by Paula Peeters | Feb 17, 2016 | Writing
The osprey sees all. High above the town on a metal wire bowl, atop a mobile phone tower. From her crookedly pile of driftwood nest, she surveys the scene. A scattering of fibro shacks, low blocky brick apartment buildings, squat lowset brick houses, clustered near...
by Paula Peeters | Jan 6, 2016 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
A pair of fairy wrens are in our garden – their calls are shrill, sweet and curiously penetrating. And for the first time ever, I think they might stay. This is terribly exciting. When we moved here eight years ago, we transformed a backyard of kikuyu grass into...
by Paula Peeters | Oct 3, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
Cold wind buffets my breath as the small boat bounces along the waves. We are heading towards a tiny, sun-bleached rocky nub of an island, one of the many that cluster about the sprawling, inverted triangle of Eyre Peninsula, like small fish shadowing a large,...
by Paula Peeters | Sep 17, 2015 | Writing
I’ve just spent more than a week living in a eucalypt woodland in central Queensland. For 8 days I saw no concrete, no bitumen. I didn’t check the internet, or watch any TV. I slept in a tent pitched on pale orange sand, with native grass tussocks all around, dried to...
by Paula Peeters | Aug 4, 2015 | Tales of science, Writing
Me: Hello little logrunner, how are things with you? Logrunner: (scratch, scratch)…oh…you talking to me? Me: Yes, I’d like to know what it’s like to be a logrunner. Logrunner: (cocks her head, looks at me with a big dark eye) Not sure if I’ve really thought about it....
by Paula Peeters | Jul 15, 2015 | Forest portraits, Wildlife illustration, Writing
When it comes to doing art I’m largely self taught, so I always hesitate to call myself an artist. But I do like a challenge. Trying to draw forest portraits would require me to brush up on everything I had ever learnt about colour and tone and whatever else goes into...