The NT’s (Northern Territory) outback destroys books!!!
And, that’s where I live—in a freaking book desert!
Until Pamela Cook posed the question, I’d never realised my eclectic book collection had spread throughout my house in a mish-mash private library that would have a librarian pulling out her hair! Yikes.
Cookbooks are in the kitchen—shocker, right. But they’re vintage CWA (Country Women’s Assoc.) cookbooks I’d inherited from my grandmother. My mother annually mailed me her local fundraising editions to wherever I was working at the time. Yep, the CWA recipes made it to Papua New Guinea’s hinterlands and many beaches on deserted tropical islands in the Torres Straits. I’m surprised they lasted…maybe because those ladies stapled or tied their editions together with a ribbon.
Continuing on our book tour of the humble abode, you’ll find an old-school atlas, tropical gardening manuals, and Australiana reference books. They stand next to the ancient dynamite box I found in an abandoned mine in Tasmania.
Books also live in the trusty 4WD, I kid you not. For road trips, my tablet gets loaded with e-books, along with podcasts and playlists (my other addiction). There is the odd floating children’s book and some YA PNR. We have HEMA’s Australia 4wd atlas, it’s a bulky beast that preserves all my more detailed maps of North Australia’s outback regions. There’s a well-worn bird watcher’s guidebook held together by a rubber band, and a battered camp-oven cookbook, stained by many differing charcoal fingerprints of various cooks thumbing their way through its pages.
So, I bet you’re assuming we abuse our books?
Before you call the book-police to book me (ha) … you can find the rest at Pamela Cook’s site where I was her guest for the week. Thank you, Pamela.
#Escape2HEA | #ElsieCreek
