Poetry

I have had another poem published in the online journal of WA Poets Creatrix 30. I love writing poetry but get very frustrated when I cannot spend the time writing as I wish! The published poem was Winter Rain. I am currently working on another about Australian Christmases

WINTER RAIN

The rain drifts in and around the hills;
on the flatland it finds its way beneath my coat,
at home it pours down over my window sills,
and I’m beginning to think I’ll need a boat!

 Heavy black clouds wreath around the valleys

hiding the hill tops, even the city skyline,
don’t venture forth without your brollies;
leave early to get wherever you go on time.

Watch out for flooding, so map your course

to travel wet roads safely as still the rain poured;
careful to stay on road or washed off by force
by water that gouges the roads and claims scored.

But me, I revel in the teeming torrents,

enjoying the perfume, watching the hidden hills,
rewarded by the sudden appearance of forests
Grey and dull in the torrential spills.

Many poems I submit don't make the grade but that's the way it goes

America's 4th July 2011

A bit of trivia regarding America's 4th July celebrations and the nation's revered flag. I love the flag for what it stands for, and for being the flag under which our Church was founded, through Moroni as requested by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

AMERICAN FORK — There were 2.5 million people living in the American colonies when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
There are a few more Americans today — 311.7 million. And just like many who are anxious to light a few fireworks on the Fourth of July, the Census Bureau's penchant to tell Americans about themselves gets its fuse lit at a chance to celebrate the most American of national holidays — by the numbers.

Tom Smart, Deseret News
The crew steps inside the Dee Balloon III before launching during the America's Freedom Festival's annual Balloon Festival in Provo on Friday.
From the archive
•Tallying America for the Fourth of July – June 27, 2011
•Bills by Bishop, Hatch would change census counting, include Utah missionaries overseas – March 31, 2011
•2010 Census details Utah growth; West Jordan now 4th largest city – Feb. 24, 2011
The information quantifies the obvious, adds a few surprises and begs a question or two.
It may be a surprise that $3.2 million worth of American flags sold in 2010 were manufactured overseas, for example. But with that in mind, it is likely less of a surprise that $2.8 million of those imports came from China. Mexico is the biggest purchaser of American-made American flags, buying $486,000 worth last year.
The Census Bureau did not quantify how many American flags end up in places hostile to the United States, destined to become a prop in some nefarious media-attention-seeking down-with-America protest.
Much more subjective might be the question about how many "famous" American flags there are. Candidates certainly include the "Star Spangled Banner" Francis Scott Key spoke of when witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry; Betsy Ross' flag; the flag hoisted on Iwo Jima, memorialized at the Marine Corps War Memorial near Arlington Cemetery; the banner almost destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, now known as the National 9/11 flag; or perhaps the banner farthest from earth that the Apollo 11 crew planted on the moon in 1969.
It is likely no surprise at all that China is the source of the bulk of the imported fireworks — $190.7 million worth in 2010. Uncounted is the number of the people who unroll their spent fireworks to look at the Chinese newsprint inside.
What may be a surprise is that the United States also exported $37 million worth of fireworks in 2010, with Japan being its single largest customer.
Across the country, 31 places have "liberty" in their names, the most populous being Liberty, Mo., with 29,149 residents. Another 35 have "eagle" in their names, including Utah's own Eagle Mountain. The most populous is Eagle Pass, Texas, population 26,248.
"Independence" is in the name of 11 places, the largest being Independence, Mo., population 116,830. Nine places have "freedom" in their name, led by Freedom, Pa., population 4,464.
The Census Bureau says there is only one "patriot" — Patriot, Ind., with a burgeoning population of 209.
Places with some form of "America in their names" total five, led in size by — stand and salute — American Fork, Utah, population 26,263.

