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Possum Tales – A Series

5 December 2025 – Canberra

Junior Miss has been hanging out with us most days. My True Love takes her photo every day. She doesn’t mind. She was a quite a bit smaller when she first started sleeping over. Occasionally she is evicted by big mum and baby possume but we haven’t seen them for a while.

Junior Miss today.

This spot is quite close to the tin roof. It is 35c degrees today so she got quite warm.

So she found another spot closer to the ground.

Whatever works!

Here is a photo from a few days ago. She likes the oil drip tray so my True Love cleaned it up for her.

All is well. We are all tucked up inside in air-conditioned comfort, except for Junior Miss. It will be another hot day for her tomorrow. Hopefully she will cope.

Take care, everyone.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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11pm is Too Late for a Birthday Photo

When you are 13.

It has been such a pleasure growing old and deaf with this girl. Ama sleeps a lot these days but she always gets up very early for breakfast.

13 remarkable years. She still chases rabbits. In her dreams.

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Urban Landcare – A Little Charmer

Just wanted to say a big thank you to our small band of dedicated volunteers who have been pitching in over the last 18 months to help a small green space be its true self. You make a difference.

If only there were less red tape and more green ribbons, but that is an interesting understory for another time. Time for a photo.

I’m so glad I work for love now. Box gum grassy woodlands with a healthy understory are critically endangered but not yet extinct in our suburbs.

Take care, everyone. Grow strong.

Kind Regards.

Tracy.

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The High Life

The honeyeater migration is underway. As I have gone native, that is, planting species indigenous to my local area, I have been contemplating ripping out all my exotic plants. It doesn’t help that my new neighbour is trying to hedge me in with European plants. This is ‘Straya, I feel like saying.

Anyway, the visiting Yellow-faced honeyeaters have reminded me that it is okay to retain a few of my less weedy exotic shrubs.

I knew it! Everyone loves camellias.

Still, the woodland birds really love the garden changes. They are coming in droves now.

Take care, everyone. Grow it and they will come.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Holiday Kinda

I’m not one for holidays. However all sorts of commitments have fallen by the wayside recently so that’s kind of a holiday.

I’m sorry for taking a very long holiday (aka resigning) from my part-time job as Thursday Ragtag Daily Prompt contributor without so much as a goodbye.

I’m sorry I resigned from a couple of environmental committees today. I’m not really a fit and proper person at the moment. It’s true. Not quite a write-off though, so no sympathy. Got that?

I’m embarrassed and remorseful that I told the lads from Ventia today to go forth and procreate kinda when they were surveying our verge for a new NBN (comms) upgrade. My tree might have to take a holiday if they rip its roots. There are no holidays from Type 1 diabetes because I was exceedingly hypoglycaemic at the time so I was extra obnoxious to those fellows. I may take an even longer holiday for that interaction. At least I didn’t hit anyone, except my husband.

I am sorry for constantly being on holiday when it comes to listening to my poor husband.

Because this sorry saga gets even worse, if you can believe that, I hope you will not take it personally when I password protect some of my blog posts while I get my sorry ass in order.

Of course, I shall let you know if I go to the clink, or for that matter, the clinic. You know, the one for very unruly minds.

I’m sorry mum. Don’t worry about me. Worry about the long suffering one.

I often finish my blog posts by saying “Take care”, but today I will go with it’s okay to stuff up every now and then. What’s the worse that can happen? I will leave comments open for the very long list that I am sure you can come up with. Play along, I would rather that than sympathy.

Oh, stuff it. Take care, everyone.

Kind Regards.

Tracy.

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Into The Deep End – A Family History

The last time I visited my mother’s place in 2018, my True Love, who is a nosy bugger, picked up what appeared to be a small family history journal. He was only a few pages in when he exclaimed that I had to read this. So I read a few pages. It dissolved me. I put the journal aside to digest the information, hopefully to return to it another day.

I’ve heard often the advice not to dwell in the past but instead to look forward. I wonder if that advice is given by those who have trouble leaving it behind. I wish I could take that advice. But I seem to be stuck there, in that moment of betrayal and tragedy when a family’s life was torn apart by colonial invaders. Surely anyone who knows this history would take it upon themselves to reached out to descendants of the other family to apologise?

