Possum presents

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A Crepuscule rose climbs along my verandah railings, the blooms of which I am very fond. Unfortunately I only get to admire them on the far branches that hang suspended in mid-air.

The rest are eaten by the brush-tailed possum.
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No doubt it thinks it makes a fair exchange. It munches on flowers and leaves and breaks off stems and branches, makes a deposit on the railing by way of payment and waddles off to the next rose bush.
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But whether currants or coal, I haven’t yet found a use for these little black offerings, so am not happy about the exchange at all. I could do without the presents and the presence — of any possum!

Funeral cockatoos

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The harsh cry of the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos often echoes around the forested ridges here. It is supposed to be the harbinger of rain but it seems to be here right when it’s already wet or misty.

They come in small flocks but are a restless lot and I have always had trouble getting a photo. By the time my lens has found one amongst the higher branches, zoomed in and refocused, it’s moved on!
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Also sometimes called the Funeral Cockatoo because of its rusty black plumage, you don’t always see the short tufty crest raised — unlike the Sulphur-crested White Cockatoos with their flamboyantly waving yellow head-dresses.
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So I am very pleased to share these photos with you: I only wish it was video so you could hear the squawks!

Breakfast with the birds

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Newcastle is blessed with a wonderful Wetlands Centre redeemed by the dedication of many from what in the 60s we dismissed as The Dump and The Swamp. I am fortunate to be able to launch my new book in this great setting, over Breakfast with the Birds on Mothers’ Day.

Love to see you there!

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Enjoy a leisurely stroll around the wetlands with an experienced guide and encounter dozens of different birds and animal species. 

Return to the tranquility of Nourish Café @ Hunter Wetlands for a perfect start to Sunday — and then be entertained at the launch of Mountain Tails.
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Welcome to life on the wild side!! 
Sharyn Munro is The Woman on the Mountain and Mountain Tails is the truth about the wilder side of her life — that of her animal neighbours. 

Come and take a walk in Sharyn’s gumboots, and discover the humorous, intriguing and sometimes poignant world of life on the wild side.

Breakfast with the Birds Tour 7.30am; Adults $30 Children $15 – bookings essential.

Book launch and readings of Sharyn Munro’s Mountain Tails – 9.30am FREE
Off the roundabout Sandgate Road, Shortland NSW 2307 
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL Phone: (02) 4951 6466 or by email

Download a PDF guide here.

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Bees on the move

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First I saw a dense cloud of insects — termites, I assumed. But the intense buzzing alerted me to look more closely. They were bees, swarming about the top of a young pittosporum tree.

Having had trouble with bees making their hive too close to a doorway before, I was anxious to see where they were going to settle.

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Then I spotted the dark shape at the heart of the Autumnalis shrub rose next to the tree. I had been on my hands and knees, weeding right there, only yesterday.

I hoped this wasn’t a permanent choice of abode.

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But I know little about bees. Next day they were further down the yard, in a seething mass on the grass below the lemon-scented ti-tree.

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Later that same day, as I planted out calamint seedlings, over the crackle of Radio National on my tiny transistor radio I heard an odd noise. A plane? I turned the radio off. No, bees, on the move again.

They seemed to be searching for a new place to land, and heading my way.

As I didn’t want to caught up in this, I decided it was lunchtime and fair leapt up the steps to the safety of indoors.

I have yet to find where the next squat is located.

See you at Parramatta

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For any of my readers who live in Sydney, I will be speaking about my new book, Mountain Tails, at Parramatta City Library on Tuesday 5th May, from 1-2 pm.

Part of their Lunchtime Author Talks programme, the event is free, but bookings are required (9806 5159). The Library is in Civic Place, off Macquarie Street.

After the rain

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My world looked different after the rains stopped. Blue sky seemed bluer, white clouds whiter than ever before, brighter than memory allowed. Grey skies had dominated for so long.

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My native animal neighbours appreciated it too, coming out of shelter to feed and scratch and dry off. Not having seen many since I got back from Thailand, due to the weather, I am relieved to see them.
A few wallabies, a family of roos…‘ Sawasdee-ka!’ I greet them, Thai style.

