Category: Fiction

We’ll kick off here with Thursday today. It has been a very busy week but interesting. I started off Thursday with my trip to the weight training group. Some days I really drag but today I was right up there, feelin’ good.

I had dropped Ollie off at the vet for his sedation and X-ray following his six weeks of recovery from his surgery. I had to get back and pick him up. He is healing well and his orthopaedic surgeon sent us a six week plan of physio. It was addressed to Ollie but I think we’ll have to encourage him on his progression beginning with 15 minute walks through to a short beach walk and then longer bush walks. Six more weeks living life on his lead.

Then Thursday late afternoon had me coming home, scrubbing up and getting myself down to the Theatre Royal for the Tasmanian Literary awards.

I bought a dress for the event but had to exchange it when I discovered it was slightly too small. All I could think of was comedienne Kitty Flanagan saying “If you look like a rolled roast, go up a size”. So I did!

It was a pretty good evening but sadly most of the more well known authors, Amanda Lowry , Robbie Arnott, Aunty Patsy Cameron were not in attendance.

The evening started with a recognition of country by an indigenous poet, sorry I forget her name. The following awards were in the categories of fiction, non fiction, children, poetry (for the first time), Margaret Scott award, and on it went. Australians who are interested in the winner’s list can go here. https://www.arts.tas.gov.au/tasliteraryawards/home .

As this was the first time the awards were held since Covid many were happy to see their return. The honourable MP for the Arts, Elise Archer, liberal, handed out the major awards. The highlight for me was when Andrew Darby won the non fiction category for Flight Lines.

The book…..

“Andrew Darby follows the extraordinary migratory shorebirds from Australia’s southern ocean to the Arctic and back. On these travels he explores the power of science to reveal the mysteries of these birds, and to heal both their endangered world – and unexpectedly – himself.’

The journey of these rare, grey plovers, is incredibly long and perilous. Andrew gave a passionate speech about the risk to these endangered birds by the liberal government’s plan to put up a mass of wind turbines on one of the islands in Bass Strait, directly in the flight path of many of our migratory birds. Of course the presenter of his award is from the liberal party. There was much applause and hooting and hollering.

I think members of our liberal government lie awake at night just thinking of ways they can bulldoze our state and eradicate all wildlife.

It was good to see Arts Council Tasmania bringing back the literary awards. Of course Ms Archer announced a measly increased amount of money in the state budget for the arts. But nothing like the $750 million dollars they are planning to spend on our THIRD football stadium in our little state of 500 million people, half of whom don’t care for football. The AFL won’t give Tasmania a team unless we build a new covered stadium as the existing two are without covers. Forget the ambulance ramping, little to no low cost housing and the increasing number of homeless here. Every state in Australia has one stadium and we are going to have three!

However I won’t start. Instead I will wish everyone a happy holiday season. We are not doing Christmas this year as we have taken our Christmas funds and donated them to animal welfare groups and the Bob Brown organisation for the wonderful environmental work it does. All the best for however you choose to celebrate the season or not.

I’ve been busy catching up on blog reading but lately there are too many posts to comment on so my comments are a bit sporadic. And sometimes there just isn’t a good response to make so I slide into the next one.

I’ve been following the Intrepid Arkansawyer for awhile now and I really like her format. It is in the format of a weekly diary and details not only books and tv events she watches but life with her mother and cats. I like the personal touch.

So I think I might try a bit of the diary format as I find if I wait too long before I post, it is just overwhelming to remember and write everything that happened since my last post, so I don’t. I would like to post more often.

So here goes… MONDAY:

Today was quite hectic. I did my normal weight training after a trip on the bus into town. Only 5 in the group so was nice. Getting strong. Then had a couple of errands before getting the bus back. I recently got this cookbook called Recipetin Eats Dinner by Navi Maehashi. Evidently this is one of the fastest selling cookbooks out there. I have looked at some of her you tube videos (recipetin) and really like her no nonsense approach to good food with a wonderful Asian slant to it.

I bought ingredients for one of her recipes I’ll cook tomorrow.

