On Thursday evening Panda did not come inside. It was normal for him to come to the door once darkness fell. I knew something must be wrong and taking a torch went looking for him. He was huddled under the house and I could see he was in stress. He tried to stand and his hind legs gave way. I knew then he was a victim of the paralysis tick which is endemic to the east coast of Australia. Ticks…..
In the First World War, red poppies quickly grew over the graves of the fallen soldiers at Ypres. This resulted in the poppy becoming one of the World’s most recognized memorial symbols for soldiers who have died in conflict. In Australia, Remembrance Day on the 11th November is also called Poppy Day. People wear a poppy in remembrance of all those young men who gave their lives for their countries. In New Zealand where I grew up we always wore…..
Melbourne Cup – The Race That Stops The Nation
I grew up in New Zealand. Every year, my father listened to the Melbourne Cup race on radio. Finally the day came when television came to NZ. We were able to gather around the black and white set and watch the race. When I was four years old, sitting on my father’s knee, with a pencil I marked a horse in his racing paper. That horse was Delta and the jockey was Neville Sellwood. Dad thought that was a good omen,…..
One of the fun things I like to do is to go for a drive on the beach in a four wheel drive. Last weekend, in Tasmania, I went with family, we had three vehicles in convoy, for a drive on the beach from Bellingham to Bridport, a distance of approximately 22 kms. We headed north-east from Launceston and left the highway to drive onto the beach at Bellingham. It was exhilarating driving along the beach. The sea looked magnificent. I always feel good near the…..
I remember the day I came home from school, and the shock I felt when I stood in the kitchen entrance and saw Arthur, plump and naked on the kitchen table. I was twelve years old and really distressed to see Arthur, headless and denuded of feathers, sitting there, waiting to be put in the oven. Dad had warned my brother and I that if Arthur defecated on the back steps once more, he was for the chop. Yes, Dad…..
I grew up in New Zealand, a country that does not have snakes, so it was a shock when I saw my first snake in Queensland. Luckily it was a Carpet Python, which is not venomous, but kills prey by wrapping itself around the bird or animal. We were living in the country at a place called Carters Ridge, when my husband and I heard a commotion in the chicken pen. We arrived to find the python had already swallowed…..
Now I am in the Autumn of my life, or as the late Dr Wayne Dyer would say ‘the afternoon of my life’, I am increasingly hearing of the passing of someone I know. Loss is a fact of life. We all lose loved ones. By the time we get to middle-age many of us are ‘orphans.’ I think about all the people throughout the world, who daily lose loved ones, sometime losing entire families. How do they cope? I don’t…..
A year ago I was travelling in Europe with an old friend. To get there I had to let go of my fear of flying and my fear of locking toilet doors. You may think that is a strange phobia to have, to be afraid to lock the toilet door. I wonder if it has a name? When I was about four years old, we visited our grandmother. She lived in an apartment block. This was in the fifties and…..
There is an old song called Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking. People who suffer from depression often hide their feelings with a smile and that was what I did. I just smiled at everyone and they thought I was okay. I wasn’t. My heart was broken, because I had to give up a baby for adoption in 1966. In those days if you entered a maternity hospital as an unmarried woman, you were considered unfit to be a mother. The…..
Another memoir, this book was originally just going to be a record of psychic happenings in my life, written for my grandchildren. By the time I was half way through I realised it was going to be another book. I was ridiculed as a young child so then learned not to tell people about things that happened to me. It was my secret and it is only in the last eighteen months that I have started coming out of the psychic closet. The…..
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