Clouds From Both Sides: Part 1

Clouds From Both Sides: Part 1

 

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions, I recall
I really don't know clouds at all – Joni Mitchell

Buttongrass and lowering cloud

 

Cloud was the last thing on our minds. All the forecasts were favourable: clear, sunny, no precipitation. It was the dream of the retired bushwalker. A working day for others perhaps, but for three of us it was a forecast made for walking! 

 

The trip had been a long time coming. The so-called Summer of 2025/26 had basically been a no-show. As if the unfavourable weather hadn’t been enough, social busy-ness and companionly health issues had stymied most walks. My boots had largely remained un-muddied, though my spirit was straining at the leash. Autumn would be better, surely? 

 

The answer came in the form of some huge blocking high pressure systems. One lingered over the Tasman Sea from late April into May, bringing fine weather and record high temperatures to Tasmania. It was the summer we thought we’d missed. When another high came a week later, my leash finally snapped! Three of us hastily organised a trip, and got packing.

 

* * *

 

It’s Monday morning, and we’re driving west from Hobart, heading for the wilderness. The smiles on our faces are real, even if the wind in our hair is metaphorical. There’s little or no wind forecast.  Bushwalking in the Tasmanian Wilderness in May, in calm, sunny weather? Surely, it’s a dream? But then dreams are sometimes associated with sleeping on clouds. 

 

As we drive through New Norfolk, past Mount Field, and on towards Southwest National Park, we discover one of western Tasmania’s little meteorological secrets. High pressure, high humidity and no wind equals low cloud. As we descend towards Lake Pedder, the mountains are obscured by cloud. The queen of the south-west, Mount Anne, is nowhere to be seen; the valleys are fog-bound, and there’s no sign of the sun. Still, our hopes remain high: at least it’s not raining.

 

Three at the start of the Lake Judd Track

Neither Libby nor Larry has walked in this part of the south-west before, and my last trip to Lake Judd and the surrounding hills was many years ago. Since then, back in 2019, a huge fire wiped out a lot of the track, and severely impacted some of the park’s vegetation. Happily, the track has now been rebuilt, so as we wind our way around the buttongrass-clad hills, it feels like a totally new walk. 

On the track looking back to Lake Pedder

 

Other things are much as they’ve always been here. The silence is profound, broken only by the jip of crescent honey-eaters; the claxon call of currawongs; the crunch of boots on the distinctively white and pink quartzite of the track. And what’s that green bird that Libby points out fluttering low across the track? It’s a Ground Parrot (Pezoporus wallicus), blending in with the vegetation so well that I barely know where to aim my camera. These masters of camouflage feed and breed in the low-growing tussocks, and rarely move far from that territory. As we walk on, it keeps up its furtive low flight before landing and scuttling under a low bush to hide.

 

Spot the Ground Parrot (click to enlarge)

As we get into our stride, I’m finding the new track very amenable, with its mix of constructed steps and gravel on the slopes, and parallel planking on the flatter, wetter ground. But I’m also finding that the other two are easily outpacing me, at risk of disappearing into the mist that hangs low. Libby has been training for a long-distance run, and Larry, despite recovering from a cold, is simply fitter than me. But after we stop for a lunch break half-way to our destination, they kindly agree to match their pace to mine. 

Libby and Larry getting ahead of me

 

The new track continues to ease us towards the lake, but a couple of kilometres from our destination, the newness end. Suddenly we step back a couple of decades, back to when the names Judd and mud were closely associated. We slop through some good old-fashioned sludge; brush through stubborn banksia bushes; stumble over slippery tree roots; stretch towards mud-covered rocks, often missing them. Eventually we emerge from this section, and find more boardwalk. This leads us to a track junction … and a difficult memory for me, which I share with the others. 

 

In my 30s I’d come here with a large group. We’d split into two parties on the way to Mount Sarah Jane, and one walker had found herself behind the lead group, but ahead of the following bunch. She turned left, towards Lake Judd, instead of right towards Sarah Jane. When we realised what had happened, her brother and I went back to Lake Judd to search for her.

