Close to nature's heart

"Keep close to Nature's heart...break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." Or so said John Muir, the Scottish-born American writer and conservationist. Having just spend three days doing day-walks in the Blue Mountains, I couldn't agree more.

The days were clear and cool and in the evenings my wife and I retreated---with spirits washed, dried and neatly ironed---to a log fire in a cottage to read and listen to the possums scurring across the roof. Okay so the logs were fake and it was a gas fire but it was still warm and toasty.
We are lucky in Sydney to be so close to so many national parks including: Ku-ring-gai Chase, Royal National Park, Lane Cove National Park, Sydney Harbour National Park and theBlue Mountains National Park where we were. And being there mid-week when it wasn't school holidays, we had it all to ourselves. Much as we love the city, it is good to get out into nature and replace the city's sounds with bird calls. The only high-rises in sight were built by termites.

It was also a good time to try out my new digital camera. Try as I did to get a good photo of a Supurb Lyrebird--and there were plenty of them about---all I managed was one blurry photo. (One of these days I'll read the manual and learn how to use the camera properly.) But, feeling sorry for me, various other birds came by and posed, including some Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and a male and female Australian King-Parrot.

Out and about

Disaster! My computer hard drive fried! It just suddenly quit and there was nothing I could do to rescue the things that were on it. I'd backed up most of the important things a week before the crash but some emails, were lost. So if you wrote me and didn't get answer, please write again.

I've been madly trying to finish the latest---and maybe the last---Selby book, Selby Sprung. When my computer crashed, I lost the latest changes to the stories but, fortunately, Selby rang me and helped me get the stories right. So no Selby stories were lost. I should have the book finished soon.

One thing that Selby refuses to tell me is why he wanted the book to be called Selby Sprung. Did he really get sprung? Did people find out his secret? He said that he'd tell me that last story just before the book is published. I can't wait to hear about it!


Australia has some of the most beautiful birds in the world. These are rainbow lorikeets and they're very common here in Sydney. And they're not shy. This group let me get very close to them to take this picture.




Every year in November the suburb of Glebe in Sydney has a street fair. The whole of Glebe Point Road is jammed with people listening to bands, buying wonderful food and clothing from street stalls. Here are a couple of people with their clothes painted to look like the sky.




The New South Wales Premier's Reading Challenge is a program to get kids reading lots of books. A number of my books are on their reading list so I was invited along to the launch of the program. Here's a picture of me, Selby and Snow White at the launch.