Total pages read in July were 1,187. This included finishing George Bennett’s The Heart of Healing; Donald Whitney’s Praying the Bible; The Prayers of Kierkegaard by Soren Kierkegaard and Perry Lefevre; Prophet by Frank Peretti and the first half (or so) of Peretti’s The Oath.
I’ve been reflecting a little on the different Bible versions I’ve bought, tried, used, read, given away or filed away over the years.
The first Bible I ever had or was given was the Gideon’s red public high school edition I received in my first year in high school in the mid-1970s. It was, I believe, the Revised Berkeley Edition. I still have this Bible.
The second Bible I got was a Good News for Modern Man New Testament received, again from memory, for being the ‘prayer monitor’ in my year 8/second form Scripture class. I guess I had to read or recite a prayer at the beginning or end of each weekly Scripture class. I have since disposed on this Bible, but did keep the commemorative insert.
Pages read in June totalled 829. It included the bulk of Howards End, all of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and a good chunk of The Heart of Healing by George Bennett.
Total pages read in May were 540. This includes the two books I’d lined up to read on holidays: How to Think, and Breaking Bread with the Dead - both by Alan Jacobs. I also started E.M Forster’s Howards End. I got about a quarter of the way through it in May and (spoiler alert!) finished it in June.
Day 19 was the last day of photographs on our holiday. Day 20 was spent travelling home. Day 19 saw us visiting the Warrumbungles again after previously visiting two years earlier.
Our day began earlier than expected because it was freezing (literally) outside. We went for a walk around 7:30am to warm up! Later that morning we did a few short walks in the national park. Many of the sights in the park are simply awesome. Later that afternoon we visited Timor Road park by the Castlereagh River just out of Coonabarabran to do some bird watching.
Day 18, the third last day of our holiday, involved a drive from Lightning Ridge, through Walgett, Coonamble and Barradine to Coonabarabran.
I think they forgot an air conditioner
Day 17 was a ‘recovery day’ spent in and around Lightning Ridge after our 700km drive to get here.
It’s an interesting place - eclectic; dusty but attractive; reputedly one of the poorest towns in NSW; beautiful and clear light. It seems that places with such clear light attract many artists. It is the same with Broken Hill. Plenty of tragedy and hard, physical work and plenty of artists as well.
Day 16 was a long driving day - a little over 700km. It should have been less than 600km but our GPS suggested a route that involved 170km of dirt - which we only discovered after driving the first 50km on tar.
Anyway, the drive from Charleville to Lightning Ridge took us past/over the Angellala Creek Bridge which was the scene of Australia’s largest transport explosion when, in 2014, a truck carrying 50 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caught fire, crashed and exploded. Both the railway and road bridges were destroyed. No lives were lost.
Day 15 involved a drive from Blackall to Charleville. Much of the road is flat and straight with varying forms of sparse landscape. A cup of coffee in Tambo and a couple of stops along the way saw us arrive in Charleville before lunch. After lunch we walked the Warrego River Walk which was only a kilometre or two long. Plenty of stops along the way to check out the river and bird life.
Day 14 saw us leave Winton for Blackall. After lunch in Pioneer Park we sought out the Black Stump and walked part of the Blackall bird nature walk in the afternoon. The Black Stump was a major survey point for western Queensland in the 1800s. Anything west of that point was ‘beyond the black stump’.
Statue of Lieutenant Edgar Towner VC. Reenlisted for WWII and was promoted to Major.
Edgar's sister, Greta Towner, WWI nurse
The Black Stump (replica!)