In which Al limps his way along.

I mentioned a while ago that I was beginning to read the second draft of my second novel to Deb. As a creative tool I find this wonderfully useful.

I get to weave my way through the narrative, and really hear the rhythm. Deb is a great listener and gently critical when the plot (or the writing) needs it.

So far we are about 10% through and on the whole Deb likes it. But the downside is she has identified some points where I need to do more to develop the relationship between two characters. So as you can see very helpful!

Now I am going to digress to one of my other favorite topics waterfalls.

Weeks ago I took a trip to the Otway ranges in Western Vic. Unlike the Grampians they are just behind the coast so they are wet, very wet.

I wove my way down through the rainforest in search of the Beauchamp Falls.I caught a few shots of this amazing fungi,And from underneath.Finally I reached the falls. After climbing down these stairs I got this shot from a viewing platform about half way up.Never one to make things easy for myself I decided to leave the formal path and climb down to the river bed to get shots from the base of the falls.

I’m glad I did because I saw this little fellow.He was hunting for insects in a small patch along the river banks.
The shots aren’t great because it was really dark under the forest and he would not sit still.

I have no idea what he is, I have never seen one before. I presume he is quite a local species.

About now I did something very silly and slipped on what appeared to be quite dry and stable rocks.

In saving myself I managed to bash my knee and soak my clothes.

Fortunately, when I am crossing ground that I’m unsure of I carry my camera in a padded bag. So no damage to my camera, I think I would have cried had I broken it.

I limped on upstream to the base of the falls and caught some more shots.The misty look is caused by spray from the falls. When I looked at the rocks I saw why I had fallen. Continuous drifts of moisture from the falls has caused them to grow a slick film of brown algae. What looks like rock is actually as slick as ice.

Kind of content I had the fun of climbing back out of the gorge, then climbing the stairs and finally a mile long walk (or should I say limp) back to the car.

As I said this was weeks ago, and I am all healed up. But it is a good lesson extra care is needed. Good shots are not worth an injury.

An Award (and a fantasy)

I said in my last post that I was hoping to be a bit more frequent with my posts. Ah well, so much for plans. This week has been as hectic as usual.

Tonight I am going to get to something that has been on the backburner for a while. Way back in June Denise at L’Aussie Writing passed on the Versatile Blogger Award to me.

Thank you Denise!

With this award comes a few duties. Those are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

3. Pass this award along to fifteen bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason!

4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

Now I have decided to “cheat a bit” and tell part of an episode of my life in seven paragraphs so here we go:

When our kids were small, we (that is Deb, the three girls and I) lived for a couple of years all crammed in a tiny mill cottage surrounded by rainforest. The cottage is on a farm on the Dorrigo Plateau in NSW. It is on the “back block” of a property owned by my mum and her husband. Deb and I had decided we both needed to do further studies, so we sold our house and car (we bought a cheap second hand car) and lived rent free for a while to be able to study full time.

The cottage had no mains power. We had a small solar panel with a truck battery that provided our lighting. We had a refrigerator that ran on gas. Heating, cooking and hot water were provided by a slow combustion stove. I used to cut firewood for the stove from regrowth timber on the farm.

Our house used spring water. Although we were on a ridge high on the western side of the Dorrigo Plateau (about 3600 feet) the spring that fed our house is still higher. The spring is on the other side of the valley and the water is fed by gravity down a long pipe all the way to the valley floor and then up to a holding tank behind the house.

We used to drive an old four wheel drive three miles down a muddy track every day to take the older girls to school. Luckily the local state primary school was literally at the bottom of “our driveway”. When we needed to go into town for supplies we drove four miles down a different track to “the front block” where we kept our road car at my mum’s house.

My favourite thing of all was to get up soon after dawn. The plateau to the east would still be covered with morning mist. It was like looking out over a still sea of white. Through the mist would come the noise of the dawn chorus of the birds. In particular there were lyrebirds which are incredible mimics. They mostly mimic other birds, but will mimic other sounds they hear. I have heard them mimicking things like chainsaws and camera motor-drives. I have never seen the dance they do as they sing (they are very shy) but their song is amazing anyway. You will get a tiny patch of forest with all these different bird calls coming out one after the other. Then at the end of the sequence the lyrebird sings his own song before beginning again.

The time living up there was amongst the happiest in my life. But alas the needs of growing girls and the need to go back to the workforce meant we had to leave our patch of paradise and go back to the ‘real world’.

Now our girls are all but grown up, and it doesn’t look like it will be too many years before they achieve independence, I am cultivating a fantasy. In that fantasy Deb and I move back to our mountain paradise. I dream we will build a writer’s retreat. There we will host other writers who need a break with peace and quiet only broken by birdsong and the wind. So with the income generated by the (very reasonable) fees we will charge I will be able to devote myself full time to writing.

Like I say it’s a fantasy.
But you never know.

Now for the fifteen bloggers I want to pass this award to:

1. Niki at Wool ‘N Nuts
2. Angelique at Vampires and Tofu
3. Jennifer at Ten Lives and Second Chances
4. Elspeth at It’s a Mystery
5. Lisa K. at Writing on Thin Ice
6. Shannon at Book Dreaming
7. B. at B miler Fiction
8. Carolyn at Checkerboard Squares
9. Rebecca at Sonshine Thoughts
10. Kyna at Crystal Coast Gardener
11. Charmaine at Wagging Tales
12. Sarah at Falen Formulates Fiction
13. Alexandra at The Publication Follies of Alexandra Shostak
14. Sharon at Random Thoughts (the rules said discovered recently and I figure tonight is as about as recent as it gets).
15. Amanda at a Library of My Own (I have been following Amanda for a while but she has changed blogs because she no longer lives in NYC )

Please forgive me if you have already been given this award. I just don’t have time to check tonight. I am sorry for displaying such a cavalier attitude, but you are just going to have to deal with the trauma as best you can :-)

Now finally a couple of piccies.
By The way on the subject of piccies My last post features a giveaway check it out!

So the piccies, I am a bit pressed for time tonight so just three piccies of two birds I snapped on my recent holiday.

The first two are of a Crimson Rosella, another of our gaudy parrots. Not quite as friendly as the Rainbow Lorikeets I posted a while ago, but I think just as beautiful.
Finally a small woodland bird, an Eastern Yellow Robin.
These guys are not really shy, but they are quite active so this is the first time I have managed to photograph one.