RDP: Collection

Three is a Collection

Both Naomi and I are both collectors and we love our “stuff”. Some of my collections of things are inherited. Mum had a collection of brass ornaments that her mum bought in India and Egypt when they lived there plus a few things that Naomi and I had given her since. Those things live with me now as does her collection of china monkeys.  I have other glass and china ornaments that I have inherited, been given or collected myself.

Favourite treasures in the living room.

I also have a small collection of Star Trek and Doctor Who collectibles, some were given to David and some to both of us by people who knew we loved those TV shows.

My biggest collection, the one that I mention most often, is my doll collection. I wasn’t always a collector though. I had a lot of dolls as a child and I played with them for rather longer than children do now. I was given my last doll at age fourteen although, to be honest, I didn’t play with her a lot because by that age I preferred fashion dolls. In my teens like most kids I felt pressured to stop playing with them and for several years that was that. I didn’t keep all my dolls, I wished I had later on, however, I did keep some of my childhood favourites.  As far as I was concerned they were not a collection, just part of my childhood that I wanted to keep.

When David and I bought our first home we had a spare bedroom and I had the dolls sitting around in there. I thought it would be nice to get replacements for some of the ones I had given away.  At some point in my thirties, I bought a couple of dolls that I liked. Naomi and I would go to markets, antique shows and second-hand shops looking for interesting things and more dolls started coming home with me.  I realised that I had become a collector when I added my third Sindy doll. I was no longer just replacing dolls I used to have I was actively looking to get ones I’d never owned. At around the same time, I also started to buy Barbie dolls both new and secondhand. At first, I liked to think that people thought I was buying them for a child or grandchild but eventually I didn’t care what they thought. I am proud to tell people I collect dolls now.

Now my spare bedroom is full of dolls and there are more packed away until the day we move to a new house. There are dolls in the other spare room too that I bring home from the Op Shop where I volunteer twice a week. I clean them, remove ink marks from their skin and tidy their hair before they go back. Occasionally I weaken and buy one for myself. Naomi and I have a doll blog too where we share photos and stories about our collections. We have a lot of fun with it. Collecting is a great hobby. Never mind people who complain about dust gatherers.

A group of dolls donated to the Op Shop.
Two new celluloid dolls. John who is made in Japan and Princess Elizabeth by Palitoy UK. Both from the 1930s.
One of my childhood dolls

Cee’s Black and White Challenge: Anything Related to Music

Music

Pipe bands are music to my ears.

A Pipe Band marching on ANZAC Day

I am probably showing my age with this selection of music.

A vinyl album.
Sheet Music.
Theme from Star Wars for piano.

 

 

Share Your World 2019: 14 January

    I was writing

these answers late last night and my laptop totally refused to let me add a link, or even change the size of my heading. I decided to finish it off this morning on the desktop. I was dismayed to find that I can’t do it here either so obviously, WordPress is being weird again. I think I found another way. I hope it worked.

You’re walking in a forest and you find a black suitcase.  Inside it is one million dollars and a piece of paper, stained in blood and bearing the single word “Don’t!”  Would you take the suitcase home or leave it?

First of all, I am very surprised that anyone would leave a suitcase full of money unlocked. I don’t know that I would even open it in case there was something nasty inside. I certainly would not take it home. If I had opened it and seen the blood and the note I’d feel that it was something that needed to be reported to the police and that I should not touch it because obviously, the area is a crime scene of some kind.  I am certainly not going to keep the money because. a) I would feel bad when it wasn’t mine. b) someone might come after me for it. c) I’ve never seen a million dollars, for all I know it might be counterfeit notes.

AUD_notes
I don’t have many of the large-sized notes in my purse 🙂

Imagine you lapsed and cheated on your partner. You feel horrible and you know you’ll never do it again, because the feeling is so awful. Would you confess?

I can’t imagine that I would ever have done that but if I had I would give myself away for sure because I would act guilty even if I didn’t say anything.

Would you live your life differently if nobody ever judged you for anything you did?

I want to say no but I don’t think many of us are completely unaffected by what other people think of us. As I get older I care less about what people in general think of my life choices but of course you want your family and friends to think well of you so sometimes you don’t say or do exactly as you please in case you upset them.  I really don’t care if people think I’m stupid to collect dolls, or if they criticise my appearance, eating habits or anything like that because it is really none of their business.

Would a fly without wings be called a walk? No? What would you call it?

Well, that depends.  Was the fly born with wings and lost them in some kind of mishap? Can a fly survive losing its wings? In that case, I think you can still call it a fly. If its parents were flies it is a fly.

In any case, wings or not I’d call it a noisy, dirty little pest.

What’s something that brought joy and lightness of being to you this past week?

Before I started to write this post I was watching cricket on TV and I must say that even though I haven’t been able to go to any of their games this summer I’m really enjoying how well our Hobart Hurricanes are playing as they are currently on top of the points table.

