The postman's horse always neighs twice

 

And when it does, I know I'm in for a treat: a real letter. Not an email, not a rapid-fire, typed-with-one-thumb-on-a-tiny-keyboard communication, but a real letter, thoughtfully written by someone who had something worthwhile to communicate and took the trouble to shape it into words of more than one syllable.

Our modern-day culture streamlines our interactions with each other into bite-sized encounters. But we trim the beauty when we cut the fat. The case for writing old-fashioned letters is the case for slowing down. For doing a thing deliberately and allowing space for thoughtfulness to bloom. The practice makes us intentional because it requires a little more of us, even if the note we’re writing is only a short one.

A letter always arrives from the past. There is a waiting – a forced patience – built into the art of letter-writing. We wait for a letter to arrive. We wait for a reply. In the time it takes for the letter to reach its destination, anything can happen: births, deaths, and marriages.

There’s nothing nicer than opening the mailbox and seeing something friendly, something that’s not a bill or trying to sell you something. Think about being on the receiving end of a handwritten letter, actually opening the envelope, looking at the stamp, feeling the paper and seeing the written word — it's everything. Doesn’t it make you feel a bit special? Someone took the time to write to you. They value you. You can give that gift to others, too, because here's something I've noticed: people really do like having something to hold. Hold onto that thought!

From the SYDNEY MAIL of 21 August 1935

 

From the South Coast History Society

 

Click on each page to enlarge

 

 

I hope I'm not breaking any copyright laws. Just wanting to spread the good work these amazing volunteers of the South Coast History Society are doing. Subscribe or join them!

 

Some photos from the early 60s before the bridge was built

Waiting for the punt in the 1930s

The old Steampacket Hotel in the 1930s

The Steampacket Hotel today as a private residence

The just completed bridge in 1964

 

Three Men in a Boat (but not on the Clyde River)

 

 

Jerome K. Jerome's hilarious story of what is probably the worst holiday in literature has an air of delightful nostalgia and is still laugh-aloud funny more than a hundred years after it what first published with this preface:

 

Click here to read the book

 

And yet, it is full of wisdom as well, "... not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work ..."

There is so much insight packed into this little book - useful information indeed, to say nothing of the dog! - that you almost regret having come to their final toast, "Here's to Three Men well out of a Boat!"

But that's a whole 184 pages later, so sit back and enjoy! (or listen here to the audiobook)

The world is my oyster

 

 

If you like oysters you're not alone: Egyptians and Assyrians knew that these molluses were delicious; the Greeks and Romans thought they were an aphrodisiac.

I don't like them - in fact, I've never tasted one, even though they grow in profusion on our own jetty -, maybe because at my age I no longer need an aphrodisiac, or maybe because the oyster has a sex change and can be first a male and then a female and back again.

But the movie "Oyster Farmer" is not about oysters but a rollicking good yarn with oysters, set on the Hawkesbury River near Sydney.

Of course, here at Nelligen we have much better oysters and a much better river but that's an argument for another day.

The Nelligen Progress Association's tourist-y brochure

And here's your link to the Nelligen Progress Association.