Independent Australian journal · Est. 2009
Doctor Earth is an independent Australian journal of environmental health: soil, water, fire, wildlife, houses and civic practice, written in Australian English for landholders, householders and civic readers.
Cover essay
A cracking clay on the Darling Downs is not a sand on the Swan Coastal Plain. This field note shows how to read colour, structure, pH and sodicity in an Australian profile — from a dug pit or a roadside cutting.
Dr Maya Chen · 11 March 2024 · 7 min read
Soil, pasture and paddock
How Australian soils fail, recover and feed us — from cracking clays to suburban compost heaps.
Rivers, tanks and aquifers
Murray–Darling politics at kitchen-table scale, tanks that do not breed mosquitoes, and creeks that still remember rain.
Heat, flame and the long summer
Bushfire ecology after Black Summer, cool fire, urban heat islands and houses that do not cook their occupants.
Habitat in a settled country
Koalas, native bees, urban possums and the weeds that quietly rewrite a remnant overnight.
Air, chemicals and the backyard
Indoor air, PFAS, lead paint, food gardens and the products that linger in Australian bathrooms.
Landcare, law and habit
How Landcare actually works, how to read an impact statement, and the circular habits that survive January.
Cover crops fail in Australia when they are planted on a northern-hemisphere calendar. This essay sets legumes against cereals, Mediterranean winters against summer-rainfall districts, and the need to terminate a cover before it steals the spring.
Dr Maya Chen · 21 April 2025 · 8 min read
A suburban heap is not a farm windrow. This is a practical note on hot and cold piles, rats and soldier flies, council bins, January heat, and how finished compost behaves on a Perth sand versus a Melbourne clay.
Tom Phelan · 10 February 2025 · 7 min read
Australian cities store summer in bitumen, west-facing brick and roofs that were chosen for a milder century. The extra heat arrives at night, when the streets should be giving it back. Tree canopy, pale surfaces and renter-scale tactics are how a suburb stops being a storage heater.
Jed Hargraves · 30 November 2024 · 10 min read
Cool fire is not a lifestyle look and not a video you copy on a weekend. It is a practice held by Aboriginal people on particular Country, now asked to sit beside agency burns, liability forms and a public that wants a gentle flame to undo a hard century.
Jed Hargraves · 2 November 2024 · 10 min read
Black Summer is now the reference fire against which later seasons are quietly measured. Epicormic shoots and seedbanks explain a lot of the green that followed. They do not explain every forest, and they do not unwrite the smoke that sat on towns for weeks.
Jed Hargraves · 11 October 2024 · 10 min read
A safer clean is less about a leaf on the label and more about fragrance, residual disinfectants, what a septic can digest, and what vinegar cannot do. Read the first six ingredients. Ignore the waterfall. The house will still get clean.
Dr Linh Tran · 13 September 2024 · 9 min read