HAWAII: JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE. PART 1 – IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT.

On a recent visit to Hawaii, I hardly saw any native wildlife, a stark reminder that things haven't improved since I first came to film for the B.B.C. back in the early 1980s. Thirty five years ago I made my first visit to Hawaii at a time when travelling to distant tropical islands from the U.K. was considered exotic. In those days, you'd emerge from a plane into the shimmering light and once down the gangway steps walk to the terminal building with the heat of the sun bouncing beneath your feet like a playful pet; and just as you were…

So Long New Zealand and Thanks For All the Sheep. Part 2.

Any European botanist arriving in New Zealand for the first time might just as well be landing on a different planet - so extraordinarily is the plant life on these South Pacific islands. It took four or five years to see any positive results when trying to establish our native New Zealand garden. The one thing that grew easily was flax, and this was encouraging, because I'd seen nectar feeding birds visiting flax flowers elsewhere - so, it wasn't difficult to join up the dots... soon I was dividing and planting out as many locally grown flax as I could…