15 YEARS AGO

Exactly 15 years ago to the day, filming started on this biodiversity video project. Wildlife camera man and filmmaker Glen Threlfo had helped select my camera, a Canon XL1, which served me until 2007. The project began as a documentary, the seeds of which were sown as ’Island in the Sky’, a Friends of Tamborine Mountain initiative to capture the interaction between the mountain’s residents and its flora and fauna. The camera man was the son of a friend of mine who was keen on videoing. The first entries in the Film Diary, dated 19 January 1998, were of sunrise over the ocean and illuminating the ranges to the west. My son Simon, then 17, filmed some early night sequences. I became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of making a documentary because I felt totally out of my depth. I needed to devise a project over which I had as much control as possible. The concept of creating a video archive devoted to the mountain’s biodiversity came to me. It proved to be the ideal solution.