Simpson and Day Field Guide to the Birds of Australia 8th edition

From time to time I feature birds on this travel blog. Birding is one of my major interests and I write about my sightings on Trevor’s Birding blog.

Many people carry a bird identification guide book with them on their travels. I make sure I always have one with me to help work out what I am seeing.

If you are a traveller – and interested in birds – I’d suggest that you find room for a bird field guide too. Most of them are compact enough to fit easily into a day pack or even a handbag.

Today sees the publication of a new field guide of Australian birds. The Simpson and Day field guide has been around since 1984 and has sold over half a million copies. Today the fully revised and updated 8th edition is published.

The publicist at Penguin Books Australia sent me a review copy a few weeks ago. I’ve written an extensive review of this exciting new book here on my birding blog.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

Over the last week I have travelled three times to Adelaide to attend the 2010 Adelaide Writers’ Week. This is an integral part of the biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts. Writers and readers come here from all over Australia for this important festival, one of the best of its kind in the world. A fine array of talented international writers are also on the speakers’ list or on panel discussions on books and writing.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

The sessions run from 9:30am to 6pm every day for six days and admission is free to all sessions (except the evening sessions in the Town Hall). Sitting there all day is a marathon effort for both organisers and audience members. The audience would have to number well over 500 at any one time, often swelled for popular or well-known writers, or during the lunch break of workers in the nearby CBD, a five minute walk away.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

Three large marquees are set up for the week in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens located beautifully between the CBD and the River Torrens. The East Tent and the West Tent host the writers’ talks and panel discussions, while the central tent is the Book Shop. The shop stocks many of the books of the visiting authors as well as stocks of new books launched during the week. Every guest speaker is encouraged to sit at tables in front of this tent for book signings, and to meet their readers.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

Last week I travelled to Adelaide several times to attend this year’s Writers’ Week, an important feature of every Festival of Arts in the city.  This special part of the festival runs for six days at the beginning of the festival. It attracts writers and readers from all over Australia for the day long sessions. The programme always features leading Australian writers as well as a significant array of international writers and publishers.

Tom Keneally opening Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

This year’s writers’ week was opened by leading Australian writer Tom Keneally (pictured above). Tom is probably best know for his book Schindler’s Ark which was made into a very successful movie. Tom is an entertaining speaker as well as very thought provoking for readers and writers alike.

During the first afternoon the Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann (photo below), announced the Premier’s awards for writing in ten different categories.

Premier Mike Rann announcing awards at Adelaide Writers' Week 2010

Castlemaine, Victoria

We stayed a few days with our friends in Gisborne, Victoria on our way back from Sydney, January 2009. while we were there we went to visit the historic town of Castlemaine, about a half hour drive north of Gisborne. While we were there I managed a few photos of some of the beautiful old buildings. I’d love to spend more time wandering around this historic place.

Castlemaine, Victoria

We spent quite a long time looking through an antique shop. We found a great place to have lunch and we also browsed in a wonderful bookshop for quite a while. I love old bookshops; you never know what wonderful titles one will find. I didn’t find anything this time.

Castlemaine, Victoria

One of the interesting – and curious – things about the bookshop was the large statue of a cat on the roof over the footpath.  The photo below shows a close up of the cat.

Castlemaine, Victoria

Against a Peacock Sky written by Monica Connell. Published by Penguin Books (Viking) in 1991.

Monica Connell grew up in Northern Ireland and is an anthropologist who went to live in a rural village in Nepal. She lived and worked for two years with a Nepali family, sharing their celebrations, their hardships, their food and their hard labour in the fields to provide a subsistence living. One family took her in, sharing their everyday lives on a very personal level with her, allowing her to virtually become one of the family.

Monica witnessed first hand the villagers’ way of life. She learned how to care for the animals, how to plant and harvest rice and the best way to hunt a boar. She relates the significance of their many religious ceremonies, beliefs and festivals. She relates – without any hint of being judgmental – the importance of various customs employed to appease the local gods in order to have a successful crop or produce healthy animals.

This is a fascinating account of life in rural Nepal as it has been for many centuries and had remained largely untouched by outside influences. Here and there in her narrative, however, there are hints of change in their somewhat cloistered existence. Outside pressures were beginning to show. For example, one young man finds work building roads in nearby India, and he leaves permanently. The old ways were beginning to change, and I suspect if the author returned to that village today there would be many more changes apparent.

I would suspect that this book is now out of print. I bought mine via the internet as a used copy after I had experienced a touch of Nepali life when I went to visit there in 2006. To read more of my impressions of life in Nepal, go to the Contents on the sidebar, or click on several of the Categories, also on the sidebar.