This is a third person ‘about me’ that was written for a website I had an article on… I thought I would chuck it here too. Because I am lazy like that.

Fiona Gumboots is a person of many obsessions who spends her time trying to combine them all.

Photography and a passionate love of science keeps her out and about exploring everything she can find in the natural world. From the beauty of a sunset and auroras to the intricate details of the world of fungi and the lower plant kingdom she is never short of something to keep her mind racing.

In between her fascination with the natural world she spends her time studying plant science at UTAS, hanging out with her husband and kids, martial arts and generally getting side tracked with the latest obsession that has caught her fancy.

*Edit – Fiona finished her Bachelor of Science with a major in Plant Science in 2018 and is now doing Honours, looking at seed germination within the genus Epacris….

*Edit again – As of 2022 Fiona has finished her honours (she did that at the start of 2021) and has since been working as an ecologist for North Barker Ecosystem Services in Hobart. She still has lots of obsessions. Now including mountain biking, and knitting socks and beanies and other knitted things.

*Edit again again – Still obsessed with plants. Still obsessed with knitting. Now working at Enviro-Dynamics as a botanist/ environmental consultant, doing all kinds of awesome fun stuff. Living the plant dream!

The Gumboot Chronicles has been going for a while. I’m not quite sure what it is really. A collection of things I feel like writing about. A place to collate my photography of the plants and associated organisms I find in the forests. Somewhere to try and inspire folks to enjoy the outdoors and perhaps learn a new thing along the way. Maybe take a different look at martial arts and the benefits it provides.

My constant aim is to post more regularly. Write about the different walks and hikes I do with the idea, not only of a record of where I go and what I see, but encourage others to get out there too. The same philiosophy also applies to martial arts, botany, photography, pretty much everything I write about. I hope someone, somewhere, learns something new or is prompted to look differently at something they have read here.

I often hear people advise that a blog or a website needs a theme and needs to stick to it. That mixing things up and having posts about topics that have no relation to each other is a bad thing. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. I don’t think I could stick to a theme if I tried. I am all over the place with interests in many different things that have no bearing to each other at all. It is what it is.

On that note. If you have any feedback, good or bad, feel free to drop me a line.