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Film Diary / 01.05.2010

I was at the Knoll National Park to film some fungi I had noticed during our night filming a few days earlier when I saw a lace monitor in the picnic area on the look out for scraps. He was a large specimen and I was able to get some good shots of him patrolling the open ground. The monitor did not have things all his own way. A number of scrub turkeys were also after a feed and one repeatedly went for the monitor’s long tail, pecking at it viciously, so that the monitor formed his tail into a horizontal fiddlehead shape to make it a harder target for the scrub turkey. I didn’t film enough of this drama. I went in search of the fungi and only noticed them on my way back.

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Other / 28.04.2010

Today I posted the data disc to Sakkeer Hussein, comprising a number of my YouTube clips he had requested for his classroom project. Steve and I had to complete the Greenscreen DVD and eight new Youtube clips before we could turn our attention to compiling the data disc.

Sakkeer, a zoology teacher from Kerala in India, first got in touch in December last year on YouTube with a request to use some of my video clips for his teaching aid project for biology students. He has uploaded hundreds of clips of his own and other footage, covering a vast range of life forms including microbes. Here is his channel.

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Other / 22.04.2010

I had a bit of a win when I renewed my domain names for two years. I was able to renew both names for the price of one. The price has not changed from the beginning. I also have biodiversity.net.au.

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My Travels / 19.04.2010

When visiting the travel agent last week, I was told that my airfare to Europe had gone up by $800. The outward journey involved the added expense of an overnight stop in Singapore. My plan to incorporate a visit to India to catch up with my ex father-in-law, Andy, a couple of months before his 90th birthday, was becoming unaffordable. I enquired about fares for a straightforward Brisbane/London return flight and was quoted a price $2000 cheaper. Then, following phone calls to find out if I could stay with Andy for his birthday, which I can, I today booked and paid for my UK/Europe flight with the intention of travelling to Delhi with my son Simon in December. My UK/Europe dates remain unchanged.

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Other / 15.04.2010

Greenscreen Festival sent an email confirming the safe arrival of my entry the day before the deadline. Steve and I were up against it for the past couple of months, clocking up the hours to produce a documentary about me and my work called One Small Place On Earth . . . Originally I had planned a DVD along the lines of The Beauty of Overlooked Things, but with the extra dimension of night footage. Steve advised me to try and conform to the expectations of the festival organisers by changing to a documentary format. Time and money were always going to be a major constraint. We had to courier the DVD to Germany. I am glad we made the documentary. It is something on which I hope we can build.

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Website / 11.04.2010

Dallas sent an email, copied to me, with the amended XML file to Katja Schulz.

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My Travels / 23.03.2010

Received an email from Herbert Distel confirming the dates for my short stay at his house near Vienna at the end of August, to which I am greatly looking forward. I have booked my UK/Europe, August/September trip with a week’s stay in India on my way home. I was a schoolboy the last time I was in Austria.

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Website / 11.03.2010

Katja’s email reply to Dallas, copied to me, listed the problems EOL had. Dallas has undertaken to make the necessary changes at a further cost to me.

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Film Diary / 11.03.2010

On February 23 I filmed a pair of ducks with three ducklings on a temporary pond created by a storm-fed spring which had filled overnight. I pass the pond on my daily walk and kept my eye on the duck family. I was amazed that the ducks had committed their brood to this pond. Today I filmed just 2 ducklings; one had perished. They were away from the pond, near the property boundary and had grown considerably. I moved closer to them whereupon they and all the other ducks flew over the fence and did not return. We have had good wet seasons for the past two years, culminating in a record-breaking 354mm in 24 hours on the Mountain on February 6/7.

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Other / 11.03.2010

I received an email from Gold Coast City Libraries ordering five sets of Supplements 1 to 3 of the Archive which were published at the end of 2009. This was in addition to recent orders from other buyers of the original publication of the archive in 2006. Every little helps to defray my production costs. Fortunately the project does not depend on sales since it is not about achieving sales.