Veronika Wild

Shame on me - I don't have a photo of my own for this, but I have washed hundreds, possibly thousands of oiled penguins. This photo is by Tatiana Gerus on Wikimedia  Commons If you go down to the beach today, - well on almost any evening between September and March, you could be in for a big surprise. That’s a busy time for Little Penguins, a.k.a. Fairy Penguins, Little Blue Penguins, ( Eudyptula Minor), so you are asked to be especially careful where you tread as their burrows are littered around the edges of our beaches. Although they can be found elsewhere in the southern waters of Australia and New Zealand and even Chile, Tasmania is home to almost half the world's estimated 500,000 breeding pairs . At 30 – 40 cms in size, Little Penguins are the smallest of the 17 known species of penguin. Their diminutive size and awkward gait on land make them look very cute, but in the sea they are formidable swimmers.   When the Iron Baron   ran ...

I climbed Legge’s Tor yesterday – another bit of unfinished business from last year. My excuse is that I was already in the area and couldn’t resist. This time I took my poor old van - very, very slowly, all the way up Jacob’s Ladder and started from the Link Track in the Ben Lomond Alpine Village. Ski Village at the top of Jacob's Ladder The Welcoming Committee  -at least six large greys hopped out of my way as I approached the track  It was a beautiful day for it. While the lowlands sweltered at 30 + Degrees C, it was a balmy 19oC up there.   Most of the showier flowering plants we’d seen last time had gone into frantic seed production mode leaving a patchwork of different greens – bright green, blue green, grey green, moss green, spiced up occasionally with a dash of red from the seed pods of the mountain rocket.   A few small flowers put on a brave show especially some yellow daisies and the delightful mountain anemones. Yell...

Not a Happy New Year for this poor wallaby or its cousins. There was another just a few feet away In case you've missed the photo, I am talking about native animals here, not humans. It’s official- Tasmania is the Roadkill Capital  of the world. Anyone who has been to Tasmania can’t fail to be shocked by the number of dead animals on our roads, although many councils do make an effort to clear dead and injured animals away. Estimates range from 500,000 animals killed per year to over a million and upwards or more than 30 every hour.This is doubly tragic because most of our wild animals aren’t found anywhere else – the devils, the wombats, the platypi, the echidnas, the quolls, bettongs, potoroos, pademelons and bandicoots, not to mention other marsupials, birds and reptiles.   Many of them, especially the Tasmanian devil, are already endangered.* The causes are many – greater numbers say some; land clearing for plantations or housing developments which f...

Approaching the summit of Hartz Peak There I have done it and earned two genuine Peak Bagger’s point into the bargain. I have just climbed Hartz Peak all the way to the summit. The trouble is that the mountain has bagged me too. Morning mist shrouds the mountains My journey started pleasantly enough. It was early in the morning with dew still on the grass and the mountains shrouded in mist. Creeks burbled beneath the duckboards as I wound my way to Ladies’ Tarn. Though the floral display was not quite as spectacular as it had been last time when the waratah was in bloom, more modest flowers - starry eyed cushion plants, alpine daisies – yellow and white, or a scatter of blush pink trigger plants cheered me on my way.  Along the duckboards Bellendena Montana -Mountain Rocket, looks like cotton candy and comes in several colours On nearing the Tarn the mists began to rise wraithlike from the plateau. You could now see the flush ...