I love ducks but they make keeping poultry tricky with their poor sanitary habits. I hope you’ve survived the heat this week. It’s been tough going up here.

A graph and table showing a week of temperatures above 40°C for Dubbo, with a record breaking 46.1°C reached on 26 January. Overnight minimums have also been high the past few nights — these are severe heatwave conditions.

The temperatures this week in Dubbo have been brutal for anything breathing. It’s been far worse further west — heat records broken by more than 1° in places. Another day of the heatwave to go. Heading for 45°C today and an overnight of 26°, and then fingers crossed, a more reasonable end to summer.

A grey frog powers out of the water well of a hanging pot.

It’s been stinking hot here but these little guys know where the cool spots are 🐸

And a Merry Christmas Eve to you!

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:
Grey-headed Flying Fox
Hump-backed Whales
Australian Bustard
Brolga
Platypus

I feel you have an advantage over many of us @ecosystemunraveller.com - a great list 🙌🏼

Data collected for another year of microbat monitoring at my place for Bats in Backyards (NSW). Now it’s the wait for a report to come back to tell me what species have been logged this year. Some great pick-ups, like this one. These calls are in the 30-80 kHz frequency range 🦇🔊 #EcoAcoustics

It’s pretty special. I was lucky to see the aurora in Iceland twice, but I’m yet to be up late enough to see it here. You got a mention today though in an interview I did with BirdLife Aust’s Kristy Peters about mistletoe. It was a great yarn.

A Straw-necked ibis picking through grass, framed by two trees in the foreground.

2 weeks out from summer & it feels like 6°C at 7.30am. I’ve been for a walk & had brekky outside watching an Eastern yellow robin, Double-barred finches and wrens at the bird bath. Roos are grazing in the paddock with Straw-necked ibis. Blue-cheeked honeyeaters are shrieking from the Silky oak 💚

ecoartspace.org/Sys/Store/Pr...

Two pages from the book — one of me playing a guitar on top of soils as I listen to the soils through special microphones and the other page is a video still of an animation I made for a soundscape composition about soils for an exhibition in Italy in 2024.

I’m thrilled to be a featured artist in the ecoartspace published book 'Soils Turn' & one of only two artists in a section on listening to soils. Marcus Maeder being the other. 'Soils Turn’ incl. 175+ artists from Europe, US, India, and Australia. It’s launching in New York in a couple of weeks.

Pink and blue cloudy skies at dusk over a dry paddock.

The storms have passed.

A male Red-necked wallaby cleaning up thistles in my front garden.

A Red-necked wallaby mum on alert with her joey reclining in her pouch.

Just hanging about this weekend doing all the things I have no time or energy for through the week…reading, writing, laundry, walking, gardening and watching my garden ornaments graze amongst the native trees and shrubs beside the house 🦘🦘🦘

Pink and mauve dusk skies to the west at dusk. Dark trees in the foreground.

Pastel skies after a warm, grey, showery couple of days across the Western Plains of NSW.

An image of a tree with a red audio waveform graphic over the top with the arboreus.earth logo in the bottom centre.

A world map with red markers of where the sonic tree portraits have come from on the arboreus.earth site. 9 countries are currently represented — Australia, England, USA, Canada, Kenya, Venezuela, Poland, France, Germany.

CALLOUT: arboreus.earth submissions. This is growing a global, virtual forest of sounds. Are trees near you on this map? If not, we’d love to see them included.

Details of how to submit are on the submit page of the site - arboreus.earth/submit/ Deadline for final 2025 upload is 21 November.

Two light brown speckled honeyeater eggs in a woven nest of grasses and cobwebs attached to a young tree.

White-plumed Honeyeater eggs in a beautiful nest of woven grass and cobwebs, found in the back of my garden.

Night lights of the city on the plains with the first light of the day appearing in the east.

The view on my way to work in the mornings these days. A pre-dawn Dubbo City.

🙏🏻 and yes, only good things 😊

Forever more! I’m the official new presenter. We were talking about you on Friday 😆 You were one of the best.

My week in pictures. An early morning Sunday walk, a Saturday of conversation and listening on farm, and another week down of presenting the ABC brekky program across the Western Plains on NSW sharing ideas, laughs, information, and some great yarns.

Thank you!

A photo of me holding headphones behind an ABC branded microphone in the radio studio with ABC signage on a banner behind me.

I’ve just finished up my first week as the full-time breakfast presenter on ABC Western Plains. It’s where I started started my journalism career in earnest in 1992. Some call it full circle, others back to the future. It’s a new challenge. Radio has changed enormously in 30 years, but so have I.

Thank you! Yes, big changes.

A screenshot of the current temperature in Dubbo -1.8°C feels like -5.2°C.

It’s the first day of spring tomorrow 🥶 The only thing we don’t get here is snow. Winter can piss off now.

A social media tile showing feature images of each of the 25 listings currently on the site with the text: The sounds of a virtual global forest, a quote from the website, and the arboreus.earth logo.

The sounds of a virtual, global forest - 25 beautiful sonic tree and forest portraits from 8 countries, recorded by 14 field recordists. New listings now online. Take a break and plug into arboreus.earth 🎧 arboreus.earth/trees/

A screenshot of the weather in Dubbo on a Sunday morning — -2.1°C feels like -4.7°C.

This is a bit rude for the end of winter. I don’t need this for my predawn work starts 🥶

A Red-necked wallaby grazing, showing scars on its back.

A Red-necked wallaby on alert.

A Red-necked wallaby grazing weeds on a mound of dirt.

Wallaby today? 🦘 This fella has a story to tell 😕

Macro photo of a microscopic web beneath decaying wood in the soil.

After chasing radio stories all week, I’m switching gears this weekend with looming creative deadlines for an exhibition opening late October. Puzzling over how to supply a high res image for a sound work. I might have to use one of my macro photos of soil given that’s what the work is about.

Over 3 decades, I’ve navigated my way through new processes, software & comms formats as needed with a little bit of on-the-go learning along the way. After a week in a new job, using an unfamiliar PC, software & apps I’d never seen or heard of before this week, my brain feels ready to explode 🤯

“Soils Turn” is co-edited by Ass. Prof. Arts & Research at Bauhaus University Weimar, Alexandra R. Toland & curator & ecoartspace founder, Patricia Watts. Limited edition of 300. Pre-orders being taken now - ecoartspace.org/Sys/Store/Pr...