Skinks. Australia is crawling with them, figuratively and literally. At last count we had 339 species. 339 species! And yet the richness of species is only half the story. Australia has a skink for every occasion. Giant skinks and miniature skinks. Skinks that live half of their lives in the alpine deep freeze, and others that toil through the harshest desert heat. Skinks that scale trees in a blistering flash, and others that have lost all but the last vestige of their limbs. Skinks whose days are spent cavorting in tight-knit family units, and others who are murderously territorial. Skinks saturated with colour, and skinks whose camouflage is near impregnable. Skinks whose range extends over hundreds of square kilometers, and others that persist nowhere else but a speck of granite in the Southern Ocean. You would be hard pressed to find a more diverse radiation than the Australian Scincidae…

Eastern Robust Slider, Lerista punctatovittata. Big Desert, Victoria

South-west Crevice Skink, Egernia napoleonis. Poorongorup NP, Western Australia

Boulenger’s Skink, Morethia boulengeri. Mansfield, Victoria

White’s Skink, Liopholis whitii. Grampians NP, Victoria

Ctenotus brachyonyx. Ouyen, Victoria

Tussock Skink, Pseudemoia pagenstecheri. Craigieburn, Victoria

Ragged Snake-eyed Skink, Cryptoblepharus pannosus. Murray-Sunset NP, Victoria

Southern Grass Skink, Pseudemoia entrecasteauxii. Mt Baw Baw NP, Victoria

Evolution crafts some wacky creatures. Birds that can’t fly. Squirrels that can. Mammals that lay eggs. Worms that luminesce. Vampire bats. Goblin fish. Octopus. I must admit that I have a considerable soft spot for these ecological and evolutionary oddities. They are just so fascinating; so mind-bogglingly weird. So indulge me as a list a few more. A few that I’ve had the great joy of seeing in the flesh, and whom I dearly hope to see again. Frogs whose finely textured and brilliantly patterned skin has inspired Aboriginal art for millennia. Dragons that spend their days munching hundreds of tiny, acrid ants, and whose skin not only wards off predators with a litany of devilish thorns, but also pumps water directly to their mouth by capillary action. Miniaturised snakes whose diet is restricted entirely to lizard eggs (that rarest of commodities) and others whose tail so perfectly mimics a grub – in both form and function – that it brings dinner right to their door. Lizards who swim through sand, having long ago cast aside the limbs that hinder their progress. And snakes whose morphology just takes your breath away. Whose beauty you can barely fathom, and whose existence re-affirms why you took up the cause in the first place….

Holy Cross Frog, Notaden bennetti

Thorny Devil, Moloch horridus

Black-naped Snake, Neelaps bimaculatus

Common Death Adder, Acanthophis antarcticus

Red-tailed Worm Lizard, Aprasia inaurita

Bandy Bandy, Vermicella annulata

Australia is not renowned for its mountains. Our medal tally at the last Winter Olympics will tell you that. And yet we have a mountain range that challenges the grandest the world has to offer. Not in height, no. But for scale, diversity and sheer spectacle? You have to give me that. The range I’m talking about is of course the Great Dividing Range – a conglomerate of mountains that stretches 3500 km along Australia’s eastern seaboard. Like most Australians, I’ve only nibbled at the edges of the Great Divide. But what a rewarding taste it has been. I’ve rambled through environments ranging from alpine meadows to sub-tropical rainforests, and had the pleasure of crossing paths with herps ranging from the tiniest of skinks, to dragons, elapids, frogs and pythons…

Alpine Copperhead, Austrelaps ramsayi. Mt Baw Baw, Victoria

Maccoy’s skink, Nannoscincus maccoyi. Mansfield, Victoria

Common Froglet, Crinia signifera. Grampians National Park, Victoria

White Lipped Snake, Drysdalia coronoides. Mt Baw Baw, Victoria

Spencer’s Skink, Pseudemoia spenceri. Mt Baw Baw, Victoria

Mountain Dragon, Rankinia diemensis. Grampians National Park, Victoria

Eastern Ranges Rock-skink, Liopholis modesta. New England Tableland, NSW

Carpet Python, Morelia spilota mcdowelli. Sunshine Coast hinterland, Queensland

If I had to sum up my research in one word it would be autecology. I’m fascinated by the stories of individual species. Their life-histories, their patterns of activity and dispersal, their diets, their habitat requirements. In short, the axes that influence the survival of individuals and populations. But it’s just my particular window on ecosystem function. It’s a form of abstraction. Like all applied ecologists, I’m ultimately concerned with the persistence of entire ecosystems. So how does an autecologist indulge their passion for ecosystems directly? Through landscape photography, of course!

Morning light on the open woodlands of Lake Tutchewop, Victoria

The clear waters of a sub-tropical rainforest stream in the Nightcap Range, NSW

Waxing moon over the Red Gum woodlands of southern New South Wales

Limestone heaths of south-western Western Australia

The granite heathlands of Mt Hope, Victoria

Light dancing on a Mt Baw Baw rivulet

Sandstone escarpment of Table Mountain, with the Murray floodplain below

Storm brewing on an Alpine meadow

Deep summer amongst the granite inselbergs of central Victoria

Sunset on the Brunswick River estuary

I couldn’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent wandering Melbourne’s volcanic plains. I grew up a just stones throw from them, on the sedimentary hills east of the Plenty River. Perhaps it is sacrilegious to say, but the volcanic plains were far more interesting for a boy obsessed with herpetology. Whereas the Red Box woodlands east of the river offered fleeting glimpses of the odd Garden Skink, the volcanic plains west of the river offered Little Whip Snakes, Brownsnakes, Tussock Skinks, Pobblebonks, Bluetongue Lizards, Cunningham Skinks, Copperheads, Tiger Snakes, Small-eyed Snakes. The choice was easy….

Southern Water Skink, Eulamprus tympanum

Brown Tree Frog, Litoria ewingii

Small-eyed Snake, Cryptophis nigrescens

Growling Grass Frog, Litoria raniformis

Striped Skink, Ctenotus robustus

Common Brownsnake, Pseudonaja textilis

Tussock Skink, Pseudemoia pagenstecheri

Little Whip Snake, Parasuta flagellum

Pobblebonk, Limnodynastes dumerilii