As many members may know the Retired & Leisured (R&L) Group had been organised and chaired by Margot Bentley for a number of years. Unfortunately, due to some health issues, Margot has been unable to continue in this role in 2018. In a moment of weakness and with Margot’s assistance ...

Kevin Morrison, previously Chief Wildlife Officer of the Department of Parks and Wildlife, spoke to us about his work and experiences there. He grew up in Kalgoorlie, where catching rabbits and chasing birds with a ‘ging’ revealed his fascination with the bush. Whilst at school he did biology, which led ...

Our August meeting was an account given by Eddie Dell of the coach trip that he and Joy made in Costa Rica with Coates Wildlife Tours, where they were very efficiently guided by a local guide. The name of the country means “rich coast” and it covers an area of ...

Our July meeting was a talk given by Laura Skates, who is doing her PhD with research at UWA. Early work on carnivorous plants was carried out by Charles Darwin, who raised them in his own greenhouse and wrote a book about them. He said “Drosera is a wonderful plant ...

Our June meeting was an old-fashioned style of Retired and Leisured Group meeting where each member speaks. In this case their contribution was to be about birds in Western Australia. Robin Roe brought in a copy of N. Cayley’s book What Bird Is That?, to which she was introduced as ...

RETIRED & LEISURED GROUP MAY MEETING REPORT The May meeting consisted of an attractive and engaging talk given by Gabor Bedo on his visit to Lord Howe Island in 2014. The island was discovered by Lieut. Ball on HMS Supply in 1788 and named after Lord Howe, the head of ...

RETIRED & LEISURED GROUP APRIL MEETING REPORT Our April meeting was a talk by Tony Ahmat on Australia’s yellow diamonds, specifically the Ellendale diamond mine. Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring substance and alluvial diamonds were known in Australia from 1851 and discovered in commercial quantities in 1895. The Ellendale ...

March 2017 The group visited the Travellers and Traders in the Indian Ocean exhibition at the museum, which tells the story of the voyages and people who travelled in the area over hundreds of years and of the objects which they carried—originating from many countries and often discovered in far ...

Eddie Dell was the first speaker at our initial meeting for 2017. He spoke about the birds on his Sawyers Valley property, where he has identified 38 species. He brought in a New Holland Honeyeater’s nest—a tiny one—from which two young birds had hatched and later flew off to a ...