TravellinPenguin

Summer’s Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up To Be

Posted on January 30, 2019January 30, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

snip20190130_4 Sadly, Tasmania is burning and it just has everyone on edge and filled with sadness. The fires began in our wilderness areas from lightning strikes from a dry storm we had a few weeks ago. They seem to be spreading from west to east. They have now approached residential parts of the state in the southwest and central highlands. People are evacuating everywhere.

Tasmania has very good fire management strategies and so far there has been no loss of life though a few houses have now gone.

The smoke not only blankets our state, it has been reported that it has reached New Zealand.

Fires are unrelenting in our high temperatures blanketing out state and they really cause people to feel depressed. I feel very sad for the people leaving their homes for evacuation shelters and camping in large football ovals in this heat. I also feel very sad for the animals. Wildlife flee, people with horse trailers collect farm animals and move them to large paddocks that have been volunteered away from the fires. People really rise to the occasion and provide amazing relief on all counts.

Lots of donations being made to the dogs home and the woman who is organising paddocks for farm animals. A pet taxi service in Hobart has been collecting domestic pets and driving them to refuge as well.

One feels helpless watching. Everyone wants to do something but is not equipped to do more than donate money to those working. There have been warnings to stay away unless on official business.

snip20190130_1 Of course there has been one looter caught and another in a campground in the eastern half of the state that is currently fire free lighting a large campfire. Both have been charged and will go through the courts. One can only wonder what these morons think about. There has also been some arsonist that started another fire that diverted one of the helicopters away from the main blazes to put this fire out. I must admit my thoughts run to the days of public floggings.

Like the rest of the country, we need rain. Except Queensland which has floods raging in the north. Isn’t that always the way. We also need politicians who believe in the science of global warming and aren’t pushing through a coal mine at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. (Again the public floggings go though my head.)

As far as books. I have finished up reading the books I wrote of previously and am looking for something that will hold my attention long enough to get out of this funk that quite a few of us find ourselves in.

snip20190130_2 There is a lot of photography work coming up for me in the month of Feb that will be mentioned later. But for now I just need to get this out of my system.

I know this will pass. Everything passes eventually. Just need to keep telling ourselves that.

Australian Fiction, Australian Woman's Author, Non Fiction, Uncategorized

January Reading And A Bit Of Serendipity

Posted on January 24, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

Our Fuller’s Bookshop Book for February is The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. It is a retelling of the Iliad from the point of view of a woman. Our group meets the first Thursday night of February so I will write more about it after we have discussed it.

I recently finished The Arsonist by Chloe Harper. Our group will discuss this book the first week of March. Chloe Harper is an Australian writer who writes about the Black Friday bushfires in Victoria that happened several years ago. Again I will wait until after the group meets to write about it.

I am currently reading our April book, The Everlasting Sunday by Robert Lukins about boys living in a boarding school in England in 1962. I’m not that far into it yet but I feel it might become quite ominous. More on that later.

In the meantime, I can talk about the recently read The Shepherd’s Hut by Australian writer Tim Winton. I imagine most people who live in Australia who read this blog have read it. I will say I loved it very much and couldn’t put it down. It was a slowly drawn story of a young man who lives in Western Australia. He had a very abusive father who had abused him for years and it became worse once his mother died of cancer. He often wished his father dead and when he does die in an accident while working on his car in a shed, the boy fears he may be blamed and heads off into the bush and desert of Western Australia.

In my opinion nobody writes about Western Australia better than Tim Winton. You feel the heat, the dust, the young man’s hunger. He comes across an elderly man living in a shack in the desert in the middle of nowhere and the story continues with the development of their relationship, the life and trials that happen upon them.

My only criticism of the book, which some don’t agree with is I thought Tim Winton wrapped up the ending too quickly. This is a drawn out story that seemed to follow a certain, consistent pace throughout. Then suddenly the end is upon the reader and it seemed to quickly finish. I can’t say more than that as I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone. I will leave it at that for now. I did really enjoy this book though.

The serendipity I refer to is regarding a page I have put in my 2019 journal. I read a lot of book reviews. I get them from my bookshop, other blogger’s posts, the newspaper, everywhere.

I also receive publishers newsletters and magazines and often see older books referred to at times. I often exclaim to myself, “My gosh I have that book on my shelf!” and think I should get it off the shelf and read it so I can then pass it on. So for 2019 as I read reviews and notice books that are named by other bloggers, I will get that book off my shelf and place in a pile to finally have a serious look at it. If I’m not going to read it then maybe it is time to pass it along.

So far on my journal’s Serendipity page, as I call it, I have Persuasion by Jane Austen. It is one of her books I have seen the film for but never read. So onto the pile it goes and I might finally get to it. As it is early in the year I don’t have any other books listed but I do have books by a couple of authors that have been in the winds of 2019.

I read a blurb in the Weekend Australian just before New Year’s Eve written by Mandy Sayers about her favourite books for 2018. I have a book on the shelf by her so I may grab that one. I have several books on the shelf by Helen Garner unread and I know I must read them. I hear so much about Helen Garner especially from Australian bloggers I follow. So onto the pile they need to go. I can’t think about their latest books while I still have their previous books on the shelf. snip20190124_6

February will have me listening to audible books, mainly in the car. I’m currently listening to Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick who is a New York City writer I love. I heard her speak at the Sydney Writer’s festival a few years ago and enjoyed her very much. Most of her books are memoirs of her life growing up in a tenement building of 20 apartments in the Bronx. Some of her books are of her life later in life. She is close to me in age so has lived quite a bit of life.

