Queensland Floods

In the past 24 hours or so many of you will have seen images of deadly flash floods in Toowoomba in Queensland, with 9 confirmed dead and 59 people missing.

First of all I need to say we live around 1300 kilometres from Toowoomba two states away, so Deb, Lu and myself are safe and well having made our way home from Tassie on Sunday night. My older girls E and Io are also safe, more about that in a moment.

However, the floods have struck pretty close to home for me.

I have occasionally said I am originally a Queenslander, well Toowoomba used to be my home town. The images of the floods are all from areas I know intimately, it is quite sobering to see a place you have fond feelings for ripped to pieces.

Back to my older two E and Io. Because of our ties to Queensland our “big girls” went on a road trip before Christmas.

Their destination - Toowoomba.

I found out about the floods through a phone call from E yesterday afternoon. She warned me that we would hear terrible news about Toowoomba in the evening. She was getting in first to let us know that she and her sister are safe so we wouldn’t have to worry.

They are staying at a friend’s house that is well above the floods.

The only slight issues are: they are cut off in Toowoomba, all roads out of the town are still cut; they have to boil water before drinking it because of contamination fears; and there is no bread or milk left in the remaining shops.

So given what might have been we are very fortunate.

Hopefully some more cheerful posts in the next few days.

ARRRR, Remarkable Ruins

Sorry I couldn't help myself with the title of this post.
We continue to explore Tassie and the past few days we have been based in Hobart the capital and have explored chunks of the South East Coast.
Now to the title of this post.
In just the past two days we have seen Pirate Bay (I'm not kidding that really is its name)

Remarkable Caves
And an entire ruined prison town.Now a question. I've been teasing with just a few of the thousands of photos I have taken over the past days in different places. I'm now trying to get my head around showing more when I get home but how do I go about it? Do I do a general overview, or do I focus on particular areas? If so what do I start with?

Two More From Tasmania

We're still in Tasmania (we'll be heading home Sunday night).

I haven't been able to post because I haven't had an internet connection until tonight. Most of the time we haven't had mobile phone (cell phone) coverage . Tonight I am using my mobile as a modem. Hence a quick post with only a few photos because my mobile plan charges by the megabyte for useage.

We have been zig-zagging across the state from the North Coast (Launceston and the Tamar Valley) to the East Coast (St Helen's and the Bay of Fires).
Then to the Central Highlands.
Finally all the way down South to Hobart this evening.

By Aussie standards the state is small, only about four or five hours drive from one end to the other and the population is tiny only five hundred thousand people or so.

This means much of the countryside is unspoiled and quiet. Even in peak tourist season (it's summer down here) the roads are quiet and the beaches almost empty. As an aside I suspect part of the reason the beaches are quiet is the temperature, we've been having glorious sunny weather, but only temperatures of 20C (68F)which most Aussies think is far too cold for swimming.

Tassie is increadibly beautiful and I have been running my camera hot. I literaly filled all of my memory cards yesterday and had to stop shooting.

Here are just a couple:
First: Rocks at the Bay of Fires.The colours there have to be seen to be believed, the piccie doesn't do justice. Crystal clear water, white sands, and boulders streaked with orange.

The second photo is from from Cradle Mountain National Park in the Central Highlands.It shows Cradle Mountain looking across Dove Lake. The mountain and the lake were both carved by glaciers in the last Ice Age.
The building is an old boat house that was built in the 1940s.

Two From Tasmania

An almost record short post from me tonight.
Just so you know I am having a great holiday.
These are two piccies I have taken today, here in Tasmania.
The first is of an 1830s stone jetty at Low Head Pilot station on the Tamar River.The second was taken at St Helen's Point in the evening, shame it is a bit cold for a dip.Thanks everyone for their comments over the past couple of days. Internet connectivity here is just too bad to spend much time online. And as you can see there are other things to look at other than a netbook screen :-)

Eye Candy Blogfest.

I hope this post works.

I’ve attempted to schedule it (which is something I have not done before), so as I say here’s hoping!

Two things:

First, I’ve entered Vicki Rocho’s Eye Candy Blogfest. So I have to post a ‘favourite’ photo.

I owe a quick apology to Vicki, I did mean to blog about this blogfest, but I just haven’t had time to get to it.

This “easy” blogfest has actually been really difficult.

Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog know I take heaps of photos. So I have many, many favourites!

So deciding a piccie for this post I thought about photos I have taken of:

SunsetDawn
WaterfallsBeachesSpectacular scenerySkyscapesCityscapesOdd wildlifeBeautiful wildlifeArchaeology

In the end I came down to choosing between photos that I didn’t take myself.

Photos of loved ones.

Like my little brother Ian when he was three.But the photo I am putting up as a ‘favourite’ for this blogfest is one of me that Deb took about fifteen years ago. It is me in one of my ‘hippy phases’. Yes that shaggy individual in the middle really is me. What makes this piccie special to me is I am with my three gorgeous girls. They don’t generally like having their photos taken so there are surprisingly few of us together.

Now the other thing I need to talk about is: I am away all this next week. Deb, Lu and I are having a week’s holiday in ‘The Apple Isle.’
For those of you who don’t know that is the smallest Australian State, namely Tasmania.

I don’t know how often I will have internet access in the land of the Tasmanian Devil (they really do exist). So it is possible you may not hear from me until I get home in a bit over a week.

One last thing, I haven’t had time to respond to the wonderful comments people have left on my last couple of posts. I promise I will as soon as possible.

Wednesday Words (on Thursday again)

I had an early start this morning and wasn’t home until late.

So all my ideas for a post tonight have gone out the window.

So to keep things quick tonight I am going to put up two pieces of my work.

The first is Chapter Eight of my book Veiled in Shadows. If you want to read it please click on the tab above.