Your blogger (not lost) in a rainforest - photo by Libby

We found her at the lake, and she was quite distraught. After giving her sympathy and snacks, we quickly headed off to rejoin the others, who were now an hour or two ahead of us. In our rush, we ourselves took a wrong turn, and ended up hopelessly off track and scrub bound in some of the area’s notoriously dense vegetation. For more than 3 hours we bush-bashed steeply uphill through unrelenting scrub, finally emerging – utterly exhausted – as darkness fell. On the dodgiest of slopes, the three of us squeezed into a 2-person tent and tried to sleep. But our trials weren’t over yet. A few hours before dawn a strong cold front smashed into us, almost tearing our tent down. We hurriedly packed up by torchlight, and stumbled uphill in the dark wind and rain, until we at last found the rest of our group. That uphill slog remains one of the worst experiences of my long walking career. Error compounding error, meets south-west scrub and wild weather.

 

But the past is the past. Today we intend to take that left turn towards Lake Judd. I tell the others the track will become rooty once we enter rainforest, which it duly does. It’s only just gone 3pm, but it’s so dark in the forest that it feels as though someone has turned out the lights. Pink climbing heath shine bright in the gloom.

Climbing Heath in the rainforest

There’s a final sting in the tail: a steep and rooty climb through sodden forest. It feels like a mini version of Moss Ridge on the way into Federation Peak. As we scramble upwards, Larry and Libby are breezily discussing the mindset of endurance athletes, and how they always manage to find that extra 10%. Me? I’m all out of percentages, struggling for breath while muttering under it “Where’s the bl**dy campsite?”

 

Our disparate mindsets soon reunite as we start to glimpse water through the trees. Libby momentarily mistakes it for more cloud, but the mini ripples on the otherwise still lake give it away. We dump our packs, then find some suitable tent-sites beneath the trees, before I suggest we check out the view from the water’s edge. I've told the others that it’s one of the most stunning views from any campsite in the state. The huge Eliza Plateau rises abruptly above the far shore of the large and stunning lake. But from the shore we see none of this. Cloud has settled low over the lake. It’s beautiful in its misty, tranquil way, but surely the others must think I’ve oversold it. 

 

Only time will tell, if the clouds decide to cooperate. Meanwhile aesthetic matters give way to practicality. We set our tents up, and get our food prep underway. It’s been a good day, a promising start to our walk. More than that: it's simply wonderful to be out here, clouds or not.

 

The Fellowship of the Foot

"There will be many footpaths in Utopia." - HG Wells 

[Walking and talking: profound yet simple] 

They are unlike the people you spend most of your life among: family, work mates, friends. The people you meet while out walking may not even have names - or names that you know. Some will meet your eye and greet you, others will keep their gaze steadfastly elsewhere, perhaps groundward, perhaps somewhere over your left shoulder.

Sometimes you’ll try to make a connection with the cautious ones. Just the other morning a woman was walking a dog whose gait and behaviour was so similar to my dog’s, that as I overtook her I had to ask if it was a Staffordshire terrier. I had to ask twice actually, because we were both wearing white earbuds, which can limit things. But eventually we had a 10 second dog conversation, the sort that confirms the dog's breed and gender, and its status as “spoiled”, but nothing much more.

The fellowship of the foot is sometimes that simple. Or simpler even, in the case of a nod or a muttered "Morning". Of course there are others who you get to know much better. Like Dave and Donna, a retired couple who share the backtrack with us. They walk their dog "Fred" there every day and knew our previous dog well enough for them to talk about “Angus” for years after his death.

Donna knows “Noo”, our current dog, well too: knows her nervous disposition, her barks and raised hackles when calm “Fred” is about. Donna carries treats, and rewards “Noo” for coming, and for calming. She gives us hope that our old dog may pick up new tricks.

[Noo enjoying the bush] 

We talk about other things too: the state of the bush, the weather, holidays, mountain bikers (Dave is not keen on them). But if there is one focus among the people along the track, it’s animals. Apart from walking their dogs, and occasionally riding their horses there, some neighbours have even made it a pet burial ground.

Some months back a brightly painted wooden cross appeared beside the track. It was inscribed to “Lucky”, with a few heart-felt words honouring their demised dog. Then a week ago we noticed another similar-styled cross next to the first. This time it was for “Flick”.

We paused beside the impromptu pet cemetery, reading the inscriptions and thinking. Half to herself Lynne said “Flick ‘n’ Lucky”. I couldn’t resist replying “Looks like they weren’t so flick’n lucky”, breaking the mood and sending us both down the track laughing like naughty children.

