Cyclone Preparations, the Decade-long Drought, and Mosquito Manipulations

This morning, while I walked in Townsville’s Bicentennial Park, the sun rose above city and Ross River as an eye-searing ball of molten gold. Before noon, I rushed outdoors to snatch laundry off...

Koala

In the dim light of 5:10 a.m., a golfer hit practice balls on the Townsville Golf Club, his face so screened by the receeding darkness that I was unable to ascertain if he was young or old. Beneath th...

Aussie Mammal Mugshots

I stole quietly into Townsville’s tropical dawn, the songs of a brush cuckoo and olive-backed oriole drawing me forth, the two vocalizations so different yet now so familiar – the brush cuckoo...

Sugarcane Sorrows

In the day’s first light, frog songs rolled into the new week in a tide of deep, rubber-band twangs, rough buzzes, and high, rolling trills. The past weekend in Townsville was balmy rather than ...