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An echidna appeared just near the house, poking about in the overgrown herb garden. I have seen it, or a relative, there before. I expect the rocks provide good insect hidey holes for it to investigate.

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Near the herb garden a large Wanderer butterfly decorates the lavender shrub. Although they are common here, familiarity does not breed contempt — they are very striking in colour and pattern, and I am grateful for their abundance.

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Next day the echidna is still wandering about the yard as if intends to stay.

It feels like company; I am pleased to be sharing with a creature again, and to see something is using the useless grass.

As I have trouble putting a spade through this kikuyu sod, I am impressed that the echidna can poke and wriggle its snout through with no apparent trouble. An efficient ‘poker’ indeed.

Wet, wet world

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wet-1Recent rains seemed endless as I remained cabinbound for the week, standing on the wet steps and peering out over the falling autumn leaves at the wet, wet world around me.

Over 300mm of rain fell, encouraging the kikuyu to grow ahead of my efforts once more.

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Gum boot shod, hat dripping water down the neck of my Drizabone, each morning I had to at least venture as far as the rain gauge and the diminishing wood heap, as well as checking the batteries in the solar power shed.

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The maned wood ducks liked it, and clearly felt secure in this watery world, seeing me restricted to the verandah far more than usual. They nibbled their way at leisure across the yard, much closer to structures than previously.

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On the first morning of no rain, I ventured out with the camera. Low cloud still hid the far mountains, and the trees still dripped latent raindrops, but it was good to be out walking.

Water ran over grass like mini-creeks, and water plants flourished in puddles.

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Although the horses have been gone for months, their presence is still evident in the rotting lumps of manure scattered here and there. On the track each ball of manure has sprouted tiny fungi, like candles on a cake.

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In the house yard, colours are darker, leaves shinier, lichen brighter. The plants look happier than I do – as the rain begins to fall again

Mountain Tails has arrived

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mt-200I have been told that my new book, Mountain Tails,  has arrived!  It is probably at my post office right now, for me to collect next week when the road dries out and the creek level drops!

I can hardly wait, even though I have of course read it – the real book is quite a different matter from an on-screen or A4 manuscript.

What will it feel and smell like? Will I cry as I did when I first held ‘The Woman on the Mountain’? Will my drawings look OK in actual print? Will I find any missing commas?

It is also heading for bookshops all round the country, but Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website here and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.

This collection of short pieces about my wild animal neighbours here in my wildlife refuge is accompanied by my black and white drawings, and hopefully it will amuse, intrigue and educate readers as much as the critters themselves do for me.

In raising awareness of their uniqueness, it also aims to raise awareness of the plight of our threatened and endangered species, and at the end I have included lists of ways to get involved for those who want to help, and contacts for doing so.

I will be giving talks at various places and as Exisle arranges them I’ll put up posts to let you know. Always good to meet my readers, such as Kez at East Maitland last year.

Many events wlll be before Mother’s Day, as Exisle think it will make a great Mother’s Day gift.

PS: I have it! A dear little book, but the only time I felt like crying was at the dedication to my Dad, whom I still miss terribly. Exisle have again done a beautiful job of production – designer Nanette is so attuned to the tone of a work that I can’t imagine a different cover now.

Yes, I’d like to redo one or two drawings that don’t look so good at the reduced size; but mostly I just wanted to add all the other animal events that have happened since, dozens of postscripts needed – or a second collection in a year or so? I had forgotten that, for example, the whole python saga was after the manuscript had been sent off!

Thai dualities

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dual-1Modern Thais obviously value their legacy from antiquity and its incredible cratfsmanship; temple restoration work was everywhere.

But they have the knack of also living very much in the real and modern world, and we saw energy-saving light globes everywhere – unapologetically even in shrines.

