About 30 metres below the Park Avenue gates in Memorial Park at Blackheath is a huge thicket of invasive weeds; blackberries, ivy, scarlet montbretia, red hot pokers etc. A lone Japanese maple struggles to survive in the centre. The irony is that satin bowerbirds, wattle birds and
Read more →
Just before Christmas, as the bush fires crept ever closer to Blackheath and we all suffered in the heatwave, I photographed a little tractor and water tank in Wentworth Street. I assumed it must be someone’s personal fire protection unit. Mind you, I did wonder about the
Read more →
Hello, Editor Des here. Well we had nasty fires up here in the Blue Mountains at Christmas time. It was very scary for my guardian Pauline Conolly. However, Mr Bob Conolly and myself protected everything and were extremely brave…especially me if I may say so. But the
Read more →
Absinthe is a distilled, highly alcoholic drink. It is anise flavoured, derived from the plants wormwood, green anise and sweet fennel. It was popular in early 20thC Paris, especially among bohemian artists and writers such as Picasso, Proust, Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar
Read more →
Who would imagine that dear old hydrangeas would hold up so well during the 2019/20 fires and heatwave conditions in the NSW Blue Mountains? The origin of the name seems to contradict the very notion that they would! ‘First discovered in Japan, the name hydrangea comes from
Read more →
Time to be out and about now the fire risk has subsided. My own garden is a disaster, with only the natives and hydrangeas holding up. But how is everything else going in this awful heatwave I wonder? Well, to my great surprise an ibis has taken
Read more →
AN UPDATE ON THE FOLLOWING STORY…. It can be a bit of a worry when your long term neighbours sell up, especially if they were really nice. What if the new owners have non-stop barking dogs, or are throwers of wild parties? That might sound a bit
Read more →
I never could resist a nativity play. They are usually performed by sweet little schoolchildren, so an adult version was something of a novelty for me. Titled, The Shepherds’ Play, it was held in the dining room of The New Ivanhoe Hotel last night. All seats were
Read more →
My young friend Miss Milly has not always been comfortable around nature. Here she is hiding behind Editor Des when our Kookaburra called Taffy came to visit. She thought he might fly off with her to Govett’s Leap. Or pull her hair. Her idea of nature is
Read more →
Writers need to get out and about sometimes, otherwise our solitary profession would drive us to distraction. Plus, for a gardener like me there are too many distractions at home….such as roses! I have a ten minute walk to my village of Blackheath, and in a place
Read more →