What is it Wednesday?

Well a little surprisingly after the vile weather last night I was greeted by a beautiful dawn and hardly a cloud in the sky.

One bonus of early starts is I get to see dawn most mornings.

Now for this week's WIIW.  I suspect this is an easy one, but sometimes the ones I think are easy  are the the ones that stump people.

SO without further ado, what on Earth do you think this might be?

Spring!

Most days I try to get out of the office for a quick walk at lunch time. For months now it hasn't been a very pleasant prospect. Melbourne has a reputation in Oz for a dreary, wet and cold winter.

This year it has really lived up to that reputation. In buckets!

We count the start of spring in Oz from 1 September, until today the weather has not been very spring like.

Today was different! For the first time since last autumn I left the office without my coat.

It was beautiful!
So nice I turned toward the Carlton Gardens.
So nice and sunny that I broke one of my rules (don't use a phone camera).


I just had to record it because the forecast from tomorrow afternoon is wintry again the rest of the week.

In the Gardens is the Royal Exhibition Building.
 
On my way back I paused to show how close the gardens are to the city (you can see the window to my office in this piccie).

“If you don’t like it” or Melbourne Weather

They say about Melbourne weather: “If you don’t like it, just wait it will change” or “Melbourne the city where you have five seasons in a day.”

Well Melbourne is living up to its reputation just lately.

This city is located on the south coast of Australia’s mainland and two major factors drive our weather here. The Southern Ocean and Australia’s hot dry inland.

Winds here tend to come roughly from the west. If they come from the South-West they come off the Southern Ocean so things are cool to cold. If the wind veers to come from the North-West the wind comes off the desert centre of Oz then things get warm to oven- like.

Just over a week ago, to be absolutely precise 10 September (we do the dates the right way around down here) I took these photos. That is right folks that is snow taken at the Upper Yarra Valley a week ago Saturday.

Spring And that road was closed because of snowfalls further up.

When I took those photos it was 12:00 in the day and the temperature was hovering around 0° C (30°F).

But yesterday we went back to the mountains these next few piccies were taken high up across the valley from my snow shots. No snow this week!

This weekend just past we had glorious spring weather, with the temperature climbing to a pleasantly warm 29°C (84°F). I say pleasantly warm because that is how I see it, basically almost warm enough to head to the beach. Remember summer temperatures here are often between 35°C (95°F) and 45°C (113°F) so 29 is “warm”

This cute little waterfall is called the La La Falls.As you can see it was just too bright to take really nice waterfall shots.

Bright enough to capture shadows of a certain Aussie, call this one a “self portrait”.

Just finally,
I had to share this boulder in the stream and this absolutely cute bridge in the trail on the climb up to the falls. The clever national parks rangers have built this little beauty out of dry-stone. There isn’t so much as a drop of mortar in this construction.

A quick poll. For my next post would you prefer:

A: More waterfalls
B: Some majestic trees
Or
C: Sunlight through clouds?

Autumn is Here.

The weather has turned cold. I hasten to add, that is by our standards.
My brother lives in the UK. I was talking to him last night, he was saying it was a lovely sunny day and beautifully warm.
I was grumbling because it was cold and wet. When we compared temperatures we were both talking about 20ºC (68ºF). I guess things are relative.

Anyway this afternoon the clouds broke up and the sun came out for a while. So Deb and I decided to go for a walk.
We stayed fairly close to home and went to a spot called The Plenty Gorge Park.
As you can see from these trees autumn is starting to bite.In the Park is an old farm the LePage homestead.
The original farmhouse was built in the 1850s. Then it was rebuilt in the 1870s. Unlike the Georgian buildings I photographed in Tasmania this building shows the hallmark of Aussie bush homes verandas most of the way around. They keep a house cooler in summer and if you get really desperate you could sleep on the veranda on hot nights.

I would guess this old bluestone barn is one of the older buildings on the property.
Around the corner you can see down to the pond below.As you can see the garden is planted in a cottage garden style.And one last shot a rose budding in the shade.Now to the extract from my WIP.