I took a break from my WIP over Christmas, but I am commuting again today and hence I was writing.

Here is a possible extract from my WIP Veiled in Storms. It is a piece written from the perspective of Valentina who is Ronnie’s flame earlier in the book. I say possible, because I literally wrote this on my way home tonight, and while I know events like this will happen to Valentina they may well disappear into “back story”. And to be honest I haven’t had time to properly reread this to decide if I can build a good second draft from it.

So in Valentina’s words:

Valentina Meshcova 1943: Baptism
Clinging to the ground like I once did to my mother's skirts I inched forward. Above my head whizzed German bullets. Bullets that were being very deliberately fired to kill me.
With my right hand I dragged myself forward, with my left I towed the straps of a medical bag and a machine-gun. My destination, a shell crater, lay only a few metres in front of me. I felt like screaming in terror, I had never been so frightened, but somehow I forced myself to keep inching forwards.
Finally, I reached the relative cover of the low bank of earth thrown up by the exploding shell. I rolled on to my side and looked up at the bank, even as I watched spurts of dirt were thrown up as bullets slammed into the top. I couldn't think of how to get over without being killed.
I looked back the way I had come, a shallow slope led back down to our trenches. Scattered across that slope lay eighteen bodies, in greenish-brown Russian uniforms. I had crept past many of them checking for signs of life on my tortuous way to where I now lay.
An hour and a half ago some idiot of an officer had ordered an attack on a German trench in front of me. Most of the boys had been cut down, a few had dragged themselves back wounded and one had been seen signalling for help from the crater.
I lay still and tried to remember Svetlana's arguments for why us girls should volunteer for the Red Army. None of them seemed to make any sense now, surely I would contribute more to the war by finishing my studies at medical school rather than getting myself killed here.
The shooting eased off and died away. I risked lifting my head a little and waving back in the direction of our trench. The sergeant there had promised that when I got near they would 'lay down covering fire'.
Whatever that meant.
Nothing happened, it was very quiet for a moment. I thought I could hear a mumbling voice beyond the bank inside the crater, someone was still alive. I waved again.
I found out what covering fire was.
Machine guns and rifles all suddenly began firing from the direction of our trenches. Again bullets screamed past, it didn't feel much better than the Germans shooting at me.
Hopefully it was worse for the Germans. Dragging my gear with me I hurled myself up and over the bank, sliding down into the hole beyond...

Now finally, and in case you think I am making up female Russian medics, a piccie of a real heroine from Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ which we in the West know as WWII.
Medics like this woman were common in the Red Army during the war, and many were highly decorated for saving men at great personal risk. However, many photos like this were staged, but in this one she looks more tired than 'patriotic,' so I guess it might be a genuine shot.

Fort Queenscliff Part II

I started posting about Fort Queenscliff before Christmas. Then of course I got distracted by my 200th post Q&A.

So in the tradition of my (semi-mythical) Uncle Harry I put on my tour guide’s hat and resume with a guided tour of Fort Queenscliff.

The Fort sits on the southern outskirts of Queenscliff guarding “The Rip”. The defences at Queenscliff and around Port Phillip Bay were built through the second half of the 19th century, to protect Melbourne from invasion by hostile foreign powers.
These hostile powers were identified as the French, the Russians and, at one stage during the American Civil War, the United States!

When you approach The Fort from the landward side you see a decidedly unimpressive brick wall that forms the rear defence. Originally there was a dry moat and there are dozens of loopholes for rifle fire from inside. But with my knowledge of military technology I was unimpressed. Yes the fort was built in the Nineteenth Century but it was clear that any force bringing even light artillery to bear on this wall would have quickly overcome these defences.

However, I wasn’t quite ready to write the fort off, it was after all designed to protect the entrance to Port Phillip Bay from the sea.

Inside the fort the tour starts with the interior buildings. One is the Black Lighthouse which I posted about previously. Standing next to this is an old signal tower. Fort Queenscliff was only one of a chain of forts built around the entrance to The Bay.
Any defence of Port Phillip Bay would have been coordinated by signals sent through this tower.

Next you pass this Georgian style building. Before The Fort was built this was the civilian post and telegraph office for the town. When the fort was built it was closed to civilians, the offices were shifted into the town. This building became part of the Fort’s hospital.

Then you approach what was the real business end of the fort. These bunker walls form the back side of a massive earth bank that is the front wall of the fort. Set into the bank are a number of heavy gun emplacements.
This is a Nineteenth Century “disappearing gun”And from below. The concept of the gun was that once it was fired it would drop out of sight so the crew could safely reload it. The massive hydraulic ram would lift it up to be fired again.

This is the latest in 19th century communication technology, a brass speaking tube to pass orders to the original magazines deep beneath the base of the guns.

Down below is a whole network of tunnels to allow communication and troops to move around The Fort while under fire.One feature I liked was the original brass oil lamps set in alcoves in the walls. These were locked behind glass to prevent accidents setting off the tonnes of high explosive that were once stored down here. The modern electric lights make things much easier

Back up top we then saw the emplacements built for twentieth century shore battery guns.Impressive until you realise they are dummies. The shield is the original from gun that was sited here in the 1930s, but the barrel is a fake.
With World War II there was a sudden realisation that Japanese naval air-power could easily target these guns. So they were moved to camouflaged positions near Point Lonsdale. The dummies were placed so enemy aerial reconnaissance or spies would report the guns were still in place and waste effort targeting a ruse.

This final photo is of the command bunker used in WWI and WWII.Allegedly the first angry Allied shots of WWI were ordered from here when a German merchant vessel attempted to make a run for the open ocean.

By the 1880s Port Phillip Bay was the most heavily defended port anywhere in the British Empire. Would anyone care to guess why?

Uncle Harry signing off.