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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Film Diary / 11.04.2012

Night filming 70 at the Knoll National Park, with Mark, Dan & Jenny. I filmed a cricket grooming, a native cockroach, a Damsel fly and, for the one and only time, mating Stick insects.

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Film Diary / 30.03.2012

Was told about some strange fungi on a property and having had a look, decided to come back and film them. I took them to be Crinoline Stinkhorns whose skirts had failed to deploy. They were growing in wood mulch. The fungus has a remarkable skirt which descends from the cap to the ground. I also filmed a Case moth larva on the move in the mulch.

 

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Other / 22.03.2012

Today I emailed a dozen literary agents, 10 of them in London, one in Brisbane and one in Melbourne, asking if they would consider my book “One small place on earth…   Celebrating Biodiversity Where You Are”.

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The Brisbane Line / 19.03.2012

In seeking to submit my latest article for the Brisbane Line, I contacted Martin Leet only for him to tell me that he is no longer the editor. He referred me to Karyn Brinkley, the CEO of the Brisbane Institute, who has taken over from him. I phoned Karyn and we had a cordial conversation, of which the upshot is that I today submitted the article.

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Film Diary / 15.03.2012

Have been regularly filming moths on the garage, but today was surprised to see 3 Emperor moths, Syntherata Janetta close together. They are a large, impressive moth. The previous example of the species I filmed, was in December. She was laying eggs in what seemed a most unsuitable place – on the garage’s side wall.

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My Travels / 26.02.2012

Received an email from Jeremy Deller, whom I contacted after reading a Guardian Weekly article about him, asking if we might meet during my stay in London. He requested me to email him when I’m in town.