It's been a fairly hectic seven months. I have researched and written a book for the 10-14 age group called Australian Backyard Naturalist, illustrating at each point with photos of home-made apparatus or the life forms in question.

I'm sort of a naturalist by training, but I haven;t written in the area for 25 years. The National Library of Australia asked me to do a sequel for Australian Backyard Explorer which was shortlisted this week for the Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall award, so I was pretty chuffed when the first one paid off.

The second one has been a lot of work, but I had lots of fun.

There's another children's book in production (it's about monsters), but now I'm going hammer and tongs on a serious interest: the hunger for gold, the madness, the harm and other effects that gold has engendered. There's a lot of hilarious science and other stuff to be told there, but now I'm going more quietly.