The backtrack isn’t just used by domestic animals. We see, hear and find evidence of many native birds, mammals and other animals on our walks. And they don’t only limit themselves to the bush.

One morning while on the footpath near the Cascade Brewery, I witnessed an unusual congregation of birds, a kind of avian cold war between sulphur-crested cockatoos and currawongs. It was as though I’d come across an animated “Spy vs Spy”: the cockatoos all white except for their crests, the currawongs all black but for their golden eyes and white tail markings.

[A Black Currawong plays the strong, silent type] 

The two species were sitting on top of open wooden apple bins inside the factory grounds. It was apple harvest time, and the birds knew there were plenty there for the pecking. I paused to watch, counting more than a dozen of each type of bird busy at the apple boxes, with more flying in and out from the tall water silos across the road.

I wondered how the two very different species might interact. The currawong all silent swoop and precision, the cockatoo raucous, unpredictable, manouverable: stealth fighter meets combat chopper.

[A Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. Photo by Lynne Grant] 

As I watched a cocky landed atop a box right next to a feeding currawong. The latter paused and looked up at the cockatoo, just a wingspan away. The cockatoo arched forward, unfurled its crest, and let out an ear-piercing “RAAARRRKK!”. It was too much for the currawong, which flapped off to find a vacant box.

Further down the footpath I came come across Tommy, who walks with the aid of a zimmer frame. We’ve chatted for many years, enough for me to know he’s a war veteran, that he lives in a retirement village, and that he has cancer. Walking is his one freedom. I sometimes slow and walk with him towards town, where he goes for breakfast and a change of scene.

Tommy knows a little of my life too, just snatches perhaps, about travel or grandchildren or walking. It’s enough that we can go a year or more without coming across each other, and then take up again like old friends. And it’s enough that my walks will be just that bit poorer when Tommy is no longer there.

Something as simple as walking side by side, sharing informally while your focus is elsewhere, walking and talking, can make connections whose impact is deeper than time. That’s the fellowship of the foot.

Returning to Rhona (2)

Part 2: Bonding with the Wilderness

Photographers and other poets call it the golden hour. It's that time of day, on and after sunset, when the light softens and dims almost imperceptibly, and the world begins to marinate in its receding gentleness.

"Golden hour" commencing above Kunanyi/Mt Wellington 

The bushwalker, tired from a day spent upright and bearing a load, aims to have all chores done by this time. Dinner downed, tent ready, reclining as comfortably as the campsite allows, the walker nurses his or her beverage of choice - and is content.

Such is the scene at Gordonvale on our first family trip to Lake Rhona more than a decade ago. Down to four following the marriage of our eldest, we have taken about four hours to get here. The normally shorter trip has been complicated by some "navigational issues", and a slow, cautious crossing of the Gordon River.

But we are content as the slow summer twilight dims, and the peace of the forest nudges us towards sleep. It's then that a large flock of currawongs gathers in the trees behind us, unseen in the rising dark, but soon memorably heard.

A currawong's call has been rendered as kar-week-eek-kar or similar. It's also been likened to a bugle or a claxon horn. As I listen to the startling and rich vocal interplay of this flock I think these descriptions about as nuanced as saying a dog goes woof woof! No - it's as though an orchestra that's been playing Strauss waltzes has kicked back, let down its collective hair, and gone into an extended jazz improvisation.

Long, expressive, descending notes are traded between players, one to another to a third, before some other player introduces a multi-noted warble, which is gently countered by a tunefully muted squawk. This is no Darwinian struggle; no "look at me" grab-for-attention. This is relaxed, deep, expressive communication. Their conversation continues well after dark, filling Gordonvale’s already enchanting forest with a heart-lifting aural beauty.

Gordonvale is a story passed down through generations of bushwalkers. On my first trip here in the early 80s, I was told about the "friend of bushwalkers", the “Prince of Rasselas”, who once lived and worked here. As we approached Gordonvale that first time, I was struck by the incongruity of finding old fence posts, some with wire still attached, out here in the 'wilderness'. The main buildings that once stood here collapsed in the 1970s, but in the 80s an old out-building, some rooflines and many structural timbers were still evident in the slowly encroaching bush.

Then and Now: Walkers visit Gordonvale in the 1970s (left) and in 2011. Photo on left (M. Higgins, from "The South-West Book" eds. Gee and Fenton) shows the main house still standing.

