Veronika Wild

The maidenly blush of new blossom has almost gone, though a what miracle it was after that long winter. Now it is a new season which ought to have a special name and be celebrated in its own right. It is in Europe of course, where its equivalent falls in May. It’s that time in mid – spring when the trees hastily cover their naked branches in flamboyant green. The rich fat smell of hawthorn fills the air, the chestnut puts out its white candles and the bees are busy.   A lazy bird of prey rides on the wind. The chestnut The oakleaves At the Railway Roundabout The elms In the gardens Though I love the steadfast evergreens and enduring eucalypts, the annual renewal of deciduous trees still fills me with delight. If autumn colour brings intimations of mortality and thinking of times past and loves lost, this flush of green is a kind of quickening that makes me yearn for new adventures and do new things before the harsher sun of sum...

"As We Travel" - by Luke Wagner inspired by the poetry of  James McAuley Not too far away at the Colville Gallery at the far end of Salamanca, Tasmanian artist Luke Wagner  has fulfilled a long held ambition to paint a series based on the poems of James McAuley (1917 -1976) a well-known Australian academic, poet, journalist and literary critic perhaps most famous for the “ Ern Malley Hoax ” in which he and a collaborator, despising modernist poetry, successfully submitted sixteen nonsense poems to a literary magazine.  

It's easy to lose yourself in David Keeling's "regrowth" forest which is part of a larger work You could say that this week I have been flat out like a lizard drinking, to use a typically Australian expression that means “I have been really busy,” not that I have ever seen a lizard drinking. No chance to get out into the bush, but I did manage to see a couple of exhibitions, both at least vaguely related to nature The painting and the installation are meant to be viewed together   Not so long ago few people had access to photography. Now that photography no longer requires hugely expensive equipment – especially if you have a smartphone, nor darkrooms, nor film purchases and development costs, let alone extensive knowledge of exposure time, film speed and shutter speeds, almost anyone can provide accurate representations of objects in nature or elsewhere which was once the preserve of the artist. This leaves the artist free to bring his or her im...

“Knick Knack Paddywhack, Give a Frog a Home….” (Sung to the tune of “This Old Man Came Rolling Home.”) While I was out orchid hunting I passed a hidden dam where Pobblebonks – a.k.a.    Eastern Banjo Frogs were happily singing and yesterday my son sent me a photo from Queensland of a tree frog he had found in the air conditioner. These two incidents got me thinking about the status of frogs, which have been in worldwide decline since they started being closely monitored in the 1980’s.   This matters because they are our canaries in the coal mine, telling us about the health of our environment and especially our water. The frog that came in from the heat - Gordon's Air Con loving Tree Frog   It wasn’t that long ago that standing waters of any kind– frog habitat, were anathema to councils being associated with waterborne diseases and thought to be breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other unpleasant things.   Swamps and wetlands were als...

The Blessington Track -a Coastal Walk at South Arm I had been a bit disappointed since going orchid hunting with Peter and friends last week. Each time I went out it started to rain and I hadn’t found a single orchid. Yesterday started much the same. As if on cue, it rained again as I was driving over the bridge, but I kept going anyway and continued on down the South Arm Highway.  This is a high level walk with views of beaches and shore platforms There was brilliant sunshine while I did the lovely coastal walk from South Arm to Blessington but there wasn’t an orchid to be seen. They don’t seem to be all that fond of the beach which is very unAustralian. I continued on to another coastal track at Opossum Bay where a lady I met had told me that she had seen a blue one, but the rain came back with a vengeance along with a biting wind   and I couldn’t get back to the van soon enough. If there had been a hundred orchids, I wouldn’t have seen them because my g...