They don’t waste as much as we do in the West; I loved that many garbage bins and their stands, like these pictured below at the Forest Wat, were made from old tyres, turned inside out and cut to suit.
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But in the midst of all the beauty of the temples and gardens, there is an awful lot of cement. It reminded me of the old touristy Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of NSW, where fake grottoes of cement were a feature.
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Here they do a lot of fake log bridges and railings and paint them brown, but they also do fake timber outdoor tables and chairs with fake bark edgings and paint them quite hideously garish in glossy orange or lime green.

We saw them everywhere, private and public, and our bus passed a place where they make them: hundreds of settings glared at us by the roadside, awaiting buyers.

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These seem most incongruous for such an aesthetically conscious people, but they do love colour! This tour bus ( not ours) was at a hot springs/national park;  the ‘antennae’ mirrors make them look like giant bugs.

dual-5And then there was the knowingly-garish, like at the Condoms and Cabbages restaurant in Chiang Rai, adjoining the Hill Tribes Museum and Education Centre (a better choice than taking a tour to gawk at the downtrodden and much-exploited inhabitants of a hill tribe village!)

Associated with and raising funds for the NGO, the Population and Community Development Association, Cabbages and Condoms had great food plus fun models wearing condoms in a way you probably hadn’t considered!

Their menu promises ‘Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy!’

They also need warm clothes for hill tribe children for the winter if you know any grannies with no-one to knit for. What modern Mum really wants handwashable knits as gifts for their kids anymore? Our Xmas time is their cold season. More information here.

Cyanide insanity

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In my book The Woman on the Mountain, I expressed my disbelief that the National Heritage listed wetlands of Lake Cowal — and all the waters downstream — had been put under great threat from Canadian giant Barrick Gold’s open-cut cyanide leach goldmining right next to it.

The Wiradjuri people and their supporters have been fighting this insanity, this obscenity, for the past 10 years. Now Barrick Gold wants to expand into the lake bed, doubling the size of the mine.

No mine has ever avoided leaking cyanide-laced water and waste into the ecosystem. Barrick’s gold mine at Lake Cowal will be no exception.

You’ll be appalled at what you learn from their Save Lake Cowal website which I am now including as a permanent link from mine.

They need ongoing support in this campaign about sovereignty, the battle against corporate greed and the ongoing fight to protect an ecologically significant and sacred land.

Watch a video about it here.

Look out! Triffids!

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My favourite tool is my hoe. After 30 years of loyal service it needed a new handle, which I’d loosely put on just before heading off for the weekend.

The bright new handle showed up how poorly I’d treated the hoe head and I vowed to give it a good sand and oil before it went back out on duty.

I left it leaning aginst a chair on the verandah, to remind myself to do so.

In those two days the Chilean Jasmine sent up a tendril between the boards, found the hoe and claimed it, looping around the handle and heading for the sky.

You’d swear it had an intelligence to do so: as always, I think of John Wyndham’s triffids.

Chiang Mai skyline

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This is the view from the cool tiled haven of our room in the great value guesthouse, Safe House.

In the old walled city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, the gold and mirror mosaics of the wat and chedi spires jostle for sky space with the bright scalloped reds of temple tiles, the rusting browns of water tanks and corrugated iron roofs, and the greys of untreated timber and asbestos roofing.

Threaded amongst them is the green of trees: papaws and flowering mangoes and wide spreading trees I cannot name, except for the sacred Bodhi tree with its heart-shaped leaves. This is the shape of the wind-catchers that hang below the small temple bells ting-tinging from the chests of the finial creatures I see everywhere.

I heard the bells tinging often; I brought one at the markets and now it hangs on my verandah, giving me tings that are pure Thailand for me.

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I didn’t find out what they represent, but they seemed familiar; then I realised it was Michael Leunig’s Mr Curly I was thinking of, with no disrespect to either.

Safe House Court Guesthouse is at 178 Ratchapakhinai Road, very central, very clean, very cheap.  It has a good Thai restaurant in the tree-shaded front courtyard, and life was made much easier for us by the delightful Yo in reception, a knowledgeable and helpful young man with fluent English.

We also found it useful to be opposite a well-known landmark, Wat U Mong, for giving directions and thus getting home in tuk-tuks and sawng-thaews (open-air mini-cabs and ute-buses).