Welcome to Forest Leaves

The beautiful blossom of the Silver Princess tree – watercolour by Frank Batini   It all started one sunny autumn day back in 2017. I was...

Mowgli and his wolf-mother - an illustration from the first Jungle Book (Macmillan's Children Edition 1983)       The release of Disney's...

Flight path Perth to Darwin, 2,650 km, most of which is over no-man’s land.   There is nothing like the death of a dear friend, or a real...

Bushfire in Western Australia’s southern forests   I had an insight, many years ago, into a fascinating perspective on The Great Bushfire...

Pt Conspicuous juts out into the Southern Ocean on the coast of Western Australia (photo by Jack Bradshaw) Holidaying at Nornalup, I...

The route to the Ice Cave at the snout of the Paradise Glacier: scene of an alpine adventure I grew up in the south-west of Western...

Bishop John Colenso, as caricatured in Punch magazine. One of the saddest stories I have read in recent years concerned the resignation...

A Swan River pelican with Pelican Point beyond. The painting is by my schooldays friend Hamish Cuming During the early 1990s when I was...

Dr Samuel Johnson sums it up: "The advice that is wanted is commonly unwelcome, and that which is not wanted is evidently impertinent”....

A magnificent red flowering gum, photographed in the main street of Manjimup by Jack Bradshaw It was the late 1990s, and one of those...

A question of psychology : who's in charge here? There was an interesting story on the radio recently about animal intelligence. A team...

Street scene in Berlin following the onslaught by the Red Army in May 1945 I have been reading Antony Beevor’s superb book Berlin – the...

Early dentistry (but before my time) I was in the Melville library one day recently, leafing through a book on early days on the...

Looking across King George Sound to the Torndirrup National Park On a recent exploration of well-loved spots along the south coast near...

A Mataranka Pie – billed as “The Best in Australia”. It was March, 2010, the end of the wet season, a hot and sultry morning. But there...

The archetypal rogue elephant: male, solitary, old, and dangerously and unpredictably violent I have never worked with elephants and have...

The original dust jacket of The Desert Column Chatting with old friends over a beer one day, the subject of ‘best-remembered books of our...

The Ford Model T: pioneer of the automotive generation I have been reading a book of essays by E.B. White, long-time writer and editor...

Comparing girths with the King Jarrah at Sawyers Valley, October 2023 Way back in April 1967, when I was the district forester at the WA...

Christmas in Vienna Christmas is fast approaching, and Christmas carols are in the air. I enjoyed some old favourites only last night at...