The crowd on the hill at Blundstone Arena

RDP: River

The Wild River

We have a lot of rivers in Tasmania, so many that much of our power comes from hydro-electric power plants.

Tungatinah Power Station

It was the proposed damming of a river, the Franklin, in the southwest of the state that led to the blockade of the river in the summer of 1982-83. It is quite an involved story starting further back when the Hydro-Electric Commission (HEC)  built a dam which caused the flooding of  Lake Pedder, a renowned beauty spot, in 1972.

When the state government of the day proposed to dam the Franklin River the newly formed Tasmanian Wilderness Society began their campaign to save it. It’s a long story that has more to do with politics than with rivers but it is interesting reading so I’ll include a link to an article by Professor Clive Hamilton who tells the story much better than I can.

Below is Peter Dombrovskis famous photo taken on the Franklin and used by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society to publicise the issue.

Rock island bend.jpg
By National Library of Australia nla.pic-an6631500-v, Fair use, Link

image canoe
Peter Dombrovskis’ Canoe-TMAG, Hobart

I do remember the blockade. We were still living in South Australia and every night the news would have stories sent from this tiny place, Strahan, that we had never heard of before then. Many celebrities, Australian and international including Sir Yehudi Menuhin, ­Barry Humphries, Eartha Kitt, Dick Smith, and ­David Bellamy took part in the blockade beside ordinary people from every state in Australia. David and I watched the news and cheered for the blockaders many of whom were arrested and when they refused to keep away from the river as part of their bail conditions were removed to jail in Hobart.

In the end, a Federal Labor government was elected in early 1983 and one of their first acts was to stop the dam from being built.

An old HEC logo in the visitor centre in Strahan

When we first visited Strahan many years later I learned at the visitor centre how the whole issue had divided families. To this day there are still people who believe that dam should have been built but the Franklin is still a wild river. I’ve never seen it but I’m happy knowing it is there. I have cruised on the Gordon River which flows into it. The point where the two rivers join was one of the proposed sites for the dam.

Gordon River, Tasmania

Further Reading:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2014/06/reflecting-on-the-conservation-of-the-franklin-river/

 

 

 

 

RDP: Letter

Snail Mail Around The World

Who remembers penfriend clubs? When I was young, children and many adults enjoyed communicating with penfriends in other countries.

Sometimes you found your penfriend through a school project. When I was in Primary School our city of Elizabeth, South Australia, became a sister city to Fremont, California and our school exchanged letters with students in schools over there. I don’t recall if I had a long-standing penfriend from that time but later on in my teens and twenties I had a lot.

Pens were a popular gift for letter writers.

Of course, there was no internet then but there was often a penfriend column in comics, women’s magazines and the Sunday papers. Through these sources, I also found out that there were clubs you could join for a small fee who would send you lists of potential new friends.

How exciting it was when the postman arrived and there was a fat letter, maybe with photos inside or perhaps a flimsy “Aerogramme” or a postcard.  At Christmas, the cards would cover every surface in the living room.

I wrote to girls, and a few guys, in New Zealand, Canada, the USA and the UK mostly. I was interested in learning what it was like to live in their countries and I enjoyed writing about everyday life in Australia. My letters were nearly always long ones. I generally stopped when I had written as many pages as I could without having to buy an extra stamp, generally about five but I had large untidy handwriting. I always found it easier to communicate in writing than face to face as I was rather shy.

Mum also had penfriends and sometimes she and I would record a cassette tape to send to her Canadian penfriend who lived in Ontario near Niagara Falls. I would occasionally exchange cassettes with an American friend too. She took one of mine to the school where she was working as I think, a teacher’s aide, and told me that the teenagers in the class were most surprised to learn that Australians spoke English!

On the summit of Uluru with my then penfriend Christy from Las Vegas.

Eventually, we all lost touch. Letters became fewer as jobs, marriage and families took up more time.  Perhaps the amount of time it took for the letters to travel across the world didn’t help either. Often by the time I got a reply to my letter I could not remember what I had said in it.

I did enjoy writing and receiving those letters though and perhaps that is why I enjoy blogging today.

North Hobart Post Office

 

A Photo A Week Challenge: The Great Outdoors

The Great Tasmanian Outdoors

Here I’m sharing a few photos taken in different parts of Tasmania over the past ten years or so.

Moss
Moss on a tree. Near Strahan , Tasmania

 

Strahan
Early morning view of Strahan taken from our hotel in the Strahan Village.
image vineyards by the river
Vineyards near Rosevears on the Tamar. Cool climate wines are growing in popularity.
Rainbow over the Huon River
Rainbow over the Huon River
Table Cape, north west Tasmania
Topiary, Lake Dulverton, Oatlands Tasmania