Hello and best wishes!
#24, this time, is being prepared for you from a library in Maine, USA. The 21st of September, as you no doubt know, signals the end of another Southern Winter and the beginning of spring flowering and longer days. Now that the equinox has passed, it’s time for evenings out on the town and early morning starts. By contrast, here in the North, the leaves are changing colour and there’s a chill in the air. It’s hard to imagine the quantity of snow and ice that hit this part of the world in midwinter – the deciduous forest is a very different beast than the evergreen gum trees, rainforest, and buttongrass moorlands of Tasmania.
In this issue, we’re bringing some great stories and pictures together to get you thinking about the great outdoors and the living world around us. To help put some order to the chaotic world, we’ll learn about branching patterns in the natural world and the analogy of life as a branching tree. We’ll jump onto the dolerite rocks at one of the closest gateways to Southwest Tasmania- Hartz Mountains National Park. Shutterbug Adventures joins us for another great exploration, this time at Maria Island National Park on Tassie’s East Coast, and then we wrap up the Redmap Video Competition outreach with the first prize winner – Code Red in the Blue.
We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed compiling it. Many thanks to all contributors, and many thanks to you! Spring is here!
– The Editor