A celebration of the colourful and rare — My bird-watching friend Simon is telling me about the parrots he sees on his daily walks around Canberra. It is a long list, which includes five types of cockatoos. When he gets to the tenth parrot species — “red-rumps. Everyone loves those” — he stops to think. …

A strange case of mistaken identity — I’ve taken ages to write this — not because it’s difficult, but because it doesn’t have a punchline. But does every piece need to finish neatly? Years ago on a visit to the Natural History Museum — when it was still called the British Museum (Natural History) — I saw…

Well, just three at the moment…but it’s early days — In Far North Queensland, it seems that every garden and street corner flower bed is planted with hibiscuses. Most are showy yellow cultivars, the colour of the sun and almost as bright, but scarlet flowers are a close second. Big, bold and joyful, the hibiscus is an essential plant for…

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. …

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…