Thank you Nicki Taylor.
Some of those with whom I have blogged for a long time will remember Nicki and Charlie Taylor and their mate Amy.

Nicki edits books and was responsible for the copy of a book called Unbound Press in which some of us had little bits or stories published. I don't think any of them still blog, but I took the chance and asked Nicki to edit my manuscript about what was done to Don in Royal north Shore hospital. (Australia)

She agreed back just before Christmas and I engaged her to do this big job...the manuscript is about 250 single spaced typewritten pages and she dis an excellent and professional job...returning it in a much better state than when I sent it to her...

Today I am off to Sydney with the Manuscript and first stop is some meetings with a specialist defamation Lawyer who I will have to pay to ensure that it can be published without my being sued...


but without Nicki's help it would still be a bit of a jumble...THANK YOU NICKI!!! big time.

Don and I both loved the Stones...some time in our time together he started to call me "Honky Tonk" all couples have their terms of endearment... Don broke my heart at times with his...his quadriplegia did nothing to lessen his love and people imagined we had no sort of love life because of this...

I was always his "Honky Tonk Woman" and only we knew why...





I miss so much his kind of love. I have become a hermit out here...but not lonely for people...just lonely for him...he was something else... someone else and I was so lucky...its the loss of him as he was which is too hard to bear.

Sometimes, at home, in the middle of the night I would hear Don softly singing Joe Cocker’s ‘You are so beautiful to me’ over and over. How do you ever cope with losing someone who loved you like that? Maybe in the night he was awake with pain and just checking if I was awake, which I had to be by the end of the few lines he knew, but more often than not he just sang it. Someone able-bodied, who could turn over in the night and hold you in his arms, couldn’t have held me as beautifully and with as much love as Don did with his singing and other things. It was a way of being close in the dark. He didn’t want anything for himself. All he ever worked for and wanted was always for the girls and me and other people. Through that he drew pleasure. I was always beautiful to Don and he to me. This song brings me undone big time....

Where's that flat bottomed boat when you need one?

this mother and large baby Kangaroo sat here for ages till the water moved higher then they shifted...there are plenty of spots for them but they are basically encircled as am I...they may have to come up high with me if this continues.

Later this morning i took these...its slowly (thank goodness) rising
This is the paddock beside the house ...the water goes across about 40 acres beyond this out to the highway

Think you can get lost in the crowd...nah! No longer.

Just Have a look as this technology, absolutely unbelievable?????
Can't believe this - click on the link below - the technology is mind-boggling !This is a photo from the 2009 Inauguration, In which you can see IN FOCUS the face of each individual in the crowd !!!
You can scan, double click and zoom to any section of the crowd. . . wait a few seconds. . . and the focus adjusts. The picture was taken with a robotic camera at 1,474 megapixel. (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera)
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

My Craggy Island Home and more rain predicted...cut off from town right now but not to worry...plenty of food and Chirs and Melissa went to the Winery yesterday...and have plenty (to take home they thought???)

The bodies of water apart from the small dam which has disappeared is all flood water

And then it floods....All we need now is a bloody cyclone or something...

Melissa and Chris were to go back to Sydney today but major flooding means that they can't get through. Melissa said her dad caused the flooding so she would have to stay longer

Happy Birthday to me...aged old 55!!!

I am today 40 years older than what i was when this photo was taken of me holding my youngest sister Annie (who everyone calls Jackie). I was 15 then. A few months before this photo was taken my dad was killed by a drunk driver...

Its odd to look at yourself so young and reflect. I have to say that with all that has happened in these 40 years the good times, the fun and the laughter have meant that the balance more than tips on the side of happiness. In a few hours my eldest daughter Melissa and her husband Chris will arrive...its been such a long time since the girls visited the house. Its easier for me to go to them these days. And wouldn't you know it, I now have water lying over the road, and rain is supposed to bucket down for the next few days. A shame it didn't come a week earlier...how different things would have been in Victoria it it had...

No good doing the what if's?

My youngest gave me a beautiful ring with four hearts in its centre. We are going to have it engraved with the four initials of our little family. It wasn't cheap and my first reaction was "What on earth did you eat for the past weeks?"

