Tag: freedom

Australia · ducks · freedom

Free to Come and Go ~ Choosing to Stay

Joanne14 Comments

It was back in February this year that I first introduced my pair of very welcome visitors to my back garden. They have been the most elusive couple, and extremely camera-shy, but I recently had the opportunity of encouraging them so stay just a little longer.

Each morning I feed the birds when they visit my garden. The visitors, including kookaburras, magpies, minors and honey eaters, have all become progressively more and more trusting of me, these days congregating within a metre of my feet as I drop a few crumbs of bread for them all to nibble on.

Out of the corner of my eye a few mornings ago, I noticed a flash of “something”, followed by a huge splash! into my swimming pool. The ducks are back!

Mr. Drake

Needing some form of encouragement for the ducks to stick around, while I quietly dashed inside to grab my camera, I flung a few chunks of bread down to the pool area, which the ducks noticed immediately.

Exploring the yard.

The camera I have used during the past month has become my new best friend. I’m totally obsessed with photography since getting this camera about a month ago. (Obsessed to the point of neglecting my blog, you may have noticed!)

Sharing the birds bread.

The zoom on my new camera is brilliant! There are so many options available to play around with that I’m feeling like quite the photographer these days! My camera is rarely far from my side, and it’s not unusual for me to take at least fifty to one-hundred photos each day.

Well, the chunks of bread throw into the pool area did the trick, the ducks lingered, whilst I clicked away, photo after photo, from this angle and that. Even when the cute little couple waddled down further into the garden away from the pool, pecking at the grass, I still clicked away, the result being around eighty photos of, well, just the ducks!

So close to the house.

This story gets even better though. (I’m hoping at this point that I’m not the only person in the world who is extremely excited by a pair of ducks choosing my back yard to hang out in!) The ducks came back the next day, but this visit, they came right up to the house, sharing the birds bread, just a few steps away from my back door!

Surveying the yard ~ A new view of the world.

It doesn’t get much better than this. Okay, maybe it could; imagine if they will eventually become so trusting that they would eat out of my hand! Am I being too optimist?After quite a bit of research I have learned that this handsome couple are “Australian Wood Ducks”. The breeding season is around November, when the female lays eight to ten eggs. I wonder if they will one day bring their ducklings to visit?

 

 

 

freedom · friends · son

Leaving on a Jet ‘Plane

Joanne7 Comments
When you were a little boy, did you ever dream of the countries you would visit one day?

He’s leaving on a jet ‘plane this morning. He’ll be at the Brisbane airport now; his luggage will have been checked and probably loaded onto the plane. He’ll also probably be on the plane himself, sitting with two of his best mates from his childhood.

Have they been allocated good seats? Who else will be on board the plane, taking the twenty-two hour flight with them? Will he enjoy the movies he watches? His only concern about his entire trip was the flight there and the flight home again.

No, no, don’t get me wrong, he loves air travel, that’s not his concern; it’s the boredom; it’s the wasted days.

“Try to focus on the adventure ahead of you, of seeing a whole new country on the other side of the world”, his father had suggested. “That will make the flight seem shorter.”

The clock on the mantelpiece strikes 11 am. Is the ‘plane running to schedule? Is he comfortably sitting aboard the plane, perhaps in a window seat, watching as the ground races past his window and the ‘plane takes off, lifting higher and higher, the ground becoming smaller and smaller?

When I speak with my blogging friends in the U.S.A. why is it that they feel so close to me, yet when my son is taking the twenty-two hour flight to the other side of the world, it suddenly feels as if he is going to another planet?

Travel safe, my boy. Enjoy your adventure. Make the most of the trip that you and your mates have planned for months.

Your room will be waiting here for you when you return. I will be so excited as the days draw nearer to your return home, just as I have done when you have travelled overseas before.

Why didn’t Japan or Sri Lanka seem so far away? I believe I am only taking on board your concerns as my own. But haven’t I always done that?

The “Big Apple” awaits you, my son; your five-week adventure begins today. xxxxxx

~ ~ ~

Australia · Changes · freedom · new beginnings

“Yours is the Earth and Everything that’s in it”

Joanne5 Comments
The SS New Australia

One of the most time consuming, although thoroughly enjoyable, items on my ‘to do’ list, is to sort through old photos I inherited from my parents. I have two brand new scrapbook style albums, which will become the new home for most of the photos, after they have all been scanned and labelled.

