Welcome to Forest Leaves

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...

Desert oaks in central Australia. (Photo by Jack Bradshaw) The American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote a...

A perfect 'Omelette de la mère Poulard', famous in the 19th century in Mt St Michel in France, and still served at the La Mere Poulard...

Crosscut sawyers in a bush competition at Big Brook in Western Australia. Villages in parts of Europe in medieval times had an...

An elderly Sri Lankan male elephant … en route to the Elephant’s Graveyard? Having been an aficionado of Tarzan when I was a boy, the...

Lightning arcing through a conifer tree in Arizona, USA (photo sent to me by Phil Cheney) Like most people, lightning both scares and...

Wandoo forest in the Helena River Catchment of Western Australia Anyone with a lifetime involvement with bushfires can recall a horror...

Dick Sproge in the crown of the Diamond Tree, 50 m from the ground, in 1941 Although he died in 1957, I never met Dick Sproge. Our times...

The modern Trout Hatcheries at Pemberton. The original timber hatchery, as featured in this story, is at the rear. Both are adjacent to...

The Duyfken replica, off the coast of Western Australia in 1999 This is a story with three diverse elements: a famous sailing ship and...

The cover of James Watson's famous book about the even-more famous research into molecular biology that led to the discovery of the...

The marri pinkie on Great Eastern Highway near Mundaring I was driving back to Perth from the Avon Valley one Christmas a few years ago...

Promo for the first on-screen Batman, the 1943 15-part serial. One way or another, Batman keeps turning up in my life. As a small boy...

Western Australian Christmas Trees, in a paddock by the York-Lakes Road Driving up to the Avon valley yesterday. I noticed that the WA...

A radio play by Roger Underwood The morning after: January 25th, 1961 Overture: the first two minutes of ‘Summer’ from Vivaldi’s Four...

The Black Bear of the North American Pacific North-west forests I was reading Dangerous Dan McGrew, one of my favourite poems, for about...

Quandong fruit on one of our trees at Gwambygine For a few years in the early 1980s I found myself working in forestry research in...

The path and daily locations of the eye of Cyclone Alby, showing dramatically how the storm accelerated when approaching the south-west...

The cover of my favourite book about boab trees I will never forget my first visit to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It was...