Welcome to Forest Leaves

A magnificent red flowering gum, photographed in the main street of Manjimup by Jack Bradshaw It was the late 1990s, and one of those...

A question of psychology : who's in charge here? There was an interesting story on the radio recently about animal intelligence. A team...

Street scene in Berlin following the onslaught by the Red Army in May 1945 I have been reading Antony Beevor’s superb book Berlin – the...

Early dentistry (but before my time) I was in the Melville library one day recently, leafing through a book on early days on the...

Looking across King George Sound to the Torndirrup National Park On a recent exploration of well-loved spots along the south coast near...

A Mataranka Pie – billed as “The Best in Australia”. It was March, 2010, the end of the wet season, a hot and sultry morning. But there...

The archetypal rogue elephant: male, solitary, old, and dangerously and unpredictably violent I have never worked with elephants and have...

The original dust jacket of The Desert Column Chatting with old friends over a beer one day, the subject of ‘best-remembered books of our...

The Ford Model T: pioneer of the automotive generation I have been reading a book of essays by E.B. White, long-time writer and editor...

Comparing girths with the King Jarrah at Sawyers Valley, October 2023 Way back in April 1967, when I was the district forester at the WA...

Christmas in Vienna Christmas is fast approaching, and Christmas carols are in the air. I enjoyed some old favourites only last night at...

“The Trans” Commonwealth Railways train, crossing the Nullarbor, probably in the 1940s I have always loved trains. I can travel on them,...

Mallet forest at Dryandra (photo by Greg Durell) I have been spending a lot of time in the Dryandra forest this last year or so. It is...

A firefighter retreats from the intense heat of exploding eucalyptus trees in an Australian bushfire In a letter to the editor of The...

Satellite image of Barrow Island, off the north-west coast of Western Australia I have been reading about the formation and early...

The crest and motto of Hale School I have recently re-read Such, Such were the Joys, George Orwell’s essay on his school days at Eton and...

Hubert (“Bert”) Trotman, dressed for a formal reception I have been reading Beckoning West¸ the enthralling story by Eleanor Smith about...

Hermann Goering as Commander of the Nazi’s Storm Troopers, in 1933 I never liked Hermann Goering. It is true that he was a brave and...

Don ‘Spriggo’ Spriggins in his mild-mannered-forester persona This is a story about (among other things) my friend Don ‘Spriggo’...

A devastated Leicester Square in London, the morning after the storm There is an amusing scene in an episode of the television program...