Winter.

While I was away on holiday at Merimbula I was posting photos like this.

And this.

Then I was grumbling that despite the gloriously sunny weather I was cold.

People enjoying their Northern hemisphere summer looked at photos like this

and for some strange reason they didn’t take me very seriously.

Fair enough in tropical parts of Oz it never really gets cold.

However, it is winter down in the bottom half of the world and here in the southern end of Oz it gets wintery.

This Aussie for one thinks it is cold.

Now I have proof of the cold down this way.

On Saturday I took this

and this

See, I’m not just grumbling :-)

OOPS! A Missed Anniversary. (Oh and a Giveaway)

I’m back from my holiday at Merimbula. I realised the other day while I was driving home an important anniversary had passed.

Before you all think I am in the doghouse for missing our wedding anniversary, things are not that dramatic.

The anniversary I missed was my first blogiversary (probably not a word but what the heck).

It was on the Eighth of July 2009 that I posted the first time.

My blog is a year old!

The nerd in me notes I have made 137 posts since then which means I have averaged a post about every 2.7 days.

I have posted 795 piccies over the twelve months, most of them my own photos.

My list of followers has grown to 143 since Kathleen Jones found my blog just a few days after I started.
Kathleen’s blog is well worth checking out by the way. Kathleen is a published author and poet who resides in a gorgeous spot in England’s Lake District (when she’s not spending time with her partner Neil in Peralta in Italy).

I would like to say a big thanks to all of you who have followed my wanderings and a bigger thanks to those who have taken the time to comment. Comments seem like the icing on an already pretty enjoyable blogging cake.

So where to from here?

Probably more of the same. I hope to post a little more frequently (because I’ve been a bit slack lately). Generally I guess I’ll post more piccies as I take them (or more realistically sort them, I’ve got over 2,000 that I have taken just in the past few weeks).
Hopefully I’ll also have more news about my book Veiled in Shadows in the near future.
I guess I’ll talk about the WIP from time to time.
My family and work will also no doubt feature.
Other than that I suppose I’ll just run with ideas as they take me.

In celebration of my blogiversary I’d like to run a little giveaway.
What am I giving away? Well it seems to me that the obvious thing to give away is some of my piccies.

So to that end the lucky winner will receive three 8” by 10” prints of any of my piccies from this blog. The winner chooses the piccies they want.
Just a few caveats: a small number of the piccies on the blog are not mine, I can’t give away prints of those; and a few piccies are cropped from larger images and would not print well at 8” by 10”, if the winner really wanted those I could organise smaller prints.

The rules to enter the give away:
The competition is open to people anywhere in the world.
You must leave a comment on this post.
You must be a follower of my blog (new followers are welcome to enter too).
Now my mercenary side comes out, if you post about my giveaway on your blog I will give you an extra 2 entries.
I will keep entries into the giveaway open until Sunday the 18th of July 2010 to give people time to enter.
Once I have chosen a winner at random (my decision will be final) I will contact the winner so they can choose the piccies they would like to receive as prints.

Now because a post from me would feel naked without piccies:
Rocks and Waves at Bermagui (an hour north of Merimbula)The “Blue Pool”, BermaguiMimosa Rocks National ParkBeach + Nobody, Mimosa Rocks National ParkEastern Grey Kangaroo and half grown joey, Mimosa Rocks National Park
Banksia Flower and bud, Mimosa Rocks National ParkBanksia seed pod (open)Tathra Warf at sunset.Tathra Bay at sunset

Merimbula day 2

Well the internet here is still dodgy at best. To get any reception I have to sit under a shelter outside in the cold to get wi-fi reception.

Yes, yes, I know that to those in the Northern Hemisphere our winter does not seem all that cold. In truth we have been having absolutely glorious weather down here on the NSW south coast (until this morning). It has been sunny every day with very little wind, temperatures up to about 16 or 17°C during the day. Way nicer than a typical dreary, wet Melbourne winter.

But it is still coat weather in the mornings and in the evenings. In fact as an ex-Queenslander I think it is pretty cold whenever it’s below about 20°C.

Thanks to my current internet woes I will have to keep my Uncle Harry-esque tourist guide to the minimum. (Sorry Uncle Harry).

So on day two of our holiday we headed south to the relatively sleepy port of Eden. Eden is a most beautiful patch of the coast. It is about six to seven hours drive from either Melbourne or Sydney and because the south coast is seen as ‘cold’ it has really avoided the tourist boom that has (in my opinion) ruined the north coast of NSW and south coast of Queensland.

Eden sits on the large Twofold Bay. This beach lies in the outer part of the bay (I guess that would be the outer ‘fold’).

