thomas m wilson: Recent Episodes
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https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/classic-travel-writing-from-colombia-to-japan-tickets-1095842236629 Get your ticket for our first session on 19 Feb 2025 10:30 AM. All the details in the above link.
As usual I look at the New York Times list of best books for this year and I realise what an alternative universe some people inhabit, and feel compelled to write my own 10 best books list. So here it is, as usual at this time of year. The jacarandas in Perth have been shedding […]
In this, my fourth course offered on travel writing so far, we’ll look at a selection of authors who have left home, and gone ‘elsewhere’ with their eyes wide open. We will look at extracts from two of Gertrude Bell’s most compelling works of travel writing, Persian Pictures and Syria: The Desert and the Sown, […]
As Laurie Lee wrote of his travels before the second world war, Europe was “wide open, a place of casual frontiers, few questions and almost no travellers”. In this fortnightly course, we’ll look at a selection of classic travel tales from this older, quieter Europe. In Tales of the Alhambra the American author and Romantic Washington Irving […]
This year I have done more walking around cities and countries that were new to me, than I have laying on a sofa with a book in my hand. For me 2023 has been more about acting in the physical world, than cogitating among the shelves – I have been the protagonist in the street, […]
As Laurie Lee wrote of his travels before the second world war, Europe was “wide open, a place of casual frontiers, few questions and almost no travellers”. In this fortnightly course, we’ll look at a selection of classic travel tales from this older, quieter Europe. In Tales of the Alhambra the American author Irving Washington […]
Is the image of Lord Elgin’s workmen sawing off a metope from atop the Parthenon in 1801 (see the painting below) just as bad as a shaky video of an ISIS fanatic sledge hammering an Assyrian sculpture into oblivion a few years ago? Not quite, as the iconoclasts, be they ancient Christian or modern […]
I have come to Athens, my final port of call in my journey south across Europe. I sit in my room on the big green park, Pedion tou Areos, and look out of the window and see canopy, and beyond that, arid yet green hills. Of course I should add that: in all other directions […]
IN THE LATE nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Vienna was the best evidence that the most accommodating and fruitful ground for the life of the mind can be something more broad than a university campus. More broad, and in many ways more fun. In Vienna there were no exams to pass, learning was a voluntary […]
As my train rolled west from Vienna the countryside became more hilly and alternated with deeply green grass and copses of trees and little villages clustering around a church with a tall, onion domed spire. And then the Alps… What can you say about the Alps? What would Europe be without the Alps? As I […]
Yesterday I began my journey south. I looked out on this grey weather from the left window at the dimples of rain on the muddy Elbe River as it flows past steep grass banks, and yellow and green steeply pitched three-story mansions behind, and wooded slope behind them. I would soon enter Bohemia for the […]
Why do I linger in places like this? Perhaps this is why… ‘Teach me mortality, frighten me into the present. Help me to find the heft of these days.’ -Jack Gilbert Another place that you can find mental and spiritual space for peace and reflection is the old Jewish cemetery, and so here I returned […]
This afternoon I was at the Humbolt Forum, and spend some time in the section on Melanesia and Micronesia. A wonderful experience has been designed by the museums curators, where you are taken by large projected video up the Sepik river on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, one of the great rivers of […]
“Sometimes, I overheard my aunts discussing these blighted destinies; and Aunt Ruth would hug me, as if to forestall my following in their footsteps. Yet, from the way she lingered over such words as ‘Xanadu’ or ‘Samarkand’ or the ‘wine-dark sea,’ I think she also felt the trouble of the ‘wanderer in her soul.” The […]
This place is huge! And you won’t have any crowds to deal with, even in the highest of the high season. Personally I have found this to be my favourite gallery in Europe in terms of overall experience, of the range of artists and the quiet and spaciousness of the gallery context. The Uffizi Gallery […]
Another wonderful building on Museum Island is the old national gallery building. King Freidrich Wilhelm IV had the idea of a temple-like building raised on a plinth decorated with motifs from antiquity, and that is the Alte Nationalgalerie we have today. Perhaps the most well known German painter in the world today is Caspar David […]
One of the world’s great museum entrances has to be the Altes Museum in Berlin. Stone eagles sit in a row above the entablature, and 18 ionic columns line the portico. A huge granite basin sits in front. This was the king Friedrich Wilhelm the thirds idea, and his architect Schinkel realised it. Built by […]
The Humbolt Forum is a reconstruction of the baroque palace that was here in an earlier epoch. Afterwards an ugly socialist concrete rectangle took its place. But as of the last two and a half years you can sit in the Lustgarten and look in the direction of the Humbolt Forum and see an elegant […]
