Winter colour

The winter may bring some cold, damp, dull days, ........

...... but nature also brings us beautiful colours with which to brighten our days.

Eastern Rosellas.

White Cockatoos.

King Parrots.

Galahs.

Magpie.

Crimson Rosellas.

Five days a week, 40 weeks a year, for six years....

... I attended this rural school in Victoria.

Just the building with the high roof - the other room was added several years later.

For most of those 6 years the school's total enrolment was about 25 children, in 7 grades, taught by one teacher in this one-roomed school.

About 25 years ago the school closed, was sold and turned into a private home.

About 5 different families have lived there in the past 25 years. The house is now for sale again. Do you think I should buy it, for old-time's sake?

Perhaps not!

These photos were taken on 8 June, during a recent trip to Victoria.

Original school building with second room added in mid 60s. The small room with the high window is a porch where we hung our coats and bags.

The school was surrounded by dairy farms.

The toilet block.

Building on the right may have been a woodshed, but I'm not sure what the other building is.

The 'house' seemed to be unoccupied, although sparsely furnished from what I could see through the windows (I didn't like to be too nosey). Unless one of the various owners has somehow managed to insulate the buildings, they will be pretty cold in winter, though maybe not too bad in the summer with high ceilings and fans.

Business is business, I guess

In search of knitting wool - wool, not acrylic or other synthetics - we took a trip today out to a town 50km from Canberra.

We found a shop that sold a small amount of material and some knitting yarn - both wool and acrylic. I bought some wool in the colour that I wanted plus a good pattern book.

As I would have liked a larger range to choose from, I asked the manager if there were any other shops in the town selling knitting wool. She replied, "No, there isn't. In fact it's hard to find knitting wool anywhere these days."

We accepted her response, thanked her, and walked out of the shop - and there, right beside her shop, was a large sign indicating that above this very shop is another which sells both wool and knitted garments.

Investigation revealed a large room, with smaller rooms attached, with tables of beautiful knitted jumpers, cardigans, caps, scarves, gloves, and other garments, while a smaller room had quite a variety of lovely wools in a range of colour and ply.

Richard bought a very nice jumper, and I bought wool to knit him a jumper (I hope he's not in a hurry...lol).

The shop had been in this location for EIGHT YEARS, and there was no way that the manager of the first shop didn't know it was there. But as I said above,

Business is business, I guess!

Here and there in recent times

Yesterday's sunset

Bare Silver Birch branches against a winter blue sky

Sunset over the hockey field last Sunday

"Ready for lunch, Kerri?"

Waters meet from two directions over the shingles, and the sound of the shifting stones and water is almost musical. Zoe wrote a beautiful story about this.

Illawarra Flame trees - look hard and you will also find a colourful parrot

Wattle (Acacia)

Guerilla Bay, NSW

Two forms of flight

Another form of Acacia

'Old Man' Banksias - these are the dry flower heads

Banksia flowers

Solution or Reason....

.... before I lose mine!!!

On looking back through postings from earlier this year I see that about half of the photos in each one are now reduced to little red crosses, and no amount of right-clicking will restore them.

PLEASE does anyone have a solution to this problem, or even a reason as to why it could be happening?

If I can't find the answer then it looks like I will have to part company with Blogger.

Is Wordpress the way to go?

A Whale of a Time....

No, I haven't taken leave of my senses.......these photos of whales were taken off the NSW coast last week. The humpbacked whales are on their annual migration from Antarctic waters to the warmer northern waters for the winter.

Although we saw a few whales only about 50metres from shore - but not when I had the camera - most of these would have been a couple of kilometres offshore. Almost too far for my little camera to cope with, but I thought they were worth a try.

It was such a thrill to see these magnificent creatures in their natural habitat.