The sparse plains of my own childhood in western New South Wales were marked by conflict, chain-clearing, water theft and suicide: all out of sight, out of mind for most of us. Perhaps that’s why I seek shadow places, walk scalded ground, touch dead trees, smell contaminated water, and discover how people cope, adapt and live with the slow violence of grinding ecological damage. My hope is to render vicarious experiences of the shadow places of the Anthropocene, and in this way, shed light on them.

When Val Plumwood conceived of ‘shadow places’, I’m not sure that Lord Howe Island was the kind of place she had in mind. It is a World Heritage site, an iconic paradise moored in the Tasman Sea, far from the destruction wrought by human industry. But I’ve come to follow researchers who are working in an ecological community under siege, who witness death and suffering each day. I’m exploring the plight of one species of bird, the ways in which million-year-old patterns of migration, courting, breeding and chick-rearing are being disrupted by human actions – a process environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren labels ‘wasted generations’.[ii]