I love tales that take place in Brooklyn or the Bronx especially in the 1950s and 60s. She deals with a very exasperating mother which I find interesting and I feel as though I am on the streets of New York with her, trying to figure out life. Fierce Attachments has most of the book taking place in her first 25 years. They live in an apartment building that has 20 apartments in it and the interaction between the neighbours and families really draw me in. I love the New York Jewish phrases and sometimes hysteria as many of the women deal with their husbands and children. snip20190124_4

February is going to be a very busy month for us but I’ll write more about that in a couple of days. I’m trying to finish off books in January because I’m not sure I’ll get a lot of reading completed in February.

More on that later. Until then, I leave you…

Weekend Wander

A Weekend Wander finds a Collectable Tassie Book

Posted on January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

snip20190103_3 I was going to have posted this up last weekend but I came down with a virus that knocked me around a bit. Better now so getting onto it. I mentioned in the last post that my friend, Kate and I sometimes go to the Glenorchy markets. It is a real mish-mash of items but they have pretty good coffee and excellent doughnuts.

We decided to get stuck into the doughnuts right away to give us sustenance for walking around and searching through all the junk this place offers for some possible treasures. I brought Penguin and Penguin brought along his American friend, Red Squirrel. I gave the responsibility for Red to Kate. I know she hasn’t lost her ability to recreate childhood anymore than I have so it was a good match.

snip20190110_8 — **Some just can’t eat a doughnut without getting sugar all over their face.**

While sitting at a table at the little kiosk in this big warehouse, her eye wandered to a table of second hand books. She suddenly said, “I see a book I need to get.” Once we finished our doughnuts we walked over to the table and I saw the large book she was talking about, Tickleberry Tales. I had not heard of it before but it turns out it is a history of the Hydro Electric Project started in Tasmania several decades ago.

From Wikipedia:

In 1914, the State Government set up the Hydro-Electric Department (changed to the Hydro-Electric Commission in 1929) to complete the first HEC power station, the Waddamana Hydro-Electric Power Station. Prior to that two private hydro-electric stations had been opened the Launceston City Council‘s Duck Reach Power Station, opened 1895 on the South Esk River (it was one of the first hydro-electric power stations in the southern hemisphere. Reefton in New Zealand is the first municipal hydro-station, beginning operations in 1888) and the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company‘s Lake Margaret Power Station, opened in 1914. Both these power stations were taken over by the HEC and closed in 1955 and 2006 respectively

Following the Second World War in the 1940s and early 1950s, many migrants came to Tasmania to work for the HEC with construction of dams and sub-stations. This was similar to the Snowy Mountains Scheme in New South Wales and similar effects in bringing in a significant number of people into the local community enriching the social fabric and culture of each state. Most constructions in this era were concentrated in the centre of the island.

As the choice of rivers and catchments in the central highlands were exhausted, the planners and engineers began serious surveying of the rivers of the west and south west regions of the state. The long term vision of those within the HEC and the politicians in support of the process, was for continued utilisation of all of the state’s water resources.

As a consequence of such a vision, the politicians and HEC bureaucrats were able to create the upper Gordon river power development schemes despite worldwide dismay at the loss of the original Lake Pedder. (Lake Pedder is a lake that has a bottom of pink quartz on the bottom and there are still calls to bring the lake back to its original glory) The hydro-industrialisation of Tasmania was seen as paramount above all, and the complaints from outsiders were treated with disdain. (When the politicians approved the Gordon River to be dammed for inclusion in this scheme the people of Tasmania held enormous protests led by several very angry environmentalists, including ex-Senator Bob Brown and what is now know as the Greens Party had its beginnings. But that is another story entirely. I might add the environmentalists won and the river was not dammed.)

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There is much more history to this large project and if you’re interested in more information just google Hydro-Electric Commission Tasmania.

Now the Hydro published a book about much more history of this project and the community of people who were the workers. This also included their families and communities. My friend, Kate, grew up in Wyatinah, Tasmania, deep into the Derwent Valley. Her husband, Mark also grew up in the same community and was two years ahead of her in school. Mark’s family is Stansbie. He comes from a large family of children and he and Kate were in primary school together.

As we looked through the book, Tickleberry Tales, she showed me photos that had been taken in their small community back in the 1970’s. Mark’s family members and Kate were featured in them. We started talking to the bookseller at the market about this book and I told her Kate is featured in the book. We thought the price she had on this book was a bit high. But before we discussed buying the book, she offered us a significant discount because she thought Kate should have it for her children to keep.

Kate’s husband’s family: The Stansbies

We pooled our money together and given the discount Kate took the book home. Her children were very happy to accept it.

That experience really lifted our spirits and we continued to walk around the rest of the market. Penguin and Red had fun, Kate and I had fun and we left two hours later with several very inexpensive plants we picked up for our gardens. I think this was a very successful Weekend Wander full of Serendipity.

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I have scattered a few photos on the page. I hope you enjoy this little bit of Tasmanian history and the Penguin was glad to get home and onto the page again.

snip20190110_4 — **Penguin gets stuck into other books.**

snip20190110_5 — **Sometimes you just can’t take a Penguin anywhere. I told him he was lucky the stall holder didn’t sell him to someone.**

Snip20181102_18 — **See you next time!!**