Lake Bolac: The Home of Bob the Bunyip

The longest night has gone, here down south. Paris can't be found, nor Farouk. I did tell them both that marsupials and members of the family, Mustelidae are not wont to hibernate, but the cold weather just seems to have that effect on us all: we just want to curl up in a branch or burrow warmed by the sun and wait till the wattle blooms.

Daphne's in Siberia by this stage, we think. The last postcard we had was from Japan where she had sheltered briefly with my brother who coaches cricket there.

When winters become countless (as they do for bunyips), melancholy blooms. It was just all getting too depressing for me, so I thought I'd do an early spring clean on the blog. New warm colours, better defined text to make reading through screens that fog up in the dew easier!

And I took myself to the cinema in Hamilton to see Kingdom of Heaven. That was probably a mistake! Baldwin IV, hiding his leprosy in his iron mask, was horrific enough: thank goodness it ended just as Richard I failed to persuade our fictitious hero Balian the smith to return with him to slaughter the 2,600 innocent Muslims at Acre.

Too many shades of the present day to make pleasant viewing, to my mind!