We managed to get a few minutes of phone coverage at Lyndhurst a few days ago – just long enough to download emails and find out that the finalists in the Romance Writers of Australia have now been announced. As Darkness Falls is a finalist in the category for Novel with Strong Romantic elements.
I’m delighted to be in such great company – the full list of finalists is on the RWA website. The winners will be announced in August at the RWAus conference.
It rained a little overnight so we spent the first part of the morning in Tibooburra, waiting to see what the weather would do. A stroll up the street, a visit to the National Parks office and the Courthouse museum, and then coffee and muffin for morning tea at the shop/cafe.
The photos are of the Albert Hall and the Family Hotel next door to it. There is another pub here, but I didn’t get a photo of it with the iPhone – which is currently the only way I can blog photos just now.
We headed to Milparinka mid-morning, via Sturt’s Cairn on Mt Poole and Depot Glen where Sturt’s exploration party spent 6 months stranded by drought in the 1840s. Then back to Milparinka for lunch at the pub – M’s population is about 5.
Tomorrow, as long as the rain holds off, we’re heading to Innamincka – and probably well out of phone range, so the blog may be quiet for a few days.
We’re now in Tibooburra, a name many people in NSW recognize because it’s often mentioned on weather reports as having the top temperature of the day. Today, however, it’s fairly cool, a mild autumn day, with light rain falling for the last ten minutes. We’re watching the weather with some trepidation, keen to avoid a repeat of our previous trip when we got flooded in at Innamincka for a week. It’s all dirt roads out here,hundreds of miles of fine dust that turns to mud with a bit of rain. So we’re hoping this rain won’t settle in!
The photo is taken with the iPhone, on a slight hill about 100km from Tibooburra. It’s impossible to capture the vastness of the landscape with a basic camera – probably with any camera. But I hope the image gives a hint of it – now imagine that landscape for 360degrees all around….
Off to Tibooburra today.
In preparation for our forthcoming trip, I bought an iPhone the other day. So far, I’ve loaded some e-books on it, put my music playlists on, got the Twitterfon app working, and put the WordPress app on so I can blog from my phone – as I’m doing now. I’ve also installed the Google app so I can email etc.
Oh, and I’ve even made a phone call on the phone!!
With all this technology in my pocket I won’t need to take my laptop or a stack of paperback books to read – which means a whole lot less weight to cart around. And we might even have phone reception here and there on the trip!