The man behind the Gordonvale story was Ernie Bond. Between 1934 and the early 1950s he lived and occasionally thrived here on a 400 hectare property excised from this wild and remote country. He’d started Gordonvale as a joint venture with three other bushies, including Paddy Hartnett. The idea was to farm sheep and cattle, and grow other fresh produce to sell to the nearby Adamsfield mine. When the mine declined in the late 1930s, only Ernie stayed on, entranced by life in this beautiful setting.

An old out-building, still standing at Gordonvale in the 1980s 

Veteran bushwalker and Launceston Walking Club stalwart, Keith Lancaster, visited Gordonvale in its heyday.

It occupied portion of a fertile rise from which a forest had been cleared. The forest still existed on its western fringe and a fine stream, which rises between Mt. Wright and the Denisons at the rear of the forest, flows past the home. The house is a three roomed comfortable cottage with several attendant shacks scattered around. The garden includes a few fruit trees, raspberry canes, strawberries and vegetables. (Keith Lancaster’s “Mountaineering Diaries”, 1947) http://dveltkamp.customer.netspace.net.au/KeithLancaster/index.htm

Far from being the hermit some thought him, Bond was the well-educated son of a Tasmanian politician and business man, Frank Bond. Ernie was a big man in every way, 6 foot 4 inches in height, with a girth to match his enormous appetite. But it was his generous hospitality that consistently amazed visitors, be they snarers, miners or bushwalkers. Keith Lancaster records it this way.

The hospitality of this grey eyed, bearded giant has to be sampled to be believed! What he has done for the walking fraternity of this State is never likely to be surpassed by any other living person. He adopts the "give and go without yourself” policy and his door is always open to any visiting hiker.

It seems that no walker got past his door without being offered at least a cuppa, if not some wallaby stew and fresh bread. In season there might also be fresh strawberries and cream - the kind of food bushwalkers could only dream of - and there was always a large warming fire and enough stories to last well into the night.

The reign of "the Prince" lasted for close to two decades. But eventually failing health and his sense that forestry incursions into the nearby Florentine were changing the area forever, convinced Ernie Bond to leave his beloved Gordonvale in 1953. Before his death in Hobart, in 1962, he arranged to hand Gordonvale over to the Hobart and Launceston Walking Clubs for the ongoing use of bushwalkers. But the isolation and difficult access that were the appeal of the place also made its upkeep too difficult.

It continued to fall into disrepair, and today Gordonvale has all but disappeared. Walkers will probably notice a few rusting farm implements and old concrete foundations. The observant may even find the rhododendron and walnut trees that survive from Ernie's once vast garden.

A rusting plough and the encroaching forest at Gordonvale, March 2011 

But inexorably the forest and its creatures are reclaiming the land after its brief time in human hands. Perhaps that's part of what the currawongs tell each other every night from Gordonvale’s treetops. 

Thoughts from the Overland Track: Part 2 - Currawongs

If I were to find myself in a deep, dark dungeon, and was striving to recall one sound that would lift my mind into clear, bright skies, I would choose the call of the currawong. And not just any currawong: it would have to be Strepera fuliginosa, the black currawong, found only in Tasmania.

It’s early afternoon, mid-November, and the currawong’s kar-week, week-kar call welcomes us to the start of our Overland Track trip. It is a sound that locates me in the Tasmanian highlands as surely as a café accordion and a man saying ooh la la would land me in France. But just as the French might equally be arguing football or discussing Proust, so the currawong’s claxon call is far from its full story. Or so we will discover.

The weather is clearing after early showers, and currawongs are cavorting in the early afternoon sun. After the initial pack-settling climb, we pause at Crater Lake. A currawong hops up for a close inspection of our packs. It is all swagger and golden-eyed defiance, the large cutlass-like bill betraying its piratical attitude.

A curious black currawong sizes up my pack near Crater Lake, Tasmania

I casually warn the first-time walkers not to leave their packs unguarded. These intelligent and inquisitive birds have learned a few tricks, including pack-invasion. The two Dutch girls in our party look unconvinced: they’ve already heard enough drop bear, yowie and tiger leech stories in Australia to make them wary.

