It's been a while...

Ahem.

It has been a while since the last newsletter, but I have excellent excuses: surgery to correct previous surgery that went wrong; a fractured spine; bushfires and evacuations and hundreds of wildlife to feed and water during November December a...

A Red Christmas

The sky is grey, the sun is red, the paddocks and animals a uniform dusty tan. Our house is perched between two vast bushfires, too large to control, yet the firies and whole community are quietly battling on. For now, the easterly wind will keep us all...

No, not that one.

An even older one.

Think of our most ancient cave paintings, or engravings under a cliff. Imagine the person carrying a torch guiding people into the darkness, explaining the images, the symbols. Without those guides, the true meaning of those images is...

Summertime Magic

I have pondered long in the land I love

What the land I love can be

And the greatest gifts we can give each child

Are courage… and history.

(With apologies to Henry Lawson)

It has been a summer of magic and beauty and happiness: a small boy explaining to his...

The holidays are a time for nibbling. Everyone is on different timetables. Kids sleep in or wake at 5 am. Breakfast can last for three hours and morph into lunch.

Our holidays are often one ‘proper’ meal, with everyone sitting at the table for two courses. The rest of t...

Alternatives to the Plastic Christmas Trees

Photo found online (source unkown)

Tired of the old green and shaggy but don’t want to go fake and plastic? Try an Aussie Christmas tree instead!

New South Wales Christmas Bush

From Wikimedia Commons (unattributed)

This comes with...

I wrote this almost forty years ago, in the late 70’s, during a drought that went on until 1983.

I lived in a shed at the time; read by candlelight and rose with the sun.

It sounds like a hard time, but it was the happiest I had ever known, a community that shared hardsh...

 Christmas Lilies!

For all those readers who can’t wait for the next in the Miss Lily series, out in April: Christmas Lilies, an eBook novella is out!

Christmas 1914: two lovers, one war, and the beginning of what would be the most successful resistance movement in World...

Delights In the Last Month:

1. Taking grandkids – and other kids – to Josephine Wants to Dance: The Musical. The youngest sat without moving, with delight and amazement, for the entire performance, and was still dazed by its wonderfulness an hour later. The others were...

 It’s snowed!!!!!

Admittedly  the snow didn’t last on the ground down here, but it fluttered across the valley. Some  areas had hail, others rain, but there was a giant swathe of genuine snow, about 30 cm deep,  and still drifts of snow on the mountain in late afternoon...