Introduction to my life and why I miss England (well, some of it).

Welcome to my blog

Hello, I'm Alex, I'm a 24 year old wildlife enthusiast and amateur naturalist from Beverley, East Yorkshire. I've spent the last few years of my life both travelling and studying, living in Australia for two years then returning to the UK to study Conservation Biology in Plymouth, Devon. I'm currently back living in Australia with my girlfriend Kim, she's an Aussie, a teacher and the love of my life.

The next couple of years should be a bit of a roller coaster and give me plenty to write about, I'm applying for Australian residency, continuing my studies in Conservation Biology and attempting to teach myself (with the help of youtube) how to establish and maintain a sustainable, organic garden full of both edible plants and to attract native wildlife, River Cottage got nothing on me...

My goal over the next few years is to secure a job working for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy or a National Parks Service and eventually, over the next few decades, buy and restore two plots of land, one Down Under and one in the UK for the benefit of wildlife.


An Island is my home

My passion for wildlife and the outdoors was sparked at an early age, some of my earliest and fondest memories lie in a garden somewhere in Southern England at the height of summer.
There is something undeniably enchanting about the English countryside in the summer, not the monocultures and sprayed fields that dominate the rural landscapes today but the few remaining meadows that hark from a world that barely exists anymore. A timeless place of long, lazy days laying in sweet smelling grass by a babbling chalk stream, the realm of ratty and moley, skylarks and nightingales, cuckoos, dappled light and shimmering reflections, it's a world that is constantly in flux, vibrant, restless and alive, yet somehow still and peaceful.

Late afternoon is my favorite time, everything seems to stand still, small blue and copper butterflies dance between the tall, delicate grasses and wildflowers, to the lazy, hypnotic thrum of bees, grasshoppers and hoverflies. The screams of swifts, swallows and martens, nothing more than darting shadows silhouetted across the reddening skies, merge with the, liquid song of a lone blackbird as he lulls the sun to sleep for another night.

It's within this ephemeral world of the British summertime, crouched beside my garden pond, that my love for the natural world was nurtured.
I am, perhaps, romanticising the image and I'm sad to say that many of the places that captivated me in my childhood are now housing estates or golf courses, succumbing to development and 'progress'.
However, Australia is my new home and it's wildlife and environments are staggeringly beautiful, diverse and rich, sometimes beyond words, I intend on making a career fighting for their survival and in 20 years I will look back on the memories I make now as fondly as I view those I've written about here.
Although I think that even in all it's majesty, Australia can never hold the same meaning to me as the cry of the swifts and the subtle beauty of a wildflower meadow alongside a chalk stream.