Travellin' Penguin

LIFE:

It has been a sad week this week. We had to say goodbye to our old cat Cousin Eddie. He has been with us since he was 8 weeks old. He was never a robust boy. We rescued him from the Tasmanian Humane Society. But he really loved us and was smoochy right from the start. He sat with me every morning after his breakfast while I read the paper and checked emails. He used to ask Mr. P to be picked up and he would get on his shoulders and ride around the house.  He developed a cancerous tumour and went down pretty fast in the last few months.  It is so hard to lose a beloved pet. Grizzy and Pickles, our other two cats don’t seem to realise he’s gone but he was always more attached to us than the other cats. He did love the dogs and Peanut often washed his head a couple of times a day.

THIS WEEK’S BOOK:

This week I’ve been listening to an audio book. It is Theo of Golden by Allen Levi and beautifully narrated by David Morse. Published February 2026 by Fontana GB.  I’m a little over half way but I don’t know if I’ll continue it.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi is a warm and uplifting novel about an elderly stranger named Theo who arrives in the small Southern town of Golden, Georgia. After discovering a collection of hand-drawn portraits hanging in a local coffee shop, he quietly buys them one by one and sets out to return each portrait to the person depicted. As Theo meets the townspeople, he listens to their stories, shares his wisdom and kindness, and helps them see themselves in a new light. Through these encounters, the novel explores themes of generosity, human connection, grief, hope, and the power of truly being seen. Beneath its gentle surface lies a deeper mystery about Theo’s own past and the reason he came to Golden in the first place.

This is the sort of quiet, compassionate novel more focused on character, community, and kindness than on plot twists.

I really like the writing in this book. I can see the locations as thought I’m there. 

Theo is such a gentleman, softly spoken with impeccable manners. The people of the town react to him in different ways. I do get a bit tired of the stories as many are predictable in their endings. Once I begin hearing the story I know exactly how it is going to end. It is a very saccharine book. Theo is like a grandfather Pollyanna. It is a very gentle, positive book and if one is feeling down I can see how the stories would lift a mood. I think, for myself I’d rather hear a story now and again and not just read through it in a few sittings. I’d be interested to know how others react to this book. 

I think I’ll start another book and maybe just listen to 30 minutes of this book at a time. I do like Theo’s character a lot and I am curious how the book might end. Theo’s mystery might continue to be quite interesting.

TASSIE TRAVEL:

As it’s been cold here and sometimes rainy I haven’t done much photography.

Five of us from the photo club did do a Twilight Tour the other day of the historical Hobart Penitentiary. It went for two hours. It is a very good representation of the convict era of Hobart during the 1800s. We went to the basement and saw the tiny cells. There was a film that was told in a chronological order. Tasmania’s history is very harsh and full of very cruel practises as it is based on the convicts, transported here from the UK in the 19th century. The Twilight tour is quite dark and we had to carry electric lantern as we went up and down spiral staircases, into the old Magistrates court and the chapel to name a few bits of it. The tour ends as visitors stand under the hanging rope over the trap door. More than 200 prisoners were hung in this place. 

(There is graffiti on these walls)

It is a wonderful museum of those times past and I would certainly recommend the tour to anyone who visits Tasmania and likes history. Very informative. It is listed on Trip Advisor if anyone wants more information.

(I didn’t stand too close the rope. I get it.)

I’ll stop at this as I’d like the length of this to not be so long. 

I have a couple of other events but I might give them separate space. 

QUESTION:   Do you have a specific historical place near where you live that you would suggest visitors go to? Do you read much history?  I might post up some of the photos of the items in the museum I photographed in a separate post. 

Have a good week everyone and we’ll be back next week.

Our neighbour across the street has a big tarp spread across the garden bed he hopes to begin when spring comes. We’ve had some rainy days recently and the water has pooled on top of the tarp. I am sitting here at my desk, looking out the window and watching the plovers (birds) give themselves a great big bath in the water. Plovers have lived in the lot across the street for decades but they never had a swimming pool. I am being quite entertained watching them. 

I’ve had a bit of a break from this blog but am back now. Sometimes you reach a point you just don’t feel like writing.

I’ve had a couple of disappointing reads lately. Our book club read Betty as I mentioned. I didn’t like it at all but many members in the group did like it. The writing was good but there was too much really serious trauma without anything good to balance it out. The child and animal cruelty was just too much. I am happy to have moved on.

