Diary Page
January 2010
Camels
My Garden
I'm not complaining, you understand, because it's great to be back in the U.K. after travelling on the other side of the world for four months. But when we left South Australia to come back home it was 43 Centigrade and we were slapping on litres of sun cream and spending as much time as possible on the beach, where there was at least a chance of a breeze. Within a pitifully short time, here we are with the heating on all day trying to remember where we put all the woollies before we left, last summer. Where did all this snow come from? Going straight from high Summer to deep Winter is a bit of a shock to the system and feels really weird. Looks pretty, though, doesn't it?
While I was away, I stuffed my writer's notebook with sights, sounds, smells, characters and experiences. Who knows what will come of it? I have written a short piece for a magazine already - about camels in the Australian desert, as it happens - but I'm hoping that once I have settled back into a writing routine (and warmed up!), at least one book-length story, maybe more, will jump out and insist on being written.
Did you know that there are so many camels in parts of Australia now that they are considered to be pests? I didn't even know there were ANY camels in Australia, but I discovered they were introduced hundreds of years ago by silk traders from Afghanistan, and they've escaped and bred freely in the wild. The government wants people to get rid of them because they destroy crops and damage the land. If you want a camel as a pet or companion or work animal, you just go and take one (or three, as the woman in the picture we came across just outside Alice Springs). If you want to EAT a camel (tasted a bit like steak, I thought, when I sampled it at a barby), go ahead and shoot one. Either way, they're not at all hard to catch. I was really shocked to see camels roaming around the countryside, not to mention on my plate...
I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful time over the Christmas holidays and, maybe, a couple of 'snow days' during January when schools were closed and there was nothing to do except build snowmen, pull sledges and hurl snowballs at unsuspecting friends.