Canberra

Post #66 Sunday 17 December 2017 – The Little Prince, complex love and the rose

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Letters from America

Sunday 17 December 2017

I have just come home from my December visit to Canberra, just in time to send out this week’s Letter from America.

It was a great visit.  The weather was pure Canberra summer, all hard blue sky although we had a huge thunder storm in the middle of the second night.  I had an unexpected pleasure from the profusely flowering roses planted right under the balcony of the hotel room.  With the intense heat during the day and the long afternoon, by early evening the scent of the roses coming up  into the room was very strong – a lovely evocative perfume which took me by surprise.  Here is a photo taken by me looking down over the balcony straight onto one of the culprits:

This beautiful flower reminded me of an unforgettable book that is treated as a children’s book (which plainly it is not), Antoine Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Here is a link to Chapter 8 of the book which concerns the Little Prince’s relationship with the rose.  It is a tale of complex love and painful awakening to the meaning of things.  I highly recommend looking at it and the author’s charming drawings.  The chapter is quite short perhaps 300 words, and, as I said before, unforgettable.

http://papermine.com/pub/2005#article/34735

“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her . . . I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her . . .”

MG
xx
never complacent in love

Post #64 Wednesday 29 November 2017 – November trip to Canberra

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  Letters from America

Wednesday 29 November 2017

It was a lovely visit to Canberra this month.  On the morning I was due to leave Canberra it was raining very softly, exactly the way it doesn’t rain in Sydney (where it shamelessly buckets from all directions).  I took a walk near where I was staying and saw many lovely things including this fine sculpture – an enormous sheet of steel unfolding up the hillside.  And this trip, when I walked in the evening, I saw more bunnies on the lush Canberra lawns than I have ever seen anywhere.  It was like walking into a Beatrix Potter story.  The Canberra bunnies were out and about, mostly in pairs, quietly feasting in the dark.  They were so fluffy and almost tame.  Back in my day I think it was a bit of a heavy myxomatosis scene and there just weren’t a lot of bunnies anywhere at all (sigh).  Such a treat to see them abundant and healthy now in a place where there is lots for them to eat.

xx MG
enjoying gentle vertical rain in Canberra from time to time

 

Post #53 Friday 27 October 2017 – Melbourne, Canberra and Parsley Bay – part 2

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  Letters from America

Friday 27 October 2017

I did a short excursion to another beautiful beach on the eastern suburbs shore line.  This time to  Parsley Bay in Vaucluse.  There are old family photos showing I was brought here as an infant but I have no recollection.  The only thing I recall as a child, is the netted harbour pool at Redleaf Woollahra, a few inlets over from Parsley Bay.  It was a very scary thing to be taken, as a very small person,  to the inky deep end of the harbour pool netted off from the _sharks_ – one cannot quite forget the horror of it!

Here is Parsley Bay, with its footbridge, looking dazzling when I visited:

And this image goes some way to showing that lovely emerald green the harbour goes.  The shadows have a violet touch when they fall on the green:

And here was also a very senior looking water dragon basking on the sandstone:

It’s a lovely series of sunny photos to post – especially as today is so grey and rainy by contrast.

yours ever,
MG xx

 

 

 

Post #29 Thursday 18 May 2017 – recent travels

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  Letters from America

Thursday 18 May 2017

I have just got home today after a five day round trip from Sydney to the South Coast to Canberra then to the country block and finally back to Sydney.  It was all fairly packed with action and adventure.  There is so much to report.  For now I will just put in a couple of photos I took at the hotel I stayed at in Canberra, to show how beautiful the scene was.

More to report and I will do that over the weekend, inshallah, so to speak.

The lovely colonnaded catwalk

 

Gingko tree

With all its delicate fan shaped leaves golden for the season.

 

Resident wildlife in the long pool included carp and wood duck.  The carp were of a great size and just hung there in the water expending no apparent effort, just doing their elegant thing.  Most of the wood duck, including the one in this photo, were wisely tucked up for warmth and sleep when I arrived – the weather was a little cool and grey that early afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so good night my friends, MG xx