I could see the shark fins. The sharks were swimming in a circle around our small dinghy. “Stop snivelling,” said my twelve year old brother, Neville. “Stop now, or I will throw you overboard.” “I want to go home,” I cried. It was the first Monday of our summer school holiday and our mother was busy doing the washing. We did not have electricity and so there was no washing machine. Instead Mum used a copper, which was in our backyard,…..
For all of my childhood I lived at Onetangi Beach, on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. When my brother was fourteen he went out with a local fisher for the day. My brother dived and caught four good sized crayfish. When he arrived back at the beach, the local man said to him, “See you later.” “Wait, don’t I get my crayfish?” asked Neville. “No, I am going to sell them.” Neville went home and told Dad he had caught four crayfish……
When I moved to my new home near Pomona, after a few weeks, I had a few Kookaburras visiting me and then the number grew to seven. However I started to notice that one Kookaburra seemed to be an outcast. It never ate when the others ate, but sat in a nearby tree. After they had all flown away it would come and sit on the veranda railing and in a few days it let me feed it little bits…..
Everyone is talking about Australian Pro-surfer Mick Fanning and his shark encounter. Now today a recreational scallop diver has been killed by what is understood to be a great white shark, off Tasmania’s east coast. Horrific for his daughter who was with him. Years ago, when my youngest son Lee was a teenager, we were staying at Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast. It was early morning and my husband and I sat in our car watching our son surf. Suddenly my husband…..
I am a country woman. I grew up on an island in the Hauraki Gulf, in New Zealand. My family were hunter-gatherers. We were cash poor, and lived off the land. We gathered mushrooms and blackberries. Caught fish and crayfish. Picked oysters and mussels from the rocks. Our father hunted rabbits. I did feel sorry for the rabbits, but for many years rabbit was the only meat we ate. Dad grew all our vegetables and the property we rented had…..
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Raewyn Harlum on The Escapades of Panda
- Rodney Scruggs on The Escapades of Panda
- RaewynHarlum Raewyn on Remembrance Day
- Margie on I Remember the Day I Found Arthur Naked on the Kitchen Table
- Geniux on Remembrance Day
Categories
- About the Author
- Australian birds
- Australian Snakes
- blog
- Cats
- childhood memory
- Coming Out: Memoir of a Psychic
- Crayfish
- Four Wheel Driving
- I Was Only Nineteen
- Loss
- Love child
- Melbourne Cup
- Memories
- Moray Eel
- My pet Panda
- Paralysis Ticks
- Poppy Day
- Remembering our Soldiers
- Remembrance Day
- School Days
- Shark encounter
- Sharks
- Tasmania
- Thoroughbred Horse Racing
- Waiheke Island
- Writing