Long thread.

20 years ago today, on Saturday the 18th of January 2003, several bushfires caused by dry lightning strikes that had been burning unchecked for weeks in Namadgi National Park converged in extreme weather conditions and swept into the western suburbs of Canberra. The disaster that resulted doesn’t have a name, like Black Saturday or Black Summer or Ash Wednesday. They’re just the Canberra bushfires. There’s no need for elaboration. Around 500 houses were destroyed and four people were killed.

Wandering around a nice patch of Bursaria next to Heidelberg Road, looking at insects - and I smell wood burning. Look around, can’t see any smoke - then I notice that someone’s dropped a cigarette butt on the tan-bark and the bark’s now smouldering! Absolute DICKHEAD 🤬 Fortunately I’m wearing boots so I’ve stamped out the butt, smothered any smoking bark again and again. No sign of smoke any more - neither sight nor smell. It’s a warm day and this was a fire waiting to happen very close to houses and revegetated bush. I’m so angry!

God help me I just went down the wrong Twitter rabbit hole and accidentally read the actual English language sentence “activism and art don’t mix” Somebody call the folk singers, I have some terrible news for their community

There are a couple of quick things I want to pick up on Walker Corp’s statements quoted in this article, about their proposed development at #Toondah: theguardian.com/australia-news… For starters, the idea that the development won’t impact eastern curlews because there are so few of them left is particularly grim: there aren’t many curlews left *because of habitat destruction*. That means every scrap of remaining habitat is *essential*.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a happy story.

I used to write fiction. I had a book of short stories & a short novel published. I was writing weekly microfiction & trying to get another novel published - but god it was a grind. I was beset by all the usual, boring writer’s doubts. In 2011 my old day-job was reduced to part-time, to be axed altogether a year later. At the same time my writing career felt like it was stalling, I was in my early 30s, & everything just generally sucked.

Reluctant though I am to give any air-time to transphobia, Bevan Shields’ profile of Suzanne Moore (you couldn’t really call it an interview) for Fairfax is so exasperating and full of holes that it needs to be addressed. Firstly, this has become a pretty standard way to dismiss people who object to transphobia: to cherry-pick the worst attacks (and to be clear, death-threats are unacceptable) and depict them as representative of the whole:

Today I took my first trip to regional Victoria since lockdown ended & popped up to Mangalore Flora & Fauna Reserve, a great little patch of bush midway between Seymour and Avenel. While there I was treated to a show from this Gilbert’s whistler - the first one I’ve ever seen! Here he is in a terrible video, singing his little heart out:

Wrote my neighbour a letter There’s so much to be genuinely angry & outraged about in the world, but there are also times when the option to default to kindness to one-another in the absence of other information can be a conscious decision. I’m no expert but I think that’s how we start building communities.

A good news story, because god knows we could all use it.

Long-time followers will know of my love for Westerfolds Park in Templestowe, & in particular my obsession with the sugar gliders that live there. A bit over a year ago I spent many nights looking for, then finding them. I became familiar with a particular family of gliders, found the tree hollows they lived in, learned some of their habits - the early riser, the shy children. Then I decided to give them some peace.