This morning I visited the Treptower Park Soviet War Memorial, the largest war memorial in Germany and a place that honours the Soviet victory over the Nazis when they eventually took Berlin, and the more than 80 thousand Russian soldiers who were killed. More than 5 thousand are buried under the grass here where I […]
In the 1700s Berlin was the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was the nucleus of what eventually became Germany. In the mid to the late 1700s it was ruled by Frederick the Great, a great legal reformer, instigator of religious tolerance, military strategist, musician and friend of Voltaire. The other morning I walked […]
Arrived in Berlin last weekend. The other morning I walked alone to the Jewish cemetery near where I’m staying. The place is full of illustrious marble graves, and stone columned mausoleums, sinking in green ivy and sprouting ferns. The descendants of this nineteenth century Sachs or Lieberman or whoever else I was looking at were […]
In the last week or so in Stockholm I’ve explored Drottingholm Palace, a royal residence west of the city. In walking around the island I found a section of wild forest near the palace and remembered the splendours of wild ecosystems in the Scandinavian northern forests – mossy green boulders, beds of pine needles, birch […]
I’m in Stockholm, staying in an apartment on Sodermalm, an island neighbourhood full of hipster cafes and vegan t-shirt shops in the centre of the city. In 35 minutes bike ride I can get to a national reserve outside the city, and I love the granite covered in mixed forest alongside lakes and rivers full […]
The next day I was in London. First the Wallace Collection. A good collection of Canelletos and other views of Venice. Wonderful setting for a gallery in one of London’s grandest town houses. Then onwards southwards, to look at hats at Locke and Co., the place where the king buys his headwear. This shop was […]
The next day we drove out to Ickworth House in Suffolk to the east of Cambridge. We parked outside the grounds of the estate by an old country church. Walked through the grave stones of course, and into the church. Visiting out of the way churches in the countryside is something I am quite happy […]
Has England gone, as Philip Larkin thought it was going in his poem from 1972, Going Going? “And that will be England gone,The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,The guildhalls, the carved choirs.There’ll be books; it will linger onIn galleries; but all that remainsFor us will be concrete and tyres.” I was in England for the […]
Amsterdam… Walking through Amsterdam taught me that no, its not enough to visit Delft and Leiden and the Hague if you go to the Netherlands. There is no substitute for the wide canals and tall seventieth century town houses of Amsterdam. You can walk from the train station of Amsterdam in many directions and keep […]
Last week I was riding a bike through the forests and lakes of the countryside outside the small village of Steinhagen. The fields of wheat stood tall and thick and ready to harvest, and were bounded by forests of oak, heavy with clambering wreaths of ivy. A lowering sky of grey but lambent cloud hinted […]
What could be better than an adventure exploring Meteora in north-central Greece by myself? Arriving here I started walking up a dirt trail by myself – puddles here and there after earlier heavy rain. And then I looked up and caught and with an intake of breath saw the monastery far, far above on the […]
On one of my last days at Kalikalos I went down to Ntamouchari one afternoon and swam in the clear blue water. Then I went and found a table in Uncle Stergios’s taverna in the rocky harbour and ordered an orange cake. The small rocky bay is so perfectly proportioned and the human settlement that […]
I’m staying at a retreat centre/ eco-village called Kalikalos. It is situated next to the tiny village of Anilio, on the eastern side of the mountains of the Pelion peninsula, about 300 metres altitude, and about 2kms inland from the sea. The place is a gorgeous combination of high mountains, deep luscious greens, and vibrant, […]
Almost a week ago I left Granada in the dead of the early morning. I love this city, but I needed some more contact with nature. So to Greece I turned… However I flew through Dusseldorf – amazingly I was able to get into this bit of forest with the two and a half hours […]
Last week I was in Guadix: I and a friend took the train an hour to the east of Granada, to this small town. The train passed on a high plateau, overlooking a vast valley bordered on either side by arid erosion canyons, and topped to small trees and shrubs. It looked exactly like the […]
I was at the Carmen de los Martires the other day and it was a reminder of how it is usually individuals who create beauty, not government committees. This was the mansion of a rich industrialist and the Ciudad of Granada bought it in the 1950s for the people of the city to enjoy its […]
Some of my favourite places here… The gardens of the Carmen de los Martires: I am often found sitting here, feeling tranquil and serene amid the greenery and the water flowing from the fountain, and the absence of noisy crowds of tourists (they are over at the Alhambra). The day before I had discovered the […]
Cordoba is one of those places that was full of Moorish culture and learning back in the 800s when my English ancestors were living in societies with less access to knowledge and cultural sophistication. These days of course its full of tourists. When you enter the Mezquita, built in the 800s and after, you are […]
First impressions of an old city in southern Spain…. getting cervezas and tapas in Castenedas, an old Spanish bodega with barrels and legs of ham hanging from the ceiling and old wooden bar and lively atmosphere. That was after walking out of my first Spanish class on a Monday afternoon. Walking up to the Alhambra through […]