Last week if you remember Valentina was stopped by Stepan on her way home. Things are about to get a whole lot worse…

Valentina Meshcova
Berlin 1948
'Get in the car Tina’, Stepan jerked his head at one of the men, ‘Put the child in the front vehicle.'
One of the thugs picked Natasha up, not roughly, but not gently either. Her eyes were huge in her little face, her eyes desperately clung to me until she disappeared into the car.
With a sinking feeling I slid in next to Stepan. It was a huge black car, not German I thought, maybe American.
It was a limousine really, with a huge amount of space between the driver’s seat and the rear bench seat. Half lying, half sitting on the floor against the far corner is a woman’s form. A black hood pulled down over her face. With a frightened intake of breath I recognised the clothes.

It was Penelope.

'Hands behind your back Tina.’ Stepan’s voice strained impatient, ‘No! Facing away from me!'
The cold of metal against my wrists, with a clicking noise my hands were cuffed tight. 'Now face me.'
I turned to face him. 'What is going to happen?'
He was white and shaking, 'I warned you Tina. I warned what would happen if you didn't watch yourself.'
He slid across toward the far door pushing Penelope’s body further into the corner with the callous thrust of a boot. A muffled moan from under the hood.
‘Tina, into the middle.’
One of the men climbed in next to me.
With a lurch the car moved off, 'Where are we going?'
For the first time Stepan smiled as if to a private joke, 'As the Americans would say "we are going for a ride".'
'Stepan, please.'
'You have forfeited any right to ask favours of me. There is nothing I can do. Consorting with an enemy of the people,' he jabbed Penelope with his toe, 'means you are an enemy as well. Hood her!'
The world went black as a bag was pulled over my head.

Time drags when you are frightened. A second becomes a minute and a minute like a day. Not being able to see only made it worse, the trip seemed to go on forever.
Towards the end the vehicle bounced and swayed from side to side.
When we finally came to a halt everything went quiet for a moment.
In the hood sounds were muffled and magnified at the same time. Disembodied men’s voices, the sound of the door opening. Someone seized me by the arms and pulled.

With my arms still pinioned I was half dragged and half fell out of the car. Not onto cobbles but onto soft ground. I was dragged maybe another metre or two and dropped on my face. The smell of grass and leaf litter.

More words, the creak of the car’s springs. The thump of something heavy hitting the ground next to me. A moan, half pain half fear came from the body that had fallen against me. ‘Penelope?’
Her voice muffled by the hood, ‘Val? I’m sorry, I cocked it all up.’
‘Shut up!’, man’s voice bawling in Russian.
Noises, a regular thumping, then a rhythmic muffled metallic sound. A sound of, of what? I puzzled for a moment. Someone swinging a pick, another digging with spade.

Someone digging a grave.

Penelope must have realised what was happening almost as soon as I did. She half sobbed, two choked sobs. Then low, so low I could barely hear although I was against her she began to mutter. ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…’ again and again she chanted.
‘I said shut up!’ The hollow sound of a blow.
Then silence. Silence except for the rhythmic sound of digging.

I have been under fire many times in the war and had been very close to death many times. I had always been terrified, often so frightened I could barely move.
This time was different, my death was absolutely certain. Strangely I felt no fear, none. Instead I felt a terrible grief that my life was over, with so much wasted opportunity. But then, an appalling fear gripped me not for me, but what would happen to little Natasha. Was the other car here too? Surely they wouldn’t hurt her?

Inevitably the digging stopped. Then more hands grabbed me, some by the shoulders and some by the feet. I was carried a short distance, but suddenly shouting, a tirade of shouting. Surely it was Stepan’s voice but I couldn’t be sure. I was dropped again an involuntary ‘whoosh’ of air was driven from my lungs as I hit a pile of soft powdery dirt.

Grumbling voices, the noises of car doors opening and the slamming. The engines started, revved and began to move away. They faded but before they vanished entirely away they stopped as if they had been turned off.
Silence, then voices. A little girl, and Stepan? I screamed aloud, my voice muffled in the hood. ‘Not Natasha, Stepan please anything! Please not Natasha!’

Al Rambles

You will have to forgive me for a long rather rambling post.

