Tag Archives: nature

“Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.” – Joseph Conrad I’m not a great sailor: my favourite part of sailing is making a safe landfall. This is especially true when the landfall is somewhere new and different, and when the sailing has been a bit fraught! […]

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It is always a joy to meet someone who loves their work! Brett Weingarth is an oyster farmer who is so excited about oysters, and the environment they grow in, that he conducts regular tours of the oyster leases on the tidal waters of Pambula Lake (Broadwater), just off Australia’s southeastern Sapphire Coast. Brett grew […]

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A serpentine track of crushed rock switches back and forth across the almost-empty Mongolian landscape. One has to wonder why there are so many bends in a road of ruts and rocks and puddles when it only has to cross a relatively flat plateau! Yet, our Russian UAZ (Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod) four-wheel-drives refuse to follow a straight line […]

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There is an irony in being able to see animals better in the wild than you can at a zoo. My husband and I had grandchildren visiting over the Christmas break, so we took the opportunity to spend a day at Sydney’s beautiful Taronga Zoo. Now, I love this particular zoo (see: A Tale of […]

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Is there anything more restorative than mountain air in summer? Australia’s Snowy Mountains are a wonderful place for summer walking. The bonus of being in the Antipodes is that the height of summer falls across the Christmas – New Year break. It is my chance to take time out to reflect on the old year, […]

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