I did finish the book Touching the Sky by Deborah LawrieThis is wonderful story of Australia’s first female commercial airline pilot and what it took to reach her goals. Talk about perseverance and tenacity, this woman has it in buckets. The first part of the book is about her training and qualifying and then trying to get hired in a very misogynistic 1970s. Ansett Airlines was an Australian airlineback then and Reg Ansett did everything in his power to sabotage every effort she made. The second half of the book was about her days of flying around the world and her 19 years of flying for an airline in the Netherlands. Her relationships really struggled as she had to put her whole heart and soul into her dream. I was really impressed about the massive amounts of training pilots go through. Very comforting.

A very inspiring book. I heard her interviewed one night on the ABC radio and I just fell in love with her.

Now I’m reading another book for our book group. It is called Trickery by Rosanna Pike. 1500s, Tudor era and more hardship for women.

Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. Her mother has taught her that if you’re not too bound by the Big Man’s rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. But now her ma is gone.

As she journeys through the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb discovers that there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything…

So, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan- her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds – and vengeful enemies – to their door.

I’m finding it an okay plot but the repetition if the same dialogue throughout is just too much. It really needs much tighter editing, in my humble opinion. it’s kind of a non event for me.

Today I’m off to the eye surgeon to see what they can do to keep the vision in my right eye from descending into craziness from glaucoma. I’ve been on more eye drops and if this hasn’t lowered the pressure then the next step is laser and the third step is surgery. It worries me as my right eye is my “photo” eye and my left eye is all but useless.  I’m not driving at night as much as I was and this slow decline is really annoying. I can’t deal with the lights of oncoming eyes on two lane roads. Fortunately going into town to my Fullers book shop events the road is one way going and one way coming home. There are also street lamps but outside of the city limits is now a no go area. 

It’s always something.

However I do have some good photos to share with you of some lovely fungi and a small gum leaf hanging by one silver thread from a tree. I took these in the southwest of the state. I hope you enjoy them.

Beautiful Tasmania

I’ll be off now for another week. Hope your weekend has something you are looking forward to.

Follow up- eye appointment shows eye pressure is still too high. So now I have 2 kinds of drops a day for the next 6 weeks and if that doesn’t work we’re looking at laser or surgical treatment.

Until next time….

Our book for our June group meeting is Betty by Tiffany McDaniel. 

Good reads describes this American book as:

It begins with the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence–both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family’s darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.

But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father’s brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family’s past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt–moments that has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now.

Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story–a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.

I enjoyed the story of this book but I must give trigger warnings for it. There is suicide, beatings, incest, rape and animal abuse. It is not always an easy read. But as the author based this book on her own family and the events are not sensationalised just for a story, I was okay with it. It’s not for everyone. Looking back, if this wasn’t a book group book I may not have picked it up knowing what I now know. But, as I said the overall story over 13nyears is interesting.

I enjoyed the prose and I enjoyed hearing of how the family lived outside of the violence. The native American father has interesting tales to tell and I enjoyed the sayings he had based on native proverbs. It could be a bit confusing as her sisters have very similar names and I did mix them up at times. I think the conversation at the book group will be interesting. 

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In other news, I had quite a social week. I had my seniors group meeting at a local pub. There were 10 of us “oldies” and we enjoyed a lovely meal together. We always have so many laughs.

Then yesterday a very good friend of mine and I went to a small town not far away and visited a market. Country markets are always interesting and this one has been going every Saturday for many years. Things we saw:

Local handicrafts, beautiful plants that inspired, a book stall that had some very old convict history books that I would have snatched up if I was still collecting old books but I’m not anymore. 

There was another stall where older women were playing music from the past on an old boom box and an elderly lady who was very agile was doing a really creative dance and smiling at everyone who walked by.

We went into a newish shop and looked at all the art supplies, puzzles that were most unusual and there were gorgeous cards. There is a beautiful small book shop in the town and they had quite the crowd. We had cappuccinos and they make the best coffee. Lots of chocolate on top of the coffee. 

After walking the length of the town, we stopped for lunch. It was quite cold yesterday and as our hands were frozen we ducked into the warmth of a busy cafe. We grabbed a seat and enjoyed hot toasted sandwiches, mine with tomato, cheese and pineapple. There is something lovely about hot food on a cold day chatting with a bestie. We often talk about what we would do to change the world. That is a topic that makes us laugh. It;s as if we are the only ones who have the answers.

Next Saturday another lovely friend of mine and I are going there again, but this time with our cameras to do some street photography and maybe capture some historic icons of the place. The town is quite old and there is the opportunity to get some interesting photos so stay tuned.

I still need to post up some of my southwest Tasmania photos I took from that excursion. 

All in all, the Penguin and I enjoyed the past week and it was wonderful to get out and about and shake the cobwebs from my mind. 

Penguin loves getting out and about with his friends.

Question:   Did any of you spend time chatting with a friend this week?