Veronika Wild

Lake Osborne - ancient trees border an ancient lake Contrary to my last post, I went bushwalking again with my friend yesterday and in contrast to several previous trips to the Huon Valley, the weather remained delightful the entire time. Nor did we  see a single snake. Sometimes you can have too much nature. Our first mission in the Hartz Mountains National Park ,  was the gentle 45 minute walk to Lake Osborne. It was still a bit overcast as we set off, but mercifully not cold or windy, which is more often the case in these parts. The valley through which we walk shows many signs of past glaciation to which Tasmania was subject not once, but many times. You can see the sharply defined peaks and carved valleys – it is not for nothing that the range to our left is called the Devil’s Backbone.     Then there are the “sheep rocks” – the roches moutannees formed when the thick layer of slow moving ice scoured their leading edges smooth and then fract...

Part of the Lenah Valley Track That’s it! I am done with bushwalking for this season. Last week a friend and I did a bushwalk on the fringe of suburbia to look at New Town Falls. We hadn’t gone far when he said in big stage whisper, “Stay calm and walk very quietly.” He said it in an unusually serious tone, so I whirled around to see what his problem was. My friend now looked positively alarmed. There up on the bank a few steps back from where I had just walked was a rather large snake raising its head and looking slightly annoyed at being disturbed. I had been ahead on the track and now it lay between us. It slid down the bank halfway across the track and just stayed there for what seemed like eternity. Fortunately, it had settled down again, but showed no intention of moving. Ever. Close up- rather dodgy iPhone picture My friend tried rattling some bark to no avail. Eventually I threw a small rock into the bush intending to scare it. Though I aimed wel...

The maidenly blush of new blossom has almost gone, though a what miracle it was after that long winter. Now it is a new season which ought to have a special name and be celebrated in its own right. It is in Europe of course, where its equivalent falls in May. It’s that time in mid – spring when the trees hastily cover their naked branches in flamboyant green. The rich fat smell of hawthorn fills the air, the chestnut puts out its white candles and the bees are busy.   A lazy bird of prey rides on the wind. The chestnut The oakleaves At the Railway Roundabout The elms In the gardens Though I love the steadfast evergreens and enduring eucalypts, the annual renewal of deciduous trees still fills me with delight. If autumn colour brings intimations of mortality and thinking of times past and loves lost, this flush of green is a kind of quickening that makes me yearn for new adventures and do new things before the harsher sun of sum...

"As We Travel" - by Luke Wagner inspired by the poetry of  James McAuley Not too far away at the Colville Gallery at the far end of Salamanca, Tasmanian artist Luke Wagner  has fulfilled a long held ambition to paint a series based on the poems of James McAuley (1917 -1976) a well-known Australian academic, poet, journalist and literary critic perhaps most famous for the “ Ern Malley Hoax ” in which he and a collaborator, despising modernist poetry, successfully submitted sixteen nonsense poems to a literary magazine.  

It's easy to lose yourself in David Keeling's "regrowth" forest which is part of a larger work You could say that this week I have been flat out like a lizard drinking, to use a typically Australian expression that means “I have been really busy,” not that I have ever seen a lizard drinking. No chance to get out into the bush, but I did manage to see a couple of exhibitions, both at least vaguely related to nature The painting and the installation are meant to be viewed together   Not so long ago few people had access to photography. Now that photography no longer requires hugely expensive equipment – especially if you have a smartphone, nor darkrooms, nor film purchases and development costs, let alone extensive knowledge of exposure time, film speed and shutter speeds, almost anyone can provide accurate representations of objects in nature or elsewhere which was once the preserve of the artist. This leaves the artist free to bring his or her im...