100% Effort

Well I am frequently  guilty of using piccies that I have posted on the blog for my What is it Wednesday?

This week’s WIIW was no exception..

So let us wend our way to an answer.

Linda G guessed, ‘Definitely claws. I'm going to say duck-billed platypus.’

Yep, they are definitely claws, so you are half right 50%

Mel said  ‘A creature from "Where the Wild Things Are" trying to use chopsticks!’

That has to be one of the most creative answers in WIIW. So it is definitely worth some marks, not quite sure how many though.

Susan, being nearly as ham fisted as she accuses me of being :-) said ‘ "Claws!" I thought, all excited, thinking no one else would pick up on it. HA! Right. Okay, so what kind of claws, you probably want to know. Beats me. Big ones’
Okay, they are claws, and they are definitely big so I will say 60%.

Michelle ‘I'd say it looks like claws...but the straight brown stick in between? Don't know.’

I guess you have earned yourself 50% Michelle.

But the winner is Jennifer (AKA Old Kitty) with her answer ‘Ooooh they're claws!!! Koala claws?!’

They are claws and you are bang on the money. 100%

Koalas are really hard to spot in the bush. Usually if you are lucky enough to see one at all it will just be a slumbering figure high up a tree.

But this guy I ‘caught’ in the Otway Ranges put on a brilliant show.
Actively climbing around browsing on eucalyptus leaves.

Triplets!

This past weekend Deb and I shot away to the Otway Ranges west of Melbourne.

I am still mad keen on waterfalls and the Otways are both high and wet.

On Saturday we arrived fairly late after a leisurely start and a three hour drive. Our first destination was a section of rainforest near a village with the name of “Beech Forest”.

From where we left the car we followed this trail into the forest.I paused to snap this little fellow, s/he is a species I don’t know and I haven’t taken the time to look him/her up.Half a mile into the forest you round a corner and see this.The remains of a steam engine. And nearby tramway trucks for carrying timber to the sawmill that once stood here.You wouldn’t think it but all this forest is regrowth; a hundred years ago the whole area was clear felled.

It will be hundreds of years before it is a mature forest, but nature has an amazing power to come back if it is left be.

A bit further down we came to this stream feeding into a narrow channel and around the corner the reason we had come.

The Triplet FallsThe stream divides into three channels which tumble as a triple fall.

The star for me is the right hand fall which is…Well the piccies say it all.

Now one last thing.

I am heading off for the next five days to my Mum’s place so it is more than likely I won’t post until next week.

A sampler. And a strange coincidence

Deb and I were away for the weekend. We have returned home to find our internet service reconnected. Phew!

In my last serious post I asked which you would prefer I posted about:

A: More waterfalls
B: Some majestic trees
Or
C: Sunlight through clouds?

Most of you replied D: all of the above.

I suppose I deserve everything I got.
Well I guess I am going to make you wait for more (at least until later in this post).

On Friday, I had an odd moment with my WIP.
As regulars know I work on my writing on the train during my commute.

I realized that the section I was redrafting was set exactly 70 years in the past!

It might not seem so odd to you, but my character (a young Russian woman) was facing a life and death situation in September 1941 as I wrote about her in September 2011.

It was the strangest feeling. I drafted this section well over a year ago and quite by chance I worked on a redraft 70 years after the event.

Has anything odd like that happened in your writing?


Now to my little poll. Because I am very nice I am going to give you a bit of ‘all off the above’.
Photo A: is of the Erskine Falls in the Otway ranges.

Here is a second from the base of the fallsPhoto B.
The stairs back up from the fallsAnd taken yesterday, a tree somewhere else in the Otway ranges (I might say more about that in another post)

Finally
Photo C: Port Phillip Bay just before sunset last weekendAnd a second from a different viewpoint about five minutes later.Where do I go next?