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Nature Writing Project- Cycle 3

The next six pieces are the third and final cycle of work from our Australian Nature Writing Project.

The pieces were selected by Ben Walter, who also initiated the project. This is what Ben had to say about this set of works …

Recently, I found myself with a spare day in Launceston. I thought about climbing an obscure mountain nearby, but there’d been major rain, flooding in the area – the huge weather event that trammelled over Victoria in mid-October had also blasted Tasmania …

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I Go Down to the Shore – by RT Wenzel
Nonfiction RT Wenzel Nonfiction RT Wenzel

I Go Down to the Shore – by RT Wenzel

In the scheme of rivers, this river is not extraordinary. The surface is sometimes lustrous with scum and agricultural runoff, the riverbed coated in sludge and bacterial matting. Not a river you’d travel to see – although tourists do come for the platypuses.

Stretches of picturesque wilderness aren’t far away; this is Tasmania, after all. Golden mountainscapes and unpeopled beaches are always within driving distance. But I crave intimacy with my own backyard, and in particular, the uncultivated part beyond the marked beds, apple trees and sometimes-mown lawn. The terrain beyond the fence where the river lies …

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The Shimmer of Flying Fox Landscape – by Matthew Chrulew
Nonfiction Matthew Chrulew Nonfiction Matthew Chrulew

The Shimmer of Flying Fox Landscape – by Matthew Chrulew

… We are in William Robinson’s Flying Fox Landscape. At first we were just looking at this oil painting from 1989. We stood there trying to orient ourselves, bewildered by shifting perspectives. We knew what the artist had called it and followed his hint, searched for the flying fox. Perhaps it’s just named for the locale near his home. But that name must have come from their presence. Perhaps that’s the flying fox there, just below centre, a brush of angular purples caught up in some to-do with a magpie. But perhaps it is us. Sucked into this scene, thrown about by its winds, flipped this way and that …

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Animal Rescue – by Bastian Fox Phelan
Nonfiction Bastian Fox Phelan Nonfiction Bastian Fox Phelan

Animal Rescue – by Bastian Fox Phelan

My first experience of rescuing a native animal doesn’t end well. It’s after midnight and I’m driving home to Newcastle from Sydney. At the big roundabout in Jesmond, there’s a flash of pale-coloured feathers in my headlights. I swerve. Did I hit it? We pull over. When my partner spots the bird, it’s mounting the gutter on the far side of the highway. I can see its pink and grey plumage under the streetlights. It’s a galah, seemingly unfazed by its brush with death, strutting in the confident, plucky way that parrots do – perhaps just out for a midnight stroll? But that doesn’t seem right. Galahs aren’t nocturnal, and if they can still fly, they shouldn’t be walking across roads. Something about its wing looks funny – the way its tapered tip sags like a door that’s come off its hinges …

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In the Rain Shadow – by Jessica Carter
Nonfiction Jessica Carter Nonfiction Jessica Carter

In the Rain Shadow – by Jessica Carter

I wake to the smell of fading red blossoms. The air is warm already. There are bushfires in the west, yet the haze is not smoke but dust. Late last night I arrived here, on the other side of the Great Dividing Range, the one marked by rain shadow, and the absence of tall buildings, rushing humans, city fumes and ocean breeze. The sky is wider, the plant leaves tighter. Breathing comes lightly.

I’m back on the family farm, but the return is always fraught – a mixture of trepidation and a deep pull somewhere near my heart. A reminder of the queasy combination of fear and hope that comes with being tethered to something …

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The Magpie and the Scarecrow – by Helena Pantsis
Nonfiction Helena Pantsis Nonfiction Helena Pantsis

The Magpie and the Scarecrow – by Helena Pantsis

Mangia, Mangia, the men call out, throwing bread through the metal fence, its tessellating wire pattern opening onto a park, sod wet and uneven. The factory sits directly beside the park. The men sit in the adjoining alleyway, cigarettes burning holes in their mouths while they tear their lunches apart with ashy hands. Mangia swoops lithely down from the gum. He opens his mouth – his voice threads through the gaps, a loud artillery, fine and fluty. A short, descending call. Mangia, Mangia, the men say in response to his carolling, c’mon magpie, time for lunch

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The Right One to Rescue – by Sharon Kent
Nonfiction Sharon Kent Nonfiction Sharon Kent

The Right One to Rescue – by Sharon Kent

… ‘Mum! There’s a cat on the road. With a bucket on its head.’

