My Writing
Tag
- Art
- Australian Geographic
- Australian Yoga Life
- Bees
- Cafe Jardin
- Ecology
- Flowers
- Gardening
- Kuno
- Medium Articles
- Meniscus Literary Journal
- Organic Gardener Mag
- Out There Magazine
- Outdoor Adventure
- Peace
- Plant propagation
- Rewilding
- Simply Living
- Tasmanian Life Magazine
- The Guardian
- The Mercury
- Yoga
- Young Adult Fiction
I’m in a portrait exhibition!
Discovering SoHo is a project of photographer Paul County. With funding from Hobart City Council and South Hobart Progress Assoc., Paul set about photographing and telling the stories of a selection of South Hobart residents.
I was selected and worked with Paul to set up a portrait which expresses something fundamental about me and my relationship to books and writing.
The portraits are displayed in local cafes and online.
(Look closely at the book cover - I’m there in miniature in the middle).
Kuno: telling stories around the digital campfire
Kuno is a new site filled with stories and content about our connections with nature, and our love of nature, reminding us that we are nature. As a contributor I was asked to speak at the launch, but unfortunately I wasn’t in town that day. So they played a video of my talk, and now it’s available on the site. Take a look, and be careful, you just might disappear down the Kuno rabbit hole, a beautiful place to wander.
PS You’ll also find out a bit about the two romance novels I wrote in the 1990s…
Sheep Farmers are helping save Tasmania’s native grasslands: ‘We’re better off working together’
When I first heard about the Midlands Conservation Partnership I wanted to tell the world, because it’s a great story of collaboration.
This is my first article in The Guardian.
Right to Roam Movement, England: a human rights case study
I wrote this essay for a Masters Degree course in Human Rights, Peace & Justice, in November 2024. It explores the idea that public access to nature should be a universal human right, for the health of both people and the environment. It was inspired by the book Wild Service, which you can read my reviews of here.
My favourite book in 2024
Please read this book! Especially the chapter called Rope Swing.
p.s. I’ve reviewed it for a couple of magazines and if you click through you can read them.
Corridors of Life
I can't get enough of Emma and her fantastic Melbourne Pollinator Corridor. Her mission to create 8km of street gardens for pollinators is a fabulously ambitious and important example of how to be a local activist for nature.
What’s the Buzz?
Stop killing insects! They are the most important pollinators, essential for life as we know it and for food production. Writing this article was a great opportunity to refresh my love of botany and the relationships between plants and critters.
It's all about plant sex, so read on.
Kowai Bush and the Mears Track
Visiting patches of remnant lowland beech forest near Christchurch was also a trip into my family's past, present and future.
I've written the story on Kuno, an app/website which is all about the wonders of nature in the best place in the universe - planet Earth.
Cycling Sea to Summit around Christchurch
This article is on a new app/website called Kuno. Kuno is all about connecting people with “the best thing that’s ever happened in the universe - planet Earth.” It’s crammed with outdoor adventure guides, nature writing, nature science, photography and inspiration.
As a contributor I’m free to produce content about anything relevant to the mission of realigning our relationship with nature to one of belonging.
I wrote this one after a recent trip to Aotearoa New Zealand, my birthplace.
Helen’s Hothouse
After more than 20 years gardening in Tasmania, I wanted a hothouse. Surely some windows and other bits and pieces from the tip shop wouldn’t be too hard to put together? All I needed was a friendly, creative, patient, skilled, affordable person to build it. I found Shane.
Sharing the Farm
Farmers enclose vast amounts of land, fencing the public out. But in southern Tasmania, this farmer has thrown the gate open and found ways to entice us to explore. Whilst pioneering the production of Tasmanian Pepper berries, Chris and Sue have created a bushwalk and sculpture trail, community kitchen garden, pop-up cafe, art prize and art events. It’s organic, friendly and inspiring.
The Pollinator Project that’s Transforming Melbourne’s Streets
Recently I met Emma Cutting, founder of the Heart Gardening Project and the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor. She’s a force of nature on a mission to feed the tiny winged things that keep nature reproducing in Australia’s famously urban city.
The Landscape Architects Making Singapore Wilder
I met innovative landscape architects, Salad Dressing, in Singapore in 2023. I soon realised that a deep, exploratory philosophy underpins their extraordinary work.
Valley of the Giants: Exploring Tasmania’s Styx River
Published in the Australian Geographic in October, 2001.
The tallest flowering plants in the world (Eucalyptus regnans) grow in Tasmania’s Styx Valley. In 2001 they were being mercilessly logged. A famly liloing trip down the Styx River added the taste of adventure needed to place a story in the Australian Geographi to draw attention to the plight of our mighty old growth forests. Parts of the Styx forest were eventually incorporated into the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, but sadly, logging (and protest) is happening as I write this post in 2024.
Welcoming the Wild Things
Published in the Organic Gardener, Feb-March, 2024.
It’s a hot day in Singapore but it’s pleasantly cool as I walk through a rainforest in the grounds of the National University of Singapore (NUS). I’m with a champion of urban rewilding, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Yun Hye Hwang, whose passion for ecological design and planning has transformed the grounds of the NUS campus.
Beyond Organics: Gardening for the Future
Published by ABC Books in 2005. Foreword by Peter Cundall.
Beyond Organics takes gardening into the realm of nature conservation in every possible way. For many people, the garden is the main place of interaction with nature, and the only part of the natural environment that they directly influence and look after.
Heroes of Peace
Produced by Ryan Walsh and Helen Cushing in 2015.
An award winning documentary about four war veterans who transformed trauma into hope and healing through yoga and meditation.
Safe Refuge at Inala
Published in the Organic Gardener, Feb-March, 2024.
A driven conservationist has turned her property on Bruny Island (TAS) into a haven for endangered birds, plants and trees. Including a jurassic garden.
Dr Tonia Cochran is a self-confessed all or nothing person. So it’s not surprising to learn she owns a 600-hectare nature
reserve, an international wildlife tour company and a two-hectare (five-acre) Gondwanan Botanic Garden, all on Tasmania’s Bruny Island. Not that she ever planned any of the above.
The ABC Book of Gardening for Kids
Published by ABC Books in 2001.
The ABC Book of Gardening for Kids was a best seller…
Samskaras: Impressions of Light and Shadow
Published on Medium in February, 2020.
What are samskaras? It’s a Sanskrit word which underlies the psychology of yoga. My writings on yoga are based on fifty years of practice, twenty years of teaching and two years living in a yoga ashram in India.