Year: 2015

Bus stop chat 1I was at the bus stop waiting to catch the bus into town. A young man was also waiting and after a while he asked if the bus went into Queen St Mall, the main shopping area in Brisbane. I said near enough, that is where I am going and I am…

I spent a few days recently in Nicosia, my home town. Two years ago when I was last there the effects of the global financial downturn were very evident. One of the main commercial roads in the city, Makarios Avenue was a terrible sight. Every other shop had closed down, there were empty buildings, for…

These are the bigger moments that we take away from these special days. The celebration of a marriage. They start a new life together with wishes from friends, much love, support and joy at how beautiful they both were on their special day and how much they enjoyed the ceremony and the party.  The guests…

Sometimes when we have gone on holiday and come back, we remember the bigger things we experienced and I shall write more about that in the next blog. We quickly forget the detail, the weather, the land, images we see even fleetingly but which at the time leave their mark on our day and on…

We have landed on this troubled but defiant little island which is my homeland – so small that it would disappear many hundreds of times over in the Australian continent but big enough when I was growing up to fill my world and to be the image of all that I had. Coming back is…

Allan Cunningham (1791-1839), botanist and explorer was an extraordinary man with a love of plants. He collected hundreds and thousands of botanical samples from his voyages of discovery arriving in Sydney cover in 1816 and on numerous trips thereafter. ‘I find I can blend discovery with botanical research tolerably well’, he wrote and I think…

Its the start of the Australian winter today and as if not wanting to disappoint us “seasonalists,” the clouds have rolled in and covered the antipodean blue which so often graces these skies, snow has come down in parts of Victoria, and I have reluctantly put on a top as the wind is chilly for…

Its been a little over two years since we have lived here and we have had great joy in planting the garden with native and non native plants and fruits and see how they have grown. The credit is shared with our lovely Aussie neighbour whose avocados are probably the best in the land but…

I have been lucky enough to experience two special exhibitions lately. One is called “Wild Australia” and it showcased the physiques of Aboriginal men. This was an idea of a man called  Archibald Meston who considered himself to be an amateur anthropologist and a spokesperson for the Aboriginals he was in contact with. He was…

A funny name for a place and I guess like everything there is a story to be told – Quite a few aboriginal tribes inhabited this area, the Umbundi, the Dulingbara and the Gabbi Gabbi and Noosa probably comes from the aboriginal word “Noothera” meaning shade or shadows. The headland is full of beautiful big…