This has been a pleasant week. My niece Linda visited from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, largely because yesterday was the 83rd birthday of her mother, my sister Erica. The week passed too quickly with fun family times, shopping, eating, talking, celebrating - my sisters and I were sad to bid Linda goodbye this evening as she flew out of Mount Gambier bound for Adelaide and, in a couple of days, Brisbane.

One day, we visited the nearby seaside village of Port MacDonnell. It was to this little township that my second husband and I moved from Sydney in 1972. The contrast could hardly have been greater as we went from the rush of a bustling city to the isolation of a place so quiet that the sound of the southern sea was the loudest noise to assault our ears. It was the first sound we heard in the morning and the last we heard at night; an ever-present reminder of the power of nature. Cold winds blew from the Antarctic all year round. I remember my children going for swimming lessons at the height of summer. The pupils had to squat in the water, or their upper bodies would have turned blue. The instructor, of course, could not squat so she wore a thick woollen jumper over her bathers.

This picture - my first attempt at uploading an image to Blogspot! - is of the very first house my second husband and I bought. It was a century old even then: a four-roomed limestone cottage of the type typical of its era in this area. It had an iron roof in those days, and we paid $600 for it! Eighteen months later, we sold it for $1,800. I hate to think what it would bring now - certainly 100 times as much or more, being only a block from the beach. In this picture I'm pointing out to Linda how I came out of the side gate one day and stepped over a tiger snake that was wriggling along in the gutter, minding its own business. I don't know which of us was more astonished. Certainly Snakey and I hastened off in opposite directions! Snakey was hissing. I was probably squealing.

I have loads of critiquing and reviewing to catch up on before heading back to Perth in a week's time. I have promised the Specusphere a couple of exciting interviews as well, involving two of Australia's best-known speculative fiction authors. Deciding on questions to ask each of them is occupying a big corner of my mind this weekend. So it's back to work - no partying, shopping and country drives this week!