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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Other / 14.05.2012

I sent out another 16 emails to literary agents, mostly in London, but some in New York. Six of the initial batch (all from London) replied. I emailed 3 submissions and posted 2.

 

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Website / 09.05.2012

Because of Peter Hall’s work and holiday commitments, he won’t be available until the end of September. He suggested I try and get alternative quotes, which I did. I was given the contact details of a company who would have charged more than double Peter’s quote. After that I asked Steve once more if he knew of any IT expert at Bond University and this time he came up trumps. Following initial email contact and a meeting, I today received a quote from Ben Sinclair, a young computer whiz, which is half that of Peter Hall. What is more he can start the work when I get back from my overseas trip.

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Other / 02.05.2012

My son Simon and his fiancée, Nicole, were married on the 5th anniversary of their first date at a winery at the foot of the mountain, so I did not have far to travel. It was a perfect day, sunny, indeed hot for a while. Bride and groom were radiant, the venue’s lawns and the surrounding countryside were verdant, the food was plentiful and tasty and the mountain provided a spectacular back drop.The speeches were heartfelt,  informative and much enjoyed. It was refreshing for me to be socialising with so many young people.

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The Brisbane Line / 29.04.2012

My article ‘Lazy Journalism’ was published today, to which this is the link:

LAZY JOURNALISM

One of George Orwell’s many admirable qualities as a writer was his willingness to delcare his self-interest when expressing his opinions. I consider this a key to his legendary reputation for honesty and a test for anyone who expresses their opinions in writing,  whether in an opinion piece or in an article or book supported by exhaustive research.  I write this article as someone who is on the political left and shares the view that Tony Abbott is arguably the most right wing leader of a major party in Australia, ever.

The lazy journalism which I have in mind is closely, but not solely linked to Tony Abbott’s potent one-liners which have characterised his leadership of the coalition and refers more to the broadcast than to the print media. Abbott is a master of the gibe, the verbal equivalent of the pugilist’s stinging short arm jab. He  formulates his ceaseless criticism of the federal government in easy to understand and damaging phrases which have proved irresistible to news reporters, broadcasters and presenters. Rather than thinking for themselves by using their own… Read Complete Text

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Other / 27.04.2012

Today I received an email from Nigel Fechner, a mycologist at the Queensland Herbarium in Brisbane. Based on my description in the email I sent him, the fungi I filmed  on 30 March (see Film Diary below) are Phallus multicolor a close relative of the Crinoline Stinkhorn, Phallus indusiatus. The skirt of P. multicolor is shorter than that of P. indusiatus and is less likely to fully develop and may even appear to be non-existent.

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Other / 18.04.2012

The larva (caterpillar) of the Cyana Meyricki moth builds a stunning cage-like cocoon, a tapered oval in plan, out of its setae or hairs, which are numerous and appropriately long. The larva suspends itself in the cage and emerges as a moth through a gap in the taper. We have seen plenty of cages in a variety of locations, including 11 on the door of the neighbouring garage to the one where I film my moths. I have also filmed a cage in the rainforest at night. A few months ago I was checking some footage of a Wood Duck nestling 10 ducklings when the next sequence grabbed my attention. It was of a caterpillar climbing the wall of the garage where I film my moths. It was covered in long dark hairs and, based on the abandoned exoskeleton of larva in the cage, it was about the right size. So I asked Steve to capture some frames and sent them to  Dr David Britton at the Australian Museum in Sydney who is an expert on the moth. Today I received an email from him agreeing that “it is highly likely that this is the larva of the… Read Complete Text