Outside I hear the deep tolling of a church bell. The canal water lies dank and quiet below the window. The day is cool and still. Throughout the night last night I heard church bells every hour or two. Hearing this is a reminder that just as in most Muslim societies where the call to […]
In this fortnightly course, we’ll look at a selection of classic travel writers, from an Australian scientist’s adventures in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, to a warts-and-all description of a journey from north to south over the African continent, and an errant Englishman’s trip down India’s most sacred river, Mother Ganga. We will finish […]
I will start with a few books that were favourites from my year of reading and then concentrate on notable books published in 2022. Biography, autobiography, poetry, philosophy, politics and travel writing are all genres that made my list this year. Robert Richardson has read just about everything that Emerson read, so he’s able to […]
I have a contribution in this new UWAP book Four Rivers, Deep Maps, where I write about my connection with the Swan River. Come along to the launch 4 November, 2022. https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/book-launch-uwap-four-rivers-deep-maps-tickets-444449078157
The image above is what you expect from Istanbul. Its the terminus for the old Orient Express and the bridge from Europe to Asia. The tourist numbers – seen in the queue to get into Topkali Palace below – are also part of the scene in 2022 post-Covid lockdowns. But as usual I will follow […]
The Persia-born Rumi — who was living in Konya, 700 years ago, the capital of the Turkish Seljuk Empire — told his followers, “There are many roads which lead to God. I have chosen the one of dance and music.” Last Saturday night I watched members of this Suffi sect move into transcendence. As a […]
From Italy to Turkey, and to the centre. After our walk up Pigeon Valley in late afternoon light I felt wonderful and was very happy to be in Eastern Anatolia. The first few moments in a special place can never quite be repeated. My first few moments walking up Pigeon Valley in Cappadocia that recent […]
Upon arriving in Venice and boarding a ferry down the Grand Canal I felt simultaneously excited and entranced by the place, and like there was a sheet of plate glass between me and it. This second sense was to do with its unreality – this was a place that has been seen too many times […]
We took the high speed train from Naples to Florence. We had covered much of Italy in just 3.5 hours moving at almost 300kms an hour (at many billions of dollars expense to the Italian tax payer a few years ago). The Tuscan countryside looked so green – of anywhere this is where I would […]
Naples is full of very beautiful if haughty young women with dusky complexions and Roman noses, and surly waiters who barely acknowledge your existence when you’re trying to place an order, and dog faeces smeared on old cobble stoned pavements, and laundry hanging from balconies in need of a coat of paint, and little wicker […]
Looking up into one of the fountain’s in the forecourt Bernini designed for St Peter’s cathedral in Rome. The cathedral and its cathedra is like a hallucination – too vast and over the top to be real. The next morning I was the third person admitted into St Peter’s and had it all to myself […]
Walking towards the imperial palace of the Nuygen dynasty which ruled Vietnam from the start of the nineteenth century until 1945. On one of the 17 massive bronze urns inside the Hue imperial palace compound are all kinds of images. Elephants were a form of transport all over south-east Asia for many centuries, and had […]
I have just begun a Grand Tour. This one starts in Vietnam, before moving on to Greece, Italy and Turkey. Five days ago I arrived in Hanoi’s French Quarter and met up with a couple of friends. After being in Australia for the last three years I was immediately struck by humidity, history, dark greens, […]
Every Wednesday // 1pm – 2pm // 26 October to 7 December More information, and Register here
What do we mean when we talk about ‘progress’, and is it always a good thing? In this course we’ll look at a selection of authors who have thought about how modern life in the Western world has made us richer, healthier and more comfortable, but also more lonely and, in some senses, stressed out. […]
As usual each December I give you my favourite 10 books of the year. The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World Hardcover (2021) by Adrian Wooldridge A beautifully written history of the modern world of the last five hundred years as filtered through the lens of meritocracy as a way of organising […]
MONDAY, 20 DECEMBER 2021 FROM 18:30-21:30 Fremantle Fibonacci Centre Bruno Manser is a well-known figure in Switzerland but not so much elsewhere. He was a shepherd in the Swiss Alps who became a nomadic hunter among the Penan people of the Borneo rainforests. This film traces his life story. Only a few dozen Penan still […]
None of us can travel at the moment, but if you like travelling come and enjoy a series of documentaries on ways of life very far from suburban Australia. Come to the jungles of Sumatra, the steppes of Mongolia, the savannah of East Africa, and the ice of the Arctic, to witness ways of life […]
I’ll be speaking to the Western Australian Naturalists Club on changing cultural views of the natural world in Western Australia 9 July, 7pm. Members of the public are welcome to join. More information is here.