We’ve had a quiet weekend. Yesterday Deb and I went hunting for a birthday present for our middle daughter Io.
She has her 21st birthday in a few weeks. We bought E our eldest a Tissot watch for her 21st. I had kind of thought we would do the same for Io but Deb pointed out Io doesn’t wear a watch so it is a case of decisions, decisions. How do you buy something that a 21yo will like but hopefully still treasure in years to come?

To day Deb and I were going to go for our traditional run (er that would be drive. I love walking, but I don’t run anywhere) out bush, at the last moment we both called off. The weather didn’t look at all promising.

So Deb sat and knitted in front of the TV while I have spent the day writing. Or to be more precise reading over (not editing) my WIP and adding more.

I mentioned a little while ago Valentina has been causing me problems. Well I have close to 30,000 words written on her story. She was meant to be a secondary character in a sub-plot!

With my first novel Veiled in Shadows I had a similar problem. One of my readers (of a late draft) suggested that trimming a whole sub-plot including several characters would benefit the novel. At first I didn’t like the idea. But after a little thought it worked and improved the book.

I am not at such a late stage, I haven’t yet completed a first draft. Yet, I am faced with 30,000 words that don’t quite fit. So I either re-jig the whole plan, give Valentina her marching orders, or try and cram her back into her original second rate role.

So today I have rewritten a couple of chapters that sit elsewhere. It means my main characters David and Svetlana (I did post just a tiny bit about David ages ago ) loose some of their story. Or rather it moves to back-story.

Interestingly I suspect this new approach may work, adding a little mystery to David and Svetlana’s sections.
The problem I still have to work out though is I will run the risk of creating two parallel stories rather than having sub-plots that contribute to a whole.

Thanks to an endorsement of Drop Box by Kathleen Jones I have been using this brilliant piece of software for synchronising between my two PCs. It also creates an online back up of my WIP.

I had heard of it before, but I’m always a bit nervous about online storage because I know a couple of hackers and I am pretty sure they’d not have too many problems bypassing the security of Drop Box. But then it occurred to me that I am not particularly likely to be targeted and the worse that could happen is someone could ‘steal’ copies of my uncompleted WIP, hardly the crime of the century.

So I am trialling Drop Box and I suspect that with it I am very unlikely to loose any more chapters like I did the other week.

Enough rambling.

Here is a little more of Valentina’s Story
It comes just after the last extract I posted on the 11th of February.
Valentina looks for Penelope again, at first she is disappointed but then she gets more than she bargained for…

Valentina Meshcova
Berlin 1948
I looked for Penelope the next time I took the little one to the beach.
I was more disappointed than I thought I should have been that she was not there.
The week after I didn't look for her, instead I played in the water with Natasha.
As we came out I saw her sitting on a blanket next to ours. This time she wore a broad brimmed hat and a light cotton blouse. 'I should have listened to you last time.'
'You got yourself burnt?'
'It was terrible, my shoulders and arms are peeling. No, shedding or shredding would be a better description.'
'Ah well, you are being more careful now.'
'Yes, no choice really.'
'You could stay out of the sun all together.'
'I could, but I was curious to see you again.'
'Curious?'
'A Russian soldier, a veteran by the look of you and a little German girl an odd mix. You must agree that is enough to spark anyone's curiosity.'
'Is it so strange?'
'It is. It is a lovely afternoon, would you like to take Natasha and go for a picnic.?'
'I am not misunderstanding you am I? My German is not the best, you mean a basket of food in a meadow somewhere?'
'That is exactly what I mean. Given rationing, it won't be anything very fancy but I thought Natasha might think it fun.'
'I haven't done anything like that since before the war.'
'All the more reason.'

Sunday Swan Watch IV: The Washout

Now before I start don’t panic, today’s post has a happy ending.

I was up early this morning and soon after I headed out hoping to get some piccies of “our” swans.

This morning was bitterly cold (by Aussie standards anyway), intermittently raining and blowing a gale. In fact we have had atrocious weather all week, flooding rains right across the state and damaging winds in a lot of areas (it’s been Ok here in terms of wind).

Because of the weather I drove down to the swans’ pond. When I arrived I couldn’t see any sign of our family.

