It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

 November is a few days away and friends are starting to do their Christmas shopping...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We've had six inches of rain in the past few weeks so the dams are full and the grass is green - life is beautiful in good seasons with so many birds in my garden and fat kangaroos that don't need to eat my roses in order to stay alive.

I turned 62 this year and I'm loving it. I'm running 2k - 5k most days of the week after trying to run 100m several months ago to shut the gate when a horse was loose and found I could barely make 100m. How did I let that happen? I used to love running. I think we sometimes manage to get by each day, keeping depression at bay and barely 'getting through'. All our energy goes into appearing happy and bright to others while shadows grow long within. Maybe a symptom of that is not caring about the extra few pounds, not caring about staying home more and more often, and not caring that the fires that once burned within are going out, one by one. I decided to start running again because my body had kept me alive for 62 years and it's time I appreciated it more and cared more about what I was doing to it. 

Running changes a lot of things. I enjoy being alone in the bush as I run up the mountain at the back of our farm and back down for a 5km run. It clears my mind for writing and I'm feeling more positive. I mean, I always appear to be 1,000% over-the-top, enthusiastically positive because there's no point in complaining about things - it doesn't change anything apart from bringing others down. I even felt positive enough to have some photos taken for book interviews last week - some photos below. My grandson had a look-in because who can resist such a gorgeous little man?

62 and looking forward to the next 40 years. I want to publish another 20 books (at least), win some more national titles with my horses (I have dozens, but I look forward to winning more), and do some travelling. I've never been overseas so it's Florence with my friend Karen (we watched Armstrong walk on the moon together when we were 10), Turkey with my friend Alana (the other grandmother of this gorgeous boy), and Israel with my cousin Stephen and his wife Michelle, and I might wander around Britain by myself... well, maybe. Or maybe I'll stay home with my animals and write more because that's good, too.

Goodbye, Carol - I hope the horses, dogs, cats, family, and friends were there to greet you.

 My aunt, Carol Cavanagh, was born on 18/11/32 and passed away last week on 28/9/21. She lived her life for horses and gave me a life-long love for them. Carol had no children of her own but considered my brother and myself as better than having her own - all the fun and none of the responsibility. She was an inspirational woman ahead of her times who was an important role model in the lives of many young riders.

The video of photos from her life, set to the tune 'Run For the Roses' by Dan Fogelberg.

I chose four horse-themed songs for her service, beginning  with 'Wildfire' by Michael Martin Murphy, 'Run for the Roses' for the photos of her life, 'I Am Pegasus' by Ross Ryan for the closing of the curtain (which brought everyone to tears), and 'Horses' by Keith Urban for the final song.

The eulogy I delivered at her funeral in case you'd like to learn more about her life. 

Carol had two older brothers, my father David who died in 1988 and Warren who died in 1949. She had no children of her own but was a wonderful auntie to my brother Graeme and me. We spent most of our holidays and weekends with Carol during our school years and she gave us both a deep love of horses.

 

She learned to ride at age 5 by coaxing her father's Clydesdales under the cherry tree on their farm near Wallington outside Geelong, dropping onto a horse's back and cantering up to the house and repeating. Eventually, to save his horses, her father bought her a horse of her own.

 

Carol went to school at The Hermitage and became friends with many other great horse women of her era, including Garryowen riders and judges such as Erica Russell and Joan Wilson. As a teenager, she was an A grade tennis player and an excellent horse rider.

 

Carol had a brief marriage to fellow tennis player Lindsay Nelson but divorced a few years later, and remained single for the rest of her life. She only fell in love once, with a high-country cattleman she met when she and Dr Robbie used to take their horses up into the Victorian Alps, and I hope he was waiting for her last week.

 

Carol was a triple certificate nurse, though she always considered nursing as a way to fund her horses. In 1965 she started Reinwood Riding School at Moolap near Geelong. Many top riders learned to ride there and thousands of people developed a life-long love of horses because of her influence. She also scared a lot of people – one of my school friends married a man who remembers riding his motorbike past Reinwood when he was a teenager and he says he still has nightmares about Carol running out and abusing him in her aristocratic voice.

 

Carol and her good friend Dr. Joe Robinson helped start the Geelong Riding Club in the late 1960s, and it still operates today. Graeme and I have many happy memories of Carol and Joe planning the day-long trail rides through the Otways weeks before the event. They'd load their two horses and Graeme's and mine onto the floats and head into the bush. Dr Robbie would tie bits of environmentally-friendly toilet paper to trees to mark the way, and by the day of the ride they had all washed off so the trail rides became famous for us all becoming lost numerous times.

 

During the late 60s and 70s, Carol won numerous endurance rides on her horse Smoke, hunted on her buckskin mare Jess, competed in dressage, showing, polocrosse, and jumping, and also trained two Flemington winners for Roger Burt. She was one of the first in Australia to start doing horse riding for the disabled, closing Reinwood one day a week so the children of the Shannon Park Spastic Centre could come and ride the ponies.

 

Through her love of horses, she became friends with many interesting people. She became close friends with Eric and Billy Lange. Eric managed Ford Australia and returned to the U.S. to help run Ford there. When back in Michigan, he  helped design the DeLorean - the car used in Back to the Future – and he and his wife continued to write to Carol for decades. She was close friends with Warrick Cozens who rode at the Spanish Riding School and helped him start his famous Clifton Court Warmblood Stud – he would like to be here today but he’s in Victoria.  

 

A keen environmentalist, Carol campaigned to save old growth trees at Bannockburn outside Geelong and made the newspapers for chaining herself to the trees. She was involved in Landcare for many years, and planted many thousands of trees in Victoria and Queensland.