I click off a few portraits of the handsome pirate, then turn to concentrate on the grunt up Marions Lookout. The currawong’s call remains our occasional companion, along with its other “calling card”. These are its casts, odd-looking pellets that are somewhere between ugly red scats and huge, deformed raspberries. The casts are in fact undigested food, particularly pinkberries (from Leptecophylla juniperina), regurgitated by the birds.

A currawong's cast, full of partially digested pinkberries. (Photo courtesy of Alex Dudley)

Pelion Gap is the next place we actively notice the "pirates". Wooden platforms have been built here to manage this high traffic junction, where walkers wanting to climb Mt Ossa or Mt Pelion East can leave their heavy packs. Since they've learned their special trick, the currawongs have transformed the platform into a seasonal galley.

On a busy day there may be more than forty packs left at Pelion Gap for hours at a time. And the trick? Currawongs have learned to use their beaks to unzip packs. Once the pack is breached, the birds probe for any and everything they take a fancy to. Walkers have lost food, money, even passports to marauding birds.

The defense is to either cover your pack with a groundsheet - as the commercial groups usually do - or turn your pack onto its zips so they are minimally exposed. The three of us preparing to climb Pelion East do the latter. But when we come back, we learn that even this might not be enough. The top pocket of Tim's pack has been breached, and his mobile phone has been lifted!

After a quick search of the scoparia bushes, he locates the phone. Luckily it's still in its zip-lock bag, and undamaged by the scudding showers that have swept the Gap while we've been summitting. We can only suppose that the currawong grew tired of waiting for a signal and chucked the phone. As I said, a smart bird!

Overland Track, Tasmania

[A selection of images from a recent Overland Track trip. Click on the first image to open the Picasa web album ... enjoy!]

The Green Pharisee

[Photo: a currawong near Marion's Lookout, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania]

[a new piece probing hypocrisy in relation to conservation]

I am an admirer of currawongs. They are canny, adaptable birds with a sleek and swarthy handsomeness. To me their infectious caroling call is a signature sound of Tasmania’s mountains. And they round off their regal bearing with piercingly intelligent golden eyes.

One morning as I walked past the Cascade Brewery on my way to work, I was surprised to see a currawong sitting in the roadside gutter: a prince in a pauper’s ditch. It appeared to have been injured, and despite my approach, it barely moved. It just sat there, looking at me with unblinking eyes.

Mobs of his kind fly between the tall water silos on one side of the road and the temptingly full apple boxes on the other. Now and then they time their swoop poorly, and collide with passing traffic. As this one must have done.

As I looked at the stricken bird, I was torn. I love animals, and hate to see them suffer. But I am no vet, and wouldn’t know the first thing about avian first-aid. Animal euthanasia is even further beyond me. I’d learned this once in New Zealand when some friends and I came across a cow that had fallen off a cliff. Its legs had been broken, and massive internal injuries had already started to bloat the poor beast. Yet somehow it was still alive.

A quick bullet through the brain was called for, but we were miles from the nearest road or farmer. All we had close to hand were large rocks, which we decided to use to put the poor cow out of its misery. We failed on all counts, distressing both the cow and ourselves through this horrible and futile stoning.

I could not inflict the same “mercy” on the currawong.

Yet I also knew that if I had somehow managed to bundle up the bird and take it to my work at the Parks & Wildlife Service, the wildlife management people there wouldn’t have been able to do much for it.

So I walked on. Like the Pharisee of the parable, I crossed to the other side of the road. And I hastened to my work, where I would go about the business of helping to conserve wildlife and the environment. And of course bringing about world peace, in which I also believe!

Words That Paint Pictures

[Essay introducing the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize 2009. Published in Island #118]


What if life really did imitate art? What if each of us was to throw a painter’s canvas over the place we lived? What expression of our place, our life in that place, would fill that canvas? Would it be only the universals of modern urban life: the concrete and cars; plasma screens and iPods; mobile phones and plush furnishings that are found anywhere human prosperity has reached? Would our canvas not also contain the colours of the earth beneath our feet; the dark fleeting dash of the wild creatures we share our place with; and the variegated textures of the plants that respond to the particular seasons and soils of our particular place? Wouldn’t we want to record the sudden colour splash and sound of the birds that flit and flutter through our bushes; or the whisper, whoosh and wash of the particular weather that is present only here?

The Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize was conceived in 2002 to provide an outlet for the very particular and concrete thoughts and feelings writers have about the natural world. Not just any natural world, but the particular part of the world they have thought on, interacted with and cared enough about to express in words.