Far across on the south side of the bay stands Ben Boyd’s folly. I posted about the tower last year. It was built in the early settlement period as part of the whaling industry.This piccie is from my post last year.
The town of Eden largely stands on a rugged promontory that extends far out into the bay.The original port of Eden sits in ‘Snug Cove’. The cove is sheltered from the worst weather by the headland.

A small fishing fleet calls the port home.A large tug serves as a reminder that the bay holds a modern port away on the south side. Down on the south side of the bay is a large woodchip processing plant, and the tug is used to manoeuvre bulk carriers into their berths.

I would post more about what we’ve been doing for the past couple of days, but I’ve had enough of the cold so good night!

Merimbula Day 1

There is intermittent wi-fi coverage where we are staying at Merimbula, so I am going to try to put up a post.

After a six hour drive we arrived just before dark on Thursday evening.
In the morning I awoke to the screeching of parrots.
High in the trees the Yellow Box flowers were out. These little guys, Rainbow Lorikeets, were feeding on the nectar.

Because they were high in the trees I was content with a few (not very good piccies).

After brekky we went for a stroll down to the beach. Because of the winter cold (looks nice and sunny doesn’t it?) there was no question of swimming so we poked around the rock pools on the headland.I snapped a few piccies of starfish and

Sooty Terns, these guys fly thousands of miles to Oz shores where they winter.

I thought these weather ravaged rocks were worth a piccie.After the beach we drove into town for lunch. The girls headed back first and when Deb and I got back we found they had made some friends.

These Rainbow Lorikeets are wild birds, but with the tourists around they have clearly become used to being fed.They are so comfortable with people they will perch on hands (this is E’s).Lu was getting covered with cute little birds.They were using any vantage point.I have included this piccie because as I snapped it a wing flicked across the shot.This little guy was giving photographic direction to Io.Finally, a close up to give a real indication of the spectacular nature of these guys’ plumage.

Down Time

Just a quick post this evening.

We (that is Deb, all the Girls and I) are heading off interstate on holiday tomorrow.

We are going to be staying in a town on the south coast of New South Wales (NSW) called Merimbula.

Merimbula is just north of one of my favourite places of all, Eden.

That’s right Eden NSW.

I’ve posted about Eden before, and no doubt I will take a piccie or two while I am away (Ok, Ok, a piccie or two hundred).

I haven’t been to the NSW south coast in winter before so I am looking forward to seeing what we can see.

Humpback whales begin making their way along the coast at this time of year so they could be one thing on offer.

In any case there is a good chance I will bore you with sights from around Eden like:

Twofold Bay;

Ben Boyd National Park.

The local wild life

But we’ll just have to see.

We’ll be away for around ten days. Now the place we are staying is supposed to have internet, but in case it doesn’t you might not hear from me until I get back.

My Journey

As I mentioned all too briefly in my first post I have ambitions about getting the manuscript for my first novel Veiled in Shadows published.

Wait, stop right there Al!

I should say something about my work. Veiled in Shadows is a thriller/espionage piece set in Europe during World War II against a backdrop of the Holocaust. It explores a number of themes from the point of view of several major characters. Included in the themes are: loyalty and treachery; notions of good and evil and how different frameworks can alter individual's ideas of what is right; the capacity human beings have to endure almost anything; perhaps most important is an exploration of the differing effects years of suffering and inhumanity can have on people.

So what is my problem? Getting published of course!

I finished a draft I was finally quite happy with about eighteen months ago.
I'd done all the usual stuff, inflicting it on friends and family etc.
Next I thought I'd get a professional opinion. I sent it off to a manuscript assessor, I chose Driftwood Manuscripts in South Australia.
I had a couple of months of anxious wait, to be sure friends and family had all been positive, but that comes with the territory.

The response I received from Driftwood was on the whole really positive, with the assessor using terms like "enchanting package" to describe the work. The assessor also provided some really helpful advice on a few sections he/she (Driftwood maintain the anonymity of their assessors) thought were problematic. In particular a section of the plot relied too much on coincidence. They also suggested I get a copy edit to improve saleability. I would like to stress here that this was not a sales pitch from Driftwood, they neither offered a service nor recommended any service provider.

I went with Pat Stone from Canberra as a copy editor. I was very impressed with her fast turn around and very reasonable rates. Also she did my ego no end of good with more positive comments about the work. Pat also warned me that what I had done so far was the easy bit. She warned that getting published would be much harder than writing a book of any length.

How right Pat was.

Enough about my book for now.

Just for something completely different a couple of photo's I took last autumn at Merimbula.
These fellows are soldier crabs. They feed along tidal flats at low tide in numbers of hundreds or thousands.

They are cute little guys, the little ones about an inch across. The biggest I have seen are maybe three inches across.
They do this amazing little dance to see which is the biggest and toughest.
Mostly they just seem to measure each others size; but if they are about equal, there is often a bit of pushing and shoving to see who is boss

And just to close a sunset, also at Merimbula.