Author(s): Paula Peeters (Illustrator)

Environmental Issues

In 2017 Paula Peeters moved to the landscape she had fallen in love with as a child, and had been returning to for most of her life. The mountain forests of south-east Queensland, including Woonoongoora or Lamington National Park, are part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. They are home to an incredible diversity of plant, animal and fungal species; 'a million stories, waiting to be told'. To Dr Peeters, a botanist/zoologist/ecologist by training, and an artist/writer by choice, it is a place of immeasurable richness. Paula realises that 'getting to know' the nature of this place could take several lifetimes. In her first tentative steps, recorded in this book, Paula uses nature journaling to look closely, inquire deeply, and record her responses to the wildlife and landscapes of this place. Covering the years 2017 to 2021, this book includes a celebrated series of cartoons about the unprecedented wildfires of 2019 that forced Paula and her family to flee for their lives, and destroyed Binna Burra Mountain Lodge. By turns whimsical, inquisitive, funny, sad, and wondrous, A Walk in the Mountain Forests is unique in the library of Australian natural history books: a personal insight into intimate encounters with nature, told via the practice of nature journaling, and created in contemporary times.