I have wonderful kids. I have wonderful kids. I could say this again. I will. I have wonderful kids.

Got some great pressies, my eldest sister veronica gave me a shopping voucher. Another sister gave me a painting she did of my new cat...a book and a man's nightie...I am very practical that way...Its what i wanted. The sister I am holding gave me a photo of her three little blondies...Alison gave me the ring, some special lolliesmmmm, A really good coffee mug and a bamboo set of chimes. Alison as usual made a beautiful card for me, and wrote in her special way some lovely things...straight to the heart...a few tears.

They were worried about me because I would be by myself most of the day...but they need not have worried...its been a lovely rainy Sunday..time to reflect. I have so much and after trying to get a grasp on what happened in Victoria, I will never feel sorry for myself ever again. just to be alive and breathing means I am heaps better off than so many.

Bushfire firie gives a Koala a drink

Something good.


My daughter sent this...unbelievable to see a wild koala drinking out of a plastic bottle held by a human. In the wild they are usually not all that easy to get near on the ground...and certainly wouldn't allow you to be this near. This is just beautiful.

Australia Cries...

The death and injury toll continues to rise sadly

At least 166 people are dead and 24 blazes remain out of control as Victoria's bushfire crisis enters its fourth day.
The death toll from the bushfires is certain to rise further as more remains are found in more than 700 burnt-out homes strewn through the 330,000ha so far razed in Australia's worst bushfire disaster.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/749121/fires-rage-as-death-toll-rises-to-166

Grateful not to live in Rural Victoria right now.
I have a fire plan; that is to stay with the house anf follow what the Rural fire service people told us when they spoke to our little area... but how brave would I be with a wall of flames barrelling towards my house. How mnay of these people stayed with their houses but ran at the last minute. I feel so much for the people involved...fire is a shocking way to die and the land that was familiar becomes a nightmare.

