I have always loved this song...as I slept in my bed when the girls were babies, and Don was softly snoring i would hear the great Sea Eagles fly out over out little house and dream...I recently found what i wrote about this way back then... and John Denver's song fits how i felt to a tee...

"Sea Eagles.

In the time when Merlin arose and spirits spoke to men alive,
Sea eagles flew out over them on great whooshing wings
And cried and cried...
They cried of things we search for,
The cried of things we’ve found,
They cried in universal music, and cried to pierce our souls.

And in this time when “Space Invaders” and “Big Mac’ is everywhere,
Merlin is slumbering in his ancient wooden womb of wisdom.
This time for achieving; getting; progressing and trying to stay sane,
the sea eagles cry for those who are aware.
The cry for those who are unaware.
They cry for the truth we are seeking.
They cry for the peace we don’t have.

I am lying in my bed in a tiny wooden womb house,
in the leaden light, and birds are talking to me, singing for me.
One child sleeps at my side another in my arms;

my husband snores softly beside me
And we are lying still in total peace as the sea eagles
go flying out above our heads.

A million, million women are lying thus...
Lying still and just lying sometimes is our strength and our survival.
We’re waiting for the sea eagles,
We’re waiting for the cry...
The cry which pierces the soul and allows the spirit to speak."

Has anyone read "The Stoner Eagles" by William Horwood....that was a book and a half...

These are some shots of the beaches around my area...

This is Lighthouse beach in winter... if you click on these photos you can see how lovely the beaches are.










and again.










This is my eldest sister Veronica...who has now been christened the "Camera Nazi"..we had such times together...real bonding and will stay with me forever...






And Veronica and I ...she always pinches me or digs me in the ribs as photos are being taken so if i look prepared I was...
This was a wonderful day before we set off on our trip...we are all smiles...and this is a treasure for me. I find it hard to be with people since Don was killed so brutally. Its like I have to put a plastic face on and pretend to be normal.
Inside I am such a mess but for the time with my sister Veronica and Joan I felt slightly normal again...
June and Rod I know you read this blog just have some dignity and bugger off please...get a life.

Some more lost photos .

I was sent these photos of Don taken when he was about 14/15. I made contact with some mates he knew in Port Hedland recently and the upshot was these photos and a couple of phone calls.

Don spoke about this time as being one of the happiest when he was a kid and for me these photos are another blessing. I thought I had every photo left...and now this extra...

Don is second from left in the group of four. The one taken on the beach is a lot clearer if you click on it...


I guess had we had a son he might have looked like this, or maybe like my dad...who can tell. both our daughters are so different from each other, but yet the same. I guess if there were 10 kids in a family they would all be different.


I had a phone call from the girl on the right...she would be 59 now. We had a long talk about things and she said one thing which I can give to the girls,,,She said she remembered that Don was a gentleman...not bad for a 15year old...thats not to say he was backwards....

Lost Photos of my dad
I was given more old photos of my dad which I had never seen, when visiting old relatives. These were taken during the second world war years. Dad was unable to join the forces as he had one leg in callipers as a child and it was much shorter than the other...funny thing was he was a NSW rifle champion one time...but instead he drove ammunition trucks and the like. He was the strongest man physically I ever knew apart from Don, and like Don as well the gentlest.
Dad had the most amazing mop of curly hair and it was almost blue-black. In winter he had pale skin, Added to thick dark eyebrows, beautiful long eyelashes and eyes of blue grey - the photos don't do him justice. No matter how much he tried to control his hair, a few weeks after a trim it would be back up on top - the men he worked with tried to tease him about the hair and eyes, but Dad was so obviously male they didn't get far...

When someone has been dead for forty years, someone you loved dearly as i did with dad..to find more photos of him is a blessing. Even if the one is with a previous girlfriend...he just looks so happy and carefree...

I'm Back!
The trip over inland (to the upper Hunter area of NSW) was pretty good, although it rained much of the time. Not as cold as usual, because with the rain there were no frosts. My sister veronica who takes even more photos than I do, left her camera charger behind, so borrowed mine and between us there are some beautiful photos of the foothills west of the Barrington Tops which is wild and wonderful country...It is my favourite part of the world to look at...but not in summer...it can be hellishly hot over there then. Its funny how I feel about the countryside up there, it touches something deep inside and I feel a longing for something lost if this makes sense. But I choose not to live there.