Two sessions: Friday 11 & Monday 14 June, 9.30 – 11.30am Humans have been telling stories about nature for millennia. We look at some of the most significant and imaginatively compelling books that do just this, in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Discover, or re-discover, works of Wordsworth, Thoreau and Powers, and the poetry of Wang […]
Every 2nd Wednesday // 1pm – 2pm // 3 March to 12 May Location: Wanneroo Library Rewilding the landscape means returning some of the plants and animals indigenous to a place to their home. But what might ‘rewilding’ ourselves mean? In this course we’ll look at a selection of authors who have thought about how […]
Every year more nonfiction books seem to be published, while at the same time there is less time to read them. Arguably the culture of the book is mostly gone, displaced by social media. As Michael Kimmage wrote this year: ‘the Euro-American textual community is no more because the because the relationship of even the […]
I just returned from Fitzgerald River National Park on the south coast of Western Australia. The other day I climbed to the top of East Mt Barren and saw this view. After walking over a saddle, a long wave of stone rose up before me. It’s titled schist and quartzite and has beautiful ochre colours […]
What a pleasure and a privilege that we can gather in Western Australia at the moment without fear of coronavirus. I’ll be speaking at this symposium on the following subject… Rewilding the Academic Body We are children of the Holocene, yet far from well adapted to its successor, the Anthropocene. Detailed experimental evidence continues to […]
I wrote a contribution to the debate on Australia’s citizenship test in The Conversation. Read the article here.
I’ll be teaching a course on rewilding ourselves and the world at Wanneroo Library, starting in September. It’s supported by Wanneroo Libraries and University of the 3rd Age. Books to be discussed include: Stepping Off: Rewilding and Belonging in the South-West, Wilson, Fremantle Press (2017); H is for Hawk, Macdonald, Grove Press (2014); Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Junger, […]
I talked about my book, Stepping Off, for the Bibbulmun Track Foundation on Thursday 12 March 2020 at 6:30pm in Northbridge. A kind note afterwards from one of the people attending…
I’ll be giving two lectures on the history of pastoral in Fremantle in March this year. Come along to learn about how humans have imagined their relationship with the natural world in Western literature over the centuries. Enrol here. [Painting by English landscape artist Benjamin Williams Leader, circa 1880s.]
Every December I provide an brief overview of my ten favourite books published over the course of the year. Its always very different to lists such as those put out by the editors of the New York Times and other big publications. Night School (Penguin Poets) by Carl Dennis The latest work from one of […]
Every 2nd Saturday: August 3rd, 17th, 31st. September 14th, 28th. October 12th, 26th 2019 // 10am – 12pm Join a new discussion forum, looking at six books of imaginative literature which illuminate the human relationship with the natural world over the centuries. The range includes ancient China, 19th century England, 20th century North America and […]
I’ll be presenting a talk at the Limina conference “Humanifesto” at the University of Western Australia, 19 July 2019. Rewilding the Anthropocene Body We can see that the Anthropocene human body is very different from the hunter-gatherer human body. As we have increasingly designed our environments to facilitate physical ease we have created environments which […]
I’ve just finished travelling from Perth, to south-east Queensland and north-east NSW, exploring the subtropical landscape and visiting friends and family, and then down to the small but cultured Victorian country town of Castlemaine, to talk at a festival along with writers such as Bruce Pascoe. Castlemaine takes my vote for nicest small country town […]
Next week I’ll be in Victoria for the Castlemaine Festival. On Thursday, 28th March I’ll be on a panel with Bruce Pascoe, discussing what rewilding ourselves and the land might mean. Then on the Saturday, 30th March I’ll be talking with Jessie Cole and Inga Simpson about future directions in nature writing. I look […]
The end of the year approaches and I look back at the world of new books…. Each year about this time the newspaper and the commentariat is full of lists of ‘Best Books of 2018’. I usually have very little overlap with the choices of the journalists and commentators who make these lists […]
A few days ago I was standing at the feet of this Buddha statue, carved from a stone mountain around 300 AD. I looked up at the quiet and serene face of the mountain in the midst of the forest and the midst of the countryside. Only elephants, birds, insects and the odd monk for […]
I’ll be giving a talk on Friday 19 October as part of the Quite Frankly conference, 17 – 19 October 2018, at the University Club of UWA. Further information on the conference is available here. Specifically I’ll be talking about the history of movement for our species, from a movement-rich big history, to the […]
This Thursday evening I’ll be giving a talk about what we modern Westerners can learn from hunter-gatherer societies, and about the cultural history of our attempts to rewild ourselves. Register for the event here. The talk goes from 6-7pm and I’ll stick around for questions afterwards. Hope to see you there. Also the following week […]
I’ll be presenting a paper at the following conference in July 2018. It will be looking at the theme of aspirations for home ownership from the perspective of Big History. Hope to see you there.
