I’ve only been blogging about two months (most entries have been backdated to when they occurred). In a short space of time, I’ve gar-nered readers from every continent except Africa, and from a large number of nations spread across the other continents. I have no idea how these people have found me, for, as I’m a new blogger, Google doesn’t automatically call me up (although nowadays you only have to get half my address right to find me). I don’t have contact with any of these people, and yet my optimistic self says that whoever they are, they’re enjoying it or otherwise they wouldn’t be there, and they’re being made aware of the stunning beauty that is to be found on this earth in general, and in the Tassie wilder-ness in particular – the predominant (but not exclusive) subject of my blogs. I hope when you visit my site you can share in my sense of wonder.
they may not have been aware of and, more im-portantly, a beauty that it is vitally important to save while we still have a chance. Paintings by Eugene von Guerard and Eccleston Du Faur helped make Australians more comfortable with a beauty that was to be found here rather than in the “mother country”. As wilderness photographers, Peter Dombrovskis and Olegas Truchanas have been instrumental in making the beauty that is worth saving in Tasmania evident to the wider public who don’t necessarily have the capability or knowledge required to reach our more remote places. Whilst not for a moment placing myself anywhere near these greats (I stand on a stone at lake level while they sit on Olympus), I nonetheless hope that my photos and some of my stories capture not just the grand adventure that is bushwalking, but also the beauty that is to be found in our wilderness areas. My photos are not so much depictions of mountain X or peak Y, but of the splendour of nature.
Quite separate from that (ie, my relationship with nature and a desire to depict it in photos and words), is my project that the blog also records, adventitiously as it were. I will never get to bag all the Tasmanian Abels or to collect all the peak baggers’ points. I don’t believe it’s possible (although I never say ‘never’). So, my immediate rather more conservative project is to climb as many peaks as I can, and to have at least one decent photo and a story connected to every peak I summit. That is a secondary motor for the blog.
(In addition, if anyone wants information on a mountain I have climbed, they can and do contact me for more help, and I give it. This is often done in the forum of Bushwalk Australia).