The Big Blog
India - Grace and hope
Somehow through all the chaos, dust and squalor the women manage to remain pristine and so gorgeously colourful, wherever they are and whatever they are doing. Seeing them in their beautiful saris gliding across the rural landscape is a delight. The whole...
6 May 2015
India - Kolkata
Kolkata is a cornucopia of the last 200 years, a bustling milieu where the 19th Century sits comfortably with the 21st Century. A world wide web of little yellow diesel taxis chug about moving global entrepreneurs or street traders with equal aplomb. Ancient...
2 May 2015
What is it about India?
India is possibly the most remarkable country I have ever visited. What is it about it that gets under your skin? It might be the sea of humanity that constantly parades before you, those millions of personal journeys unfolding right before your eyes. Or perhaps...
29 April 2015
Cockatoo chaos
It is that time of the year again, late summer, when the white cockatoos flocculate into a great seething mass of mayhem, bringing calamity to our neighbourhood. The corellas are here all year round but it is in the summer, after breeding, when then they get...
24 March 2015
A reverence for trees - The great banyan of Kolkata
In countries other than Australia trees are held in high esteem, nurtured, and revered. This one in the botanic gardens in Kolkata, India, is a sheer delight. This single tree is a wonderland of trunks, a place to explore, to get lost, and to marvel in natures...
22 December 2014
Jacaranda - reminds me of home
Late spring in Australia brings the purple haze to brighten up our cities and towns. The Jacaranda trees are a feature of much of urban Australia in the late spring and early summer, all the way from Perth in the south-west corner, through Adelaide, Melbourne,...
24 November 2014
Big red's harem
I’ve just been out chasing one of the more elusive kangaroos, the Yellow-footed rock wallaby, one of Australia’s threatened species, found only in some outback areas of South Australia and New South Wales. The Yellow-footed’s are rather reclusive, favouring...
20 October 2014
Wine Country - The pickers hut
I live in a very beautiful part of the world, and as it happens it is “Wine Country”. Our State and country is well endowed with such wonderful landscapes, full of the elixir of life. If you haven’t tried it yet I can hopefully bring some of the joy of wine...
21 July 2014
A Reverence for Trees - Ginko Gold
I still remember the first time I saw a Ginko (Ginko biloba) tree. It was at the University of California, Berkeley Campus, it was autumn and the tree was resplendent in its beautiful gold frock, a glorius gilt lawn under its feet. The Ginko is a curious tree,...
22 June 2014