About the same time I learned about organic gardening, my parents had just bought some land beneath Ben Cairn, a peak on the flanks of Mount Donna Buang near Melbourne. I had the opportunity to set up a garden there. So a whole lot of things happened together.
Mainly it was organic gardening, working on this land in a really amazing physical environment. And then, gradually hearing about environmental causes of different kinds.
I was doing a lot of bushwalking, rock climbing. I was just out in nature. I wanted to be out in nature and just fit it in to a whole philosophical way of living.
For me, growing my own food is really important. I want my food to be healthy. I want it to be uncontaminated. I want it to be absolutely fresh. And that has just been a life pattern for me.
It's part of being healthy. I have now grown my own food almost continuously since I was about 30, but on and off between 18 and 30.
So going back to the story, my parents bought this place. They wanted to set up a small farm - which they did - but it was a very unsuitable country. It was covered in bracken. But it was this big valley and it looked across onto the flanks of Mount Donna Buang. It was eucalyptus regnans forest. I used to do a lot of bird watching, lots of interesting birds in the forest. There were little wombats around the place.
It wasn't a good place to farm. My parents moved later after they bought much better land. But it was just a really nice place to develop really.
I used to walk all over the hills. It was just a magical place to be.
I do have this amazing memory of working on the farm there one day, and looking down into the valley and a flock of white ibis came into the valley. There must have been about 20 or 25 of them and they caught a thermal and they rose up through the valley. That was a really special memory that stayed with me. Quite an ordinary bird I suppose in many ways, but just an extraordinary thing to see.
About the same time I learned about organic gardening, my parents had just bought some land beneath Ben Cairn, a peak on the flanks of Mount Donna Buang near Melbourne. I had the opportunity to set up a garden there. So a whole lot of things happened together.
Mainly it was organic gardening, working on this land in a really amazing physical environment. And then, gradually hearing about environmental causes of different kinds.
I was doing a lot of bushwalking, rock climbing. I was just out in nature. I wanted to be out in nature and just fit it in to a whole philosophical way of living.
For me, growing my own food is really important. I want my food to be healthy. I want it to be uncontaminated. I want it to be absolutely fresh. And that has just been a life pattern for me.
It's part of being healthy. I have now grown my own food almost continuously since I was about 30, but on and off between 18 and 30.
So going back to the story, my parents bought this place. They wanted to set up a small farm - which they did - but it was a very unsuitable country. It was covered in bracken. But it was this big valley and it looked across onto the flanks of Mount Donna Buang. It was eucalyptus regnans forest. I used to do a lot of bird watching, lots of interesting birds in the forest. There were little wombats around the place.
It wasn't a good place to farm. My parents moved later after they bought much better land. But it was just a really nice place to develop really.
I used to walk all over the hills. It was just a magical place to be.
I do have this amazing memory of working on the farm there one day, and looking down into the valley and a flock of white ibis came into the valley. There must have been about 20 or 25 of them and they caught a thermal and they rose up through the valley. That was a really special memory that stayed with me. Quite an ordinary bird I suppose in many ways, but just an extraordinary thing to see.
Dr Eric Woehler has been asked a few times where his passion and interest came from. He grew up in Hobart in a caring home, but nature wasn’t something that was a thread in conversations. That inspiration happened at university.
For ecologist/ornithologist and Birdlife Tasmania Convenor Dr Karen Dick, her love of nature comes from her South African childhood, a mother who rehabilitated wildlife and an unexpected encounter with the incredible secretarybird.
I really enjoy watching it all happen. Just slowly, observing the cycles. I really notice the bird life, because that comes to your door. Then, there's a lot of marine life. It's a big part of every day, reflects composer and guitarist Julius Schwing, on his connection to Nature and a childhood spent "amongst it all" on Bruny Island.
I had an experience where I was volunteering with sea turtles in Costa Rica, writes ecologist and University of Tasmania PhD student Edith Shum. It was my first trip abroad and that kind of made me. It was the first time I was really out in nature on my own, and made me realise how small I was. It sparked a lot.
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