The journal was a biography of the Little family. The Littles left Ireland in 1839 to build a new life in Australia. The family journal is lost now. Borrowed by another and not returned. So I only learnt recently that I’m a descendant of the 1839 Littles. So now I know. I must say sorry. I do not expect absolution for the sins of the past. There’s no absolution for lives taken, land stolen and freedom denied. There is only truth. The alternative to apologising is to live without compassion, without humanity, live the lie. Still, I appreciate how difficult it is to make the first move. I have been reflecting longer than I should. My time has come.

The family patriarch, John Little, settled on Baffle Creek, near Bundaberg. His wife, Catherine, suggested the property be named “Rosedale”.

Source: Fox’s History of Queensland – Its People and Industries, p. 291

It is not difficult to imagine the importance of this lagoon to the evicted owners, the Gooreng Gooreng people.

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In the absence of the journal, I dived into Ancestry. What a shock it was to see the family trees and photos of people who have committed atrocities and yet there is no acknowledgement of that. Maybe a better term for Ancestry would be Pandora’s box.

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In November 2024, the newly elected Queensland Government led by David Crisafulli, abolished the state’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry and repealed the Path to Treaty Act.

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Thanks for reading. Take care, everyone, and don’t let your ancestry shame you into avoiding the truth or hamper your compassion.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Land Sharing

Yuma from Ngunawal country. This week it was Landcare Week and to celebrate, Landcare ACT organised a conference for environmental volunteers. Our local government coughed up the money for the conference and many of their terrific parks and conservation staff, as well as a host of other experts, ensured it all went smoothly and shared their knowledge with us. A big thank you to everyone involved.

I particularly liked the field trips and the session on story telling, the latter being a subject very close to my heart. I haven’t written much about my garden conversion or landcare activities recently, so here is a quick and dirty update.

Above is a photo of my personal landcare project. Hasn’t it grown? I’ve had to fence it to keep the rabbits out. My True Love asked me whether I going to tell the story of how I came a gutser on the fence today? A passerby raced over to help me up. Some people are really kind. There’s not much more to tell. I’m fine. But that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

Check out this Red-browed finch (below). These sassy little finches are becoming regular visitors to my yard. It is very difficult to photograph my little visitors with so much paraphernalia in the way. I digress.

Finally, there was much excitement today as my True Love photographed a Fuscous honeyeater at our official landcare session. Perhaps Fuscous honeyeaters visit a lot? It is hard to tell when we are normally heads-down, bums-up working. Anyway, it’s a great story. Can’t wait to share it with our whole team.

I told someone at the conference about my art and my website. I probably should have reviewed my website first. My stories have been a bit dreary lately and my artwork is hard to find. Hope I didn’t put them off. And my (3am) grammar is terrible! The moral of this story must be fewer words, right? Here goes.

Family Ties
Fruits of our labour.
Roll out the Welcome Matt.
Your story of resilience and strength.
Your vulnerability.
The Difference you make.
Our time to grow.

How was that?

More importantly, how’s my blog family going? I’ve been rather preoccupied lately, but that’s another story.

Take care, everyone.

Kind Regards.
Tracy

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That Sinking Feeling

That feeling you have when you discover your hearing aid is missing after an afternoon of planting in the garden.

Photo by An Chu on Pexels.com

Followed by a feeling of relief when the hearing aid is finally located caught in the zipper of your coat.

I think I’ll buy a couple of extra plants to celebrate my good fortune.

Take care, everyone, or savour the silence.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Unfinished Business

My father is definitely thinner. Frailer. His kidneys are failing him but I can’t decide whether he has lost his mind. He probably has, but I don’t want to face it. Most likely because, if he has lost his mind, I am not far behind him. But this is not about me.

My father needs to decide whether to go on dialysis. He’s old. And frail. And forgets things. Did I mention that? However, he has always been rather forgetful as he doesn’t pay attention.

There’s probably only one sure thing. Ama, our little dog who is supposed to be dead by now, will probably outlast us both. She doesn’t forget anything. The diagnostic blood test clearly didn’t tell the full story. The excess insulin in her system was from her pancreas correcting for the dawn phenomenon and not from a tumour. Ama is unusual but not that unusual. Thank Dog!

So here we all are. Not going strong, but still going. Hope you are too.

Take care and try to pay attention.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.