Ducks flocking in from everywhere

The ducks were in hibernation for several months but awoke with a flurry of feathers in August when my eldest sister and niece sent me three ducks for my birthday.  And yes, this is the same sister who gave me Big Duck as a birthday present in 2006, starting this whole wonderful adventure of rubber ducks in my life.  The twins came from my sister and Pop Peace was found and sent by my niece, who also gave me UK (Brit) Duck Christmas 2009.  Some of the ducks that I now have may be put in collection mode - kept in their boxes and rarely coming out - but these ducks given by family and friends will always have that specialness about them of gifts given with love and will always be MY ducks.


There have been 17 newcomers since August - including the birthday three - meaning that their numbers have nearly doubled.  I am not sure what happened but they have decided to invade and have aspirations on taking over my life.  We will see about that!  


They have come from all over the world and Australia - three from the UK, three from Brisbane in Queensland, three from Victoria, three from Wattleup in Western Australia, four from Darwin and one from Wayzata, Minnesota in the USA.  No, I haven't looked up where the hell that is as yet but I will.  I suppose the Wayzata people are wondering where Darwin is.


There is a debate about which ducks will travel to Bali with me on 29 October. I have put my foot down and said that only three can come.  You will hear all about it in due course and see the pictures, of course.  Please don't start taking bets on how many ducks will end up in my luggage. I really am going to be quite firm with them and have definitely placed the limit at three.


Back to more serious things of starting the introductions of the new ducks.


This lovely one has the name of 'Pop Peace' and is a mini duck from Bud by Design Room.  Pop Peace has taken to going into the office where I am doing some contract work and likes sitting under the computer screen.  (Flew in from Queensland)

These cuties I have called the twins and they are only 3 cms tall.  Not the smallest ducks I have but nearly. Came from Queensland with Pop Peace.

And of course these are called the triplets, found at the local Spotlight store while I was shopping for some beads.  They all stand at 4 cms tall.

Okay, that is six out of the 17 newcomers and quite enough for now.

Ducks around Ieper (Ypres)

My previous visits to Europe have been focussed on restaurants and food.  The trip in 2008 was focussed on WWI and WWII battle sites in Belgium.  Okay, there was also great food and restaurants as well as it always is with our family.  


I won't even begin to put history lessons in here.  I will leave that to my son-in-law and that at another time and place.  He, being a history teacher with a passion for war history, was our own remarkable personal tour guide around the battle sites in Belgium, making it interesting and informative.


Below are two links for those who would like to delve further into Diksmuide and trenches in particular as this is where this set of photos were taken.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare
http://www.trabel.com/diksmuide/diksmuide-trench.htm

Yes, the trenches have been recreated in concrete and there is no mud as we were there in July and there are poppies growing everywhere, softening the harshness of the images from WWI.  Yes, it is not an exact re-creation, but would I not have been seriously scarred in my mind to have been exposed to what the soldiers on both sides had to live through in this area of conflict?

The surroundings are flat, flat and flat, giving quite a different outlook on the the importance of a vantage point such as Hill 60 and why it was named as such.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hill_60_(Western_Front)

After visiting the trenches, we stopped at beautiful Ieper for lunch.  And of course visited the town hall which has an excellent museum, In Flanders Fields.   http://www.inflandersfields.be/  
It is still difficult for me to believe the utter devastation of this area, even seeing the photos, and that the city has been entirely rebuilt to how it looked in 1914. 
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/town-ieper-history.htm

Lunch with the ducks.  After all the rolling of the eyes and groaning when the ducks were brought out of my handbag, the kids played the game with me very well, pointing out picture opportunities and making sure the ducks were fed and watered along with us.


Before going to Europe on this trip, friends were astonished that, firstly, we were going to Belgium and then that we were going to stay for two weeks.  Even the passport person at Brussels airport was amazed when daughter and son-in-law told him how long they were staying in the country.  'What are you going to do to fill in your time?'


I loved our time in Belgium  It was easy to get around, wonderful scenery, great food, wine, beer and chocolate.  Great place to visit.

Ducks in Bruges

This is going to be mainly photos as I have so many of ducks in Bruges - mainly the real ones.  Bruges itself is beautiful.  

A canal in Bruges, most of them are this pretty.

Blue Duck and Little Duck posing on the canal.

The real ducks across the canal hanging out on a landing.

Yes, these are not ducks but what the heck, wouldn't you take photos of them as well?

Looks like a female version of Little Duck except she is a cake of soap.

And chocolate ducks - we are in Belgium after all.

