top of the fence. This evening Don Herbison-Evans replied to the email I sent him. Much to my relief, he was able to identify the species from the attached photo I included.

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Other / 19.11.2020

An email arrived from a lady at the Western Australia New Museum, requesting the use of four of my species videos for the museum’s platform. In my reply I granted permission on the understanding that the videos would be shown complete with opening and closing titles, in which I and my website are credited. PS On 28.11.20  I was told that the videos would be downloaded in full with my name in the attribution line.

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Film Diary / 13.11.2020

What is it with Driscoll Lane and flying insects? On my walk this morning I noticed a new-to-me tussock moth caterpillar on a picket fence and cursed myself for not having my stills camera with me. I cursed myself even more when I saw a magnificent tachinid fly on a nearby power poll. I estimate that it took five minutes for me to get home and a couple of minutes more to retrieve my camera and drive back to the location. The fly was where I left it and, although it shifted its position because of my attention, it stayed put and allowed me to photograph it.  This seems as remarkable as finding the Australian emerald dragonfly still in the hedge just beyond the power poll, when I returned with my video camera and filmed it from various angles, for a good half hour, six years ago. The tussock moth caterpillar was nowhere to be seen.