Dark descends upon a dead-end property atop a winding mountain road and Ian McMaster steps out into the forest.

Protective goggles perched atop his grey hair, torch in hand, McMaster is drawn into the gums that surround his rammed-earth home toward a white sheet shining in UV light like a stage prop moon.

He is not alone. He is setting out to show some musicians a moth. The mission, though, is almost certain to fail.

McMaster has gone looking for moths – or mothing – about four nights every week for the past seven years on the property that he and wife Chrissie share atop Mount Mellum in the Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland . In all those years he has only once seen the species of moth that singer-songwriter Emma Bosworth hopes to see on this night in late August. And that time

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