I have cropped this photo as didn't need to show the pearl G-string on the mannequin, I will leave that to people's imagination.  I was very disappointed that they were using a duck in this display for a sex shop!

And lastly, this was a duck we met while we were having late afternoon drinks beside the canal.  He really had attitude, eating the beer snacks that were thrown to him and even stole a cigarette out of my hand when I held it down out of the way of everyone else at the table.  Those were the days when I still smoked.

Long live all ducks - feathered, rubber, soap and chocolate.

Picnic at Versigny

I seem to have had a hiatus for several months.  That's okay.  Life changes for a moment and then it gets back on track.  Since I have last written, the duck collection has grown to 25 ducks and waiting on another five coming from the USA and the UK.   My sister Kerry and my daughter Rosa have been responsible for a good number of these ducks.

Back to the point of this blog.  It was about putting up more photos of the ducks in Europe.  So I will go straight into it.  I have posted the Ducks in Paris and the Ducks in Champagne. Just needed to refresh where I am.

Ahh, picnic in Versigny. Yes.

We found this spot by accident, driving through the French countryside.
We were looking for a picnic spot and really could not get any better than this.  The food consisted of bread, cheese and pastries we had purchased in Reims as we left that beautiful city.

The wine we found in a very local wine merchant's house in the village of Versigny and it cost a whole 2.50 euros.  So we now had food, wine and the perfect picnic spot.  All as we needed was something to open the bottle with (not many screw caps in Europe) and something to drink the wine from that did not involve passing around the bottle, though we have done that before.  I was the only one out of the four who had a bottle opener and of course it was in my suitcase which was jammed in with all the other luggage in the back of the station wagon.  This was produced after not too much of a struggle.  For drinking vessels we used the little red with white polka dot rammikins that Rosa had bought in a kitchenware shop in Reims.  This shop was right next door to the cheese shop which was our excuse for wandering into it and looking around.

All in all, a gorgeous picnic and one of the highlights of our European trip for the spontaneity and fun.

With, of course, the ducks.

Giving up smoking

I gave up smoking cigarettes nearly 12 months ago.  Now I miss it.  I won't start smoking again, of course.  Why go through all that pain just to have to go through it again another day?  I am hoping that talking about what I am feeling makes it easier stay on the path of not smoking 


Though this last time I gave up smoking wasn't that painful at all.  There were four days of not feeling so lovely and being a little tense and then those feelings went away and I was left with a disappointed feeling that it, smoking, left me so easily this time.  


This is not a sign that I can resume smoking as it is so easy to give up!!  This says to me that it was time to let it go.  The previous times I gave up smoking were awful and seriously do not trust my luck that it would be easy again.


When visiting down south I felt like a pariah as a smoker.  Rightly so, it is smelly and dirty before we go onto any health issues.  Speaking of which, my daughter is studying medicine and the medical facts of why I shouldn't smoke weren't mentioned very often but.........

When did I start smoking cigarettes?  There was the time as a rebellious teenager that I smoked, menthols at that.  Peer group pressure - other girls were experimenting with smoking and so I joined in.  


There was something very risque about pooling our money and one of us going into the milkbar after school and buying a packet of cigarettes.  Sitting in the park smoking later I remember feeling very grown up.  We were not simply anonymous schoolgirls any more.   We were pushing the boundary of what we were allowed to do.  We were sophisticated women - or so we thought at the tender age of 15. 




That first time smoking did not last long.  I left school and it was no longer necessary to prove that I was not a schoolgirl any more.  I wasn't.  Anyway, life was far to busy and fun to spend time smoking.

A little later there was another experimental time.  It was the early 70's and the world was a beautiful place to be in.  We could do anything, anything at all.  There were few boundaries in our small world that we didn't push at in an attempt to batter them down.  


No, that is incorrect.  Really thinking back to that time, I did not realise that there were barriers there.  That didn't come until several years later.  At that moment there was just a hell of a lot of things to do in life, places to go to, people to meet.  And experimenting with substances was one of the things that was there to try.  We did and came through it and out the other side relatively unscathed.



The next flirtation with smoking was living in Germany in late 1976 as a young wife and mother.  For an Australian woman on her first trip overseas, at that time I did not have the life experience to communicate my feelings of being boxed in and expected to act in a certain way.  So I smoked hand-rolled Cuban cigarillos and they were fun.   As I stopped smoking as soon as we returned to Australia six months later, smoking these cigarillos was purely a release for me from the stifling lifestyle that was Germany at the moment in time.


The next step on my smoking career, if I can call it that, wasn't until I arrived in Darwin in 1993.  Again I was being rebellious, doing the things that I had not been doing in the previous 18 years because of the lifestyle that I had chosen.  It was again a time to experiment, to find out who I was and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.  


