Any Port in a Storm (but not this one anymore)
- I am Cooking: Cups of tea
- Books I am Reading: S---- Sky, EDA entry I am judging
- TV /DVDs I am Watching: Ronin the movie
The radio is broadcasting from the Female factory in Hobart today. It is where all the female convicts were put to work when they arrived. There is a Rajah Quilt on display at the Queen Vic Museum too. It is a quilt made by convict women on the long trip here by ship. I must go and see it as today is the last day. It has over 2000 pieces and there is a contemporary display influenced by the quilt. The last convicts were transported here in 1854 which just happens to be 150 years ago. It is both strange and invigorating to have a convict heritage in the state. Only a small percentage of the convicts were transported for what we would consider serious crimes today, most were victims of poverty or political prisoners. We had a holiday shack at Port Arthur when I was young. My dad built it and I did the tiling!! I also had to run to the nearest shack with a phone when he fell of the roof and had to be rushed to Hobart in the ambulance. My mum and sister just panicked. I panicked too, but I was able to phone the ambulance. Apparently, according to the psychologist, I am a ‘coper’. I saw a counsellor when I had to retire to help me adjust to illness and my new life, but I am a coper, so I do panic at first, but then I am resigned!!!!! We spent 2 weekends out of every month there until I was in Matric – Years 11 and 12, though we called it A and B class. We swam and canoed and walked and rode our bikes and wandered the historic site at will. We played in the ruins and picked blackberries, the men dived for abalone and fished for whitebait and sometimes they had mutton birds, but now that is outlawed and only the Aborigines are allowed on most islands. In the olden days anyone could catch them. I hated it : they were plucked and washed and then cooked outside as the stench was terrible. Shearwaters or mutton birds were a delicacy, but I preferred the clotted cream from the milk we bought at the dairy up the road!!! Rain, hail or searing heat made no difference to my dad : we all went to Port Arthur.
We had sold the shack and my dad was way dead by the time Martin Bryant killed all the people there . It was hard to believe and I know I have not been there for 20 years now. It was idyllic : a paradise for children and we never felt in danger or at risk.
My father was particularly accident prone : he was the first person in the Tepid baths, he fell through the glass roof into the empty pool before it opened – and no we don’t want to know why he was there!! ; he fell through a hole in the deck of the navy ship while reading a letter from my mum ; his ship was torpedoed : he fell off the roof of the shack : he was charged with mutiny, he and his friends were guarding the Captain’s alcohol and there was less of the guarding and more of the drinking until the new 2IC asked them to climb up the stairs and they were too drunk to do so – ergo disobeying a direct order and a charge of mutiny!!! ; he had numerous car accidents as he wore a hat and tended to steer where he looked ; yet despite all this and the Korean war he managed to survive and then die from cancer 3 months after being diagnosed. My mother has never recovered, she does a fairly good impression of Miss Havisham from 'Great Expectations'.
I have finished reading ‘The Tainted’ and I can say that this third book in the Isles of Glory series has surpassed my expectations : it is not what I expected but in a good way. The ends are more or less tied up, there is not a happily ever after for everyone, which is as it should be. The narrator had changed and new characters have been added but I still want there to be another trilogy at least!! I can highly recommend this series by Glenda Larke. Australia has myriad fantasy and sci-fi writers now and I like almost all of them . There are 2 I have read that I don’t like but that’s a tiny percentage so I am lucky. They are even republishing some books with new covers soon after the last of them has been published. I also recommend the ‘Tales of the Otori’ by Lian Hearn who is really Gillian Rubenstein or vice versa. Although the Library often categorises it as an historical romance it is actually a fantasy set in a medieval Japanese-like world. I am off to see the Rajah Quilt before it goes now at the Inveresk new Museum site.