Have you noticed that when you take a photograph of a sacred site which is near a waterfall or well your image usually includes orbs?  It doesn’t happen everywhere, but if a place hasn’t yet been overrun with people, there always seems to be orbs dancing in the atmosphere. With wells it is usually at the entrance, but with waterfalls the orbs are literally everywhere.

I visited St. Nectan’s Glen in Cornwall during the Autumn months and was able to stand next to the waterfall. These photographs were taken on that day.

St Nectan’s Glen is in Cornwall, Great Britain. To get to St Nectan’s Glen one must follow a trail that leads down into a wooded glen and runs along the course of the Trevillet River, crossing over a footbridge, before climbing to the Kieve and hermitage. The walk is about a mile (1.6 kilometers) in length.

The main falls is known as the Kieve and is a plunge pool or basin fed by a 60-foot-high (18 metre) waterfall on the Trevillet River.

St. Nectan’s Kieve is believed by some to be a cloutie well. Cloutie wells are places of pilgrimage in Celtic areas. They are wells or springs, usually with a tree growing near where strips of cloth or ribbons have been tied to the branches of the tree in remembrance of loved ones, for wishes, and for healing.

The orbs in the photographs are interesting aren’t they?

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me … then gradually I write one page and then another … write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished you are always surprised.”

John Steinbeck, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, ‘East of Eden’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’

Welcome to my web page

Hope you’re having a good day and thanks for visiting. I’m a Western Australian playwright and short story writer. I’ve always enjoyed the magic of theatre and film and have been fortunate to have my plays performed in the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates and in Australia.

Although writing stories and getting feedback on reader’s enjoyment is wonderful, nothing beats the exhilaration of sitting amongst an audience of strangers and watching their reaction to the characters I have created. Hearing them laugh when they should laugh, a quiet sob in the sad bits, and all of us journeying with characters brought to life by the genius of the actors is a fleeting but powerful moment where the audience is frozen in time.

As a writer I love exploring universal themes and have been awarded the Todhunter Literary Award and the John Joseph Jones Award.

As well as plays and film scripts, I also enjoy writing short stories, children’s books and poetry.  

You can use ‘ARCHIVES’ on the side bar to click on each month to read the posts, or scroll down if it is easier for you.

I hope you enjoy this gorgeous little humming bird.

Thanks for visiting.

                    Writing and the Natural World

As a writer, I always feel drawn to include some aspect of the natural world in my stories.  Whether it’s in the form of a description of the elements or something as simple as having an animal as one of my characters. It probably stems from my childhood and the landscapes I’ve visited as an adult.

I grew up in the beach suburb of Scarborough in Western Australia. The beach was within walking distance and every morning I woke to the sound of kookaburras welcoming the new day. If you’ve never heard a kookaburra it sounds like wild cackling laughter. To get to school I had to walk through bushland, which seemed normal at the time, but what it meant was walking through tall eucalyptus trees searching for a tree that had been painted with a yellow mark and then walking to the next tree with a yellow mark until finally I arrived at the school. My sojourn through the trees before and after school fostered independence and it also allowed me to experience the sounds, smells, wildlife and bird calls of the Australian bush.

When I grew to adulthood and started travelling the world, after experiencing the splendour of Machu Picchu, an ancient Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains of  Peru, I journeyed to the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil and lived in this truly magnificent environment for a short time.

Canoeing the Amazon River and living in a small hut, I once again experienced nature in all its forms. The trees, the wildlife, the rain, the jungle sounds, I think they all became a part of my DNA. I visited with shamans and watched the indigenous tribes carry out their daily chores. My time in the jungle cemented my connection with the natural world.

