My Avalon

Autumn dawn over Yeo by Ann O'Dyne.

No husband, no partner, no kids,
I'm Queen Guinevere (on the skids).

No wheels, and no home, this region I roam,
It's not good, it's not bad,
It's just different.

signs of life

Even in the middle of nowhere, my natural habitat, choices are offered if one sees the signs.

Eucalypt, Yeo, 7am.

In a foggy Autumn dawn, from the front door of my present haven, this gum tree soars over the old dairy shed.

The realisations provoked by this sight, put me back in my tiny place in Time and on planet Earth, as it revolves, for the moment, in dark space, relying on a flaming sun for each new day.

Later, a pair of Gang-Gang cockatoos landed in it, getting my attention with their very funny call, which sounds just like a big old creaking door - 'waaarrrk!'.

(Of course I didn't get a photo ... I found this one thanks to www.pixdaus.com.)

Delena cancerides indeed!

I'm Winter-ing in The Otway Forest area and keeping the fire roaring is a crucial daily activity. Last night I learned to never gather logs from the woodstack at dusk, even if spiders don't upset you as they do so many others.
When I grabbed a log it absolutely seethed with freaked out Huntsmans.
The things you see when you don't have the darn camera!
So just now I searched online for a photo of 'Huntsman spider nest' and found this sad story:

'Dr Linda Rayor, of Cornell University, a Visiting Fellow at Canberra's ANU, says her study of Huntsman spiders (Delena cancerides) has shown it is the only one of the 1039 known huntsman species, that lives a social life with family members, and, of the 40,000 known spider species only 1% are social like that, and this species one of only two that does not spin a web.
Rayor believes the communal lifestyle has been thrust upon the spider by a lack of suitable accommodation in the wild.
With an adult female weighing up to 4.5 grams and with a leg spread that can exceed 14 centimetres, Rayor says the spider is limited in finding large enough spaces to live.
"They are trying to fit themselves into retreats under the bark of wattle trees and it turns out there are remarkably few of these habitats around," she says.
"The colony is producing all these offspring that want to start their own colony but they have no where to go."
The nest can be home to more than 100 spiders with up to 30 sub-adults, but the family ties only bind as long as the mother of the spider nest is alive.
Rayor says the mother defends the nest against predators and seals it off from attack, brings prey home to feed the family and generally keeps the peace.
On her death however, she says, familial loyalty is forgotten.

Because of the lack of habitats there is intense competition between sexually mature sisters to inherit the family site from the mother.

"I've seen sisters in fights to the death," Dr.Rayor says.'

( Gosh I hope I didn't start a Huntsgirl death fight when I dropped the log.)

Then, my Inbox had, in that amazing coincidental way the world unfolds, my usual newsletter from

REMO's Store in Sydney featuring

a Spider Catcher!

I hope all my new friends stay outside in the logpile tonight.

acCumulated Kyneton

Autumn in Kyneton Victoria copyright Ann O'Dyne.

Joni Mitchell looked at clouds and saw ‘rows and flows of angel hair and ice-cream castles in the air’.
The technical names for cloud formations are conventionally Latin words chosen to match characteristic shapes, and so when weather-watchers recently identified a new type of cloud that has hitherto escaped classification, the name proposed for it was the Latin word asperatus, meaning ‘roughened’.

*goes off singing a beloved composition* ...

David 'asperatus' Ruffin's -
'I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day,
With my girl.
I've even got the month of May,
With my girl ... '

Now please do visit the absolutely enjoyful Cloud Appreciation Society for an evanescent good time. The founder named his child Cirrus.

(thanks to Chambers Dictionary blogspot.com/ for some of the text above)

way out west

This is my late Grandmother and her children in a paddock somewhere near Hamilton Victoria in the early 1930's. The photo is from her album and is labelled 'Smithy', so I assume it is Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. One of those happy children is my father, now 87, and right now he is unbearable.

Today when I took his car for service, the garage people told me that back in January when he told them I was coming to take care of him, they thought I would only last a week.

just sayin'. *stomps off looking for empathy*

all just anodyne here

This is my photo of a gorgeous baby alpaca that I looked after while the owners were on holiday.

Note it is wearing a tiny Drizabone coat. Mother Agnes is the tall red alpaca left of the group.

The proper name for a baby alpaca is 'cria', so put that on your Scrabble board for free.