Another great resource book....weeds

A great weed book that I can recommend for the central and southern sections of the east coast of Australia is Weeds of the South-east: An Identification Guide for Australia. It is written by F.J.Richardson, R.G. Richardson and R.C.H. Shepherd.

The second and fully updated edition of this book was released recently (2011) and I think it is brilliant. Great photos, easy descriptions (if you want them) and worth its cost if you are regularly needing to identify weeds in your area and not a true and passionate botanist. It is also easily available from online stores.

I live in south-east Queensland and it is certainly relevant for my area. And because of the geographic distribution of the book's subject matter you can also look at or learn about some of the weedy species that occur in the cooler parts of the continent.

Thumbs up for this publication!



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Guide to Eucalypts and Wattles in Brisbane region

The Queensland Herbarium (part of the Department of Environment and Resource Management) has a couple of fabulous and easy to understand and follow guides to eucalypts and wattles of the Brisbane region. These guides have been available for a number of years now and I have found them a fantastic resource. If you print them double-sided onto an A3 piece of paper they fold into a nice brochure size pamphlet. They are easy to take with you and have great illustrations that allow you to easily identify these species in the Brisbane region whilst you're in the field.

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Eucalypt guide is available at: http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/wildlife-ecosystems/plants/queensland_herbarium/publications/pdf/eucalypt_key3.pdf

and the wattle guide is available at: http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/wildlife-ecosystems/plants/queensland_herbarium/publications/pdf/wattle_key3.pdf

Hope you find them as useful as I have found them over the years! Pin It

BrisScience now online

What a Christmas present! You can now watch past presentations organised by BrisScience online. These are available at: http://vimeo.com/channels/brisscience. Five presentations from 2011 are now available on this website, with more to come.

Science in your lounge room. How can it get any better? Pin It

Urban Garden sessions - Brisbane 2011

The State Library of Queensland is about to hold the 2011 Ideas Festival (19-22 May). As part of this initiative, they will be holding a number of sessions entitled "Urban Garden". It is being advertised as a family activity aimed at learning about food, where it comes from, how far it travels to get to your plate and how to become involved in growing your own food.

The State Library website has some information available about the session. Their website also has a short video clip showing the construction process for this urban garden (would love some of those hard-working hands in my garden). According to the library's information the garden is based on permaculture principles and is an active learning event for the family.

Get your hands dirty, 20 & 21 May 2011, at the State Library of Queensland, SouthBank, Brisbane!

Booking are required. No cost. Pin It

Useful Native Plant Identification Books

Here are three readily available and easy to use native plant identification books useful in South-east Queensland.

• Wild plants of Greater Brisbane - Queensland Museum
• Noosa Native Plants - Noosa Integrated Catchment Association Inc.
• Mountains to Mangroves (there is a new edition available that combines the previously available two volume set) - Logan River Branch of Society for Growing Australian Plants

These are all photographic plant identification books and group the plant species into their supporting habitats/ecosystems. Easy to flip through to identify and no keys or fancy terms necessary.

Great reference texts and if you're keen it is a great idea to carry at least one of them in the field with you (if you're back can handle it) to help expand your knowledge of native plants in South-east Queensland! Pin It

Refugee Tutoring

In Brisbane St Vincent de Paul has developed a special volunteer program where individuals can assist refugees in the Brisbane, Logan and Ipswich areas. The idea is to provide them with educational, social and vocational opportunities within the community with your assistance.

I had learnt about this type of program being run a couple of years back and have been trying to keep my ear out for something similar. So finally I have got around to looking into such a program and found this specific one.

If people want to know more about the program or would like to volunteer then refer to the official website: http://www.refugeetutoring.org/index.php.

Presently this particularly program only caters for those areas mentioned above. Perhaps there are other similar programs available in your area, feel free to add these as a comment to this post. Pin It

PARKing day

On the 17th of September this year, Brisbane held PARKing day. The principle behind this day is the consideration of how much green space we could have in the city if we didn't drive our cars to work and car parks were converted to lovely green spaces. Brisbane City Council was on board with this initiative (along with other companies and groups) and assisted with converting some of the inner city carparking spaces into lovely temporary green spaces for the day.


Additional information can be found on the following website: http://www.brisbaneparkingday.com/  and there are links to other pages with photos from this base page. Some of the spots look pretty cool and enticing. The only thing I am disappointed about is to find out about this after the fact and not being able to participate.  Pin It

David Suzuki lecture

Yippeee. A friend of mine has just organised for us to go to the David Suzuki lecture during the Brisbane Writer's festival. It is my understanding that he has a new book and hence the association with the writer's festival, but it certainly will be an interesting seminar to listen to since I have grown up being surrounded by David's books and my mother thinking that I should work for him when I suggested in my late high school years that I was going to do environmental science at uni.

Hope it is a great night out.

More information on this seminar can be found on the Brisbane Writer's festival home page (http://www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au/) and the Powerhouse's home page (http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org/). Pin It

Animals in your backyard

Do you know what native animals visit your back yard? I have a small to medium sized block in the northern suburbs of Brisbane and I am amazed at the number of species that do frequent my backyard throughout the year.

Here is an initial list of species that I know have visited my backyard over the last five years:

• Australian magpie
• Southern boobook
• Little wattlebird
• Silvereyes
• Brown honeyeater
• Scaly-breasted lorikeet
• Rainbow lorikeet
• Green tree frog
• Laughing kookaburra
• Torresian crow (a lot of them)
• Australian white ibis
• Azure kingfisher
• Black-faced cuckoo-shrike
• Blue-faced honeyeater
• Crested pigeon
• Figbird
• Magpie-lark
• Noisy miner
• Pied butcherbird
• Spangled drongo
• Sulphur-crested cockatoo
• Pheasant coucal
• White-faced heron
• Eastern reef egret
• Willie wagtail
• Blue-tongued lizard

Nasty pest species that come and visit my backyard all too often:

• Common myna
• Cane toad
• Feral pigeon (or rock dove)
• Spotted dove

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Riding the black cockatoo

Wow, what a book. I am almost finished this amazing read in a very short period of time and I am truly enjoying the experience. The book is by John Danalis and is based on one of his family's stories. It is truly an incredible read and journey.

The story revolves around John's family having an indigenous person's skull on their mantlepiece and the family returning these remains to their traditional lands and the impact this process has on John and his family.

This book has enlightened me on a number of indigenous issues and made me once again recognise the impact that white settlement has had on both the land and the people who traditionally inhabited Australia. It also highlights the relationship that the original settlers had with the indigenous people as well how the broader population in the 21st century relate to both present and past generations of indigenous people.

I can wait to read the last few pages and start investigating some of the things that have really struck a chord with me. Highly recommended read! Pin It