Since the first biennial prize in 2003, around three hundred individuals have entered the Wildcare prize; nearly half of that number in the 2009 event. The prize has tapped into a feeling that seems to be abroad in our land: the feeling that here, in the early years of the 21st century, we Australians are finally ready to write our places into a new kind of existence. We seem eager to record in words the feelings and thoughts about being in this land that have only slowly come to the surface. It now appears important for us to read our landscape; to know our place; and to celebrate the particularity of where we live.

It’s not that disgruntlement with our leaders or perceptions of threat – the traditional motivators of environmentally-slanted writing – have gone away. Clearly the mainstream 'success' of environment as an issue, and the plethora of spin about 'clean and green', haven’t assuaged the concerns of writers. But something else is happening that is both beneath and beyond the world of headlines and politics. At last place is about more than postcodes, real estate values and the cache of locality names.

My own place is near the base of a collapsed layer cake, geologically speaking at least. It’s a cake that was baked over some 280 million years out of whatever ingredients fell to hand. Right where I sit the available element was mud; just above here it was sand, and top-most it was magma – three hundred metres of it – injected up through layers of previously ‘cooked’ sediment. Not a conventional way to ice a cake, nor a standard thickness. But whoever designed Tasmania had an inordinate fondness for dolerite.

The collapse of the cake has been barely noticeable on a human time scale. Nonetheless it has crumbled, and will continue to do so. A large scoop of cake was taken out of the mountain’s side just above here by ice as recently as ten thousand years ago. The tell-tale swale is an unmistakeable signature of ice. Vertical scars through the forest show the tracks of more recent major rock falls. Occasionally crumbs still fall from the mountain’s table, with dolerite boulders turning up even here in suburban Hobart.

To keep reading my place, I must augment the geological timescale with the much shorter-spanned biological ones. I learn that when the Permian mudstone was just ooze being washed into the Tasmania Basin, there were no flowering plants. Conifers, cycads, algae, lichens and mosses impeded the erosive running water, with bits of plants joining the shells in becoming fossils. It wasn’t until that basin had been filled, buried, hardened, and lifted back to an altogether unrecognisable surface that the rock saw its first flowering plants.

Over aeons wave upon wave of varied vegetation adjusted to the different climates, latitudes and altitudes that this mudstone has seen. Until today the shallow, impoverished regolith and soil that it produces, brings forth not the spectacular rainforests than can grow on richer soils in this climate, but instead a gnarled and humble woodland of silver peppermint, Eucalyptus tenuiramis. A spacious, easily traversed forest with crackling, straggly undergrowth, so quintessentially Australian that I half expect to find a Roberts or McCubbin character propped against a trunk, billy boiling, handing me a cuppa.

Above us Tasmania’s green rosellas might be feeding on seeds, chuckling and sweetly tinkling, reminding me why I always think of them as bell parrots. If disturbed their relaxed calling would be replaced by their more excited flight/fright call 'cussick cussick'. Are they perturbed by clinking currawongs flying low through the trees? In this stealth mode, currawongs are more intent on finding prey than drawing attention to their presence. By contrast when our apple crop is near to ripe there is no such silence. Their loud ringing calls spread the news to the whole flock.

Such are a few tiny daytime fragments I might read in my local bush. But if I’m tempted to think I’ve gained a degree of familiarity, night-time confounds me. After dark this bushland takes on a wholly foreign character. Were I adept at reading with my nose, as my dog certainly is, I could more readily comprehend the pages of this crepuscular life. Instead I’m left to look at the tracks and traces it leaves behind. Potoroo and pademelon runways; bandicoot diggings; scats, frass, fur and feathers: clues to a twilit life. They remind me how close to bio-illiterate I am, despite nearly a quarter of a century of living in and looking at the one piece of bush.

All of this may explain why nature writing is a hard-won form. Yes, any good writer should be able to write about the natural world. But to do it successfully, to do it in a way that rings true, requires the same kind of observational commitment that writers put into character, plot or sentence structure.

This year’s prize-winning pieces illustrate well the benefits of such toil. Whether describing human efforts to restore what once was, nature’s gentle irruptions into tangled urban lives, or the perils faced by all life forms, the felicity of the writing cloaks the observational labour involved. How encouraging that so many are so effectively taking on this labour of love.