The only water fowl I could see was a solitary coot.More concerning is the pond has seen a rise and then fall in water level with the rain. This piccie shows a lot of reed debris left as the water has risen and then retreated. Somewhat concerning to me the swans’ nest has been destroyed by the minor flood. These short reeds are the ones that their platform was tethered to. As the water has risen the platform has been floated off and then broken up.

Interestingly some large water-bird has begun building another platform just nearby. I guess it isn’t our swans, but who knows.

As I said I couldn’t see any sign of the swans. I wasn’t really worried because the weather was awful and I guessed they were hunkered down somewhere keeping the babies warm. So I began walking around the perimeter of the pond, planning to check it and the ponds nearby.

But that was not to be, it began to really rain, so I beat a retreat.

A bit later looking at the weather I got the impression that I wasn’t going to be able to get out to get any piccies. I guessed I would have to post an up in the air post for today’s Swan Watch. Deb and I decided to go for a drive.

We drove up to Ballarat (about 90 minutes away) to have a look at Lake Wendouree, the lake is a shallow volcanic crater lake that lies in the heart of Ballarat. We wanted to have a look because with the drought we have had over the past few years the lake has been totally dry.

Until this week that is, we have had so much rain in the state in recent weeks and especially this week that the lake has begun to fill up again.While we were at the lake I braved the rain to grab a few shots of another swan family (I figured they would make a consolation prize given I couldn’t post piccies of ours).

The cob was keeping a close eye on me to make sure I didn’t get too close.He is the proud father of five cygnets. As you can probably see they are quite a lot larger than “our” babies. I’d guess these guys hatched three or four weeks ago.

Now to the happy ending.

When I got home this evening my daughter Io said the weather had improved for a while this afternoon. She and her boyfriend had gone for a walk. They saw swans grazing near the pond.

Very kindly they took some photos on a mobile phone (hence the quality).
In this first you can see some wood ducks and a couple of swans.Getting a bit closer they got some pictures of our babies (see the fuzzy grey blobs), before the cob told them to move on.
So all is well with our swans :-)

Fire, Snow and Rain.

On Sunday, after I posted about Greg and Fred, we went for a drive. Most of the photos in this post were taken from the front passenger seat of our moving car. As you will see from the photos it was wet most of the way.

We drove out through Healesville in the Yarra Valley up over the Black Spur.
The bush here was burnt in the fires following Black Saturday, 7th February 2009.
This first piccie shows the bush there; it is deceptively green. Unlike the fires on the 7th most of the fire up through this stretch was of low intensity. The tree trunks are blackened, but the crowns of the trees were not harmed and with the tree ferns sprouting in the understory it looks comparatively healthy.

Up over the Black Spur we turned off the Maroondah Highway and drove up towards Marysville. This second photo shows a stretch that was burnt on the Black Saturday. The crowns of the trees have been burnt bare and killed and the understory burnt away completely.
Virtually all these trees are Eucalyptus species (gum trees in daily usage) as Australian natives they are well adapted to fire and most of them are still alive, although badly damaged.
Marysville was one of the hardest hit places on Black Saturday, about one in five of the townspeople perished and the majority of buildings were destroyed. I didn’t take any photos there, it felt disrespectful.

Past Marysville we drove higher up past Lake Mountain towards Warburton in the Upper Yarra.
This photo shows how stark the landscape is up there now. The fires were truly intense, most of these trees are showing no sign of regeneration. To kill Eucalypts like this the fires were probably over 1000 degrees centigrade.
It was a bitterly cold day and in this higher country snow had been falling. Again most of the trees in these next few photos appear to have perished.
As we went father up the snow got deeper and the contrast between the blackened trees and the white of the snow is marked. The only green was from a few tree ferns that were just hanging on.

Then a sudden contrast we drove into a small pocket of bush that had avoided the worst of the fire. It’s not a great photo but it gives you an idea of what this bush would normally like at this time of year. Aussie bush is evergreen, so usually we have snow and leafy trees together.
Then back into burnt. This bush is burnt but with less ferocity. I think many of these trees will come back. I quite like these couple of photos, the black of the trunks, the white snow and the wet windscreen blurring it all together.
As you can see it began to lightly snow again.

