Sounds like they're almost everywhere. I guess i could do with changing my thread title to.... The Roaches Wallabies might be no more but the uk is far from a Wallaby free zone.
Yes i was quite saddened when i heard they were no longer hopping around the area in the Peak District they had made their home for so long. I never had the pleasure of seeing one but have spoken to a few who have. The area where they lived was close to what's regarded to be the best gritstone outcrop in the Peak District, the Roaches. I've climbed there many times and always kept a sharp lookout for a sighting of a Roaches wallaby, but sadly they always eluded me.
It's sad to read that the troupe of Bennetts Wallabies living just 30 miles from my home are now officially extinct. They have been surviving and at first thriving in the English Peak District since 1940. Originally five were released and their numbers grew until the very harsh winter of 1963 and since then there has been a steady decline. It's now accept that they are no more as the last sighting was in 2009. But as with many tales of unusual creatures in the wild, tales of sightings are occaisionally still reported but without pohotographic back up.
"It is not a secret, but it is not generally appreciated, that for nearly 70 years a colony of Bennett’s wallabies, whose natural home is Tasmania, hopped contentedly around the Staffordshire moorlands in the south-western part of the Peak District National Park, munching heather and sporadically breeding."
I had no choice one morning about three years back. I had travelled to Greece to help a woman living on a yacht sail around the Greek islands and do a bit of maintenance on the boat. I arrived late evening, she met me at a marina and we rowed out to her boat which was moored out in the bay. After boarding she said asked me if i was hungry, she'd made me a pizza. After travelling from the uk i certainly was ready to eat and pizza sounded good, but when she served it, it didnt look so good. The base was about four inches thick and the topping was just a bit of tomato sauce. I did my best to eat as much as possible, but the doughy texture and lack of taste made it almost impossible to eat more than half of it. When i stopped eating and pushed the still weighed down plate to one side she looked at the plated then looked at me and said, "are you not eating that? If not you will have to have it for your breakfast, we dont waste anything on a boat." She wasn't joking either, next morning, 6am, she shouted into my bedroom, "time to get up, lots of work to do, your pizza and a coffee are on the table." From then on things went from bad to worse and three days later i jumped ship before we set sail for Corfu. I don't think i'll be able to face pizza for breakfast ever again.
I go to this place whenever the weather allows. A fantastic officially designated naturist beach in North Wales and just a two hour drive away....
"Acclaimed by regular users as one of the best beaches in the UK, Morfa Dyffryn (also known as Dyffryn Ardudwy) is located on the Welsh coast between Harlech and Barmouth in the county of Gwynedd. This location has been used by naturists since the mid-1930's and in 2000 the local authority took a decision to erect notices designating a section of the beach for naturist use."
"Morfa Dyffryn beach itself is ENORMOUS, even the part used by naturists is about 1 mile in length - and to the rear of that are hundreds of acres of peaceful dunes and scrubland between the beach and the airfield. An enthusiastic regular visitor reports: '"The beach is clean, as is the sea which shelves gently so swimming is possible - and the tide doesn't go out miles!"
No, not garbled at all, you make some very good points. Of course Buddha is not around these days to ask, but he did leave around 80,000 teachings from which great wisdom can be taken. You talk about how to undo a lifetime of ignorance, that is what much of Buddhist teaching is about, unlearning rather than just learning. Whatever problems, delusions or sufferings we have, through Buddhist teachings there is a way forward if the effort is made. I kind of like this quote....
Elizabeth Gilbert..... “Accept the glorious mess you are.”
And the myna birds on The Island shouted "ATTENTION," stay focused. Repeat, "attention", stay in the moment, take the Entheogen. Search for every possibility, "attention."
The person who wrote the words accredited to Jesus of Nazereth was certainly an enlightened human being. There is in fact reasonable evidence he spent the misssng years in India, some even claim he was in fact a Buddhist monk. At the very least he was probably influenced to some degree by Buddha's teachings which had been around for about five hundred years and had spread to the Middle East.
bodleing2 Forum Posts (6,132)
The uk wallabies are no more.
Sounds like they're almost everywhere. I guess i could do with changing my thread title to.... The Roaches Wallabies might be no more but the uk is far from a Wallaby free zone.