Year: 2017

A curious Cassowary complete with with crown and grass background. The EKKA is on – the biggest agricultural show in Queensland and I volunteer there every year with great joy and enthusiasm. So much love and effort goes into this show that it is hard not to come away completely singing its praises.This year I…

Sitting waiting for the bus an elderly man walks up, I shift over making room for him to sit down and he winks at me. I take one look at him and I am ready to start the conversation.  In the headband of his fawn coloured cowboy hat he has guinea fowl feathers which I…

Winter seems unwilling to knock on our doors with any conviction this year and while I know that this might not be the best for us, I have loved the balmy warmth of this different sun and its rays which have a gentleness about them. Then a slight chill settles into the evening, when teas…

Those of you who know me will appreciate that I have felt keenly the absence of a dog in my life. However this is not the time for another and so I resort to borrowing the neighbours’ dogs to take for walks and patting some I find out and about. Just this weekend though I…

Yes, I was talking about sharing  in my previous blog and how important it is to make sure there is enough to go round for everyone but in this case I am feeling robbed everyone, robbed.A couple of months back I walked into my back garden and proudly took a picture of my first bunch…

I was walking in the garden, looking at the expertly peeled mandarin skins lying on the ground and then the black marks by the pool. Then I laughed heartily all by myself – first signs of madness perhaps-or profound jet lag- it struck me that this was the bats’ version of Orange is the new…

The importance of this moment for Cyprus cannot be underestimated. Finally after stops and starts  from last year, there is a Conference taking place in Crans Montana, in Switzerland in which Greece, Turkey and the UK are alongside the Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiating teams trying to solve an intractable problem that has lasted for…

FACT: You need a mortgage to visit Hairdressers in Australia.FICTION: You often, but mistakenly, believe that the money is well spent. FACT: You go expecting to look better on exiting, albeit poorer.FICTION: They don’t really care how you look – but often, it is not better. FACT: Most hairdressing salons are a sanctuary for young…

They say it is the Australian Galapagos and the seals are certainly part of it. Soon the whales will be swimming by. The koalas balance on the flimsiest of branches, the birds make small fleeting appearances but for me it is the coastline that is the draw card. Beaches of such wild beauty and emptiness.…

Literally named so – there is no messing here – what you see is what they are called and they ARE remarkable. They are situated on a rounded lava rock perched some 200 feet above the ocean. A collection of extraordinary, indeed remarkable granite boulders eroded by wind and sea over a mere 500 million…