 

Carol worked as a nurse in aged care for a number of years and always made me promise I'd never 'put her in a home'. Thanks to the wonderful home care system, for most of the last decade, Carol lived in a cottage on our farm and Carinity Home Care came in for an hour each day to help her have a good quality of life at home. For the past few years, she has been increasingly frail but still very happy living on her own terms. Her dog of 18 years, Scruffy, died early this year, joining the many dogs Carol has loved through her life - Nobby, Shiloh, Rebel, Gucci, Campbell, and others will no doubt be wagging their tails at her side today.

 

Carol led a remarkable life and inspired many people – and scared a few others. In many ways, she was a woman ahead of her times. This isn’t a time to be sad, but to be glad for a life lived on her own terms – marching, dancing, and riding to her own music.

Writing, Vaccinations, Horses, & August.

 I'm currently working on Book 3 of The Dimity Horse Mysteries. It is an overwhelming relief to find that readers love Book 2, so hopefully I can give them another great read in Book 3.

I had my first Astrazeneca vaccination last week. There were no side effects apart from feeling a little flat the next day - but that could have been something else. I do have a psychosomaic reaction to needles, though - not all the time, maybe one in three. Unfortunately, for all the people sitting waiting for their AZ needle, I had one after that needle. There were alarmed eyes and worried faces as I waited the 15 minutes after the vaccination and started sweating and going pale. I could feel the blood pressure dropping and needed to lie down for a bit to fix it. It's no biggie - it happens if I think about the needle rather than think about something else, and sometimes if I'm assisting someone with a bloody injury on a horse (but not if I'm working on the injury myself).  A few minutes on the couch in one of the doctor's rooms and the BP was back up to 100/55 and climbing. When I came out, I noticed some of the people in the waiting room looked ready to flee. Really, if a bad reaction is like 1 in 100,000, then if I did have a reaction, it should have made them realise they were in the safe zone again.

Happy Birthday to the horses today. All the foals will start appearing now - well, in Australia, anyway. September 1 is the start of our breeding season for most breeds, so August 1 often sees the foals hitting the ground.

August in the Lockyer Valley usually means 'Ekka winds'. Most of the year, we hardly ever have wind except when there's a storm, but August brings westerlies around the time of our state show, the Ekka. Today, the Ekka was cancelled because of the current Covid outbreak and lockdown - I hope they can cancel the Ekka winds, too.

Stay happy - it's a choice. Keep dreaming - it makes life better. Smile whenever possible - it's healthy for you and others..

July 2021 - a new book out!

 It took longer than I expected, but the sequel to "MUTED" is now out - 'RESCUED: Saving the Lost Horses" puts the Muted characters in another mystery. I wrote Muted as a stand-alone, but so many readers wanted another book with these characters, I came up with more plots so it will be a series called 'The Dimity Horse Mysteries'. I was worried readers might not like Rescued after all the effort I went to in creating my 'great Australian horse book' with Muted, but the first 37 reviews/ratings have been 90% five-star with a couple of four-stars - that is a HUGE relief for me.

I'm now working on the third book in this series. There are no cliffhangers between books - the same people plus some new characters face international horse mysteries/crimes, and I have quite a few plots in my head.You don't spend a life-time in the horse industry without having endless 'what if' scenarious playing out in your mind, so I'm putting some of those to work.

I hope you, your family, and friends have been doing OK during the pandemic. I know how lucky I am to live on a farm at this time. I don't know if anyone ever reads this, but just in case someone does, I'll put some photos of the views from various sides of our house. It is a beautiful place to live. We moved here over 30 years ago after leaving the station in the outback.

This is looking east over our main dam.

Looking out the front door across our paddocks to the south west - a morning mist and the peak of Mt Beau Brummel.

Looking north out my back door, through part of the orchard.

A glimpse of the bush through the orchard - the farm goes up into the hills.

Some of my regular garden visitors. Hundreds of crested pigeons, diamond wing doves, double bar finches, bronzewing pigeons, and other birds visit the garden every day.

We worked hard for our farm - we almost never had holidays, drove older cars, never smoked, rarely ate out, and I rarely drink anything stronger than tea and coffee. It's been worth living a 'small life' in order to have our beautiful farm. 

Keep laughing - remember, your body can't tell the difference between fake laughter and real laughter, so even when life lacks humour, do a big fake laugh at least five times a day and your body will produce the 'feel good' hormones in response. It may seem odd, but it works.

Stay safe,
Leanne O.

2021 Is Underway

 We're already more than half way through January - time is flicking past like one of those calendars on old movies. I suppose it makes sense - when we are ten, a single year is a tenth of our life so is quite a large percentage. At 61, a year is less than a tiny 60th of my life so seems so much smaller than when I was young. I'm enjoying this age - I couldn't handle the stress of teenage years again, or the pressure of feeling judged by others in later decades... now, I just enjoy each day and measure myself against myself, not against others.

We've had some rain - no floods or even enough to make the creek run, but atleast we have green grass at the moment. The birds have returned to our garden and we have dozens of double-bar finches, top-knot pigeons, bronzewing pigeons, diamond wing doves, rainbow lorikeets, scaly breasted lorikeets, and other flocks in our trees. There is also a pair of Sacred Kingfishers nesting in a tree near our main shed - they drill a hole into the dried mud of a white-ant nest up in a tree. At nights, I've heard the Powerful Owls - they are big enough to take small dogs, cats, possums, and even koalas from trees - I know they've taken some of my guinea fowl from their roosts, but they are such magnificent birds that I'm glad we have them on our property.

I'm editing the sequel to Muted to try and make it as good as possible. I worry it will disappoint readers, but it will be better than some books, not as good as others.

I hope you are having a good start to the year.