From Nine news,

The Victorian Bushfires have now killed 108 ppeople confirmed. No one knows how many are injured but it would have to be more
There was little rest for many firefighters overnight, with 25 bushfires still raging out of control at 3.30am (AEDT) on Monday.
At least 750 homes have been destroyed and an estimated 330,000 hectares burnt out while authorities said some fires could take weeks to contain.
The latest death toll, announced by Victoria Police at 2am on Monday, surpasses the toll from the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, in which 75 people died in Victoria and South Australia, and the Black Friday bushfires of 1939, which killed 71.
Reflecting the chaos caused by the fires, police early Monday said they could not identify the exact location where five of the victims died.
Of the confirmed deaths, at least 63 perished in the largest blaze, in the Kinglake region, that has cut a vast swath across the central highlands from Wandong, south to Kinglake and nearby Saint Andrews, and northeast towards the upper Goulburn Valley.
One fire official said the blaze now had a perimeter extending "hundreds of kilometres" and may take weeks to contain.
The Kinglake fire, which sprawls across 220,000 hectares - about two-thirds of the area destroyed by fires across Victoria - has all but consumed towns including Kinglake and Marysville.
Former Nine Network Melbourne newsreader Brian Naylor, 78, and his wife Moiree are among the nine people that died at tiny Kinglake West as the flames swept in on Saturday.
It's expected more burned houses, and more victims, will be found once day breaks.
Victorian Emergency Control Centre spokeswoman Caroline Douglass said the Kinglake fire poses two major threats.
Residents of Taggerty, Acheron, Snobs Creek and Eildon are on alert, with the fire active in their area.
"There are quite a lot of hot spots in that area and it is still quite dangerous," Ms Douglass said.
Residents in the Kinglake area have also been asked to remain alert, with containment lines not completed.
Fears are held for communities near Beechworth, in the state's northeast, where a fire has burned 30,000 hectares so far, Ms Douglass said.
Two people died at the village of Mudgeegonga, in the hills south of Beechworth on Sunday.
Ms Douglass said the fire was still threatening Stanley, Bruarong, Dederang, Gundowring, Gundowring Upper, Kancoona, Kancoona South, Coral Bank, Glen Creek and Running Creek.
The fire had entered the Mount Big Ben area, southeast of Yackandandah, and while quiet overnight may affect Kergunyah, Kergunyah South and Gundowring North during the morning.
Further spotting east of the Kiewa River may also put the towns of Eskdale and Little Snowy Creek at risk.
"The wind is expected to swing to the south and it will push the fire in the direction of Yackandandah over the next day," she said.
In Gippsland, the 32,860 hectares Churchill fire burned almost to the coast and claimed 21 lives.
Ten died at Calignee, south of Traralgon in the Latrobe Valley, with five dead at nearby Hazlewood, two at Jeeralang and four at Koornalla.
Fire activity had eased overnight but a host of townships are on alert, including Hazelwood South, Jeeralang, Jeeralang North, Jeeralang Junction, Balook, Le Roy, Jumbuck, Valley View, Budgeree East, Traralgon South, Callignee, Calignee North, Calignee South, Carrajung Lower, Won Wron, Woodside, Devon North, Yarram, Calrossie, Alberton, Tarraville, Port Albert, Langsborough, Manns Beach and Robertsons Beach.
The Bunyip Ridge fire in west Gippsland burned 25,000 hectares.
"It has much-reduced fire behaviour, which is great, but we are yet to get containment lines around it completely. We ask residents to remain vigilant there," Ms Douglass said.
A blaze that has killed two people at Bendigo, and another near Horsham, have been contained by fire crews.
With fires also burning in the Yarra Valley, east of Melbourne, staff at Healesville Sanctuary have evacuated its entire threatened species collection.
Staff have transferred 60 helmeted honeyeaters (including eggs and hatchlings), 25 mountain pygmy possums and their pouch young, 32 Tasmanian devils, 69 orange-bellied parrots, two brush-tailed rock Wallabies and five koalas to Melbourne Zoo as part of the sanctuary's emergency management plan.
Ms Douglass said the weather was the key to gaining the upper hand.
"The weather in the south has been much cooler. In the north of the state, though, it's still very warm. It's very dry," she said.
Moderate to fresh southwest to southerly winds are predicted for Victoria, with isolated light showers on and south of the ranges and morning isolated thunderstorms in the north, where it would remain warm with very high fire danger.
Workers at the emergency control centre are doing it tough but are more worried about firefighters in the field, Ms Douglass said.
"It's certainly sombre, especially as they keep updating the death toll. Every time it goes up, it gets a bit quieter," she said.
"It's hard to keep going knowing the impact this is having in the broader community but I think it's a lot harder on the firefighters out doing their jobs that keep discovering more houses that are burnt or more remains of people. It must be very tough on them."

My heart and hope go out to all those people affected by the terrible bushfires in Victoria and New South Wales. I hope that non of my blog mates have lost anyone, been injured o affected...today's heat in NSW is going to be of the scale and we have just got to hope for a still day...
As of 9am 25 people have been confoirmed dead in the Victorian fires and they think it may rise to 40...
I just feel so sad for the people involved. i can not comprehend what they are going through.
"
From Nine news today
The death toll from the Victorian bushfires has risen to 25, police said today.
"I can confirm that we now have 25 people dead at this point in time," Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said.PHOTOS: Fatal inferno
Mr Walshe told reporters late Saturday that 14 people had been confirmed dead, with fears that the toll could rise above 40.
"Our concern is still... that we believe numbers will rise as we get further into the fire zones this morning," Mr Walshe told the Nine Network on Sunday morning.

Most of the bodies were discovered in towns northeast of Melbourne - six at Kinglake, six at Kinglake West, four at Wandong and St Andrews, three at Humevale, and one each in Arthurs Creek and Bendigo.
At least six bodies were found in the one car at Kinglake, with reports that others may have been trying to escape the fire in cars.
Children are believed to be among the dead. But police have so far been unable to confirm the gender or ages of the victims.
Mr Walshe said he feared the death toll would be much higher.
"At this stage, to have 25 confirmed deceased, that gives me great concern that the numbers are going to get substantially higher as the day goes on, as we're able to get into the fire zones behind the fires to do those searches," he said.
He said earlier that police would undertake a more thorough search of burnt-out properties on Sunday with the fire in the area under control and cooler conditions.
Police spokesman Senior Constable Wayne Wilson said the clarification on a final death toll would take time.
"We've got to go through these places in the daylight, where we can search them properly," he told ABC Radio.
"These sort of situations it does take time for clarification to come through... particularly when you are dealing with death.
"We do it as quickly as we can but we've got to do it in a methodical and accurate way."
Meanwhile, 18 people have been admitted to Melbourne's Alfred Hospital with burns and three are in a critical condition.
Seven of the injured have burns to more than 30 per cent of their bodies.
© AAP 2009"

