Team Dusty Gazette May 2024

                                              Ciao Team Dusty!

Many of you would have celebrated Mother’s Day this month. My mum was the mother of ten children. Three of them were kept secret from me and my six siblings.  It was not until my mother died that we found her secret and I took up the task of writing a book about how my mother was separated from her first three children. It was a confronting story to write and, as it was my first full length novel, I did not feel confident I was up to the task. In fact, I had to enlist the help of hypnosis to find that confidence. The end result, as most of you know, was Whisper My Secret  which has been an Amazon best seller in several categories, several times over. Go Mum!

When my mother met my father during the second World War, he took her back to his hometown Orbost in East Gippsland, which also became my hometown. Last time I told you about my relocation back to Orbost, which is now my home base until I am able to return to Melbourne to live.

At present I am taking a break in Aireys Inlet, a small coastal town located on the Great Ocean Road southwest of Melbourne. This spectacular seaside hamlet attracts tourists, surfers, filmmakers and, of course, writers. Australian crime writer Arthur Upfield lived at Aireys in the 1950s and wrote a murder mystery set in the lighthouse. Split Point Lighthouse is still a working lighthouse playing a vital role in helping vessels navigate the treacherous waters of Bass Strait. The lighthouse keeper, however, has been replaced by an automated system which still operates every night.

The romance of the lighthouse is only one of the delightful elements of this area. I also encounter lots of beautiful birds here, as I do in Orbost. However, I have not come across a sheep here in Aireys as yet. In Orbost one day while I was enjoying a cappuccino at a café in the main street I was serenaded by a bleating sheep in the background. I later found out the sheep (a ram I think), which looked like a sheep in cow’s clothing cos it had the colouring similar to a Holstein cow, was a much-loved pet. This delightful encounter remined me of the days when, as kids, my brothers and I used to ride on the back of a big old ram from the sheep farm next door. He was as big as a Shetland pony - at least he seemed to be to the child me - a gentle giant who didn’t mind having us kids on his back.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Lugubrious brown eyes stared at me from behind great wide nostrils that resembled portals to secret caves. This dromedary didn’t like me. Tooting Moon

DID YOU KNOW?
Sheep have rectangular pupils which allows them to almost everything around them except what is directly behind then - without turning their heads. Even if a sheep has its head down grazing on luscious grass it can see what’s happening around it.

And did you know there was once a sheep called Sugar living on a farm in Melbourne who answered the call of adventure from the wild. Sugar escaped from the farm and ventured out into the big wide world to see what she could see. Eventually she was taken in by a mob of kangaroos who treated her as family. She lived contentedly with the kangas for five years -  until a human spoilt her fun. This human spotted Sugar with her bush family and thought Sugar looked a little worse for wear and badly overdue for a haircut. And wouldn’t ‘ewe’ know it, she organised a rescue mission which took six months of plotting and planning.

Rescue? Sugar, in the care of her Skippy family, was doing just fine and living life to the fullest in Melbourne’s Sugarloaf Reservoir. She was nonplussed when the ‘bleating’ humans arrived in 2023 and spoilt all her fun.

They took her to the Australia’s best ‘baa-baashop’ where she was pampered and given a glamorous buzz cut. She came out without her huge wool coat looking a little sheepish. That huge coat was what had the humans worried because having so much wool on her back could have exposed Sugar to parasite infection and disease.

Sugar has now been adopted by a non-kangaroo family where she continues to get pampered and expertly groomed every day. So, I suppose you could say, ‘all’s wool that ends wool’.

Remember: All of the Dusty Kent Mysteries, including the latest book Death in The Dandenongs, are available FREE in Kindle Unlimited.

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