Cochlear blessings

This blog entry is long overdue. The cochlear implant is a wonderful blessing, even though I still don't have 100% hearing. To hear the birds singing, to play my favourite old records, to listen to my CDs and my movies, to go to Church and hear the Sabbath day meetings, to visit with friends, my family and even the check out 'chicks', is truly a marvel, a wonderful miracle. Such a blessing from my God when I was reconciled to being deaf and this miracle popped out of the blue. I know Heavenly Father is mindful of me and that there are those who watch over me! Of course, mine isn't painted like these, the picture was sent to me by my cousin Jenny who is living in London. Brilliant idea for kids who have to wear the processor

 

Blog Comments

It is very sad when someone who is supposed to be family will visit my blog and leave such dreadful, heart-rending comments that are based on completely unfounded untruths. It is sad that the person who left such comments doesn't realize that as a grandmother, I have access to my grandchildren through the law. Watch it people before you slam accusations around! I love my family! The detrimental comments have been treated as spam

My position on marriage between a man and a woman

Senator Eric Abetz Leader of the Government in the Senate Minister for Employment Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Public Service Liberal Senator for Tasmania

 

Dear Colleen, Given your commitment to maintaining the truth of marriage, I thought I should let you know that the Coalition has just resolved to maintain our position for the rest of this Parliament. I firmly believe that the institution of marriage is one that has been uniquely, over the centuries, the union of a man and woman to the exclusion of others for life.  I also believe it is the best environment in which to raise children. This is a bedrock institution of our society that I fully support. If you would like to gain a deeper understanding of my view, please see the transcript of my speech to the Young Liberal Federal Convention, available at my website: https://abetz.com.au/speeches/for-better-in-defence-of-marriage. The Coalition has a long-standing position supporting the definition of marriage and I am pleased that the position will continue. Can I encourage you to continue to make your views known publically through letters to newspapers, on blogs, talk back radio and discussing the issue with family and friends. Our children deserve the best possible start in life and the best possible model for that is a marriage where children enjoy the security of knowing their biological parents & the diversity of male and female role models. Thank you for your time, Eric Abetz That's what Senator Abetz has said about marriage between a man and a woman and it is gratifying to to the results of those of us who strive to teach the truth of marriage, which is ordained of God to be between a man and a woman. If those who prefer same - sex partnership, live together like man and woman do in this world today, and expect the same rights as them, but marriage itself is for man and woman and their children.  As Senator Abetz has pointed out, marriage is the bedrock of our society and without it our society would crumble

August 2015

DVDs and Cochlear processor

I have been much blessed. Over the years I have collected many DVDs, with quite a number given as gifts by my sons and friends, and mostly all captioned. I am a collector of the classics such as the old musicals, dramas, westerns and wars. There are some modern movies added to the multitude like the Bourne movies, Lord of the Rings, Eragon to name a few. My recent movie was an interesting purchase. I got it through Deseret and thought I was buying something about Latter-day Saints. The title Love's Christmas Journey; the tale of a young woman who lost her husband and little girl to a tornado and travelled to her widowed brother's home for Christmas. He had two children and that is as far as I have got watching  it. Okay so what's the problem? No problem! It started off with the logo and music of 20th Century Fox. One surprise. The second was noticing on the list of stars that Ernest Borgnine was in it. Then came the slogan about Hallmark,. I had to investigate. Okay it seems there are a group of saints searching and making movies suitable for family viewing. Well now I'll go for that and as one can purchase direct from Hallmark as well as Deseret, I just may do a little bit more of DVD buying. Why you ask? Because I can now HEAR! I can actually hear the speech of the stars, hear the songs (oh how I love Doris Day's songs, Kathryn Grayson, Howard keel, William Wallace, the list goes on!). Thus suddenly my great collection of DVDs takes on a new meaning as each day I take one to enjoy hearing it. And I can add to that collection. So blessed am I by a loving Heavenly Father and Saviour Who have made this possible for me and many, many others through the skilful and scientific work of brilliant people to bring the deaf back to hearing and bring the deaf who have never heard to hearing.  I just love the little one's who get the implants. What a wonderful miracle for them, particularly as the implant can 'grow' as they grow and has a life span of about 30 years. There may be horrors in the world, vicious things happening, but amongst it all is the beauty of miracles. What gratitude I feel at this time. And I hope my son, diagnosed with a hearing problem and needing hearing aids, will be as equally blessed.

