Penny Olsen

Australia’s First Naturalists: Indigenous peoples’ contribution to early zoology by Penny Olsen and Lynette Russell

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August 2019, no. 413
Anna Clark reviews 'Australia’s First Naturalists: Indigenous peoples’ contribution to early zoology' by Penny Olsen and Lynette Russell

What does it mean to really know an ecosystem? To name all the plants and animals in a place and understand their interactions? To feel an embodied connection to Country? To see and hear in ways that confirm and extend that knowledge?

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Night Parrot: Australia’s most elusive bird by Penny Olsen

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May 2019, no. 411
Neil Murray reviews 'Night Parrot: Australia’s most elusive bird' by Penny Olsen

Night Parrot by Penny Olsen is more than a biography of a bird that spent most of the twentieth century successfully hiding from people. It is a historical biography of human determination and obsession, and of the ways in which this bird has acted as a catalyst for transitions between those two psychological states ...

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Upside Down World: Early European Impressions of Australia’s Curious Animals by Penny Olsen

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October 2010, no. 325
Peter Menkhorst reviews 'Upside Down World' by Penny Olsen

In this age of throwaway digital images it is easy to forget that before the late nineteenth century the only means of conveying a visual image of an object or place was by drawing its likeness. For this reason, well-funded exploratory expeditions often included an artist whose role was to illustrate new and interesting people, landscapes, geological features, anima ...

Feather and Brush: Three centuries of Australian bird art by Penny Olsen

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June 2001, no. 231
Libby Robin reviews 'Feather and Brush: Three centuries of Australian bird art' by Penny Olsen

Gilbert White, in 1789, declared that ‘the language of birds is very ancient and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood’. How then to portray the speakers of such language? How to give them meaning and understanding as well as plumage?

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