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People entering Sydney Harbour or taking a ferry to Manly see North Head to starboard, and admire the 80-metre cliffs, but they don't realise that they are looking at a sand-tied island, a piece of rock which is over 200 million years old, and even the locals don't know that we have so many plant species growing there, not to mention ants, pythons, butterflies, weevils, water dragons, ticks, birds, possums, dragonflies, bandicoots, echidnas, tree snakes, lichens, stick insects, snails, spiders, lichens, fungi, colourful bacteria, bird of paradise flies, ant lions, frogs and much more on the 10,000-year-old sandhills that formed in the last Ice Age.
Peter Macinnis is biology-trained and cares about rocks, but prefers to call himself a naturalist, and he has played on, and walked over, the headland for more than 70 years (how much more, he won't say, admitting only to being of advanced middle age). This is a revised version of a print book, optimised for reading on your mobile phone or tablet.
He has worked as a volunteer on land care projects on North Head since 2013, and his photos of his finds fill this book. He knows where the bodies are buried — and they aren't all in the Third Quarantine Cemetery!
Peter wins awards when he writes for children, and while this book is written for teens and up, the clarity is there to allow eight-year-olds who resemble him at that age to learn a great deal about the rocks, plants, animals and lesser life forms, all of which may be found in this naturalists' wonderland.
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With a double major in botany and zoology, some time as a National Parks ranger, and trained as a teacher, I spent more years as a working bureaucrat than as a classroom teacher (though that was 11.5 years in Chalkland, and I have never stopped educating: when people asked me "What do you teach?", my cheery answer was always "children!").
I have always been a naturalist and enquirer into curious things, I am an obligate writer and story-teller. I spent 5 years as an educator at the Powerhouse and the Australian Museum, informing adults, teenagers and tinies. I am a volunteer “visiting scientist” (under a CSIRO program) at Manly Vale Public School on Sydney’s northern beaches. I often take adult groups on show and tell walks. I see one or two echidnas each week while working as a bush regenerator, and I delight in sharing them with people. I know echidnas’ special attraction for people.
I have written about 60 books over the last 50 years. I win awards for my children’s books, but among my more interesting and most cited works for adults, I would list Curious Minds (National Library of Australia), about naturalist artists and explorers of Australia; The Lawn: A Social History (Murdoch); Bittersweet: the story of sugar (Allen and Unwin); Not Your Usual Gold Stories (Five Mile); 100 Discoveries, (Pier 9), (also in German); Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World, (Pier 9), (also in Korean); Australia's Pioneers, Heroes and Fools, (Pier 9); The Killer Bean of Calabar and Other Stories, (Allen and Unwin), (now in 5 or 6 languages).
My writing tends to focus in the intersections of science, technology, Australia, mathematics, history and culture. From this base, I have two Whitley awards, seven CBCA long-lists, one CBCA Honour book and one book of the year, one WA Premier’s Prize for Children’s Literature, and others. My publisher for the last decade has been the National Library of Australia, and they are currently considering a fifth edition of my The Big Book of Australian History.