This book review is a good summary of Stepping Off – thanks to Amy Budrikis. Read the review at Limina.
My best books of 2017… Deeply insightful works from Yale University Press on geopolitics today, a history of consumerism in the West, a wave making read on the Anthropocene as a new era, a powerful explanation of the nature/nurture question for human identity by a very funny Californian, and a charming meander through the English […]
Why bother to tell the history of the plants and animals that make up my home in Western Australia? Partly its about reminding us of what was here on the land before, and in some ways, could be here again. In answering this question I’d like to quote the full text of Henry David Thoreau’s […]
You can listen to a recent radio interview I did about my new book with Adrian Glamorgan here.
The stones in this bridge are not all in a perfect state of repair. That’s part of its charm. I’m just back from a couple of days down at Jianshui, a historic town a few hours south of Kunming with a large city wall and a towering city gate. The trip has made me reflect on […]
Last weekend I headed out for a rock climbing session with some locals and expats. First I had to cross town, and while doing so I came across an old man doing water calligraphy by Green Lake. I love the transience of this art: the beginning of the poem is starting to fade by the time he reaches […]
I’ve arrived in Kunming, the little red dot you can see on the map above. I’m here to teach research skills to undergraduate students at Yunnan Normal University. As you can see, I’ve come to a point where the foothills of the Himalayas fold up into a bunch of deep creases. Yunnan province is the area of […]
At the start of February I launched my new book, Stepping Off: Rewilding and Belonging in the South-West, at an event at Clancy’s in Fremantle. On Tuesday evening this week I was talking about the book down at Albany Library. As I was in the area I decided to camp for a couple of […]
What are you going to do if you like tribal living and you’re in the cold winter of the Levant? Head south to the Southern Hemisphere, and to the wilds of Africa. After leaving Israel and Jordan that is exactly what I did. I arrived in Nairobi and the first thing which struck me was […]
In Jerusalem yesterday I encountered three of the most sacred sites of some of the biggest religions on earth. First the Western Wall, the most sacred site for Jews worldwide. Then after some serious security checks and long wait in a line we were allowed up a long wooden walkway, up to the Temple Mount. […]
Arriving in Israel… Coming over the border from Jordan it was forbidding and stern – as though I was passing through a highly militarised zone, which indeed I was. Machine gun towers, arid, blasted dune landscape, and endless security checks and waiting about. Then I was in the West Bank. The first thing I noticed […]
I have been travelling West from Asia. When I was in Colombo I photographed a golden statue of the Buddha facing the Greco-Roman heritage embodied in Colombo’s Town Hall. And now I’ve finally reached a real example of the Roman Empire’s built heritage – the city of Jerash in Jordan. Jerash is one of the […]
While in Wadi Musa I had met our Bedu guide’s 92 year old mother. She was living in an apartment in the town. I asked her if she preferred life when she was a young woman and there was less access to Western conveniences, or if she preferred life in the town today. She told me […]
I’ve been at Montreal (known Arabic as Shawbak) Castle, a crusader castle south of Wadi Musa. Standing behind the battlements I had looked through a slit in the stone. Some of this stone had been built by Christians from Western Europe around 1115 AD in order to take back the Holy Land from Muslims. Through […]
Mountains entered. Size incalculable. Mystical weight and folds of stone. Still blue air. The first day in Petra we headed out to Little Petra, a few kms away from the more famous site, where a narrow canyon is filled with Nabatean caves, carved around 2000 years ago. On the way we took a dirt track […]
I’ve arrived in the Middle East, in Jordan. It is winter here. Yesterday afternoon I visited the Amman Citadel, a raised acropolis in the centre of the capital. It lies atop a prominent hill in the centre of the city, and as you walk around the ruins of Roman civilisation you look down on box-like limestone-coloured apartment […]
I just arrived in Tangalle. What a journey… local bus from Galle Fort. Fast paced Hindi music, big buddha in the ceiling with flashing lights, another buddha on the dash board of the bus wrapped in plastic, a driver who swung the old 1970s Leyland bus around corners to the point where any more swing […]
I’m in Galle, on the south-east coast of Sri Lanka. From the rooftop terrace above the hotel room I’m sitting in the sound of surf gently crumbling on the reef beyond the Fort’s ramparts can be heard, and the breathing Indian ocean is glimpsed through tall coconut trees. The old city juts out into the […]
