Regular readers may have noticed I’m pretty passionate about urban nature. I believe that to love nature you need to ‘know nature’ and the only way we are going to know nature is if we experience her every day. Nature shouldn’t be something we have drive hours to visit. We need to nurture and protect nature in our cities! So I’m tempted to visit Sydney on Sunday to go along to the Biodiversity in the City event (but I won’t because I’ll be walking against warming here in Newcastle). 'Biodiversity in the city' is a guided walk through Sydney and... Read more →

Whale watching at Jervis Bay last year. The whale watching season has started here in NSW. The whales are currently migrating north to spend the winter in warmer waters. I’ve just discovered the Wild about Whales education campaign and I thought it was worth sharing. There’s an informative website full of information, images, and video. Little Eco and I spent much of this evening exploring the images and video and talking about our whale watching experience last year (I love that she doesn’t seem to remember she spent most of the trip vomiting and is keen to go again. I’m... Read more →

Collecting road-side rubbish thrown from cars. Clean up Australia Day March 2009. There’s not much that frustrates me more than seeing someone throw rubbish or cigarette butts out of their car windows. You too? For those of you living in NSW, did you know you can dob these tossers in? They unfortunately won’t be fined, but they will be sent a warning letter, advising them of penalties. Perhaps they will think twice before tossing next time? Check out the reporting form and read the FAQ and you will be prepared next time you see a tosser. You will need to... Read more →

Today is International Day for Biological Diversity. I know I’d be wasting my time trying to talk to a three year old about ‘Biodiversity’. Thankfully, you don’t actually need to talk about something to learn about it. I had planned to take Little Eco on an ‘expedition’ to see if we could find a threatened plant that was recorded ‘on top of sea cliff south of Newcastle Beach’ by botanist and conservationist L.A.S Johnson in 1953, and as far as I’m aware it hasn’t been recorded there since. Little Eco wasn’t overly excited about the expedition, but once I drew... Read more →

I was being a tad unrealistic thinking we could do 24 parks in 24 days. It didn't take me long to realise racing off to a different park each afternoon was just adding another scheduled activity to an already busy scheduled day. So I've backed off to a more realistic rate of exploration. We've been having a lot of fun and have found some great (and not-so great) parks. My favourites this week were: Dip-netting for water bugs at Eucalyptus Circuit Reserve, Warabrook: We were pretty impressed with the freshwater shrimp we found and after having so much fun are... Read more →