Summer has certainly arrived here...
Many places in New South Wales are expecting 43C (109.4 F)-47C (116.6 F) tomorrow Some places out west will be 50Celsius. Thats an unbearable 122 F.

I can remember its being this hot when I was a kid, so I am not convinced its global Warming, as people are having extremes of cold in the Northern hemisphere. There are many weather cycles which are natural and part of how the planet has fuctioned for some time. This hot summer is mild compared to some. During the sixties it would be this hot for ten days straight, then a few clouds, no rain and back to hot again. The furniture inside our house was warm to touch and there was no escape at night, even sleeping on the verandahs. We had no fans nor any cooling at all. I don't know how people don't go mad when its like this. As kids it was okay because we would be swimming or whatever. School was a nightmare and the nuns didn't spare the cane because of the heat...maybe they were worse dressed head to toe in yards of black thick cotton.

Dad would come home in his lunch break from the meat works and totally change his clothes because they'd be wet through as if he'd been swimming. I remember him swallowing salt tablets and having dreadful leg cramps at nigh time because of the lack of salt in his system from sweating.

Now here's the thing...mum and dad never wore deodorant, we were restricted with water and all shared the one bath at times...I do not remember either of them having that B.O. smell that we notice within hours after a shower if we forget deodorant.

I don't remember any of the old people smelling offensively...a few drunks maybe but not the others. I figure that they must have had a lot of Pommie baths,

So I wonder why we all use deodorant. What has changed so that even after a shower we need deodorant. I can only ever recall mum having a lovely sunlight soap smell...a smell which wafted into my home many a time after she died, almost 16 years ago now.

I managed to convert to the mineral stone which comes now in a container and you just have to put water on it...but all my sisters and all the adults I know close enough to know, use chemical deodorant. I got off that one because of its links with breast cancer.

Have we become more sensitive towards any smells like normal body smells so that we don't feel clean and consider others unclean if they don't smell like some fake flower or something.

Its become a funny world. I think back to the early 60's and i can remember things, how we did things...there was no tele till 1967...what did we do at night...I can't remember being bored...and yes i did watch the test Pattern when tele first came to our house. We had an outdoors toilet which the sanitary man employed by the council came and emptied once a week. It was a bit high in summer. I remember sometimes when dad was away working if it got too maggoty or too full Mum would somehow get it down the back yard (this was in a country town) about an acre away from the house and dig a hole and bury it.

We'd be there with her carrying a pick or shovel, for all the world like we were having a party.

The fuel stove kept everyone warm in winter and the hot water was always singing on the stove... Only on the very hottest days did that fire go out and then only after dinner (lunch) So we'd have cold teas.

The old people would sit out on the verandahs of any house we were in visiting or our home, and you would hear them talking away till you couldn't stay awake...I can't remember what they said, but every so often a hail of laughter would bring me awake again...till I gave in. Any joke going had my attention.

Some time ago I posted the following...way back... I wrote it for some family history I was putting together in the early 90's, which sits in a large black ring binder... Some will have read it, but most not. The heat today reminded me of this..it was a great time to be a kid, but then my girls say it was a great time to be a kid in the 1980's maybe its always a great time to be a kid, just that if you have had a happy childhood, no one elses childhood seems as good as the one you lived inside. Thats how I feel anyway.

"Photos.

I look at my 'child' photos and the memories come back in wave
after wave. Waves of sunshine and winter; waves of sweetness and
sorrow. Each little detail stirs a memory that stirs a flood of
other memories that I thought were gone. The large cement
rectangle, near the back door of our house in Aberdeen which used
to be the base of the back part of our house, and on which stood
the kitchen, bathroom and laundry, and which fell to white ants,
long before I was born, and before my family came to live there.

