S T O R I E S (Q U E N T I N ~ C H E S T E R )

STORIES

Most of my time is spent doing articles for magazines and newspapers. Often it's the editors who come up with the story ideas. Other times, it's me pestering them. The writing is usually a braid of natural history, landscape, people, personal experience and issues. In the case of Wild I also have a regular column - The Wild Life. That means I get to scribble about whatever is on my mind as the deadline arrives. Here are some of the articles from the past two or three years:

Return of the Chook                     AUST GEO                               APR 2006
Take it From Me                           WILD 102                                OCT 2006
Essence of the Barossa                 AUST GEO                               OCT 2006
The Miracle Cure                         WILD 103                                JAN 2007
Born To Be Wild                           WILD 105                                JUL 2007
Away with the Birds                     WILD 106                                OCT 2007
Jagged Beauty (Flinders)              AUST GEO 88                          OCT 2007
Digging Up Pasties . . .                 AUST GEO 88                        OCT 2007
Parks, Present & Future               WILD 107                               JAN 2008
Skin Deep                                     WILD 108                                APR 2008
Accidental Birder                         AUST GEO 90                          APR 2008
Immersion Therapy                    WILD 109                                JUL 2008
Our Magnetic North                    OUTDOOR AUSTRALIA              JUL 2008
Early Warning                               AUST GEO 91                          JUL 2008
To Boldly Go                                 WILD 110                                OCT 2008
Wilderness With Ensuite               WILD 111                               JAN 2009
Finding Your Way . . .                WILD 112                               APR 2009
Artist's Island Connections           THE ISLANDER                         APR 2009
Sticks & Stones                             WILD 113                               JUL 2009

from Immersion Therapy

"It takes just a few dozen strides for the forest to grab you. It reels you into a world of green on green, a world that is not so much a place as a play of sensations. Travelling the forest depths, all familiar points of reference - landmarks and horizons, shifts in wind direction, the angle of the sun, the drift of clouds and the register of distant sounds - are gone. You might get a faint change in light or odd wafts of moving air but none of this adds up to much. Instead it’s all foreground, new growth on old, a fantasia of leaf shapes, scaly bark, strange plants and trickling, gushing sounds."