Walking through Great Sandy National Park on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island), scenery changes from long sandy beaches to shady tall rainforest. Sandy tracks of this sand island crunch with Eucalyptus leaves. It’s August. Small spring flowers are soft lilac amongst spiky long tendrils of grass trees, cool in dappled shadows after the open expanse of glittering sand. “Stop!” one of our group called excitedly. She whipped out a butterfly net. Swooping the net with practised technique, she suddenly held the net close to her face, hand inside, carefully she guided a little grey moth into a specimen bottle. It’s a …. She’d warned us that she would be interested to see if there’s any of this species of moth as she’d noted the variety of flowers they like. Now it’s our turn to be excited, questioning and totally absorbed in the tiny beauty. Her PhD thesis on that species of moth is now complete but, when I talked to her recently, she’d love to walk to see other species.