That cement still burns my feet, cold-hot. My hardened child
feet, test the level of my endurance in the high summers of my
long ago. That cement bore witness to many baptisms by hose, in
the bright heat of summer as we took our turns to have the
baptisimal rites said over us, each in turn, religiously cooled
by the experience. But to sit on the large high tank stand and
hold that hose, ah, that was the privilege.

Endless games of rounders, focused on the long gone rectangle.
The bases which were trees, still stand as witnesses that these
games of young life occurred. "Queenie, Queenie, whose got the
ball?", the childish voices of sisters, friends, sometimes
enemies and myself, chorus out in my mind. I know every beat and
note of that game. Skipping, games of 'fly' were all focused
around that patch of cement.

Mum was always somewhere inside that large old house, almost
always. So sure of this were we all the time that we never even
thought about it. Dad generally did all the outside work, when he
was home, but it often seemed to fall to mum to bury the contents
of our outside toilet, whose large pan always got close to
overflowing at Christmas times, in the intense heat of the inland
summer. As a child fascinated by the event, the maggots and the
whole event of the burying, I can remember her delicately picking
her way down the back yard, hauling this very heavy and unstable
container of her family's wastes. Pick and shovel at the ready.
Those years of boarding school could never have prepared her for
this task and yet she never seem to lose her temper, get dirty or
forget her unique dignity.

The yard we played in was large, interesting and safe.
Imagination could reign free and the back yard was many things.
Childhood days seemed eternal. I share all this with my sisters
and the bond of home and yard goes very deep. I still remember
the piles of tree nuts we would gather into tins and piles. We
would form teams and pelt these hard projectiles at one another
without thought of eye loss. Didn't I throw a tomato stake over
the old paling fence once which landed right between my sister
June's eyes. By accident of course.

I see the old tin pedal car that belonged to us all at different
times, but was originally Veronica's. Then even further back an
old tin pram, a scooter and a battered old Dinky which were both
repainted, every time they were handed down to the next child
they fitted. They were ours, in those days, only as long as we
used them, and as soon as we moved on to other things, 'ours'
would be revamped and hammered smooth by dad to be presented to
the next in line. I never recall being disappointed that these
toys were old. They always felt new, by virtue of their being
given to me, and re painted. It was a good feeling.

When I was about nine a small blow up paddle pool appeared in the
yard one Christmas.Dad covered it with a tarpaulin shade. It was
heaven just to lie in this cramped little space and pretend it
was much bigger and that you were really swimming. There is a
photo of this arrangement, and mum stands in the photo, younger
than I, arms folded and laughing cheekily out at the camera. I
see photos of the large yard, in my childhood, always mowed and
trimmed, sometimes even with flowers on the edge of the driveway,
and realise that dad did much more in the yard than my childish
mind realised.

We are all five of us, the children of then, adults now. Some of
us even have adult children of our own. I can still feel the
burning heat of those long summers, in our yard, I still remember
eating water-melons out in the yard, on the late summer evenings
and playing endless games of hide and seek in the dark. Through
it all, and with all that went on in the outside world, the home
and back yard was the private world of the family to be who and
what it wanted to be without interference, from outside the
paling fences."



When it is this hot the death rate rises amongst the elderly and frail

Mike Adam's song about the bailout of big business in the US.
I have this newsletter in my email regularly...never thought the guy Mike Adams who is a health writer, was into rap but this song is a good one...
Natural News Insider Alert (www.NaturalNews.com) newsletter




