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Author: Ralph Lavelle
Web developer by trade. Married to Tina. 2 kids, Alexander and Eoin. I'm from Ireland, but we all live in Australia.
Wyuna, the woman in the mountain
It's been sixteen years since we first moved to Upper Mount Gravatt; the house in which we live is our second one in this south Brisbane suburb. Our kids have grown up here and attend school nearby, Tina's parents live five minutes away, and most of the working days of that sixteen years I've cycled… Continue reading Wyuna, the woman in the mountain
On the Fringe of Adelaide
In her role as Logistics Manager in the Australian Air Force, earlier this year Tina was sent to Adelaide to do her bit to help coordinate Covid relief. It was her third time away from us for an extended period in the last year, and the first time they'd sent her to South Australia. In… Continue reading On the Fringe of Adelaide
Takin’ a Tucana to Wooyung beach
Any ideas we might have had, and in fact did have, of going back to Europe over the last year having been forestalled by the pandemic, this year we found ourselves all cashed-up with no particular place to go. The thousands we would have spent in Ireland, Jordan and Poland (the unlikely bedfellows of our… Continue reading Takin’ a Tucana to Wooyung beach
Easter in Carnarvon Gorge
In keeping with the cavalier manner in which the fates had of late been effing with our holiday plans, the week we were due to leave for Carnarvon Gorge Brisbane was put into a three-day lockdown once again. The last time this happened, back in January, we'd had to cancel an overnighter we'd booked in… Continue reading Easter in Carnarvon Gorge
Sea change weekend – whalewatching off Fraser Island
Every August in Queensland we have something called The Royal Queensland Show, better known as 'The Ekka'. That nickname comes from the fact that the Show is an exhibition of Queensland's agricultural roots ("bringing the country and city together for a true celebration of agriculture"). When we finally went, two years ago, we saw a… Continue reading Sea change weekend – whalewatching off Fraser Island
A short hike on Mt. Barney, nothing too strenuous
The Scenic Rim is the name of the bottom left quadrant of a giant circle in south-east Queensland, centred on Brisbane, of radius one hundred kilometres and which more or less forms, in those parts, the border with New South Wales. The Rim itself is made of a chain of mountains which was formed by… Continue reading A short hike on Mt. Barney, nothing too strenuous
An Aesthete at Surfer’s
When I was a young aesthete, a long time ago now, I sat down and watched the movie Death in Venice. The image of Dirk Bogarde sunk in his deckchair on the Venice Lido, hair dye running down his face, as everyone else (including the object of his obsession, Tadzio) fled the cholera-ravaged city, all… Continue reading An Aesthete at Surfer’s
A chaos of delight
"The delight one experiences at such times bewilders the mind, if the eye attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over, if turning to admire the splendour of the scenery,… Continue reading A chaos of delight
Obsessed with History in Smolensk
One of the best books - no, make that the best book - I read last year was 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski. I was reading it in Smolensk, fittingly enough, on a flying two-day stay, as part of our two weeks in Russia, in the very city where the Russian… Continue reading Obsessed with History in Smolensk
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