The Dalwallinu Council Boys

I thought I should include my latest published poem in my blog, now that I have re-discovered my password! It was published in the WA Bush Poets and Yarnspinners monthly publication Bullytin, August 2015 edition. For the benefit of readers, Dalwallinu is a wheat belt town north of Perth on the edge of the pastoral land, the last of the agricultural area that is suitable for crop growing. It is 248 kms from Perth on the Great Northern Highway. Meekatharra, the base for the Flying Doctor radio is also on the highway and is 764kms from Perth and the station that we were on Oudabunna, was between the two towns, the turn off to the station at Paynes Find being on the same highway and about 370kms from Perth and 30 kms from Paynes Find, which, at the time we lived there, had only a tavern and petrol bowsers. Our radio codes were Oudabunna 8WIR - Eight Whisky India Romeo and Meekatharra was 8VKJ - Eight Victor Kilo Juliet. The time period is the 1960s and most of the Great Northern Highway north of the wheat belt area was gravel and rough. The Dalwallinu Council at that period was grading and repairing roads out in their farming district.

The Dalwallinu Council Boys

The Dalwallinu Council Boys
Were rebuilding roads anew,
Out in the bush with their council toys
Around the farms of Dalwallinu.

One hundred or so miles up north,

At ten o’clock for morning tea,
Pedal radios tuned and blared forth
Tales that women extolled with glee.

In the gravel, the dirt, the scrub and the dust,
Machinery all stopped their sound.
Smoko you see, the tuned radio a must
For the Dally boys to get their next round.

The women spoke of their troubles,

Their frustrations, their tears, their joys,
Unaware of their secret listeners,
The Dalwallinu Council boys.

The boys heard that Fabulon was useless,

And butter had melted with the heat
And to alleviate weight and the stress,
Splits up the door jamb would defeat.

The Dally boys home troubles the same,

As they listened amongst gravel and tar,
And promptly agreed on a nickname,
The Session of the Galah.

They learnt of lunches ‘n smokos, ‘n windmill runs,

Of mewsling, of crutching and shearing,
Of broken down vehicles, bucking horses and brums
Of sick dogs ‘n dead dogs ‘n drought appearing.

In stitches and with laughter rolling,
The Dalwallinu Council Boys sent a letter,
The Session of the Galah it was extolling,
To tell they hadn’t heard any better.

The women were really delighted

Of such a glowing epistle,
Each morning they happily recited
‘G’day’ to the boys out in the thistle.

 ‘Way south where the city was busy

Was boss Royal Flying Doctor base.
They heard all this radio tizzy
And decided they had to save face.

Dalwallinu Council received a letter,

To discipline its council boys,
To the women they even went one better
The pedal radio was not one of their toys.

So their cuppa tea listeners were banned,

And with a sigh the women did tune
Into their usual morning tea session,
And no ‘G’day’ to break the gloom.

Next time when travelling to the city

As one passed through Dalwallinu town,
A letter was dropped in the gritty
Machinery of boys that were ‘down’.

The Session of the Galah did continue,

Its listeners with delight a radio must,
Dalwallinu Council Boys already knew,
Listening out in the gravel, the dirt, and the dust.

 

Passwords

This remembering my blog's password has got whiskers on it. I could say the same for all passwords for whatever I do online it requires a password. Now my head is full of passwords. There have been at times many things I wanted to write in my blog and many articles I wanted to attach to my blog. oh well, never mind, let's look at the good side of things. Dad's Story has been self published. Brother John and self designed the cover for this self -published photocopied book!

 

The things that happen!

