Online obituary database reveals Australian stories, Australian Geographic // 21 April 2011
My piece for Australian Geographic: ALAN WADDELL STARTED walking the streets of Sydney three months after the death of Marge, his wife of 60 years. Throughout his years of quiet wandering, Alan documented every street of every suburb in Sydney, in the process photographing the quirky and the mundane – in many ways echoing another … Read more
Monsoons spin the earth’s plates, Australian Geographic // 15 April 2011
LONG-TERM, NATURAL CLIMATIC events can alter the motion of the earth’s tectonic plates, according to new research. An international team – led by researchers from the Australian National University – found that intensifying monsoon activity has sped up the motion of the Indian plate, which crunched into the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas 40 … Read more
Termites and ants boost crops, Australian Geographic // 7 April 2011
ANTS AND TERMITES HAVE long had a bad rap for stealing picnic food and chomping through house frames, but it turns out that their services are invaluable to Australian farmers. New research from CSIRO and the University of Sydney has shown that, by performing an earthworm-like role in soil enrichment, the insects can boost crop … Read more
My latest Australian Geographic articles // 28 March 2011
The April/May issue of Australian Geographic features a couple of articles written by me (but sadly not bylined). Check out the pdfs of my pieces below to see how Queensland wildlife is coping with the floods and a ditty about the high-pressure world of rating tropical cyclones.
Australian Geographic issue 102 now on sale // 23 March 2011
Read my latest Australian Geographic articles in the journal’s April-May edition, out now. I write about wildlife following Queensland’s devastating 2010/11 floods and take a look at how scientists measure cyclones. Pics and pdfs coming soon…
Frisky frogs, Australian Geographic // 22 January 2011
HAVING MULTIPLE SEXUAL PARTNERS at the same time is often frowned upon, but in the frog world, the more the merrier. New Australian research shows that individual females of the grey foam-nest tree frog (Chiromantis xerampelina) which mate with up to 12 partners at the same time, produce more resilient offspring than those individuals that … Read more
Historical treasures escape worst of Qld floods, Australian Geographic // 21 January 2011
AS SHOCKED QUEENSLANDERS PULL together to cope with the aftermath of last week’s floods, many of the State capital’s museums and libraries are breathing a sigh of relief after only minimal interruptions to usual summer business. For an unlucky few, however, the big clean up involves salvaging some precious and unwieldy exhibits. Read the rest … Read more
Water quality concerns plague Queensland, Australian Geographic // 16 January 2011
AN UNPRECEDENTED 7.5 MILLION tonnes of water is estimated to have fallen onto southeast Queensland in this week’s super storm, stretching infrastructure to the absolute limit. From the microscopic (Ecoli in Warra) to the bizarre (sharks in Goodna), floodwater contains a potentially dangerous cocktail of unusual contaminants and foreign bodies – and it is not … Read more
Australian wildlife hit hard by floods, Australian Geographic // 14 January 2011
AS FLOODS WREAK HAVOC across two thirds of Queensland, a mixed picture is building up of damage not only to property and infrastructure but to communities of animals too. Flash flooding following Monday’s super rainstorm – described as a “one-in-100-year event” by the Bureau of Meteorology – has so far claimed 15 lives and has … Read more
