In the gardens around our home on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, there are many green tree frogs.  Generally, you see them at night.  When my children were much younger, at night time, we would put on headlamps and go “frog spotting” around our front and back yards.  There was always excitement when we spotted a frog.  My youngest son, Ryan, after wetting his hands, would pick up a frog to show everyone, much to the distress of his grandmother!  It was a rare night, when we failed to spot at least a couple of frogs.   At the first sign of rain, the frogs would begin to sing, a cacophony of sound, night or day.   An early warning system for impending rain. One evening recently, I spotted a...

In some areas on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, it is not uncommon to spot kangaroos in the wild. Early in the morning and late evenings, a group of ten or more eastern grey kangaroos are often spotted in a large open area, close to our home that used to be an active sugar cane field, when we first moved to the area, around twenty years ago. I can still hear the crackle and smell the burning sugar cane at harvest time. It is no longer a “working sugar cane field” (unfortunately) but still a large tract of vacant land. On a nearby golf course, kangaroos often congregate. On more than one occasion, over the past year, an adventurous (or lost)...