Now, 17 years after arriving in Darwin I am smoke free for nearly the last one and hopefully will not smoke again.  But I miss smoking.  I miss rolling a cigarette.  I miss the time out it gave me when I went outside to have a smoke. 


Okay, I don't miss emptying dirty ashtrays.  I don't miss the mess in my handbag with bits of tobacco and filters rolling around the bottom no matter how careful I was.  There are more books on my shelves which I have treated myself with from the money not gone up in smoke.  I notice the smell of cigarettes when I walk out of a building and say thank you that smokers have been moved from straight outside the doors to way down the street.  It is an awful smell to come across, it really does assault my nostrils.


Maybe this is just another of those moments when I realise that I might be growing up.  I have chosen to take something out of my life which wasn't a positive influence.  Now, to do that with other areas.......


(With apologies to the ducks for taking over their spot for a moment.  Though smoked duck is very, very good)

Ducks in Champagne 2008

After Paris, my son had arranged for us to travel to Reims where there was the guided tour through Veuve Clicquot building and cellars, lunch at the Manoir in the hills and then back to Reims for a visit to Krug cellars and dinner at a local brassiere with our local hosts.  Wow, what a day.  And that is the meaning of the heading - no, we did NOT eat ducks cooked in Champagne.  Though the thought...................

The ducks were allowed to come out of my handbag very quickly when we were in the private tasting room at Veuve Clicquot while we were left alone for a moment between our tour and the guided tasting of the wines that make the famous champagne.  The ducks looked very happy being surrounded by all that glamour and yellow diffused light. Definitely suited them.




That was the end of their frivolity for the day.  They were not allowed out in public again for the time we were in Reims.
Lunch at the Veuve Clicquot Manoir in Verzy, maybe this picture explains why the ducks were not allowed to come out.

Between the Krug tasting (which I left early, there really is only so much champagne a girl can take in) and dinner, I retired to the hotel for a much needed relax and soak in the bath. 

As the ducks had been cooped up in my handbag for so long they enjoyed a wallow as well.  

The next morning we packed the car, no mean feat with the four of us travelling, had a wander around Reims and the beautiful cathedral and then continued on our travels to Belgium.

Decorative duck at Hotel des Templars, Reims.  Okay, couldn't resist taking the photo.

Ducks in Paris 2008

First stop for myself and the ducks was Paris.  Our first trip there and I was very excited to be staying in an apartment in the most beautiful city in the world.  Paris really is as beautiful as is stated and the food!!!! Wonderful.

Little pastries from the boulangerie/patissiere just around the corner from our apartment on the first morning in Paris.  I loved being able to go to the boulangerie/patissiere every morning and choose a selection of little pastries to start the day.

And as we were in Paris, viola, photo op at the Eiffel Tower.  My son managed to pull himself out from under his embarrassment, after saying 'You're not!!!' and played along with me to take these photos. 

Five glorious days in Paris staying in the 7th Arrondissement, buying food in the local shopping street every afternoon - visiting the greengrocer, cheese shop, delicatessen, wine shop.  Mmmmmmm.  Fresh bread on the way home from our favourite boulangerie.  Any left over baguette was then my petit breakfast the next morning with leftover tomatoes, greens or cheese.  This was with my first coffee before I went to the patissiere for the real or second breakfast.  How do the Parisian women stay so slim?  

Travelling Ducks 2008

It is about time that I put up the photos of the ducks travelling with me in Europe as it was in July 2008 - 18 months ago!!!  Lil Duck and Blue Duck travelled with me when I met the kids in Europe.  They both had passports which I had put together for them - how could anyone travel without a passport?  Unfortunately, since 9/11, passport control people seem to have lost their sense of humour and my attempts to have the ducks' passports stamped were met with disapproval - to the point that I felt that if I had pressed any further with my request that I may have been taken away to be questioned as to my motives.

Anyway, both the ducks seemed happy in the bottom of my handbag even if they were not travellers with stamps in their passports.  In the end they are ducks and rubber at that!

Ducks in Canberra

I have arrived back in Darwin after spending two and a bit weeks in Canberra, ostensibly to make curtains for downstairs at my daughter and son-in-law's house, but of course to travel with a duck and take photos with the Canberra cousin - Chris.  

100% Gorgeous travelled with me and liked hanging out upstairs with Chris Duck. They both enjoyed coming downstairs and watching three very good games of mahjong and then there was some time spent hanging out in the garden.