I’ve arrived in Sri Lanka. Let me be honest: first impressions of Colombo bring forth descriptors like pushy, moustache-wearing, women-dominating, smog-covered, coarse, opportunistic and disheveled. It is not a city that anybody should rush to visit. However this morning I found my way through this city to a tiny pocket of beauty and calm – the […]
That little dot in the north west of south-east Asia is Chiang Mai. As you can see there is a lot of darkness around it. Darkness equals lots of forest and mountains. I’ve recently returned from the mountains to Chiang Mai. Its very much a busy and bustling city, but even here people try to bring […]
Lonely Planet talks up every country in the world, and if you read their guides every city and area seems to have a virtue worth singing. But the fact is that we can’t be everywhere and are forced to choose where to be as individuals on the face of this earth. And some places are just […]
Made it to Cave Lodge in the small village of Tham Lot. The last time I was here was seven years ago. I’m sitting on a hammock above the softly flowing river and the green valley. A deeply relaxing place. I arrived here a few days ago. We came on our motorbike taxis from the main […]
The north-west corner of Thailand is the most sparsely populated corner of the country. Mountains, forests and rivers, as far as the eye can see. And sometimes a village. This village is called Menora. Its a Karen village, without electricity or running water. Its very, very remote and not mapped on Google Maps. Living out […]
The forests of Thailand have been retreat for, particularly since the 1980s. Forest monks, who go to the forests to meditate, have seen their home get smaller and smaller. In some cases this has prompted them to become defenders of the forest, for example performing tree ordination ceremonies, effectively ordaining a tree in saffron robes […]
It is early morning in Sukhothai, the first capital of present day Thailand, in the north of the country. From the Sanskrit, Sukhothai means ‘dawn of happiness’. The air is still cool this morning, and the old city is empty of all but two or three tourists. Doves coo gently from ancient stone rooftops. […]
Waking by the water. Shivers of wind crease the pelt of the sea. A black schooner floats in the sheltered arm of the bay, and upon the quarterdeck stands a lone figure. He is facing away but appears to be consulting a map. The morning is still. The wind has dropped and the smell […]
Flight, the Darling Scarp, Western Australia. An autumn afternoon and evening spend playing acro yoga with a bunch of friends. Acro yoga is a good Paleo fitness activity: it brings together the tribe, pushes your proprioceptive ability, increases your muscular strength and power, loads the skeletal system with heavy […]
Yes, this isn’t Luang Prabang itself, but rather a waterfall 30kms out of town. But it got your attention. I’m sure countless tourists have taken these photos, but I still love a good waterfall. Especially when the water is this colour. Yesterday morning staying on the peninsula in the old quarter of Luang Prabang […]
The Buddha looks down on the inhabitants of a village in northern Laos. Lying in bed the other night I thought of about Western teenagers playing with their iPads while lying on sofas in brick houses on lonely streets, juxtaposed with the three boys I saw playing hop scotch by the river with their […]
On the way down I lay back in the kayak and looked up the valley cliff faces as the kayak span lazily and drifted downstream with the pull of the current. All I could see was wild forest canopy, creepers, epiphytes and vivid, chaotic, lush green life with a background of soaring cliff and […]
After leaving Luang Prabang, we head further north, up a powerful and fast flowing river called the Nam Ou… We’ve finally arrived in the agrarian Asia of mountainous Laos. Its a step back hundreds of years into a land of ducks quacking, chicks chirping, dogs playing, children crying and playing, river water mummuring, […]
Got scooter but don’t want to drive it 12 hours north? Not a problem. We’ll get a couple of the guys from out back. Laotian ingenuity and cheerful disregard for health and safety are soon on display (why is that girl standing under the scooter?!). Vang Vieng is the first stop on […]
Arrived in Siem Reap – flew over a vast delta of rivers and floating villages here and there amongst the glinting waters of the Cambodian plain. Into Siem Reap and immediately errant chickens on the side of the road and bicycles bring me back into South-East Asian life. Walked down the river into down town […]
I’ve just come back from Rottnest island, after staying in a little cottage in a small bay right on the water. The cottage looks out over an arcing rocky limestone headland, and as a cold front moved over us, the headland protected us like a encircling arm from the winds and waves. Our first night […]
I’ve spend the day hanging out of the door way of a train travelling across the mountains, hills and plains of Sri Lanka. This morning we got on the station at Ella in the highlands and this afternoon we will be in Colombo. Many English poets have written poems about passing moments on train platforms, […]