Another album I have to work on is a very old photographic record of my parents voyage in 1951, on the ship the “SS New Australia”, which brought them and their three young daughters from Southampton, England to Sydney, Australia, a journey taking them over one month, when they travelled across the world in search of a new and improved life.

In among a paper bag full of photos I discovered three restaurant menus, carefully saved and well preserved after all these years from their weeks on the “SS New Australia”.

On the back of one of the menus, printed Wednesday, December 6, 1950, I found a poem. As I read the poem, I couldn’t help but think what a thoughtful gesture it had been, giving these immigrants so much hope for their future lives, in particular with the line “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it”.

As they embarked on their new lives, they had the whole world in the palm of their hand!

Note~ After deciding to record these thoughts here today and researching how many others there were on the same voyage as my parents (over 1,500 people) I happened to notice the date when they arrived at their destination of Sydney, Australia.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge in the early 1950's

The “SS New Australia” sailed into Sydney Harbour on the March 19, 1951, exactly sixty-one years ago today. And just by coincidence, today is the eightieth anniversary of the opening of the “Sydney Harbour Bridge”!

~ ~ ~

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

And make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold On!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Rudyard Kipling ~ Photo scanned from my book "The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English"

 

ducks · freedom · friends · summer

An Early Morning Visitor….Come back later, around midday, okay?

Joanne11 Comments
My camera-shy visitor

Over the past few months we’ve had a regular visitor to our back garden, or to be more precise, to our swimming pool.

We enjoy the pool on a hot day too!

A duck must have mistaken our pool for a nice relaxing pond, in which to float around and casually pass the time of day. Obviously the chlorine and salt added to the pool has not had any adverse effect to his health as he has returned, again and again, even occasionally bringing his lady friend along with him!

In the eighteen years that we have had the pool this is the first duck that has taken a liking to it, which has left me wondering….why? Is this the first duck to ever notice, over the past eighteen years, that the pool is there? Or, have the others been put off by the smell of salt and chlorine?

Perhaps our visitor is simply an eccentric duck!

I'm up here, Mr Duck. Look this way!

I’ve tried to get a photo of this cute little guy for ages, but every time the camera has reached my face, he flies away!

This morning, however, at 7am, armed with both camera and determination, I actually photographed him! They are not the best photos of all time, that’s a certainty, but at least they are proof that I’m not hallucinating!

I’ve noticed that all the photos I take in the early morning and also later in the afternoon have a fuzzy look to them, so just to satisfy myself that the light of the day can make a huge difference to the quality of a photo, I took another photo of the same place, same zoom, but at 1pm this afternoon.

Bring Mrs Duck with you next time. Midday would suit me just fine!

The result? Much clearer, and far more vivid in colour.

Now, if the duck will just make a visit around midday, my camera will be waiting. Hey, I’ll even invite his lady friend! 🙂

daughter · Mum

Being Authentically “You”

Joanne4 Comments

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. ~  Sir Walter Scott (1808)

When my eldest daughter told me that she had realised she was copying me, when making choices for her own life and had stopped doing so as she wanted be authentically herself, I couldn’t have been happier.

I asked her whatever had possessed her to want to copy me in the first place, and she told me simply, “Because I love you, I guess”.

There is an old saying that ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’, but how much imitation is too much?

Think about it carefully. Do you really want the responsibility of knowing that there is someone out there, who is not truly being themselves, because they are imitating you?

Or would you be content to spend your own life living as another person would have you live it?

An innocent act of admiration for someone in your life can lead to a web of deception, a web that you may not even realise that you have got yourself caught up in, until one day you wake up to the fact that the person who is living your life, isn’t really you.

I know this to be true, as I’ve lived the “lie”, albeit an innocent lie, but none the less destructive.

Throughout the month of March, the theme at the Calm Space was “change” and I submitted my article to Karen rather timidly, with the content being so personal.

There were two deciding factors on why I finally decided to allow Karen to publish what I had written. One – Karen told me she loved the article (and it always helps to know the Editor is happy!)

My second deciding factor was that I realised that someone who reads my story may actually learn something, and benefit from the mistakes I have made.

My message is an important one. I do hope you will read my article at the Calm Space, “Living the Richest of Lives”.

“Your experiences are not limited to what you have created in the past”. ~ Gary Zukav