I can't believe it's only 26 more sleeps before I set off to Adelaide to stay with my friend Annalou for the duration of the Adelaide Writers Festival! Eleven sleeps after that and I head off to Perth, first for Swancon - this year the National Science Fiction Convention - and then for a meditation retreat with Patrick Kearney, one of this country's finest teachers of Vipassana. It's been a busy time lately and I had almost lost track of time. Now I must start to pull myself toegther ready for the Big Adventure.

I have often moaned and bewailed the fact that I cannot afford to live in Perth anymore, yet I must admit that the Limestone Coast is a lovely part of the country. My sister Erica's daughter Linda has been down from Queensland for a flying visit and while she was here we visited places that locals seldom think to go to but which visitors always want to see. One such place was the Waterfall Gardens at Dartmoor, sone 40-odd kilometres from Mount Gambier. We found a beautiful park with natural waterfalls and creeks running into a river. I thought I knew this area quite well and I didn't even know it was there! Linda and I had a lovely walk down to the river, admiring the scenery on the way. The gardens are quite wild - a mixture of native and exotic plants, many of them weeds, growing in tight profusion. One outstanding feature was the Tiger Lilies, which used to be found in almost every garden when I was a child, but for some reason they have been ousted by newer hybrids these days, which is shame as they really are most attractive with their black-spotched orange blooms. They grow tiny bulblets in the leaf axils, so I carefully collected three of them to bring home and hopefully grow on. Nestled into a pot, within a few days they began to elongate, changing from balls to teardrops. Each little teardrop is particloured in black and brown, the colours divided by a curved silver line, rather in the fashion of a Yang-Yin symbol. I often wish I had a much better camera, and this is one of those times. Each bulblet is a tiny work of art that would probably go unseen in the garden.

But in China the news is of a harsher aspect of nature. Storms that have left huge cities without electricity have also deprived millions of people of their one chance in the year to visit loved ones far away. My heart goes out to them and to the countless people who must be lying sick and dying in cold flats because there is no heating in what must be a truly terrible winter.

It's sobering to realise that I whinge and whine about having to live far from the place I call home. At least I have a roof over my head, decent weather (although we're getting some unseasonably cold mornings!) and enough to eat, with a holiday to look forward to: one that will, moreover, cost me virtually nothing. I really have nothing to whine about. I've even had a stroke of luck in the form of an editing assignment from a PhD student in Perth, and her fees will pay my Swancon subscription. No, I have nothing to whine about, nothing at all. Once again, I am deeply touched by the generosity and kindness of friends who have provided me with transport and accommodation, to say nothing of the good company I will enjoy when we get together. May some of those people in China enjoy one tenth of the luck of this little fat old lady!