Ella is a small village, mainly catering to the tourist trade these days. It is in the high country but not as high or bleak at Nurwa Eliya. The landscape is green and fecund here, and the pace of life is slow. We’re staying in a family homestay place, upstairs in a clean and well […]
The British love of a cup of tea dates back to the 1600s among the aristocracy, but was widespread among the working class by the end of the nineteenth century. The humble cup of tea at an English vicarage can be analyzed as reshaping huge swathes of the earth, moving Tamil workers from India to […]
A herd of wild buffalo relax in a waterhole as the sun came up yesterday morning in Udawalawe National Park, southern Sri Lanka. They lolled, snorted and sighed, huge horns glistening in the sun. In the centre and slightly to the left of this photo a lone jackal cruises looking for an unprotected calf. Udawalawe […]
As the afternoon lengthened we visited the Gal Viharaya Buddha stone sculptures at Polonnaruwa. The land around is so green and gentle in this region of the island: central, around 100 metres altitude, and generous rainfall. And to be by the giant reclining stone Buddha (14 m long) and the giant sitting Buddha just near […]
This morning we rose very early to visit Jetavanaramaya. This stupa is the largest – by volume – of any structure from the ancient world. It is 122 metres tall, and in the early morning light it was quite a sight. The lush green field was capped by the floating dome over the tree tops […]
I’ve been moving through Sri Lanka for a week now and thought I’d communicate some impressions. Colombo is where travelers arrive. Colombo, looking back, is not a charismatic city. I saw more men than women on the streets during the day, and after sunset it was rare to see a single women on the […]
Currently I’m interested in the evolutionary context of human movement and psychology. I believe that stress reduction in modern Western society can be achieved through moving for pleasure in wild natural environments for regular, if brief, periods. We are stone age children born to twentieth century mothers, and I believe that understanding our past can […]
This is my last blog post for a long time, maybe forever. I began this site in 2005, with help from my brother. Thanks for all your help Sam. That year I finished writing my PhD. In 2006 I started writing a blog, and for the next six years I regularly contributed images and words […]
Over Christmas I took the opportunity to look back over some of the talk from 2011. Here I bring you the words of the ‘moral leaders of the nation’. The first comes from the American nation. The second comes from the Australian nation. The first comes from American author Bill McKibben, and the second comes […]
Three of the most important environmental decisions you make each day: Breakfast Lunch Dinner With that in mind, Alissa Bilfield co-founder and director of the Cookbook Project is on the line from Boston in the US to kick off the show and tell us about her new slow food initiative. Later we will hear from […]
This week we hear from Executive Director of The Australia Institute Richard Denniss about the real story of the mining industry in Australia. With the high cost of living in Perth in mind, partly caused by the mining boom, more people are turning to shared living to be able to afford a house to […]
This week the show comes from Vietnam. I make a botched attempt of singing a line from Noel Coward, and then explore Ba Be National Park in northern Vietnam. Ba Be is an area of deep green rainforest and high limestone peaks. I talk with the director of the park and some of the villagers […]
These are a few of the images that remained in my mind after visiting Hanoi and the rainforested mountains south of the Chinese border. The soundtrack comes from sitting around in a village hut in Ba Be with a couple of the women farmers singing in their local Tay language. At the start you […]
This week’s Understorey starts with a discussion with David Conover, a film maker in America (pictured above). Conover is the mastermind behind the contemplative and visually stunning series Sunrise Earth, and he is currently producing a film called Behold the Earth, and exploration of science and religion as different avenues for embracing nature in American […]
I really liked the look of this guy’s bike workshop. Its a street corner. Good view eh?
The Temple of Literature was built in 1070 as a conduit for the teachings of Confucius. After ambling through this establishment this morning, I walked around the corner and sat myself down for a shave. As I leaned back I saw above the leaves and branches of rainforest trees, and in the reflection in front […]
I’ve just been making a short film with a few people in Ba Be National Park in northern Vietnam. I’m not going to write much now, just putting up a couple of photos. From the land where the pith helmet is actually worn by millions of men on bicycles.