Driving in snow is not something we have to do in most of the country.

Finally as we came back down the other side bush untouched by the fires. Also more rain. Glorious rain. Enough to cause some nuisance flooding and even lift Melbourne’s water supply by a few percent.

Of Humble Pie

We have developed a strange obsession with going out into the wide blue yonder what ever the weather. Today for example it is another cold damp day and blowing a gale. What do the household do? Curl up in front of the fire with a good book? Sit and watch the latest DVD? Do anything warm and cosy?
No, not a bit of it. Instead we head off for a picnic.

But the plot thickens and humble pie is called for.
At the insistence of our eldest, we again headed for Mount Donna Buang, in a quest for snow.
Now anyone who has been following my blog during its brief existence, will remember that just under two weeks ago, I wrote very disparagingly about the snow cover up on old Donna.

If a picture is worth a thousand words

As you can see same place but now definitely not the same story.
Admittedly only about six inches cover at the moment, but definitely snow.

My eldest is still girding her loins in preparation for her “wet-pracs”. She says she is feeling a bit more able to face the idea. But the poor thing is still very apprehensive about being physically ill come the day. What is keeping her going is the long term goal.

Given the title of this blog I had better say a little about my literary endeavours.
Basically they can be summed up as: word count - 0.
Too many early starts and late finishes just lately.
Writing and the day job don’t necessarily go together.
Truth be told I am probably spending too much time looking at other peoples blogs as well. But a boy has to have some fun from time to time.

Then again writing or researching are fun, but I find I need much more energy, more focus to work on the book. If I write tired, more often than not I just junk that material when I reread.
So speaking of tired, I ran breakfast at work this morning (we try to provide a service 365 days a year) which means a 5:30 am start. So without further ado goodnight and talk to you next time.

The Journey Continues

When Pat Stone warned me getting published was the hard part she spoke words of wisdom.

With a manuscript I was more or less happy with under my belt, I began the usual trick of querying Agents and the odd publisher. What a painfully slow process it is. Send out the usual letter, synopsis, and sample chapters that their submission guidelines ask for and wait and wait…
Then when finally something arrives…
A rejection, not surprising, not unexpected, yet still surprisingly distressing.
Then you begin again, and again.

When I have talked about my writing in the past I have always said that it was an end in itself. I have always said that if nothing I write ever sees the light of day it will not matter.

That is still true, but also it is not, not quite. I still write mainly for myself, but now somehow, it is not quite enough. Now I want to share my work with others, to have an audience.

Yet the process of trying to get published is very trying. I suppose it is a major character flaw, but I find myself getting very wrapped up the rejections, in trying to craft “a better query”, and then brooding on a reply.

The worst thing about the process is it takes so much energy away from what I would really like to be doing, writing the next novel.

Enough moaning for today.

It has been cold winter weather here for the past few weeks. Not miserable enough to stop us getting out and about though.
I know, I know, days with a maximum of 15° C (59° F) don’t seem very cold to many in the Northern Hemisphere, but we are used to summer temperatures in the 30s to 40s (86 to 104) in fact this past summer we had a days up to 47° (116° F) in February.
Also here in Southern Victoria the wind comes straight in off the Bass Straight and Southern Ocean so it feels much colder than it is.

Anyway last weekend we went for a quick run (about 2 ½ hours drive) down to Wilson’s Promontory (the most southerly point on the Australian mainland) It was wet so we didn’t walk much.

This photo shows the state of some of the walking tracks at the moment.

I did snap a heap of photos (don’t you love digital) but the light was not good so I don’t think many were worth the effort.
Towards evening, the cloud broke up a bit and in the pale watery light, I got a few shots that were almost worthwhile.

Doesn’t that water look cold.
Almost at the end of the day this chap showed up with a couple of mates and let me get close enough for this.

He/she is a Crimson Rosella, one of the many, many parrot species we enjoy in Oz. If being in such a beautiful environment (even with the wind) wasn’t enough, how could anyone grumble too much with such a bright creature on hand.