So between us we ended up with about 500 photos!!! Most of them pretty good. I ended up christening her "The Camera Nazi" because she seemed to forget who's camera it was, and seemed a little surprised when i requested taking a photo at all...it was good fun...

It was emotional as well as walking through the old hometown cemetery, after taking flowers to mum and dad's and other rellies graves, many of the headstones bore the names of people we had known in our childhood...too many of them were too young...

Some first photos... This is Joan (in front) and Veronica standing where we used to play Rounders as kids...it is our old back yard. The house was moved about 30 years ago and the backyard where we had such fun is just a vacant lot...its funny, I can still see the cement paths, the chookyard, dad's woodcutting business down the back, the swing and the long clothes line...



Veronica and Joanie under the old Pepper tree (there are a few of them now, from the original old one...this was where dad's large chook run was.



















We stayed at a friend of veronica's place...she was away...her bedroom had an amazing view of the landscape...you could see it all even lying in bed. I'll post this later. We downed the odd glass of wine here, and watched many Father Ted DVD's. I got to set the camera up and then run into position...




My sister Veronica is a real Winery person and loves to go round looking at them all...I admit not being all that big on doing this...but the scenery was beautiful. On the second last day we had lunch there and it was really no more expensive than in a coffee shop. I am more of a cask wine person... something unmentionable in the Winery tasting areas...HM!

Before I came home I spent a day with the journalist who has finished the final edit of my book. She managed to strip 10,000 words and its hard to tell where from so well did she do it. Its much easier to read now and no repetition. She is really positive about getting it published and I am really lucky to have linked up with such a like minded person. I was straight away comfortable with her. We are the same age, and also our husbands were the same age. Hers died (also caused by the doctors) a year before Don and her youngest son has cerebral palsy caused again by mistakes made shortly after his birth...so i sure found the right person...

Now must catch up on everyone...it seems like ages.

My eldest sister and I are travelling over to our old home town

today and will be away till 24th June. She bought me a present. See below. Said it reminded her of don I when we were young. Not that we wore shirts with peace signs on it...but close, and we didn't play guitars... she said it was the facial expressions..HMMM She is sort of right when you look at the young photo below and she got the flared jeans right. Those were great times to be young in thats for sure.

We are going over for the 40th anniversary of our dad being killed ...and also a good chance to be together. There will be three of us gathering together, out of the five of us. A shame. It could have been really good had all five of us met and it may have helped sort things out...after all it was not to be about us...but for the memory of our dad . One other sister can't come because of exams.

Anyhow, I doubt there will be a place to blog while I am away so i hope you all stay well and keep out of mischief...or at least enjoy that mischief.

A funny sort of week...
About ten days ago I took the new cat in to see if she was healthy, as being a dumped cat, I needed to know first did she belong to someone else (micro chipped) and had she been desexed. First up were all the vaccination needles, blood tests that you are told must be done to see if she has cat aids etc...$200... then bring her back in a few days for micro chipping and desexing (as she is still active that way...they said.

So back for the operation and I get a phone call an hour later to say she couldn't be Spayed as they discovered she had a lung worm called, "Aelurostrongylus Abstrusus”; only the best...its treatable but means twice daily getting a horrible mixture down her throat with a syringe...easy if you have three hands... I was told to do Cuss the other cat as the young vet said it might be contagious...more blood tests...$375 and still not desexed.

So took her home to begin the 2 week treatment...the next day she is "In heat" and trying to accost my cat (who is female) but she was spraying everywhere and accosting anything that vaguely sat still for her, the chair leg, my leg...I had never seen a cat in heat before...and thought she must be sick till my other cat, exhausted from being unable to get away from her, and frantically pleading for rescue...made me twig...got on the net and there it was... 5 to ten days I was told shorter if she mated longer if she didn't... my house is not huge so the smell is shocking...as i have had to lock her in a verandah room. I must have mopped the floor six times a day... the poor thing seems unable to settle and when not sleeping exhausted for a moment she is yowling fit to wake the dead, and this goes on most of the day and night...


I gave up on trying to get the medicine down her throat the syringe way as I was copping most of it myself anyway...so now I put a little in an eggcup size amount of milk and don't feed her till its gone...so its working. I am desperate to get the lung worms cleared up because she can't be Spayed till i do and will come back on heat later if I don't...

