Regent Park Tasmania - lifestyle of artist in country Tasmania

July and we have been experiencing many days and night of rain. we needed it as the paddocks had got very dry, turning wheat coloured over summer.  it only took a couple of days of rain to return to green again and we get these little visitors at night.     image below - link refers to info on the little brown tree frog. and it was such a nice surprise to find, online, the sound it makes - surprise because i always assumed THIS sound was crickets but it is actually the little brown tree frog.  It was October (i think) 2022 when the creek flooded - a once in 7 year flood (apparently) ... there is a  playlist of flood videos  that happened in 2022 on our you tube hoping it is is indeed once in 7 years ... or longer - we will be fine as the house is up the hill but the studio got flooded and that took 6 weeks to clean up !

on a recent walk discovered this lovely flowering - Fatsia Japonica - i wrote about it here .  a winter flowering.  look forward to seeing how big it gets - apparently quite large and wide. i took photos of this particular part of the creek, from the bridge and came back at night to take shots of around the same area, from the bridge.   still discovering things along our journey here -the creek has filled a little since we have been getting regular rains - the paddocks have greened over and the wallabies are gathering in large groups during the night to chomp on the grass. check out this video on youtube of blackfish in the creek  and i am doing monthly videos (just started this year) - we have been here 3 years and i began the monthly vids so i can notice the differences and changes each year.

On a walk across the paddock yesterday I found this plant flowering by the creek.  and today it looked like this ! so pretty. This is called fatsia Japonica and is best suited to outdoor growth.  I purchased one last year and have it indoors - it grew so well that i had extras come up in the pot and this one is outdoors growing beautifully by the creek.  The flowers were such a nice surprise - the one indoors is leafy and large-ish but nothing like this one outdoors. Things I learned from Google today. The name. fatsia Japonica . It is better suited outdoors than indoors - i am now planning where to plant the indoor one once we get into spring. The location i put the one outdoors is perfect for it - shady with some sun. it flowers in autumn (although we are winter here just now) and berries will follow !  great. so good for the birds. it will grow 6-10 feet both in height and width!  how fabulous and apparently the new shoots may get eaten but the older ones ar...

 i knew it ! ... it comes around so quickly ! It is hard to believe we have been here for 2 years already and now into our third year. I have a small notebook into which i have been jotting down the plants that grow here (if i can identify them), the birds that visit and when as well as the fish, reptiles etc. The photo i took of the little brown tree frog was when he was stuck to our glass sliding door - so beautiful, really tiny. The (second) slide show below is a collection of the birds i could find online that have visited here with one or two of my own photos included where i could capture them including the little red-breasted robin and a wasp!  I have added a list of the names under the images. where there is a (g) following the name that is my own photo.                    yellow wattle bird                                   li...

 An idle thought but i will give it a go - so many projects on the go its difficult to know when to post anything about any particular one especially since 'we' tend to wait until its done and perfect. You should see my reject pile ! So i am going to attempt to post each Sunday a look back on the previous 7 days - just images of things mostly in progress. Hopefully this will capture more (in a kinda diary way) my activities and provide the discipline i lack in posting regularly. Let's see how we go ! (I am already a day late on the very first "Looking Back"). The images reflect my week - birds visiting, creek walks and printmaking (of the creek and) flora in the garden, George on a coffee morning catchup, exploring photographs without using a camera, stitching (this piece is finally completed), monoprinting, painting, books and cooking. A middle of the night dash to the emergency as V had a terrible reaction to a virus. It was an all-nighter but a week late...

These are just magnificent this year. last year, there were no yellow flowers - i did notice a couple had small bits of yellow 'trying' to come on but it never happened. at the time i thought perhaps it was a variety that didnt flower ... but nope, happily i was wrong. We are surrounded by them ... thankfully i am more allergic to grasses than pollen see more about the wattles here and join our youtube channel Lovely to find these visitors yesterday - went down with a cup of coffee to see if i can see playtpus ... he hasn't been around for weeks ... i am thinking because the creek is running high and fast.

  so sweet ... today the 'platypus' was not shy and hung around for hours.... then i realised its a baby ... i hadn't seen the platypus (the adult) for nearly three weeks ... maybe this is why ? So much great footage here as this one was quite open to its environment. so good. and there is a bit of a cleanup required along the creek edge after a night of high winds and trees that have fallen across the creek. see video here

Examples of 'lifestyle' include habits in sleeping patterns, physical activity, hydration habits, sleeping patterns. Wikipedia defines a lifestyle "as the way a person lives. This includes patterns related to personal relationships, consumption, entertainment and dress. A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values or worldview." We 'know' this means tempering things 'bad' and maintaining things 'good'. Bad and good being highly subjective and individual to circumstance, beliefs and choices made. I also want to include a level of privilege. There are many lists on the internet defining 'lifestyle' to include an active lifestyle, a rural lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle, an urban lifestyle, a solo lifestyle etc. Its been a long road to this place in the country, in Tasmania - and what a place it is ... we feel most grateful and look forward to discovering all it has to offer. We have been here for 12 months...

I wrote a post about dropping my phone in the creek  here I go down to the creek daily many times a day to spend time with a platypus and the birds. Anyway I dropped my phone in the creek a Pixel … its a Pixel 2XL (I know I know, its old) but I love the phone for its camera and reliability - I don't use it for email or fb or anything other than phone, camera, sound recorder, a chat program, the weather bureau, maps/gps to get me somewhere and very occasional checking of fb posts. I was looking to get another phone this past six months and have settled on the Pixel7pro but let me tell you the story …. I dropped the pixel2 in the creek while standing on the bridge; it has a black rubber backing and fell face down and sank to the bottom - the creek is very clear but where it went in is dark so I couldn’t see it at all. I went down to the creek often at different times of day for a couple of days and saw it exactly where it had fallen - straight down - I could just see a hard edge o...

  this one got away from me ... our 1 year anniversary - musing at the bridge ... in the moment we did make the date  ... our anniversary dinner. and this is what it makes us feel like ! images from our first year here #countryliving #tasmania

 studio break - a coffee and i am east side of the creek again, on the bridge ... enjoying lovely abstract imagery across my camera as i film, silently with just the sounds around me at the time.

 i take regular daily walks to the creek as its so close to the studio and its just a marvellous time out. In this video i begin by talking about the tiger snake we saw in the cat pen today and it was the day i realised we did actually have a platypus living in the creek - east side of the bridge. i had seen it once before for a split second, surfing under the bridge on a high tide. (truly). it was so many weeks later i saw him (or her) again ... and had my camera going. wait for it ... a glimpse at mine 1.09, then again at 2.21 and then from 3.03 to 3.15 minutes on this recording. makes me smile and i go regularly to the bridge on the lookout.  another one here.   more about the platypus on our youtube channel - search platypus.