The bound volume
Long-form reporting and practical essays on the health of Australian land, water, fire, wildlife, houses and civic life.
Cover crops fail in Australia when they are planted on a northern-hemisphere calendar. This essay sets legumes against cereals, Mediterranean winters against summer-rainfall districts, and the need to terminate a cover before it steals the spring.
Dr Maya Chen · 21 April 2025 · 8 min read
A suburban heap is not a farm windrow. This is a practical note on hot and cold piles, rats and soldier flies, council bins, January heat, and how finished compost behaves on a Perth sand versus a Melbourne clay.
Tom Phelan · 10 February 2025 · 7 min read
Australian cities store summer in bitumen, west-facing brick and roofs that were chosen for a milder century. The extra heat arrives at night, when the streets should be giving it back. Tree canopy, pale surfaces and renter-scale tactics are how a suburb stops being a storage heater.
Jed Hargraves · 30 November 2024 · 10 min read
Cool fire is not a lifestyle look and not a video you copy on a weekend. It is a practice held by Aboriginal people on particular Country, now asked to sit beside agency burns, liability forms and a public that wants a gentle flame to undo a hard century.
Jed Hargraves · 2 November 2024 · 10 min read
Black Summer is now the reference fire against which later seasons are quietly measured. Epicormic shoots and seedbanks explain a lot of the green that followed. They do not explain every forest, and they do not unwrite the smoke that sat on towns for weeks.
Jed Hargraves · 11 October 2024 · 10 min read
A safer clean is less about a leaf on the label and more about fragrance, residual disinfectants, what a septic can digest, and what vinegar cannot do. Read the first six ingredients. Ignore the waterfall. The house will still get clean.
Dr Linh Tran · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
Civic Practice · Guest post
A guest note on the circular habits that outlast a New Year list: repair, op shops, the FOGO bin, and the small reuse that does not die in a heatwave. Virtue that needs a cool morning will not see February. The rest can be ordinary.
Priya Nair · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
A backyard can grow a useful amount of food if you respect lead in old soil, the season your city actually has, and the water you will still give in January. Shade cloth and chooks help. A farm fantasy does not. Start with a bed you will keep.
Dr Linh Tran · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
PFAS hide in stain treatments, some cosmetics and waterproofing, and they sit in groundwater near old firefighting foam. A household can swap a few products. It cannot mop a catchment. Here is the difference, written for an Australian laundry and an Australian suburb.
Dr Linh Tran · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
Landcare is a group, a grant cycle and a Saturday that looks like gloves and a sausage. It is also volunteer fatigue, a trailer that needs registration, and the long work of weeds that return. Here is the civic machine, without the brochure.
Samira Blake · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
Pre-1970 paint and fibro are still in ordinary Australian houses, including the Queenslanders people love. DIY renovation is how they become dust. Licensed removal is slower and less romantic. This is a householder’s note, not medical advice.
Dr Linh Tran · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
An EIS is a long argument dressed as a folder of facts. A SEE is a smaller cousin. Submissions, offsets and the maps the consultant did not dwell on are how a civic reader stays honest. You do not need to be a lawyer. You do need a method.
Samira Blake · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read
A dry-climate garden does not have to be gravel and a single sculptural agave. Hydrozoning, mulch, honest plant choices and a tank can keep a backyard looking inhabited through a restriction summer, without pretending the hose is a climate strategy.
Frances Okonkwo · 8 September 2024 · 10 min read
Rest, density and water points can change how cattle use a run, but they do not manufacture rain. A field note on northern and southern rangelands, feral grazers, and what regeneration can honestly do in a drought.
Tom Phelan · 2 September 2024 · 8 min read
Stormwater does not vanish when it reaches a grate. It becomes a concrete creek, a litter pulse, a nutrient argument and, in a few lucky channels, a place that still holds platypus. Daylighting, traps and water-sensitive design are how a suburb admits the rain is still its problem.
Frances Okonkwo · 17 August 2024 · 10 min read
The Great Artesian Basin is not an underground lake waiting to be tapped. It is old water held in rock, feeding bores, mound springs and an inland pastoral life, now argued over by miners, gas fields and the long job of capping what should never have been left to run.
Frances Okonkwo · 20 July 2024 · 10 min read
The sea is not arguing in a court. It is rearranging sand, estuaries and the edge of suburbs that were sold as forever. Seawalls buy time; planned retreat admits a map. Insurance, an EIS and the difference between a tourist cliff and a street of houses are the civic work.
Jed Hargraves · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
Australian houses were built for a milder century and now ask the grid to finish the job. Insulation, ceiling fans, a shaded western window and a split system used with manners keep a room liveable. Renters have a shorter list; blackouts make that list shorter still.
Jed Hargraves · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
Indoor air in an Australian house is bushfire smoke, a tropical wet-season mould, a gas cooktop and an unflued heater arguing in a closed room. This is not medical advice. It is a building conversation for owners and renters who still have to breathe at home.
Dr Linh Tran · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
A koala corridor is not a logo on a developer's fence. It is feed trees an animal can walk between, dogs held at dusk, roads that do not harvest the night, and a refusal to treat an offset as a tree that is actually standing.
Marli Watson · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
Urban wildlife is not a failure of the city. Possums, flying-foxes, snakes and ibis are using the habitat we left. Bins, fruit, a pool fence and a phone number for WIRES are how a yard stays neighbourly without becoming a trap.
Marli Watson · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
A backyard will not save Australian bees, but it can stop being hostile. Tetragonula hives have become a fashion; solitary bees were already in the fence post. Flowers, a little bare earth, and a refusal to fog the suburb are the useful offer.
Marli Watson · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
A household will not delist a species. It can keep a cat in at night, dim a light that spills into bush, give money to people who already have a plan, and stop confusing a donation with a tree. Citizen science is attention with a datasheet.
Marli Watson · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
Lantana, cat's claw and asparagus fern do not wait for a management plan. They rewrite a gully between two wet seasons. Garden escapees, dirty boots after a bushwalk and the habit of treating a pretty flower as harmless are how the rewrite begins.
Marli Watson · 7 July 2024 · 9 min read
Soil carbon is a stock you can measure, not a vibe you can market. This essay separates organic matter from Australian Carbon Credit Units, pasture from cropping, and a one-per-cent claim from what a paddock can actually hold.
Dr Maya Chen · 17 June 2024 · 7 min read
A tank is not a plastic barrel you forget after the plumber leaves. First-flush, mosquito mesh, pumps, roof metal and state plumbing rules decide whether the water is a garden gift or a warm, neglected hazard. This is the household version, without the panic or the brochure.
Frances Okonkwo · 13 June 2024 · 10 min read
The Murray–Darling is not a distant irrigation argument. It is the catchment that fills Adelaide's glass in a dry year, keeps Broken Hill on a pipeline, and decides whether a river still looks like a river. Here is the basin in householder language.
Frances Okonkwo · 1 May 2024 · 10 min read
A cracking clay on the Darling Downs is not a sand on the Swan Coastal Plain. This field note shows how to read colour, structure, pH and sodicity in an Australian profile — from a dug pit or a roadside cutting.
Dr Maya Chen · 11 March 2024 · 7 min read