For me Bush Poetry is an integral part of the Australian landscape. It’s as important as the Simpson Desert or the Great Barrier Reef, as Aussie as a game of Two-Up on Anzac Day, and as colloquial as ‘g’day’ or ‘she’ll be right’. I’ve never been brave enough to write a bush poem, but I Continue reading
Tag: Border Watch
Perception is king…
I’ve been immersed in editing Burning Lies for the last two weeks which means skipping the blogsphere to a large extent. I’m surfacing today because of a story my sister sent me. (She’s in France and knows more about what’s going on in Australian newspapers than I do…) The article is in the Sydney Morning Continue reading
Sunday bike-ride
Locked in another hotel room for the last two nights I’ve been delving into my photos of home. It may sound crazy for a pilot, but I’m really a homebody who loves nothing more than family and friends around me, in a familiar environment. Consequently, my computer has hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos of special Continue reading
Writing Races?
They say writers need to exercise their writing muscles to keep them strong, so what better way than to sprint for an hour or two! Queensland Writers Centre has an online department called Australian Writer’s Marketplace Online – AWM Online. It’s a wonderful resource for writers covering everything from advice to on-line courses, to forums. Continue reading
Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan
With the reliability of modern aircraft, advanced engineering systems, and components that are replaced long before they wear out most airline pilots will never experience an engine in-flight shut down in their careers. We spend a lot of time planning for that eventuality – completing emergency procedures training, and flying flight simulators where we deal Continue reading
Poems
Did you write poetry as a teenager? I did. Copious amounts of it. Most of it was thrown out during numerous house moves, but the one below was a little different. I wrote it for a girlfriend when we finished school. She, in turn, had it made into a scroll for my thirtieth birthday. I Continue reading
Looks can be deceiving…
When a friend dropped around this morning for his weekend triple-shot-expresso we told him we were headed to Port Douglas for lunch. ‘Try the services club,’ he advised us. GW and I looked at each other and smiled politely. Services club in Port? If it was any good we’d have heard about it before now Continue reading
Cairns Post Article – Romantic Book of the Year Winner
CAIRNS author and pilot Helene Young revisited a windswept Trinity Beach yesterday to recall the inspiration for her novel, Wings of Fear, which won the Australian Romantic Book of the Year award. “When I found a dead body on Trinity Beach in 2003, it started me thinking,” Ms Young said about her book, which centres Continue reading
Book sites
Are you a fan of Goodreads? Or The Reading Room? How about Shelfari? Librarything? Have you even heard of theses sites? Do you really need any more reasons to procrastinate? I certainly don’t, but I find myself strangely drawn to theses sites. The other day, chatting in the flight deck to a colleague who barely uses Continue reading
Trinity Turtles
There’s a wonderful band of retirees at Trinity Beach who keep the gardens on the foreshore full of vibrant colour. (Graham and I provide the muscles when required.) Yesterday we had a birthday barbie to celebrate the birthdays amongst the group in August. It was a windy but glorious day in paradise and I even Continue reading