This has been a very quiet week. The weather here has been cold, blustery, snowy and windy as a polar vortex sweeps the southeastern part of Australia. So we have not gone outdoors much at all except to run errands and stock up on food.

I have gotten into the book The Red Kangaroo by Hannah Blackmore. It is an Australian Travel Diary written by her in 2001. This year she has decided to publish it in the book I’m currently reading.  The author blurb on the back states she is from Jersey in the Channel Islands and now lives in Hobart, Tasmania. She is an artist and writer, working from her studio in Salamanca. She is passionate about art and travel.   Maybe I’ll run into her.  She kept a diary for one year as she travelled around Australia in 2001. Each entry is a paragraph or three about each day from mid 2001 into 2002.  So far she still hasn’t left Sydney. Evidently she is spending Christmas with family members before taking off on her own to backpack around the country.

I am enjoying it so far. She is a good writer and as this is a diary, she is quite concise which I enjoy. I am getting a good look into the life of living in a backpackers hostel on Bondi Beach and she writes a lot about her days at Coogee, Bondi and areas between there and the city centre.  She visits galleries and gardens, works briefly in a local, very busy cafe and spends days at the beach with new found friends and her boyfriend who visited from the UK for three weeks.

I am looking forward to the rest of her trip.  If you enjoy travel diaries then this one is fun and doesn’t take long to read. I’m also wondering if her relationship stacks up while she is away for one year and he is in the UK.

My other reading has me going cover to cover with Australian Photographic Magazine, Womankind Magazine (published here in Hobart)  and MindFood magazine (all Australian).  Winter is a great time for long, hot baths, hot drinks and reading magazines.  I get motivation when I read what the rest of the world is currently doing and magazines are good for that.

Our dog Odie and his friend Charlie (greyhound featured a couple of posts ago) had a play date bush walk up the fire track on Thursday and also we visited the donkey up the road. However Odie has either been bitten by something or somehow managed to get something into his foot that has caused quite the infection. Saturday’s trip to the vet with his very sore back left foot had him in hospital for the afternoon for x-rays (no fracture or tumours), a couple of high doses of methadone that made him a very sociable dog and antibiotics. He continues those now he is home with another check scheduled for tomorrow. He is such a drama queen and pretty much refuses to walk on three legs so we are carrying him outdoors in the pouring rain all weekend from the polar vortex. Now who’s being a drama queen?  As he’s 16 kgs this is great fun, while waiting for him to do his doggie business.  Hopefully whatever is causing his swollen, very painful foot will ease off in the next couple of days.

As Odie spends long days on my bed sleeping and refusing to walk, yet we don’t want him to jump up and down off the bed, I am on the computer sorting through old photographs from a couple of years ago, keeping an eye on him.  I thought I would share a few of my Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary photos that I forgot I had. As I have several North American and European blogging friends I thought they might enjoy seeing some of our wildlife here.

All photos taken at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary that cares for injured animals with view to release back into the wild, if possible and educate the public about our wildlife. They have rescued more than 7000 injured and sick animals this past year.

We’ll look forward to seeing what this coming week brings. Hope your weekend is sharping up to be a good one and for you Australians, hope the storms didn’t hurt you too much.