Author: TravellinPenguin

The Alphabet photo challenge and reading challenge has begun. But let me back up.

Tomorrow I head to Sydney to see the Tina Turner musical and spend a couple of days taking photos with a friend. Now, I’ll need a book to read on the plane. Will put my soundproof headphones on and enjoy a couple of hours in the air.

Alphabet by author’s last name: The A book is Robbie Arnott’s book Limberlost. I have heard so much about it and hope I can finish it then pass it on. It has won numerous awards and everyone I know seems to have read it or is talking about it. The blurb states:

“In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat.

His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.

Desperate to ignore it all-to avoid the future rushing towards him-Ned dreams of open water.

As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land- of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.”

******************************

Yesterday I visited a home where a young woman had lost a ring from her grandmother somewhere between her garden and a large hardware store several miles north. She posted on our Good Karma fb page wanting a metal detector. I contacted her and said I don’t loan it out but I would come over and scour her back yard. After 90 minutes yesterday digging up screws, nails, bottle tops and crushed beer cans I am fairly certain there is no ring in her yard. She said it could be in her house and one of her two cats found it. One of her cats is a kitten so we can all guess what could have happened if that is the case. She presented me with a lovely bottle of red wine for my efforts so it was a good return for me anyway.

I then headed north to begin my Alphabet photography challenge. I really want to visit places I have not been so the afternoon had me at the James Austin cottage north of Hobart 14 kms. A for Austin. The wind was blowing a gale but the sun was out and although cold it didn’t take long to explore the small grounds of this property. I’d never seen it before.

Google told me:
It is a small and simple cottage, built by James Austin in 1809 and is located a couple of hundred metres from the Austins Ferry Yacht Club.
Austin was a convict who had been transported to Port Phillip in HMS Calcutta in 1803 and then transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1804. His crime was the theft of beehives valued at thirty shillings and he built Austins’s cottage on his release from local stone. He named the cottage and farm after Baltonsborough the village of his birth in Somerset, England. In 1816 James Austin and his cousin James Earl established the first trans Derwent ferry service which remained the main transport route from Hobart Town to Launceston until completion of the Bridgewater causeway in 1838.

He became prosperous and developed a large farm property and orchards. He died in 1831. The original farmhouse he lived in is gone and an inn built at the time burned in the 1967 bushfires.

It was a lovely day out and finished off with a toasted sandwich and a flat white coffee sitting outdoors in freezing wind along the River Derwent. I look forward to future challenges. We need to go out into bad weather at times just to feel alive🤠🌻.

I hope you enjoy the little cottage photos. I’m tempted to visit it one Sunday arternoon when it is open.

I will finish off with our cat, Cousin Eddie helping me pack. So glad I noticed him.

In January I was notified I had a bunch of Frequent Flyer points and I needed to use them by end of March or lose them. I had been wanting to fly to Sydney to see the Tina Turner musical as I love anything to do with Tina Turner. Event though she does not play herself in the play I think the actor who won the part will be very good. So I booked it all and leave Monday.

I’ll be there for five days. Two days will be spent with a good friend doing photography. Hopefully some street and urban photography one day and animals another. Then I’ll come home.

I’m taking my lovely copy of Hemingway’s book The Sun Also Rises to read on the plane. That is the June book club read. It is one of the books of his I have not read due to the bull fighting in it but I’ll just have to skim over that part if it gets too busy.

When I return I am going to do a little photography project and a book project. Both are alphabet projects. Tasmania is cold and dark for the winter and it is important to get out for some sun. Photo project will have me visiting different places alphabetically with my camera. Saturday I am visiting a local spot that starts with A. I’ll include it in a future blog. I’m hoping to find some interesting spots in southern Tasmania that I have not been to before.

Alphabetical TBR project. I have my book club reads that are often more substantial but I have a lot of books on my shelf that are slimmer and need to be read and removed. So I will start with an author that begins with A and go from there. We’ll see how far I get until the first day of spring, equinox spring, but of September spring.

So stay tuned for my thoughts on that and some photos hopefully in a couple of weeks. Stay well everyone.

…but I wanted to tell you about the rally I went to here in Hobart on Saturday. In Australia we have Aussie Rules football that is quite popular in several states, though not all as others prefer rugby. Each state has one stadium to accommodate football, cricket or rugby. However Tasmania has two stadiums. One in the north that is currently under renovation and one in the south of the state. Several states have one or more football teams. Tasmania does not have a team. Tasmanians have wanted a team for years but usually support a favourite team in another state. We would like one.

Now the head of the AFL, Aus Football League got together with our state premiere and said we will give you a team. All you have to do is build a covered stadium for 750 million dollars. We will chip in 15 million and your taxpayers can pay the rest. Our premiere and this head guy from Melbourne went into a room and signed a secret deal approving this. No one else in parliament was allowed to learn the terms of this contract and still don’t. Then our prime minister weighed in and said, “We’ll give you 240 million dollars if you follow these redevelopment rules in this area of old warehouses, etc on your waterfront” . However all predictions indicate costs will blow out to a billion dollars and where are the engineers and builders coming from who will build it? Where will the traffic go? There is one main road that flows by the site. Not to mention it will be 10 stories high and overshadow the Cenotaph, the ground the war and veterans memorials are on. The mayor and city council don’t know the details either. It was a done deal and then announced in the media that this stadium will be built on the waterfront of Hobart. Right in town. Again, Ten stories high-highest building in Hobart. And it is on Indigenous historic land.

Well, the proverbial shit hit the fan throughout the state. Everyone wants a team but this is blackmail. We have homeless on our winter streets. We have people dying in ambulances. We have a mental health hospital closing its doors as the building is too old. We have environmental issues. We also have 70% of people in our state not wanting a third stadium in a state with 500,000 people. We are a small state.

On Saturday a protest as called for on Parliament House lawns after 7 days of organisation. 6,000 people from all over the state arrived at noon. Every branch of government was there. Two of the party our premiere belongs two resigned and became independents as they are against the whole thing. Tasmania’s liberal government is now in minority. They did have majority. For my North American friends the liberal party here is the conservative party unlike liberals in the USA being more to the left.

So now, no one knows what will happen but the protest was great and I went to it with my camera and took photos. The only book related bit of this post is that Richard Flanagan, a Booker prize winning author and homegrown here who loves this state, introduced the speakers.

I don’t get political in my blog but I want to share my photos and if this goes ahead Tasmania will have 3 large stadiums and maybe no team.

When you visit here be careful not to step over a cut down tree in the rainforest, step over a homeless person or get in the way of a ramped ambulance who cannot unload their patient for another few hours.

Members of the other political parties all sent messages that were read against the stadium by Australian actor Essie Davis.

Now a new week is underway and time will tell what the future holds. Until next time.

I will leave you with the proposed image. Not my photo🙄🙄