Once home I had to take Ollie to vet for a check on his surgery wound. He is doing good but has now been confined for six weeks and he really is over it. Thursday he has his sedation and x-ray to see how his leg has settled.

For relaxation this week I am reading Heather Rose’s newest book, her memoir called Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here.

TUESDAY:

Needing to get rice for today’s RecipeTin recipe. Teriyaki Beef Bowl. I’ll let you know if we like it.

More reading on the Heather Rose book. Since I missed her launch as she was the author I wrote about earlier making us wait so long for the event to begin and also on Ollie’s surgery day I was not keen to indulge her on her book. Just being stubborn. But I am so enjoying the book. Her life has been remarkable and extremely different to what I, with biased thinking, thought it would be. Her writing is very visual and I can see the places in Tassie she writes about and her experiences with the Native Americans in the USA as a young adult we’re just incredible.

I am quite surprised she survived her youth after reading of those experiences and her time in Asia in the 80s. I would recommend this book as I am just speeding through it and I don’t speed through books generally. I am enjoying the part now where she has just completed the Overland track walk with her 13 yr old son. Quite funny. I read her book Bruny previously but think I need to get her book The Museum of Modern Love.

I just had some good news from Australian Photography Magazine. Two photos I entered into the Photographer of the Year competition have been shortlisted. I’ll share them here than publish this as I have a big event coming up Thursday and this post will be too long if I include it. This is now Part One.

Winners of photography competition will be announced the end of January. I have no thoughts of being in the top ones but am very happy to be shortlisted.

Photos below: 1. Global Warming melts the Sydney Opera House.

The Retired Showman.

Stay tuned for Part 2, end of week.

…..of a great deal of wind and rain and cool temperatures. However we are going to reach a high of 19 degrees C today, (56F) so the temps are beginning to climb.

I got up early this morning and finished the book, Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down. This book won Australia’s Miles Franklin literary award 2022 and was short listed for the Stella prize here.

I have heard a few say they don’t want to read it due to the subject matter but it is a wonderfully complex story (IMHO) and once into it I couldn’t wait to find out what happened to Maggie, the protagonist.

Here is the blurb on the back of book: “A quiet small town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she’s reluctant to revisit: dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss. She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?”

The story starts with Maggie as a 4 yr old. Her mother has left and she is left with her father. When he is imprisoned for manslaughter, her life in foster care and institutional care begins. We follow Maggie until she is in her 40s and see the ramifications of a traumatic childhood. It went in directions I could not have predicted and once into this story I think the reader is really on her side.

I found the writing amazing and the characters jumped off the page.

I’m not going to say another word about her journey as it would spoil her trajectory.

Here is another book I’m reading from the library:

Postcards from the Asylum by Tasmanian poet Karen Knight. I went to a Fullers book launch a week ago of a book of poetry she and her photography partner put together. He would take photos of the landscape of the Tasman peninsula (google Tasman Peninsula photos if you want to see it’s beauty) and she wrote a poem to go with each photo. I did not buy this book but I was interested in a previous book she mentioned that she published in 2008. It is a book of poetry of her time as an inmate at the Royal Derwent Psychiatric Hospital in 1969.

Willow court has a very old history as a hospital, lunatic asylum, psychiatric hospital and all manner of people were incarcerated there over the decades. Many with disabilities, immigrants from WWII who could not speak English, the mentally ill. It didn’t take much to end up there. It closed in 2000 and I was working for Disability Services at the time. We supported residents moving into community homes as part of a team. Reading the files of my clients made for disturbing reads and although the buildings of Willow court still stand many are now derelict with their steel bars over windows and even a moat round one building. Various organisations have tried to make a go of different enterprises since but the government has been less than helpful in managing anything to do with this place. Vandalism and graffiti have taken its toll and who knows what might happen to these heritage buildings in the future.

I am looking forward to seeing how she manages her poetry of such a dark place.

Well, I am off to the gym soon on the bus so I will move along here and leave you with a photo or two to cheer this post up a bit.