Peter Grant
Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.
The Patch

The life recycle

by Peter Grant
06 Jul 2024

For a dead language, Latin still has a lot to say ...

Environment

Blue gum blues

by Peter Grant
22 Jul 2023

There’s homesickness, and then there’s homesickness ...

TASMANIAN VOICES

Father to the man

by Peter Grant
26 May 2021

Has he been caught unawares, or is he posing? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d struck a posture for the camera. Perhaps I’m being harsh. After all he’s not yet familiar with these ancient Gondwanan forests. And that look – he is gazing up with a mix of deep contemplation and awe – is a fitting response to the total sensory embrace of a Tasmanian rainforest. All these years later he still feels it. I know because he is me. A 28-year-old me, a me flying free of the gravity of now. But still me. It’s 1982 and a different world. He has no internet and no computer (they’re for mathematical types, and he’s not one of those). His television is of the smallish, black and white kind, like his sheep dog.

TASMANIAN VOICES

River of legends

by Peter Grant
07 Dec 2020

This isn’t the image I have of sea kayaking. We are stroking gently, silently, through wide, calm, coffee-coloured water. There are no waves, and even if it seems unfathomably deep, I have no fear of sudden capsize or drowning. And that’s because we’re not at sea, but on the Gordon River.  The high banks and hills surrounding the river are decked in luxuriant vegetation, reminding us that this is a wild, water-soaked part of Tasmania. Huon pine, tea-tree, paperbark, native laurel, horizontal and myrtle all grow prolifically here. The sky today is blue and cloudless, but the river’s present calm belies a dark recent past.

TASMANIAN VOICES

Girt

by Peter Grant
30 Sep 2020

Standing atop the sheer dolerite cliffs of Cape Hauy, braced hard against a strong updraught, I didn’t expect a line from our national anthem to pop into my head. Our home is girt by sea. I suppose the huge coastal vista here reminded me how fully girt Tasmania is in comparison with that vast, old, dry continent to our north. Here we feel so much closer to the sea, so much more surrounded by it. That, after all, is the definition of an island.