Many ‘tricks of the trade’ were revealed to us when Gerhard Saueracker took us underwater and then to the wilds of Canada in his search for the perfect photo. Initially, Gerhard focussed on scuba photography and the wonders of the briny – and what wonders! Because of the poor lighting ...

Dr Tony Friend from CALM and DEC presented us with a talk on small Western Australian mammals with particular emphasis on the plight of dibblers. Tony is the principal research scientist based in Albany and his brief covers several mammals, including potoroos and numbats as well as dibblers. Dibblers (Parantechinus ...

Twenty-seven naturalists enjoyed a beautiful warm and sunny Sunday morning on the short Weir View loop walk from the Perth Hills Centre at Mundaring Weir. Several welcome members from main club, including President Roz Hart, made the journey to the Hills in the hope of seeing some fungi. Unfortunately the ...

Darling Range Branch, April 2012 Meeting Report Dr Natasha Pauli from UWA presented the talk for the meeting on a subject that explored some of the relationships between soil fauna and vegetation. In her illustrated talk she developed on the poser: ‘are plants really the architects for below ground diversity?’ ...

Darling Range Branch February Excursion Report The WA MUSEUM is a great place to be on a hot day and so it was for a smallish Nats group from the DRB and a couple from the Main Club. We assembled in the main foyer and inspected the life-size dinosaur, Carnotaurus ...

Darling Range Branch meeting, February 2012 “The Nature of Japan” was the subject of our first meeting for 2012 and it was presented jointly by Hirono and Mike Griffiths. Following their recent visit to Japan in October 2011, Mike and Hirono conducted us on a travelogue from a Naturalists’ viewpoint. ...

June Butcher, founder of the Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre and our member and guest speaker for the general meeting, gave us an insight into the aims and functioning of the rehab centre now located in the now very well rehabilitated wildlife centre at 120 Gilchrist Rd, Lesmurdie. The main thrust ...

Dr Kayley Usher, from the CSIRO, was our guest speaker for the October meeting and presented a talk entitled ‘How marvellous microbes made our world’. We were introduced into the world of the microscopic and sub-microscopic through a series of images and were presented with some interesting aspects of microbial ...

Some 20 intrepid DRB members and visitors travelled to Twink Smurthwaite’s ‘Topsy’ garden in Boya on Sunday September 18th – ‘intrepid’ because the day promised to be truly equinoxal. About half of those people continued to inspect rehabilitation work by the Helena River Catchment Group (HRCG) along the Scott Street/Pumpback ...

Eric McCrum, past President and active member of the Darling Range Branch, presented a talk on grasshoppers entitled ‘The bizarre world of grasshoppers’. Eric’s talk was well illustrated from his extensive collection of slides, a selection of which showed the wide morphology and colourful varieties of grasshoppers from WA. Eric ...