An intergenerational project to restore the rainforest — Next to the old Eacham shire council chambers, on Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands, is a mosaic on a shop wall. One of nine made to commemorate the centenary of federation, the mosaic depicts a tropical rainforest. The centrepiece is a giant red cedar, a tree with timber once considered so valuable…

A leaf from a builder’s book — The Briar Silky Oak (Musgravea heterophylla, Proteaceae) is growing well. It was only about a foot tall when I got it, but the summer heat and rain have given it a fillip. It is now three times taller, and each new leaf is 18 inches long. With its combination of…

Life can be a (window) pane — In this old house, the window glass is rippled. It looks like lizard skin or the confusion of prints in the sand at a waterhole. It offers privacy — of sorts — by breaking me into shards of colour. In the few minutes of dusk, when the sunlight takes the…

Come in. Make yourself at home — On most evenings, my schedule runs like this: I Panic about all the things that I should have done during the day, but did not for various reasons. Today’s reason is technological — the mobile phone signal, which has been perfectly acceptable up until now, has suddenly gone from four bars…

A rare bird in wild country — Fly to Broome in north-western Australia. When the tourists head out to Cable Beach on Indian Ocean, drive in the other direction. Skirt the spider legs of Dampier Creek, and travel east along red dirt roads to the shore of Roebuck Bay. In the salt marsh and rugged plain, where…

The collection is still growing — INT. OLD WOODEN HOUSE — DAY Bronwen, a middle-aged woman with a dodgy haircut, stares intently at the screen of a laptop computer. Close up on screen shows a nursery stocklist. Bronwen scrolls through the list. She pauses and writes something on a notepad next to the computer. Close up…

Weed control and revegetation are the keys — While south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales suffer from unprecedented floods, in Far North Queensland, high temperatures are breaking records. It is hot and humid, even up here on the Atherton Tablelands. In an area where houses were once constructed with fireplaces and pot-bellied stoves, new buildings are now…

Let’s get the party going — The first thing I have to do is catch up on all your stories. It is hard enough when I miss a day, but three weeks! You are a productive lot. Sorry for my absence. The past three weeks have been full on. House hunting, which had been at the…

In search of rare animals — People often make day trips from Cairns to the Atherton Tablelands for the waterfalls and the weather. The elevation (750 metres) knocks off a few degrees from the torrid temperatures of the coast. But the area is a great place to see wildlife. We have all the Wet Tropics endemic…