I'd come into town from the bush - after 28 years of field work in natural systems - and become an academic. So I turned my attention to humans, much as I had to possums in the forests.

I can easily teach people to be gardeners, and from them, once they know how to garden, you'll get a philosopher.

Choose your friends from people who you like what they do - even though you mightn't like what they say.

Life is also busy transporting and overturning the soils of earth, the stones, and the minerals. The miles-long drifts of sea kelp that float along our coasts may carry hundreds of tons of volcanic boulders held in their roots. I have followed these streams of life over 300 km, and seen them strand on granite beaches, throwing their boulders up on a 9,000 year old pile of basalt, all the hundreds of tons of which were carried there by kelp.

Type 1 Error: When we settle into wilderness, we are in conflict with so many life forms that we have to destroy them to exist. Keep out of the bush. It is already in good order.

Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance.

The agriculture taught at colleges between 1930 and 1980 has caused more damage on the face of the Earth than any other factor.