Travellin' Penguin

(Quote by Charlotte Carpenter)

It has been awhile since I was here but wanted to wish everyone well for the new Year and hope your Christmas is/was going well. We aren’t much of Christmas people anymore. We do enjoy the day but our priority is giving funds to the local animal welfare groups in our city.

Yesterday I took Ollie and Peannie to the dog beach. After a few months of rehab, Ollie’s leg has healed enough he can play with other dogs. They had so much fun and really wore themselves out. They both came home and crashed out. I think they had smiles on their faces.

Totally knackered! Look at Ollie bringing up the rear. He played so hard with other dogs.

I finally finished the book Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. Because I took so many notes on my Kindle Scribe it took me a long time to read it. The next book on my list is Zadie Smith’s book Fraud. I’ve not read her before but have heard so much about her. I will also be choosing a random book off my shelves to begin. I will randomly select three books and choose one of the three to get stuck into. I will need to speed up my reading or allow more time to get through all the books coming up in 2024. I am not the fastest reader in the world.

With my eye sight being so low now in my left eye I look like a budgie, focusing on the print with my right eye.

I find kindle books much easier and faster to read as I can adjust the font size so I think the majority of my book club reads will be kindle and I will also try to mop up more TBRs from my shelves.

Earlier in December I met my good friend from Port Macquarie in Sydney for 5 days.

She and I saw the Dictionary of Lost Words by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Opera house. We enjoyed it very much and laughed at all the big groups of people around us in the audience. They were all book clubs. How fun would that be. Your whole book group goes to the Opera house.

This is my favourite building in the world. I just love it.

I also spent some time with my photography friend who lives in Sydney that I missed when in Sydney the end of May because she came down with Covid. It was a fun week but I was glad to leave on the 8th as Sydney was 41 C (105.8 F) that day. We went to Central station that morning and boarded a train for the 6 hr journey to Port Macquarie. I enjoyed the trip but it is S L O W ! So many stops.

I stayed for a few nights with my friend. I have never been there before. It is a beautiful city.

The highlights were attending the Glass House performing arts centre to see the indigenous dance group, Bangarra. It was excellent performance and the dancers are incredible. We also had lunch at the Koala hospital grounds that includes the historic Roto house. Just beautiful. I adopted a koala for a year while there and receive mail outs about how Roto-Jazz is doing.

An injured koala came into the hospital while we were there. The vet and assistant are evaluating it. They have a viewing platform where visitors can see into the hospital.

The historic Roto house where we ate lunch on the grounds.

wrap this up with some of the phone photos from the last month . I didn’t take my big camera as my friend and I spent time at theatre (no cameras allowed), shopping (just a nuisance when holding ags) and having a cocktail every night, (takes up too much space on those tiny tables).

Our Roto Jazz . We will keep an eye on him.

This year had it ups and downs, as usual so I look forward to the clean slate of a new year. I also look forward continued chatting with my blogger friends who I have enjoyed very much this past year. Here’s to the next year into our world of the unknown.