We catch a love of nature from each other

Name: Codi
Price range: $

Kunanyi - Mount Wellington

My early experiences of connecting with nature I'd have to attribute a lot to my father. He was always a keen bush walker.

In his early professional life he was a teacher in rural Victoria. I can remember myself at the age three through to about six in Victoria, going with him when he banded birds and being able to hold these beautiful birds in the hand, being taught the different bird species, picking up lizards, understanding the difference between being bitten by a bull ant and bitten by a jackjumper, all sorts of really vital and important things.

But I think what he also taught me, apart from the joy, the beauty and the science of nature, was not to be scared of it.

I meet so many people from cities, for whom nature is a scary thing. Not just because there are snakes and spiders and scary animals, but because it's a foreign place to them, an alien place.

Taking these people out, and with your own enthusiasm and your own sense of comfort in the place, helping them understand that they can feel like that too once they understand it better and know more about it, there's a pleasure in that. Because you can get people out there enjoying what you enjoy.

And I've realised that we actually catch a love of nature from each other.

Martin Stone

Martin Stone is a Tasmanian forester who grew up roaming the foothills of Mount Wellington. Retirement...

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My early experiences of connecting with nature I'd have to attribute a lot to my father. He was always a keen bush walker.

But I think what he also taught me, apart from the joy, the beauty and the science of nature, was not to be scared of it.

I meet so many people from cities, for whom nature is a scary thing. Not just because there are snakes and spiders and scary animals, but because it's a foreign place to them, an alien place.

And I've realised that we actually catch a love of nature from each other.