Undecorating the tree

Hanging out the clothes this afternoon, I could hear this...gnawing.

Loud gnawing.

Coincidentally, I'd just been playing the opening of the old computer game, The Bard's Tale, which begins with the classic "kill the rats in the inn cellar" quest.  [Not to mention some of the most gratuitous breast shots I've seen since, well, the first time I played The Bard's Tale.]

Eventually, after much confused peering about, I found the source of the noise in the tall evergreen just over the fence.

The birds are Corellas (I think), and they're busy eating the conifer seeds.

A step up from rats!  [Though, hopefully, no giant, fire-breathing corellas show up, since that's where The Bard's Tale quest ended up.]

Research - Apocalyptica by the Sea

Attempting to write apocalyptica (not post-apocalyptica - this is a [partial] apocalypse in process rather than one of those 100 years later jobs) set in the near-now is something which it helps to fact-check - or you'll have a percentage of your readers falling out of your story because they immediately spot an impossibility in your setting.

The first setting in And All the Stars, St James Station, was a fairly easy thing to research, since it's the station I use going home from work.  Even then I've blithely swapped the location of the toilets for the sake of dramatic convenience ( :) ), a change I'll probably have to include an author's note about.  Now that the unfortunate Madeleine is departing its dusty confines (with a brief side-trip to Circular Quay), I took a lunch hour last week for Actual Research on the next setting in the book, Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo.

It's about a twenty minute walk from where I work, much of it through the grassy The Domain, and was a very useful trip for getting a good visual grip on the location for the next three or four chapters.  [Not to mention a chance to get a pie with peas from Harry's Cafe de Wheels, which sadly will not be open during the apocalypse.]

Finger Wharf is an odd place, sitting between two peninsulas, with a spectacular view of the Sydney skyline (and, ah, strange alien spires).  It's right next to a botanic garden/park on one side, and a naval base on the other, and is the home of very very rich people.  [I gather Russell Crow lives there, among others.]  And there I am, feeling immensely out of place wandering along past the row of incredibly expensive restaurants, and trying not to be too obvious peering at all the apartments and working out how one gets inside them.  I am by no means the kind of person with the chutzpah to try and talk my way inside for an inspection, though I did handily find some interior apartment shots thanks to my friend Google.

The trip did bring to my attention all the massive boats lined up outside.  They made me want to put a water chase scene in the book - I mean, Sydney Harbour, it cries out for water chases!  But there's the pesky issue of keys...

Anyway, And All the Stars proceeds apace.  I'm not a quick writer of first drafts, but progress is being made.

Stowaway

The people behind my sister in line at McDonalds told her she had a stowaway under her car...

Apparently this is a diamond python.  And, fortunately, the spare type it's curled around can be lowered without actually getting up close to test your snake identification skills.

Extremes

30 degrees celcius when I reached the train station at 7 am.  40 for most of the day.  No air-conditioning on the train home, the school kids too limp and exhausted to keep up their usual chatter.  A twenty minute walk, grateful for a breeze and the fact that I remembered to bring a hat.  Dripping by the time I reach home.

Meanwhile my mother has been evacuated from her ground-floor apartment (across the street from the river in Townsville) and has gone to my younger sister, who has spent the day stocking up on nappies and moving the essentials to the downstairs of her old Queenslander.  They'll spend the worst of the cyclone in the laundry, hoping the house above sticks around.

Australia - you can always talk about the weather.