Welcome to Forest Leaves

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...

“The Trans” Commonwealth Railways train, crossing the Nullarbor, probably in the 1940s I have always loved trains. I can travel on them,...

Mallet forest at Dryandra (photo by Greg Durell) I have been spending a lot of time in the Dryandra forest this last year or so. It is...

A firefighter retreats from the intense heat of exploding eucalyptus trees in an Australian bushfire In a letter to the editor of The...

Satellite image of Barrow Island, off the north-west coast of Western Australia I have been reading about the formation and early...

The crest and motto of Hale School I have recently re-read Such, Such were the Joys, George Orwell’s essay on his school days at Eton and...

Hubert (“Bert”) Trotman, dressed for a formal reception I have been reading Beckoning West¸ the enthralling story by Eleanor Smith about...

Hermann Goering as Commander of the Nazi’s Storm Troopers, in 1933 I never liked Hermann Goering. It is true that he was a brave and...

Don ‘Spriggo’ Spriggins in his mild-mannered-forester persona This is a story about (among other things) my friend Don ‘Spriggo’...

A devastated Leicester Square in London, the morning after the storm There is an amusing scene in an episode of the television program...

Desert oaks in central Australia. (Photo by Jack Bradshaw) The American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote a...

A perfect 'Omelette de la mère Poulard', famous in the 19th century in Mt St Michel in France, and still served at the La Mere Poulard...

Crosscut sawyers in a bush competition at Big Brook in Western Australia. Villages in parts of Europe in medieval times had an...

An elderly Sri Lankan male elephant … en route to the Elephant’s Graveyard? Having been an aficionado of Tarzan when I was a boy, the...

Lightning arcing through a conifer tree in Arizona, USA (photo sent to me by Phil Cheney) Like most people, lightning both scares and...

Wandoo forest in the Helena River Catchment of Western Australia Anyone with a lifetime involvement with bushfires can recall a horror...

Dick Sproge in the crown of the Diamond Tree, 50 m from the ground, in 1941 Although he died in 1957, I never met Dick Sproge. Our times...