Research … Could there be a Greater Pleasure

One of the greatest pleasures I find in writing is research. I write on Aboriginal Lore, a passion I have had for many years and one, which has been an integral part of my life. I also write informal travelogues, which are opinion and experience rather than travel advice and recommendations. Research has been part of my life from the very early days when I would listen to stories told and read what little there was back then of Australian tales. This has been an interest of mine since childhood. It once entailed spending long wonderful hours amongst old photo’s, writings and microfiche and I still enjoy getting back to the basics in a dusty room, unearthing precious resources.

Now-a-days a great deal of research is done on the internet and within valuable databases such as the Gutenberg Collection. This collection allows you on-line access to many journals, those of our Explorers and many other writings which are made freely available. However there is no going past many of my other research resources, valued books that I have collected over the years, which simply are no longer available and other resources and papers that make up part of my collection.

Touching the Dreamtime

Living in the sub-tropic coastal fringe on the east coast of Aus… albeit a sketch an a bit inland, we are busily now welcoming the arrival of spring and it is glorious. The flush of spring colour in the gardens, the fruit flowers on the mango tree promising a great crop. Soooo…. hoping the bees are busy.

While the Northern hemisphere is sinking into their winter we are busily emerging from ours and if the weather patterns are anything to go by it is gunna be a hot, wet summer. For Aussies, summer brings the Wet up north, the time of floods and cyclones of which we get the end of as they bounce down the eastern seaboard. This also brings a new step, a corner on the horizon for an author. New thoughts, new projects and new ideas particularly as you have rounded up old ones over the winter months now passed as I have.

I love the storms, adore a good electrical storm with fires the air and is a magnificent display of mother nature’s power, as much as I love a new idea or a good plot. It is the storms, which cradle the legends of the Dreamtime and there is nothing quite like sitting on the Kakadu Plateau and looking out over the vastness of the wetlands while different storms travel across the land. Yes… your view is so very vast up there in the Outback that you can watch the storms individually, they are like actors on stage yet in different plays performing for the privileged.

I adore the legends and myths of the Dreamtime, those that touch the reality of our lives and help mould who we are.