​​ I was going through my photos looking for a stilt to paint, or maybe a scarlet honeyeater, and came across this one of a pipit (Anthus richardi) on the beach at Bowling Green Bay, south of Townsville. It appealed to me immediately. This bird had played hide and seek with us, trying to stay out of sight behind bushes, and so had been elusive and difficult to photograph. In the photo, I particularly liked the way the late afternoon light danced across the bedraggled dead gra

​​ On the second day of our Lamington trip we came across a strange phenomenon on the forest floor beside one of the paths through the rainforest. Something really was behaving like a mad thing. It appeared to be performing a crazy dance, but was moving so fast that it was just a blur. It was only by looking at my photos later that I was able to identify it as a crane fly. My photos in sequence showed the long-legged fly in flight, then very briefly touching the end of its ab

​ We saw Red-necked Pademelons (Thylogale thetis) everywhere at O'Reilly's. They were in the visitors' areas, around the camp-site and in the forest. Some were out foraging even during the day. But they really appeared in great numbers at dusk, particularly in the paddock below the motel area. They clearly had lost much of their fear of people. These delightful, chunky, small wallabies are found on the the edges of dense forests along the east coast of NSW and southern Queens

When I started this painting I wanted to do something messy - really messy. I don't know why, but I had this young whipbird in mind from the beginning. I always work from photos and I had two to choose from, both of the same bird beside the boardwalk, on the second day of our recent stay at Lamington National Park. The bird was foraging beside a pair of logrunners that I was also trying to take photos of. Really I liked the first photo better because the bird was in a more un

Walking along one of the paths through the rainforest we came across a little Brown Thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla) that was bathing in a tiny pocket of water no bigger than a teacup, in a little well formed from a scar on the trunk of a small tree where a branch had fallen off at some time in the past. It was quite amusing to watch........ ......as it flew backwards and forwards...... ........between its perch and the little reservoir..... .......pausing to look around every n