While my father has a green thumb, my mother does not. Part of this may be due to the fact that my dad actually enjoys landscaping, cultivating trees, and tending to flowers, whereas my mother doesn’t. In a bizarre twist, though, she actually enjoys mowing the lawn. But being the genetic offspring of these two…

Psalm 19:1-4.

A friend had visited South Africa with his parents a few years ago and one of the souvenirs he brought back was a speeding ticket. It was his first time driving on the opposite side of the road and I was surprised to hear that he had done it. He had said that it wasn’t…

I saw Saving Mr. Banks about five years ago and got far more out of it than I had bargained for.  The story centered around PL Travers and her reluctant consent to allow Walter Elias Disney to make her stories into a movie. The central character in these stories was a magical nanny who Travers…

As we pressed on toward the beach, we watched the trees change around us. There were six unique types of forest on the island and sometimes you could see the change almost as if someone had drawn a line between them; from rainforest to mangrove forest to eucalypt woodland and back. We also trundled through…

In the Butchulla language the word means ‘paradise’. Though this 76 x 14 mile island has long been known as Fraser Island, after an 1836 shipwreck survivor, the original language word describes the place much, much better. After all, no one knows who Eliza Fraser is, but anyone can clearly see how beautiful the island…

I had never actually seen a whale. True, while in Atlanta a year ago I had seen a Whale Shark, but of course that didn’t count. The most exposure to bona fide whales I had ever had was watching Star Trek IV many years ago, and so Humpback Whales in particular held a certain fascination…

I first had the opportunity to learn about World Wars I and II in High School, and my fascination with them has never gone away. It was such a lengthy, all encompassing, and expansive conflict that even to this day untold stories continue to emerge. These range from horrific events such as the firebombing of…

In the third month of 2020 the first direction came through regarding adjustments made in response to the growing pandemic that had at that point gripped the world. You are all aware of the changes that resulted afterward, but this post will serve as a future reminder as to how those in Monto, Queensland were…

A big part of the history in this town involved dairy. Across the street from the house at Mill Road was a factory that used to produce butter and it seems various ones of the friends had worked there in the past. There were also train tracks that ran next to the building so as…