Skip to content →

Category: nature and travel

Word power: the folly of further-advantaging the already-fine-feathered

 

 

How did Australia come to adopt such an unusual, infantile, and palpably unfair approach to inherited wealth?

How can Australian taxpayers/non-payers – and Australia’s remarkably craven/spineless governments – be persuaded to change it?

Peter Browne attempts to answer those questions in his essay, Syd Negus, the forgotten tax-slayer.

Comments closed

Snowed, Spring 2021

…and I don’t mean Bluff Knoll, on which snow has fallen five times during Winter and Spring in 2021 – making this year Western Australia’s snowiest in more than half a century.

I have been “snowed” these past couple of weeks, so the promised flood of posts to celebrate southwest Western Australia’s  incredible 2021 Spring has been delayed.

The floodgates will open, soon – flowers galore, but also fire, feathers, rocks, seascapes…

Comments closed

Esperance & Ravensthorpe shires: wild coasts, astonishing flora…

 

My beloved and I have recently returned from a couple of weeks in one of our favourite parts of “our” planet.

Its coastscapes are magnificently “big wide screen”.

Cape Arid National Park, Cape Le Grand National Park and Fitzgerald River National Park are even more jaw-dropping at the “micro” level – one should always pay close attention to the ground immediately in front of one’s feet!

The featured image looks east from Belinup Hill to Mt Arid/Cape Arid.

One Comment

Remote brewery goes viral, as flowers “explode”

 

As Bob Hudson said nearly half a century ago in his most famous song, “don’t you ever let a chance go by”.

The pictured can’s back label bills the brew as “a light yet indulgent beer to help you through the COVID-19 times”.

Lucky Bay Brewing has excellent beers, their venue is a very congenial lunch spot for anyone lucky enough to be in or near Esperance, and those who don’t love beer will likely be pleasantly surprised by the compact but excellent and reasonably priced wine list.

It is, however, this area’s magnificent, wild coast and its astounding, astonishingly diverse wildflowers that make the adjoining shires of Esperance and Ravensthorpe one of the world’s more compelling “safari” destinations.

 

Comments closed

“Fleur Carnivore”…

 

…is an arresting, humorous/sinister/beautiful composition by Carla Bley. (for more, see footnote at bottom of this post)

Probably, Carla was inspired by some fellow Americans – Venus Flytraps.

Possibly, she had in mind the spectacular pitcher plants that lurk in Asian jungles.

However, the hottest spot for carnivorous plants is somewhere Carla has never ventured – Western Australia’s southwest corner, where more than 25% of “our” planet’s flowering carnivore species live, exclusively.

Many have exquisitely delicate flowers and look like they wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Comments closed