My Honours thesis that focused on Warrawagine Station

The other request was from an Anton von Sierrakowski who was chasing the Russell Timms who had Warrawagine Station in the East Pilbara in the 1970s. Anton had spent some time there, including a muster, and would like to get in contact with them. I searched the white pages and came up with two R. Timms in Perth. One is a Russell, so left my request on the answering service and hope its who Anton wants! I studied the Station records and work books of Timms time on Warrawagine, and this was part of my Honours thesis and later  doctoral thesis - The Historical Geography of Six Major River Basins in the North West of Western Australia since Pastoral Occupation. Hmmm, universities always like their long titles!

   

Some people read my blog and contacted me on my email. I was never more astonished in my life. Okay then. What did they want. Well, they were voices from the past, my writing past. The first was a little lady from New Zealand, Lee Cleaver who is much interested in purchasing my work Eastward to the Avon. Ron Giblett had some copies left over I know a few years back, but unfortunately they all have been sold. As Ron had been a naughty boy, laying claim to have written the book when he never put word to paper, only provided most of the genealogy and other historical data except related to the good ship Success, which I found, I had to contact Copyright Council to sort it all out. Cheeky man using someone else's hard work for his own gratification. No doubt because of that, Ron doesn't want to speak  to me, but Lee wants a book, hard copy hopefully, but as that is not to be, I can copy my own copy of the book for her.

Eastward to the Avon, publisher Ron Giblett

So I have included the cover of the book here and the title page! Just so that I can prove I did write this, Copyright Council did request an acknowledgement of my work. I waived receiving any part of the book sales, leaving that for the Giblett family. And the things that happen? I couldn't get the books to locate the way I wanted them in this poast. Darn!

Title page of Eastward to the Avon      

The beauty of it all

Mining Town of Tom Price from Mount Nameless

I was going through parts of my journal and came across some beautiful photographs I had forgotten about. They were taken in the Fortescue of the beautiful Hamersley Range and a  massive, lovely cone-shaped hill of Rio Tinto Gorge. the Hamersley Range is really spectacular with its range of colours, depending on the position of the sun.


Within the Hamersley Range at Tom price. Taken from the
 top of Mount Nameless

When I took these photos, grey-haired and 55, I was on my field trips in the North West of our large state of Western Australia, one in 1996 and the other 1997.   As I was pursuing a doctoral degree, it meant visiting everything, interviewing people and photographing everything. Iron ore mine was the dominant production in the North West, with Mount Tom Price the leader. I interviewed the manager of the mine  'Where was that iron ore going to and what was it made into?' I knew that in the past iron ore was used for vehicle engines, our wood stoves, cookware for both indoor and outdoor, machinery for a  variety of industries and so on. Antique cast iron cookware has lately become popular. Some fencing products are made from cast iron, and some machinery and piping. This I knew before I ventured the million dollar question. His answer stunned me. He thought I was a grey-haired old dame that could be bamboozled into thinking they were doing great things and I wouldn't understand! But I knew differently. Billions of tons of the stuff were shifted daily by massive trains over a kilometre long, snaking their way across the dry, spinifex landscape to the isolated but very busy ports on the coast.

Hamersley Range from Mount Nameless

I knew that the old iron ore was antique and that the new iron ore, mixed with alloys, made fencing, piping, machinery parts and so forth. So what did this manager of this huge mine have to tell me, anything different? 'Why, haven't you seen that giant carrier berthed at Port Hedland?' he asked. 'Our iron ore goes to Japan in these carriers and builds even bigger ones.' Guess my eyebrows rose at that reply, for I had hoped to receive something more technical. I replied 'so the iron ore has gone to Japan to build the big carriers that cart more iron ore to build even bigger ones of gigantic proportions?

