June, 2011

Is our landscape one shaped by humans and weather forces or might other agents – like birds – be in part responsible for the spread of fire across our landscapes? There are more questions here than answers…so far.

Female Superb Fairy-wrens Malurus cyaneus initiate extragroup fertilizations by forays to the territory of preferred males, just before sunrise, 2–4 days before egg laying. Over a prolonged breeding season, males advertise their availability to foraying females by singing during the dawn chorus.

Pastoralism in the Northern Territory is really a form of strip mining. The pastoralists are mining some of the soil nutrient elements (chemicals) out of the grasses and other leaves and exporting them in live cattle. This is happening to some of the poorest soils and ecosystems in Australia. The operation is being subsidised by the government to a considerable extent. Cattle are little more than parasitic grit in the machinery of our ecosystem. How could it be otherwise? How could the pastoral industry possibly be ecologically sustainable in the Northern Territory?

The Barunga Statement painting combined several clan designs from Yolngu country in northeastern Arnhem Land on the left with a large design featuring traditional Central Desert iconography on the right. As such it visually affirmed the unified demands of the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory and the Land Councils that represented the interests of those who had already attained the first measure of self-management promised by the Land Rights Act (NT) 1976.

Friends. We meet here, your country. We meet here, on Australian soil, our country. And we come together in this place, at this time, to celebrate a moment uniquely yours, uniquely Australian. We celebrate an agreement between the traditional owners of this land and a mining giant.

There isn’t much more that I can say about this that the pictures don’t – other than a call for people to slow down when they see wildlife on the roads – but your thoughts are more than welcome…

On a clear, cold and moonless night at Pigeonhole in the Northern Territory’s Victoria River district and I dragged my trusty camera and tripod out and took a few shots of the brilliant night sky from my campsite at the local airstrip.