Oh shame...

Oh shame - I cannot believe I am blipping a soft toy. Will my blip-cred survive?

This, of course, is a koala bear - which is not a bear at all. They were hunted almost to extinction, then Australia experienced its first ever serious environmental conscience campaign. They have been rehabilitated to an extent, but they say that one day they are bound to become extinct because of a genetic weakness.

I had a cousin of my father's and her family living in Australia. Apart from that there were no antipodean connections at all (unless we had the odd criminal shipped off to Botany Bay.) Then my sister-in-law married a Kiwi - one of the loveliest men I know - and settled there. She was a theatre sister by profession, but her real love were mountains - and she had a number of significant achievements, including being in the first all-woman team to climb Mt Cook. Full of energy, unstoppable, driven - climbing one day she stretched out an arm to pull herself up, the arm snapped. The x-rays were a devastating shock. Twelve months later she was dead from a rare, untreatable cancer. She was 57.

Three times in that year we were in New Zealand. Then again a couple of years later to see my brother-in-law. Since then the antipodes have centered large in the family. One daughter just back from two years there - one in Australia, one in NZ. Another daughter just started a year in New Zealand with her husband. A third scheming how to get there.

The Koala was a present sent home from Australia by the first of those daughter/travellers. I'm not sure what to do with it, so it sits around.

So today it can earn its keep. As a blip!