The giant carrier berthed at Port Hedland

' 'Yes!' said this twit enthusiastically. I think I left that office a very unpopular woman, for I made my final remark: 'Well, isn't that rather a Catch 22 situation?' My poor Hamersley Ranges were suffering to build these giant

Entrance to Rio Tinto Gorge

ships was the way he put it, never mind about anything else. Come on iron ore magnates, what are you doing with our beautiful country of Western Australia? Look at the most interesting design of the cone-shaped hill at the entrance to Rio Tinto Gorge, which is another entry to Tom price from the Great Northern Highway. And on the coastal highway we have the interesting cut in the landscape of Wunjina Gorge. After all, these beauties exist within a very harsh and inhospitable environment where the sun bakes the countryside in extremely high temperatures every year and cyclonic gale force winds at periodical intervals scream across the landscape uprooting trees, demolishing scattered properties, and leaving behind sometimes devastating floods, but  bringing the most welcome rain. Let's care for our strange but beautiful land.

Wunjina Gorge



Just thinking

When I went to Office Works the other day, it was a trip I enjoyed, with my car window down and the perfume of damp earth, Eucalyptus trees and other bush vegetation wafting through. I wanted to jump out of the car and go strolling through the scrub like I used to do when I lived in the outback and then in the farming region. City living is a necessity when one gets old, living close to hospitals, chemists, specialists, doctors and of course shopping precincts. But nostalgia calls all the time to return. It seems I must content myself perhaps to little trips, scribbling my bush poetry taken from my memories and keep busy so I don't get blasted homesick all the time! I would love to be in the Murchison, particularly in the winter and spring, not necessarily the summer thank you when the sun beats down on one's head fare to push me through the baked ground! But to see the willy willy's spring up, swirling around filled with twigs and dirt and anything else it picks up, kangaroos umping away from my intrusion, the leaps causing puffs of dust or an inquisitive emu treading warily towards my stationary person. Until I moved! Here where I live I often get the smell of the jarrah trees wafting down from the hills, and the familiar itch occurs and I have the desire to wander through the Darling Ranges, checking out the plants and dark-trunked jarrah trees, granite rocks and such. Have you ever been bush reader? You don't know what you are missing. I feel for the kids of the city today, who do not have the freedom I have had when growing up and in my married years, where I roamed freely wherever I wished to go. Youngsters today cannot do that, unless it is a controlled visit to the bush. Perhaps I am not making myself easily understood, but as kids we took off into the scrub wherever the fancy took us, never worrying about getting lost or of 'absolute rotters' who may be hiding. Such things never entered our heads. We would roam anywhere and mostly barefoot. I do not recall getting feet full of prickles! Quite often I roamed on my own, amongst the granite rocks up in the Darling Ranges seeking the elusive and precious orchids, donkey, spider, pink lady, blue enamel. They were never picked, but enjoyed. It is wonderful walking through the bush and smelling the rich aroma of the blackboy. In my younger years, damaged blackboy trees were used for lighting fires, within reason of course, as the gum clogged up the chimneys. A delight though, when having picnic or camping out for the aroma of burning blackboy was delightful! Dangling from their writhing positions from shrubs and trees hang the fringed lily to enhance one's view. Underfoot were the yellow bellybuttons, amongst them the mulla mulla's, or pussytails another name for them, the common name.


Cotton bush on Three Rivers station in the Murchison



Blackboys, Gooseberry Hill, Darling Ranges

White everlastings, Moorarie Station, Murchison



Kangaroo Paws and smoke bush, Kings Park, Perth



Royal Mulla Mulla or Pussytails, Murchison

Donkey Orchids in a park near me, Kelmscott

Pink enamel orchid, Darling Ranges

Smoke bush and a friends hand Toodyay

Blue Leschenaultia Toodyay



A little blue unkown creeper



Sturt Desert pea, DeGrey region Pilbara.

Memory is a ...

Well there you go! For quite some months I have not been able to get into my blog because I had forgotten the password and then of course, going through the help business I have no way to receive it on SMS. But tonight, I was visiting WA Poets Inc and my name is there as a member, when I clicked on my name, my blog came up and I sat there staring at it. The password popped into my head. Howzatt then, back to blog writing again. But not tonight as its rather late, but definitely soon!