Veronika Wild

On Friday I had an invite to have lunch with Magda at her book signing. Magda Subianski is a very accomplished comedienne probably best known for her role as the long suffering Sharon in the witty Australian  TV show "Kath and Kim." Trust me you don't want to queue jump these people. It reminds me of a Trans Siberian train ticket queue   Yes, well that was me and about two thousand other people. The queues stretched outside the bookshop and down the street. Books may well provide food for thought, but no other sort was likely to be forthcoming. Stress is beginning to show I made some women very cross when I excused myself to look at books on the other side of the queue. I sensed a few people were spoiling for a catfight. Magda herself looked very tired. I imagine she has had to go through the same performance in every little bookshop in the country. She is a real trouper and deserves every cent she makes from the book, but I'm not staying.

Bush with X factor I have always found the 200 Km journey between Hobart and Launceston rather bleak apart from the quaint villages which have now mostly been bypassed, or the quirky topiary creatures created by one Jack Cashion while employed as a road worker in the 60’s and 70’s. Perhaps he felt the same way.   Thank goodness for the new tin sculptures being put up by the South Midlands Council which hint at the history which has transpired here. The landscape you see from the highway Yet there is another little secret here.   Just off the road at Bagdad, 40 km north of Hobart is the Chauncy Vale Sanctuary. It was Tasmania’s first private Wildlife Sanctuary established in 1946 by author Nan Chauncy and her husband Anton. Nan Chauncy was born in England in 1900, but came to Australia with her parents and five siblings in 1912. Two years later, they moved to Bagdad, where they laboriously cleared the land for an apple orchard and lived in a slab ...