the Logbook Collection Story.
My first word was boat.
Spending a lot of childhood on Moreton Island meant I was on the water before I could properly walk on land, fishing because that's what you did and exploring because it made me feel alive. My fondest memories don't have walls or floors, they have salt and tide and the particular light that comes off the water early in the morning before anyone else is awake.
I never thought much about documenting any of it…you don't when you're in the middle of it. You think you'll remember, you think the good days are too big to forget.
Years later I moved to Far North Queensland, I bought a little shack sight unseen and slowly built a life for myself in one of the most extraordinary corners of the country. The reef on my doorstep and the rainforest at my back…the kind of place that gets into you slowly and then completely.
I spend a lot of time collecting things…shells, stories, observations and questions. The more I paid attention, the more I realised how quickly moments disappear if they aren't recorded somewhere.
Then in 2025 my dad experienced a life-changing health scare. He's my lighthouse.
A lifetime spent on the water, places known by memory and fishing spots discovered long before GPS existed, seasons, catches and countless stories carried entirely in his head. During his recovery, I found myself wanting to go back through it all with him. I wanted to know about the trips, the places, the catches worth remembering and the history of a life spent outside….but there was very little written down! Not because it wasn't important, but because nobody had ever handed him something worth recording it in. Something built for the way he actually lived.
Not a journal, not a diary…a logbook. A place for conditions, tides, locations, catches, observations, sketches and notes. A place to leave a record.
I couldn't bring back the memories that had already faded, but I could create a tool to help preserve the ones still to come. So I made a logbook.
The Logbook Collection grew from that moment. Today, it remains one of the most personal projects I've ever created…not because it's a product, because it's a reminder. A reminder that the things we assume we'll always remember often deserve to be written down.
A fishing trip, a shell found after a storm, abeach walked a hundred times, aquestion worth revisiting.
One of my favourite features is the index. It transforms a notebook into something much more useful. Months or years later, you can return to a particular trip, species, location or observation without flipping endlessly through pages trying to find it again. The details remain connected, the stories stay accessible, the record continues to grow and even more importantly…its a story ready to pass down.
My dad is back on the water these days.
And now he has a logbook.
Log it all - Leave a record.
Ebb Harper
