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August 1st, 2001 - Australia's Outback & 4th book Hi There, I gather from the reports that come in from my great website people at BizSolutions, that their updating of my site is creating a great deal of interest and I'm always pleased to have discussion with people who ask me questions on my Discussion Board, so hoe in. I've finished the 3rd novel in my saga on you and me and the gods in the Realm and our Creator, Light of Light and I've started the final one, 'Where Parallels Meet'. Now when I go back to re-read the end of the 3rd book, I will undoubtedly find it'll need to be tidied up but it is gratifying to know its ended. Not where I expect to either, but hopefully it makes for exciting reading when you start reading the 4th book in this saga. This morning I got out into a portion of my vege patch and turned over the soil adding in lucerne/chaff. Next I'll go around the traps and buy cow and chicken poo and dig that in, then get my son to empty the compost bins and chuck all that in too. The only problem with the cow poo is the tremendous amount of grass I've got to pull out between my veges! It was so good to get into that earth, made up over four years of all those above mentioned goodies plus dolomite and what passes for blood and bone dust these days. As I think, we're in for a hot summer and the sun is travelling South. I'll go off to a nursery and buy corn on the cob (I grow that really well) tomatoes, onions, basil - my basil ends up like a ruddy great tree. Doing this earths me and its good for the fat that has gathered around my ancient bod after three years of sitting writing. My daughters want to see me slim for my trip to The Alice... You know I'm so excited by this holiday and my trip on the Ghan. For those of you who know nothing about Australia and Australians, we were discovered in 1770. I mention this so you can see what tremendous strides my ancestors made in what is a fairly desolate arid landscape. In the early 1800s the explorers wanted to open up our vast 'Outback'. So some Aussies from South Australia brought out Afghanistans with their camels to trek through and also supply the settlers who had gone out there to establish sheep and cattle stations. These same stations were measured in square miles and many of them were larger than the British Isles. They had to be as it was one sheep to the square mile because it doesn't actually rain very much - like hardly ever... So the Afghans made this incredible trek through the deserts to Oodnadatta. (OONADATTA is how you pronounce it). Then in the later 1880's a narrow gauge train line was built on wooden sleepers. That in itself was a tremendous feat as everything had to arrive by camel for thousands of miles. The train became known as the Ghan and was famous to us because it'd get bogged down by floods - yep, when it did rain, the ancient river beds just sprawled out all over the place - or fire. Or the white ants that busily ate all the wooden sleepers. You travelled on the Ghan and if you did get to Oodnadatta. You could just as likely get stuck there in the middle of nowhere waiting for flood, fire, new wooden sleepers, or wotever. Then too, some of those early travellers recall the engine driver and coal shoveller, stopping in the middle of nowhere and having a billy of tea and something to eat and the passengers joined them. Mind you most of our Outback is the middle of nowhere. In some instances when the Ghan got bogged down in that 'middle' the crew would go out and shoot whatever food they could find to feed the passengers! Sadly (?) those days have gone and the new wide track concrete sleepered, runs west of the old ghans' camel trail and over long, strong bridges - but still more in the middle of nowhere. Naturally I want to see Ayers Rock, but I've a longing to see the Olgas so I'll take stacks of photos and Karen and Livia of BizSolutions will add them to this site so that you can see for yourself the Middle of Our Nowhere in Australia. Hope you enjoy my Blog. Rather like and I quote from the book the Dirty Dozen, 'for heaven's sake say something - even if it's only to say goodbye'. Hooroo, Helen Back to the blog index

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