Golden Orb Web Spider

Australia is home to an impressive array of spiders, some of them, like the Sydney funnel web spider, dangerously venomous to humans. Golden orb web spiders, also called golden orb weavers, on first e...

Great Barrier Reef

At 8:30 a.m., Vilis and I boarded Reef Magic’s high-speed catamaran, which transported us 45 kilometres away from Cairns to Moore Reef on the outer Great Barrier Reef. The catamaran pounded over...

Reef Notes

With Vilis’s and my tour to the outer Great Barrier Reef pending, I cycled to the library, signed out a couple of books on the Reef, and did some brushing up. Previously, I’d known that th...

Cane Toad Explosion and Bowerbird Toys

Early this morning beside a drying wetland in the Townsville development of Fairfield Waters, lawns and beds of wood-chips squirted frogs – hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of frogs. At first, ...