Whilst walking in bushland in South Australia, a very large brown snake decided to slither beside me as I trudged through the vegetation. I thought it was rather beautiful, ‘the other’, and enjoyed its peaceful presence as it seemed to enjoy mine. I walked slowly and it slithered patiently beside me. It was intoxicating to be so close to ‘the other’ and to have it accept me in such a solemn, peaceful manner. We walked/slithered quietly together and when I decided to walk on higher ground the snake and I parted company. My ignorance probably saved me that day as I don’t know if I would have been feeling as relaxed if I had known it was a King Brown with the largest recorded venom output in the world, 150mg in one bite. To the snake I was ‘the other’ and yet it accepted me and allowed us both to experience a sense of connection.

Today, I don’t live as close to the beach as I did when I was a child. I need to drive my car the short distance to enjoy the waves.  But birds still wake me every morning. White cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, doves and pink and grey galahs impatiently march up and down my back patio as they wait for me to put out bird seed. Two ducks visit each morning, have a quick swim in my fish pond, and then share a breakfast of bird seed. The willy wagtail darts across my back garden frantically looking for bugs whilst the magpies come to my front door and call out for breakfast.  Sadly, I don’t always hear the laugh of kookaburras anymore, there seems to be less of them now. Two greedy ravens visit daily and I now have a new visitor – a long nosed bandicoot. The gorgeous little creature comes into my garden and digs tiny holes in the lawn, looking for worms and insects. I think the bandicoot may live at the back of my garden and I see him/her now and then, but as bandicoots are nocturnal animals I know when he/she visits mostly by the holes in my lawn. So even in the humdrum of my ordinary life, there is still the magic of the natural world.

Play Performances

2012 ‘Yesterdays and Tomorrows’:  Warner Theatre, Connecticut, U.S.A.

2013 ‘Strange Meeting’: Toowoomba Repertory Theatre, Queensland, Australia

2016 ‘Red Back Spiders’:  The Junction Theatre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

2021 ‘Yesterdays and Tomorrows‘:  Warner Theatre International Playwrights Festival presented a retrospective of some of their most memorable plays. Warner Theatre, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Awards

2011 Todhunter Literary Award with ‘Yesterdays and Tomorrows’

2012  The John Joseph Jones Award with ‘Eternity Within’

2014  Good Dog International Film Festival Encouragement Award with ‘Strange Meeting‘

Publications

‘Rebirth’ in Peregrine Volume XXXIII Paperback – September 23, 2019 Peregrine, the literary journal of Amherst Writers & Artists, has been published annually for more than 30 years.

’Mirrors – a memoir’ in the anthology ‘Struggle and Success’ published in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by Emotional Inheritance, an imprint of Exisle Publishing.  

’Echoes’ in the anthology ‘The Turning Point’ published in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by Exisle Publishing.

‘Little Knuckler’ in the anthology ‘Feral’ published in Australia by Stringybark Publications

‘Red Kite: A Love that won’t Fade‘ published by Scholastic Asia (Scholastic Reel Books Level 3) Multisensory – Read Watch Listen.  Reel Books

‘Honey Crisp: Crunch Time’ published by Scholastic Asia (Scholastic Reel Books Level 3) Multisensory – Read Watch Listen, Reel Books

‘Wizard of Oz – A Faraway Land Series 1‘ published by Scholastic Asia (Scholastic Reel Books) – Multisensory -Read Watch Listen, Reel Books available Kyobo

Wizard of Oz – Testing Times Series 2′ published by Scholastic Asia (Scholastic Reel Books) – Multisensory -Read Watch Listen) Reel Books available Kyobo

The Eternal Thread available on Amazon

Publications coming out soon:

Dee the Dinosaur Series 1  (Scholastic Reel Books – Multisensory -Read Watch Listen) 

Dee the Dinosaur Series 2 (Scholastic Reel Books – Multisensory -Read Watch Listen) 

Flibbles the Eco Dog – Chapter Book

Typewriter photograph released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CCO.

Machu Picchu Photograph by Michal Wozniak from Freeimages

Waterfall Photograph by Manuela Adler from Pexels

Hummingbird animation by otofx purchased from iStock