I’m deep in edits for my upcoming novel, Journey’s End, which will be out with Penguin Random House at the end of May. Taking regular walks is a must, to clear my head, and it’s always a treat for me to find an insect like this one during my wanderings – Ctenomorphodes chronus.
Phasmids (or stick insects) are remarkable animals. Even the name, Phasmid, has an evocative, romantic ring to it. They have been disguising themselves as walking leaves and twigs for 126 million years, even before the evolution of flowering plants. C. chronus has an uncanny resemblance to a gum tree twig and can grow up to 18 cm in length. The males are long and slender, have full wings and can fly. The females are larger but their small wings are not functional, except to flash at predators. Phasmids are harmless herbivores, eating gum and wattle leaves. They also eat blackberry leaves, and I sometimes find them doing a good job feeding on clumps of this invasive weed. They often rock back and forth, as if swaying in the breeze.
Fossil discoveries from modern-day Mongolia mark some of the earliest examples of twig-mimicking insects. Evolution quickly produced disguises for bugs, with the arrival of the earliest birds and mammals, which visually preyed upon insects during the age of dinosaurs. This is more tantalizing evidence of early insect-plant co evolution. These ancient phasmids were about 7 cm long from tail to antenna tip. They had parallel black lines running along their wings, which at rest would have resembled a ginkgo tree leaf, also preserved as fossils in China and Mongolia where the insects lived.
Spiny Leaf Insect
One especially interesting Australian phasmid is the Spiny Leaf Insect. Females lay eggs resembling seeds, flicking them onto the ground below their tree. The eggs have a knob, called a capitulum, which is tasty to ants. Ants carry the eggs underground, eat only the knob, and leave the rest of the egg in the nest, protected from other animals that might eat it. The young phasmids (or nymphs) hatch after 1-3 years underground They look and behave like ants. When they emerge from the nest they climb into the trees, where they moult into slow-moving leaf mimics.
Phasmids are parthenogenic, which means the females can lay fertile eggs without mating, but the babies will all be girls. Males can even mate with species other than their own, which can create new species. What fascinating creatures! No wonder they’re becoming popular as pets. Museum Victoria is currently breeding rare giant stick insects, that can grow more than 50 cm in length. Next time I’m in Melbourne, I plan to meet these miracle babies!
Congratulations to Womblywoo for winning the prize draw book giveaway! I shall email you soon for your postal address.
I’m delighted to be part of the 
There is little more poignant in life, than helping to pack up the house of a loved one who has died too young. This has been my sad task recently, since the untimely death of my brother, Rod Scoullar. He was a learned man, a man who loved Australia’s fauna and flora – a naturalist of the first order. His study was a gold-mine of nature books, stored on impressive floor-to-ceiling shelves that covered an entire wall. It was here that I found the holy grail for Aussie orchid lovers – Australian Indigenous Orchids Vol 1 & 2 by A W Dockrill. These are hard to find volumes, and sell on-line 
for up to $200 a set. But aside from being the definitive treatises on native orchids, they also provided me with a wonderful link to my new book, Journey’s End, which will be out in late May.
The Ravine Orchid is found in wet, humid rainforests of the Great Dividing Range, where waterfalls cascade from the tablelands. It is 
I was fortunate enough to buy a tiny specimen from the 
My big brother passed away without warning over Christmas. I’ve been paralysed, unable to write since. So my dear friend Sydney has written this wise, beautiful post for me. It’s about Rod. Thank you Sydney. Somehow by your gracious act, I’ve been set free to write again. I just needed a little help 🙂 xx
Death isn’t a single, decisive event. The body loses its life, and we are led to believe that this is the end. But it isn’t. There is no end, no finality. There is a gentle shifting into another kind of perception, where each of us in the intimacy of grief meet him again.
November the 28th was Buy Nothing Day. It’s an international day of protest against consumerism, and I took the pledge. However it felt too easy for me. As a rural writer, I work from home, and live quite a way from the nearest shops. November 28th was a Saturday. Tuesday is my regular shopping day, when I drive into town. So I decided to buy nothing for a week instead, not even food.
It turned into an excellent way to use up what was in the cupboards. Two frozen squishy bananas turned into banana bread. I cooked the potatoes and onions that were almost past their use by dates, mixing them with eggs, cheese, frozen vegies and old packets of soup to make delicious fritters. Ends of flour in two canisters, and the apples in the bottom of the fridge became apple crumble. Lemons from our groaning trees became home-made lemonade. We managed just fine, and saved money. Ten days and counting of buying nothing. I could go another week, I decided.
My buy-nothing campaign lasted ten days, and was cut short by the ease of internet buying. She’ll probably hate the bit, and it will hang on the wall along with all the others, testament to my lack of self-control. And tomorrow’s Tuesday – shopping day. The boys will be happy that I’ve given up my campaign against corporate domination!
A lot of fencing has been happening at Pilyara lately. Thanks to a state government grant, we are fencing stock out of the timbered gullies that lead down to our creek. This is designed to protect wildlife and vegetation, as we live in a beautiful, mountainous area of high conservation value. All this hard work is already paying off – for the first time in years we’ve spotted a pair of Superb Lyrebirds in a fenced off gully, quite close to the house. What a thrill!
‘Our modelling suggests the reduction in litter fuel loads brought about by lyrebird foraging has the potential to result in markedly subdued fire behaviour…The loss of lyrebirds from forests could result in higher fuel loads and an increased likelihood of wildfires threatening human life,” said the report, published in the CSIRO’s journal Wildlife Research. ‘They forage like chickens, they’ve got big feet with really long toes so they’ve basically got rakes for feet. They rake through the litter looking for worms and little bugs, stuff to eat. They’re digging through that humus and litter layer looking for little invertebrates and whatever they can find.’