Its been raining every day and adds to the pleasant odours which no amount of sandalwood incense, or cat urine spray seems to cover.

Then late on Saturday I was coming home with a few bags of groceries (cat food mainly) after seeing the new Star trek (wonderful...the best I have seen of all the Star treks or it could be the special effects) and slipped on the path which was wet and slimy. I landed on my right shoulder, hard...but got up and thought I'm okay...went to bed and in the morning I could not move my arm (shoulder joint) away from my body.

Being a sook I just bawled my eyes out, because out here with only cats and snakes for company having my main arm out of action is really bad news and it hurt, and (sob) i felt so alone...the cats were hungry, and by the time I did all the Kitty litters, (the promiscuous one decided to get diarrhoea and it was all over the litter tray) and did the best I could with the stinky one and the feral back room, it took ages.

It took me till mid morning just to get dressed enough so I could get a taxi to hospital A&E... as I wasn't able to drive safely...

Mindful of the Swine Flu i tried not to breathe at all in the waiting room as everyone seemed to be coughing everywhere... now they have an isolation A& E setup, but didn't then...seem to be okay that way thank goodness...

As many doctors are not my favourite people it was just my luck to have Dr "Smart Arse and Arrogant younger than my daughters who spoke very little English at all".
It took me ages to undo the buttons so he could see my arm and almost impossible to get it out of the sleeve, with him standing there like a piece of puke saying "Try harder" and being impatient...may all the dogs of hell eat his liver. He wanted me to force it this way and that till I got fed up and said"maybe it should be X rayed before we do this" he said "A good idea" or something that sounded like that. Gaaarrrgh

Took ages to get dressed again, all the time he just stood and not even offered to help at all, mongrel bastard. It was incredibly painful and I could see him becoming impatient so told him it had taken me ages to get dressed that morning and I could not go any faster. Then he said like the smart arse he was "Oh but I'm sure you have someone to help you" with a grin that a woman my age knows exactly what it means...he was enjoying my humiliation. I don't think anyone has any idea how much I dislike these sorts of doctors...they need their knees kicked out from under them every Friday, just to remind them what pain is and to be humble.

I just said to him, "No actually as a matter of fact I don't have anyone to help me get dressed, my husband died recently as a victim of Royal north Shore Hospital doctors"...he was a bit quiet after that and mumbled a"sorry"...maybe he'll think twice before he shows other women such a lack of respect...and he still needs his knees kicked out from under him weekly. I would like to have that job.

The bones were not broken, its soft tissue damage, muscles...the good doctor advised me to move it about when I got home, to force it to the edge of the pain...which didn't sound right to me, but I stupidly followed his dumb advice...it got sorer and weaker. I couldn't raise my arm higher than my waist without extreme pain and then it would just flop down...finally yesterday I rang the Osteopath who I trust and who treats me as an equal which I am...he said"NOOOOO." he said he wouldn't work on it till inflammation subsided, to take Nurofen (spelling) for the inflammation and put it in a sling and hold it as still as practical...the opposite of what the child doctor told me. After Sunday coming he will look at it... doctors may be able to fix bones but when it comes to muscles and tendons and other soft tissue they seem to be bloody useless.

Its been such gloomy weather, and cooped up with the smells hasn't helped...soon the little cat will not be on heat...by the 13th she will be clear of Lung Worms and after a week can be Spayed (another $300pluss) ...no doubt the pain will get less and things will seem better...

Next week my eldest sister arrives. We are going inland to where our mum and dad are buried. It will be 40 years since dad was killed on 17th June and we had planned all five of us their children to gather for this, but only three will be there... I am really looking forward to this.

The editing is close to finished and then we move to publishing...it appears to be taking a long time, but for something of this nature and because it has to be spot on...its pretty normal I believe.

The new cat had me fooled after lunch...she seemed to be behaving normally so I let her out of the back room, within seconds she was back to her "behaviour" so quickly scooped her up and back in the room...but it may be coming to an end soon...

she is back to the loud continual 24hour a day yowling now...who needs a radio???

Also this article appeared in the Sunshine Coast daily about the bad treatment my sister received by the company he was working for when he was killed on the job... it explains itself...my sister had no idea what his funeral cost as Sunbus said not to worry about it... http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/jun/03/sunbus-widow-left-2000-funeral-bill some of the comments are excellent...