Eco online recently experienced some difficulties after being hacked over the ANZAC Day weekend. Without getting into the details, we lost a lot of information, but we are now back online with a new and hopefully improved format. The new layout gives you multiple ways to search the site and find the information you’re looking for. We are hoping the layout is cleaner and easier to follow, but your feedback is always welcomed.

Latest Content and Updates

The latest content includes a new addition to Eco online – Exploring the Past. In this section we will feature an ongoing series of writings from the early part of the 20^th century.

Kindly supplied by Dr Deborah Jordan, a Research Fellow with the School of English, Media Studies & Art History at the University of Queensland she writes:  “The The Sunshine Coast was home to two gifted writers, Vance and Nettie Palmer, from 1925. In those days when few white people were exploring  the bush, they were out most days, glorying in the earth and sea and sky.

These were the years of their daughters growing, running free among the heath and sheoaks; the time of struggling as poets and freelance writers to find a voice and to write of the land; the time of learning how to get across their political message about how the bush was being whacked, and how a sheoak is not a sheoak unless the child is reared to name and love it.

The Palmers went on to be one of Australias most important literary couples in the 1940s and ’50s. Vance was novelist, dramatist, cultural critic and political commentator; Nettie was journalist, literary critic, historian, biographer and essayist. Some of you will know Vance’s  novel The Passage. Through their early environmental writings, drawing directly on their experiences, we can begin to see another dimension of our landscape, of our society in transition from the pristine environment while cared for only by Aboriginal custodians to the skyscrapers of the present. Read the full story here.

Keep an eye out for future updates and more tales from the early years of the Sunshine Coast.

Print Editions of Eco news

We are currently in the process of providing online copies of the past print editions of Eco news. You can now download the latest issue of Eco news, Issue 11 and the very first edition, Issue 1. In the near future we hope to bring you more archives from previous editions of Eco news.

Illustrating the Issues

Over the past few editions, Eco has been fortunate to have some fantastic illustrations supplied by local graphic designer, Alex Mankiewicz. Take a look at some of her work under Eco Images.

The Next Print Edition

Eco news Issue 12 is underway and as usual always feel free to offer contributions. Until next time…

Illustrations depicting ecotourism. Click on the images below.

Illustrations depicting greenwash. Click on the images below.

Alex mankiewicz

wanderer graphic

Illustrations depicting peak oil and its impacts upon society. Click on the following link to see a collection of images.