I am studying the map. From somewhere, I half-hear this ludicrous statement, but I dismiss it, like an annoying mosquito that I can’t be bothered to swat away. I turn to my son. ‘It’s going to be dark soon. Will – you – get – in – the – car!’ I flash him a stony look. ‘Hurry up!’

He hesitates, looking down the road forlornly, before trying a different tone.

‘There’s a cat on the road. With a bucket on its head.’ He speaks evenly, as if he’s dealing with someone who doesn’t understand his language, where there’s no point becoming exasperated or overly excited …

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New Nature Writing Collection

The next six pieces are the second cycle of work from our Australian Nature Writing Project.

The pieces were selected by Ben Walter, who also initiated the project. This is what Ben had to say about this set of works.

I love wandering through ridiculous offtrack terrain in the mountains of Tasmania, but with three young kids, I find it can be pretty hard to get away. I’d love to say that reading nature writing serves as a substitute – that it totally compensates for the direct experience – and perhaps it does to a degree

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The Ocean Sounds Like a Motorway – by Melissa Fagan
Nonfiction Melissa Fagan Nonfiction Melissa Fagan

The Ocean Sounds Like a Motorway – by Melissa Fagan

How does the ocean sound? Like the hollowed-out whoosh of a shell cupped to your ear. A distant rustle. A constant murmur. A heavy thud, a thunderous clap, the creep of the encroaching tide. When heard from above—standing on the top of a rocky cliff—the sound of the ocean carries upwards, reaching towards your ears. Beneath the surface, it’s a deep, low warble. A ghostly, inhuman echo. A whale song …

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The Backyard Project: Notes from Stolen Land – by Lia Hills
Nonfiction Lia Hills Nonfiction Lia Hills

The Backyard Project: Notes from Stolen Land – by Lia Hills

The murnong’s flower head droops, in need of a drink, a single closed tip at the end of an arching stem, like an organic streetlamp or an alien probe. I have no clock with me. I will measure time in plants, one per day, for the week that I’ll spend camping in my backyard – a half-acre in the Dandenongs – off-grid, tech-free, no contact with other humans. The plants come from a community nursery down the road that only sells local indigenous species. Each of the plants I’ll place in this ground has three names …

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Schrödinger’s Butterflies – by Dave Witty
Nonfiction Dave Witty Nonfiction Dave Witty

Schrödinger’s Butterflies – by Dave Witty

… Over the next few weeks, we saw the same butterflies on three, possibly four occasions. It is unlikely they were the same individuals - they live such short, hurried lives - but they were the same species. The common grass blue. Zizina labradus. A small butterfly not much bigger than a wasp. Its movement so fast and erratic, its size so slight, that when a grass blue comes into view, you notice only a flicker at first, a flicker that appears to jump several feet as it drops out of reality, only to reappear seconds later. Your eyes take time to adjust to their jinking motion. Only after ten, maybe twenty seconds, do you finally keep track of their passage …

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Feel the Quiet – by Zohra Aly
Nonfiction Zohra Aly Nonfiction Zohra Aly

Feel the Quiet – by Zohra Aly

There’s a list of things I imagine doing if I lived a different life: wandering into the small reserve I drive past daily, sipping my first cup of tea every morning on the patio bench, learning to identify native flora and fauna by name, picking up my embroidery from where I left it weeks ago. I never get round to them because I live this life, in which I’m wiping down kitchen benchtops, hanging laundry and scrolling through Instagram …

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And a Moth Flew Out – by Helena Kadmos
Nonfiction Helena Kadmos Nonfiction Helena Kadmos

And a Moth Flew Out – by Helena Kadmos

What showering outdoors is teaching me about my place in the pandemic

At the bottom of my garden steps is a tap. I check that the valve to the sprinkler hose is closed, and that the one to the other hose is open. I turn on the tap and follow that hose to a hidey-hole behind a green plastic water tank that’s taller than I am. This is the shadiest spot in the garden …

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A New Garden – by Erica Nathan
Nonfiction Erica Nathan Nonfiction Erica Nathan

A New Garden – by Erica Nathan

… Enticing birds to feast, shelter and pause in a shared urban space has been my ten-year learning mission. I love to garden. But even as I write this, my guard is up quicker than a thornbill’s early morning dip in the birdbath. Even among the declining number of enthusiasts, my idea of gardening lacks broad appeal …

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Six new articles inspired by nature – an introduction

We are excited to publish the first six articles from our Australian Nature Writing Project. These have been selected by our Online Editor, Ben Walter, who also initiated the project. This is what Ben had to say about the first set of works.

