Adopting a Koala

.



My family and I recently returned from our annual holiday. This years trek was to Port Macquarie on the North Coast of New South Wales. One of the brochures at the resort where we stayed had information about the Koala Preservation Society of NSW and the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie.

We decided to visit the Koala Hospital and take their free tour. The Koala Hospital is run by volunteers and they get very little funding to carry out their work. The hospital has koala admissions of between 200 – 300 sick and injured koalas each year. Most that recover are nursed back to health and released into their home range. However some, like Seaview Farida, a juvenile female koala will probably need to remain at the hospital or a similarly protected area for the rest of her life.
.

Farida’s story.


Farida was brought into the hospital in August 2009. She was found on the ground in Seaview Avenue, Port Macquarie, with a wound to her right wrist and forearm. Little Seaview Farida had suffered a rather gruesome dog attack that left her with extensive damage to her right hand, part of which needed to be amputated.

By mid-September, Farida’s wounds were healing well and she was healthy enough to be moved to one of the outside yards. Although she survived her ordeal beyond all expectation, it is unlikely Farida can ever be released. She can use her injured hand to help with manoeuvring in her tree, but it is useless for climbing. Without the ability to travel easily and quickly between trees and to climb high to seek food and shelter, Farida would likely become the victim of another predator.

So Seaview Farida is now a permanent resident at the Hospital.

The Koala Hospital has an adoption scheme to help raise the money needed to look after the permanent residents and to continue their great work. We were so touched by Farida’s story and those of the many other koala’s in their care that we decided to become part of the adoption scheme.


It is amazing how good it feels, just doing this small thing to help one of Australia’s iconic animals and the people who look after them.
.




.
For more information about the Koala Hospital, you can visit them at the Macquarie Nature Reserve, Lord Street, Port Macquarie. (Definitely worth a visit.)

.
or

.
Check out their web site - http://www.koalahospital.org.au/

.

Updates to Web Site

I have just spent some quality time updating my personal website.

http://jefferyedoherty.googlepages.com/





The site is a place where I can showcase some of my work. It is split into two sections, WORDS and PICTURES.

WORDS is where my children's writer persona lives and PICTURES is where I keep my art gallery pages.

It is easy to display my art on the internet but much harder to do so with my writing. Posting stories on the net is technically self-publishing in an electronic format. This could cause major problems when trying to negotiate sales of those stories to publishers. I have however added some short excerpts from several of my writing projects.

I have also added some new paintings to my galleries.

Drop by and take a look.
.

NaNoWriMo - Winner

50,349 words!


I was actually doubtful that I was going to make the challenge this year. I kept up there with the daily word quota but I was hoping for a couple of 3000 or even 4000 word days to get me over the family holiday and 21st Wedding Anniversary that also fell in November. I had to take the laptop on holidays with us but I did scrape home with a win.
.
The most surprising thing this year, I was planning to work on three junior novels in a series, planning for about 24,000 words each. I was hoping there was enough story in each book to reach that length. After 50,000 words, I found I still have about 5000-6000 words more to do to complete the storyline for the first book. (It will be shorter than that once edited).
.
The other cool thing is that I came up with a surprise ending, much better than the one I planned. The characters just led me there. Now, it's time to put the story away for a month or two and finish editing my Chapter Book - 'Paper Magic'
.
Next year, I'm booking our holiday in some other month. November is not for lounging by the pool. It's for writing. 9Actually, every month is for writing but November especially.

.
.