This is what he says about the song...his regular newsletter is excellent as well
"NaturalNews Insider Alert (www.NaturalNews.com) newsletter
Dear NaturalNews readers,
We did it! With your help and support, something happened today that defies convention: The front page of the Wall Street Journal features a story about the song I wrote called I Want My Bailout Money, which takes aim at the bailout money con sweeping America. If you get a chance to pick up Friday's Wall Street Journal, look for that story on the front page. You can also read the web edition of that story here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123387724064054525.html?mod=article-outset-box
You can also hear the song at: http://www.naturalnews.com/I_Want_My_Bailout_Money.html
If you wish, email the writer of that WSJ story and thank him for covering the subject. He's a cool guy (Rob) who did a great job with the story and provided a lot of historical information and music and economic hard times. His email is located at the end of his article.
This kind of exposure never would have happened without YOUR support and goodwill, so I want to personally thank you for sharing NaturalNews stories, music, cartoons and other content that's helping to educate people about the truth of what's happening in the world today.
I find it interesting, by the way, that for five years the mainstream media has utterly ignored all the great reporting NaturalNews has put out there about vaccines, the cancer industry, Big Pharma, the FDA and other topics. Now, we suddenly get picked up for writing a song about the financial sector! It's a bit surprising, really, but perhaps it's a sign that the media is increasingly open to the ideas on NaturalNews that used to be considered "radical." Maybe one day the media will find the courage to write about the crimes of Big Pharma and the corruption of the FDA..."

I finally figured out...

what I get from going out to Wauchope cemetery every Sunday...apart from marking the week...

I was out there last Sunday and it was really hot. A dry heat. Cicadas were so loud I couldn't hear anything else.

As I replaced the flowers and washed the bird poo off the headstone, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. When I stood up it felt as if time had stopped and the heat didn't matter anymore...nothing mattered which was as frightening as it was wonderful...if this makes sense.

The bush in Australian summer seems to hum, not just with cicadas, but with something...the quality of the air... the incredible feeling of age which has a way of putting you in your place. It can be a bit unnerving almost alien at times. I think just about anyone who has spent anytime in the bush or close to it has had this feeling. Its almost unAustralian to mention it.

Wauchope cemetery is just on the edge of town...so that you can't see any houses. It is surrounded by tall gum trees and I often see kangaroos out there, all sorts of birds...whoever chose this place for sacred ground knew what they were doing. It has a feeling to it and I get this every time I go there.

It really hit me this last time that what matters isn't how bloody rich we are, how big our "McMansion" is...none of it...all that is inscribed on the headstones of most I could see were little endearments of love. What matters most. What matters most is how we are and how we treat people, not how we are treated...though at a lesser time I will rail about that as well...and take pure bloody enjoyment in doing so.

Now, I know Don is no more out there than he is anywhere ...but its a marker and we all have our sacred ground. For some its the edge of the ocean, for some a favourite tree, whatever...and in a hundred years unless the land becomes too valuable and is desecrated for profit, the stones will crumble as they should...and in that hundred years there will be people who will pass by and wonder and have exactly the same thoughts as I do now...

It really does not matter all the things that we find such a worry...in the end it really does come down to the sort of love that is without conditions, and is compassionate and understanding.

That was something it took Don and I our whole lives to come to. I remember one day about 6 months before he was killed, that we had been bickering...for no reason...just two people in the same room for too long will do it...and he looked at me and said "lets just not do this anymore." I felt the same, because the ones who love you, and who you love are the ones who can hurt you the most and who you can hurt...

after this we never had one more moment of even dissent...it was like as if we were on the same page...not just some of the time, but all the time...should have known something was coming along...and in a way we did...

On Sunday out at the cemetery standing there in the incredible heat, I had such a feeling of peace, a moment of something "other"...that it has stayed with me. The hard thing to do is to remember that feeling.

Sometimes from somewhere if you stop for the moment, you are given a gift like this from somewhere...



.. then there was a really strange dream I had in the wee small hours which had me crawling out of bed crying actually asking out loud "what the bloody hell was that all about?" Scared the cat! It centered around the girls...and their having gotten to a certain age so that we had to plant their feet in the ground as if they were part tree part human. Of course they didn't want do this, and hundreds of images of them seemed to fall about me of them free and human. It seemed to go on for hours and there was a dreadful feeling of loss...loss of freedom for them... but the inevitability of them having to have their feet planted... even had me encouraging them, but knowing that when this happened I would lose them because they would turn into trees... So I told them I'd stay in the middle of where they were...it just got too sad and I woke up crying... Nothing to do with headache tablets or booze ...nothing I could think of which may have created this.

I get very nervous when I have these sorts of dreams about my kids. After the experience the other day I should know better than to have useless fears...but am superstitious enough not to discount these things