Recently I sat on an upper floor in the Hobart library, intending to write this introduction, but a huge storm was mounding up through the windows; lightning flashed and thunder tore the sky as the clouds whirled grey. I was totally distracted – despite my best intentions, the natural world interfered and I got nothing done. When we began this first of three cycles publishing Australian nature writing, we hoped to find writers who had let nature disrupt their work much more productively …

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A Waving Forest – by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn

A Waving Forest – by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn

… Beneath the water, life is more graceful. Sprawling groves of kelp shift and furl in the current, while tiny silver snook fish dart between the seaweed; a wrasse glides between the plunging curtains. I follow it, hearing my sucking breath amplified by my snorkel. The mask fogs up. I continue paddling, floating and kicking over the kelp beds. I can’t see anything except a cloud of my own shallow breathing. Suddenly, my heart is racing—my chest feels like it will burst. The physical sensation of being underwater grips my ribcage like a vice. As spots appear in the corner of my mask, every shadow becomes a dark trench ready to swallow me …

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Changing Spots – by Sharon Kent
Nonfiction Sharon Kent Nonfiction Sharon Kent

Changing Spots – by Sharon Kent

I find the scats on the beach, lying by a faint depression in the sand. With careful gloved hands I pick them up. They are strange – grey-brown with a gritty texture, smelling nothing like the dog faeces they are supposed to resemble. I label a plastic bag with neat letters –16 January 2017. The Neck, Bruny Island, Tasmania – then drop the scats into the bag and seal it up. Later, a researcher will examine the specimen and extract samples for DNA analysis – a small piece in a giant puzzle. Through the plastic, I can see feathers. They are black and white. I wonder if any of them belong to the little penguins from the colony behind the dunes …

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A Questionable Survey of Suburban Eucalypts – by Uthpala Gunethilake
Nonfiction Uthpala Gunethilake Nonfiction Uthpala Gunethilake

A Questionable Survey of Suburban Eucalypts – by Uthpala Gunethilake

… There are several magnificent specimens down the slope; tall, always tall, with reddish-orange trunks and sprays of white blossoms in summer. Two books, one app and many websites later, I’m confused – is this a grey gum that has shed its bark or a Sydney red gum? Another has the telltale squiggle of moth larvae etched on its creamy-smooth bark, so it must be a scribbly gum. But it looks so much like another smooth-barked species, which fits the description of blackbutt. Another has bark furrowed like a Christmas log cake – is that a stringybark? The thing is, I can’t be sure. I know they’re all eucalypts, but I can’t call them by their names …

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The Rats Move In – by Karen A Johnson
Nonfiction Karen A Johnson Nonfiction Karen A Johnson

The Rats Move In – by Karen A Johnson

… Death and disease have hijacked the world’s narrative, at least until the sheer enormity becomes too overwhelming, and it becomes impossible to concentrate on anything outside of the inside. We beat hasty retreats to our homes and hide away until the next news broadcast. The news has replaced the novel in my world.

This is the time for explorative, dangerous fiction. Apocalyptic fiction. But I’m living in a fiction I can’t find a way to write. Nothing rivals the terror of nonfiction. I go online. I could order a gun, a knife. I don’t. I order a plant. A life …

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Fire There Is – by Searlait O’Neill
Nonfiction Searlait O'Neill Nonfiction Searlait O'Neill

Fire There Is – by Searlait O’Neill

My younger brother said that it looked as though all the feathers had been pulled from the skin of a bird, leaving nothing but demarcated veins. He went on to say, ‘That’s not exactly how it looked. I can’t say, really, how it looked.’ At the time we spoke about this, I was trying out images. I thought I’d stumble across something that could capture it. Asking him to recount the experience of seeing our brother, J, and the fire, I was looking to capture a feeling more than anything. The feeling of seeing your brother’s arms burn, of seeing his clothes dropping away like singed leaves …

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