My son-in-law has worked very hard to keep the garden alive during the drought conditions that Canberra is still under, as this quite large pumpkin will testify to.  It still is one of the great pleasures in life to prepare a meal with vegetables and herbs picked fresh from the garden - zucchini, apple cucumbers, tomatoes, figs, oregano, rosemary, basil etc.  Pasta with a sauce of fresh tomatoes roughly chopped and cooked with grated zucchini and fresh herbs - wonderful

ducks with necklaces

How does time fly past so quickly?  What happened to January 2010?  While I am asking that question, what happened to most of 2009?  One thing I have been playing with over the last few weeks is beads.  The big ducks were getting cross with being ignored - excepting being shifted from the top of the washing machine to the top of the toilet seat and back again when laundry is happening.  The only way I could appease them was to take their photos with necklaces so they could feel included with what I have been amusing myself with apart from them.

Here I will give a plug for the website I have placed the necklaces on - Madeit.  My creations are under the Aqua Goddess Creations name.   http://www.madeit.com.au/aquagoddesscreations    While you are there, check out other goodies.  Everything is hand made in Australia and there are lovely things for gifts or to spoil yourself.

Until next time, which might be coming from Canberra......

Comfort Zones

I thought that I had left the wet season behind in Darwin for a moment to have some summer sunshine in south east Queensland.  It hasn't rained all the time I have been here but.......


Weather aside, I have been taken on a quick road trip through this corner of Queensland.  The beautiful green wooded hilly countryside has astonished me.  I had not realised that I had SUCH strong pictures in my mind and preconceptions of what Queensland is like - the coastal belt, green and luscious extending up to the tropical north; the arid flat inland, the home of vast stations - these were the pictures that I associate with this area.


Travelling from the Fraser Coast to inland Dalby was eye opening.  I will admit to panic settling in when we reached the flatness of the Condamine Basin, a stark contrast to the areas around Kingaroy.  I have driven through the centre of Australia (which is not flat, there being hills, undulations, gullies) and enjoyed the 360 degree views that the vastness allows but this area left me nearly hyperventilating with its FLATNESS.  Wow!  


Queensland is taking me out of comfort zones that I did not even know that I had.  Yes, I was born in Tasmania, within the gentle undulating landscape of the north-west where I lived for the first 12 years of my life.  How does this still influence my idea of what the landscape I want to live in should look like? After living in the tropics for 16 years, I would not have thought that the look of Tasmania would still be there in my mind, the green of the hills being like a beacon of comfort tucked away to savour when I am feeling visually challenged by the landscape.


The question I ask myself here is how close together are comfort zones with being in ruts?  Where do we draw the line between staying with what is comfortable and make the decision to challenge ourselves, stretching our imaginations to what is possible, to allow us to grow and experience different emotions, feelings and situations?  Should we take the seemingly easier option of staying with what we are familiar with or choosing the option to extend ourselves beyond our known boundaries?  


I have a feeling that I will take the option of extending myself.


As an aside, the ducks did not want to travel with me on this short road trip.  They must have known about the flatness, lack of water and abundance of flies  in the Dalby area and the huge crowds at the Eumundi Markets which had me refusing to get out of the car and mingle, even though this had been the other destination of the road trip.  I admire the foresight of the ducks for their wanting to stay put in their comfort zone, even while I am coming out of mine!

January 2010 in Queensland

A few weeks ago I would not have believed that I would be spending time in Queensland but here I am, with ducks!  I travelled with Banana Duck as travelling without a duck in my bags somewhere is difficult to contemplate.  Ducks add a dimension to life that may not be appreciated by those who travel through life without one.


I arrived in Brisbane on New Years Eve to go up the coast for two weeks.  While going through Brisbane stopped to have lunch with my eldest sister.  Lovely sitting on her verandah for a while.  And there was a present there from Berenichi, one of my fab nieces.  Introducing Brit Duck to everyone, the first of my Queensland ducks.

Very confidant and self possessed is Brit Duck.   Welcome.

And here is Cushion Duck which was waiting for me when we arrived up the coast later on New Years Eve. Soft and cuddly, Cushion Duck will be a welcome addition to my couch along with turtle cushion who already lives there (lime green and orange, no photo as yet).






Below we have all the Queensland ducks waiting to be grilled, the new ducks not wasting any time for a photo op and horsing around.

Banana Duck and Brit Duck playing at being duck a la orange in waiting.


We did eat duck a la orange on Saturday night so they are pretty close to the mark.


It is raining here, not as much as Darwin is getting at the moment, and I will admit to enjoying not being as hot as I have been in October, November and December in Darwin - humidity was very high and even sitting still I broke out in a sweat.  Queenslanders are saying how hot it is but I know better.