On the spur of the moment I booked a ticket to Hanoi, northern Vietnam, last week. Tonight I sit on the balcony of a wooden stilt house by a lake with touring limestone peaks as a dimly made out sky line all around. This laptop is about to run out of batteries, so I’ll keep […]
This week on Understorey its a reggae special. I talk with roots reggae legend Pablo Moses – pictured above – about his music and the place of nature in the Rastafarian faith. Later I interview Ian Scobie, director of Earth Station, a boutique environment and music festival taking place in a National Park in South […]
This man is giving his vote of confidence to the Department of Housing and Works and their ability to provide shelter to those who need it. The sad thing is that this political-cartoon-like image is a real scene, and was observed by myself on the streets of Fremantle around 1am last night.
Recently I found myself sitting at the back of a sparse stone chamber and looking through a granite arch out over woodland, boulders and fields, all wet and green. This was the prospect from my refuge. I hadn’t expected to find myself sitting high up in a remote and little visited stone cavern looking over […]
Griffin Longley from Nature Play talks with me about his efforts to remedy nature deficit disorder in Perth. Tim Beatly from the University of Virginia’s architecture school chats with me about biophilic cities, and how Fremantle might become more of one. Here is this week’s Understorey.
I recently attended a forum on the end of logging in Western Australia at Notre Dame in Fremantle. The MC for the event was none other than English comedian Ben Elton. On this week’s Understorey we hear from Ben Elton, as well as other speakers at the forum. In the second half of the show […]
Tibet has maintained a deeply conservative cultural tradition and religion for many hundreds of years behind a curtain of high mountains. If you were at the Burswood Dome last weekend to see the Dalai Lama you would have seen the red robes and yellow hats of the Gyuto monks, costumes that have not changed for […]
The day after Gil died just over a week ago I put this picture of him behind the Kulcha bar. At the time I wrote: Gil Scott Heron died yesterday. For many years Gil has been a kind of mentor I never met, a figure who inspired me and gave me strength when I didn’t […]
And so we come to this year. We’ve already had some amazing musical performances in our 200 capacity venue above the rooftops of the port. In April Tony McManus played a beautiful guitar concert in which I even heard Erick Satie being transposed at one point. Then only a few weeks after the Egyptian oud […]
Last year at Kulcha my personal highlight was, along with original Freo personality Danny Cummings, starting a jazz funk, disco house, deep house, afrobeat DJ night called WILDSTYLE. We slowly built the night till the summer came around at the end of the year and the dance floor exploded during the Festival of Fremantle series. […]
So here goes, I’m going to give you my view of the highlights from Kulcha over the last couple of years. Its really a visual essay, images I took that create a portrait of each year in the venue. And best gig of the year at Kulcha in 2009 goes to… Sirroco. Australia’s greatest ‘world […]
President of the Australian Conservation Foundation Ian Lowe comes into the RTR studios to talk with me about the Australian federal government’s series of failures to deal with the threat of climate change. Here is this week’s podcast.
This week I managed to get one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed poets, John Kinsella, to record his poem ‘Perth Poem’ for the show. As you follow his branches through the urban corners and natural facets of this Western city you’ll be surprised. Here is the podcast.
I talk with Tim Flannery about his fantastic new book Here On Earth. He was here for the Perth Writer’s Festival and I got to have a chat with him in the RTR studio. Here is the podcast.
I visit the WA Museum, a big green shed in Welshpool, a suburb of Perth, and talk to ecologist Ric How about the native animals of Perth and how they have fared over the years. Here is this week’s podcast.
Bruce Abbott of Replants, a business in Fremantle, talks about his work transplanting grass trees from bush to be destroyed around Perth. Greens MLC Lyn McClaren talks about the latest evidence condemning the export of live cattle to Indonesia from Fremantle. Here is this week’s podcast.
Next the windows swung open to me on northern Thailand. Wherever you are on the planet the temperature generally drops six degrees for every thousand metres you gain in altitude. Getting off the train in Chiang Mai in north-west Thailand bleary eyed after a night of little sleep I felt the cooler air and gave […]
I’m just back from three weeks wandering around Thailand, the Kingdom of Siam. In the above photo I’m hanging on Ko Jum. With plenty of head space I relaxed and took in that combination of elements: moisture filled balmy air, gentle breezes, large leaved trees and palms and green grass, wide sandy beach and an […]
Legendary Australian environmental philosopher John Seed discusses and reads from the work of his favourite poet Robinson Jeffers. Danny Cummings reads from Henry David Thoreau. Here is this week’s podcast.
Skinks running at me today on the West End of Rottnest, fearlessly seeking food. Sleek scales move over hot limestone. Millions of years of evolution slinking over sun kissed skeletons of sand, reading striations of past ages with clawed feet.