A post I wrote below back in 2012 to John

DEAR JOHN HAMBLIN

MAY 17, 2012 

Dear John,

John Hamblin

I saw your book in the store a long time ago, I thought I must read that book, but it disappeared from the shelf and unfortunately I haven’t read it till now.

I am halfway through your story and what an interesting life you have lead. I only know you from Play School, so to read about all your earlier endeavours is wonderful.  I am loving the book so far.

When I saw Play School was bringing out a 45 year anniversary DVD I knew I had to have it. I needed to introduce my kids to the fantastic funny John I remember as a kid, and let me tell you they loved it.

I listened as the presenters talked on ABC radio about their job, and especially listening for Benita, talk about her wonderful time with you.

When I went to our local bookstore to buy the DVD the older gentleman behind the counter fondly recalled he had a big crush on Benita, and I told him I was buying the DVD because I loved John.

My Nan’s fondest memory of me as a child is singing “Open Wide, come inside, it’s Play School”. It also runs in the family, all my children have loved Play School and I was lucky enough to go to a Play School concert when Benita was still doing them.

Just last year I gave my daughter the day off school just to go watch a playschool concert (her last show) before she grows out of the Play School stage.

My third child who is almost two also loves Play School, and the first thing he does in the morning, after eating of course, is bring me the remote and ask for “Cool Cool”.

I can’t help but compare every new presenter to you. I look at the new ones, judging their awkwardness, (they usually settle down after a couple of years) but no one has yet lived up to you or the likes of Noni, Benita, George and Don.

So why am I sharing all this with you? I am not sure, I am reading your life story and perhaps wanted to share a piece of mine, perhaps it’s the re living the childhood memories, making me feel young again. Those blissful moments of being a child without a care in the world.

I hear you live in Tasmania now, and are an artist. I also live in Tasmania, and if I ever get the chance I would love to meet you, and see some of your wonderful art work.

I read in your book that you still get fan mail as the ABC still pass them on to you, so I hope this letter finds you well.

Kind Regards,

Nicole

Sad I never got to meet you!

18/08/2019 

Open House Launceston is coming up again on September the 7th 2019.

Here are some photographs I took at last years Open House.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking through some beautiful buildings, and the Ghost Sign tour was also fantastic.

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And my winning entry into the Open House photo competition

Neil Pitts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2016

A while back I posted a few photos of my home’s interior with the hashtag #meetmyhouzz not thinking much of it, I received an email from the team at Houzz asking if I would like to feature our home on their website. I did a little panic as our home is a work in progress and so far only the kitchen has progressed but I though, why not, this is real life, most people don’t live in fully renovated houses that appear in designer magazines, and if they do they mustn’t have children or pets haha! So here is my real life 🙂

Meet My Houzz: A Retro Family Home in Tassie

17/10/2020 COMMENTS OFF CLIENT WORK, INTERIORS

Boho Cottage at White Beach, on the Tasman Peninsula was such a stunning location.  I worked with Samantha at Storied Homes to photograph her beautiful airbnb.  Such a relaxing location and warm and cozy with the fire on at night.  I highly recommend a stay here .  So many thoughtful details and gorgeous decorating.

Every time I go to blog I seem to start it with long time, no post!  Once again that is the case.  I hope you are all getting through the current pandemic, and coming out the other side.  I was unable to take many photos during lockdown and have been brainstorming ways I can still work from home for the future.

During the lockdown I was looking through and sorting old photographs and was thinking how best to preserve the memories.  A lot of my old albums are falling apart, and my negatives are just sitting in a box.  I am sure if you have a collection they are probably doing the same!  I sometimes think about what the first thing I would grab in a house fire/flood and for me it would be my computer hard drives or photo albums, but we have come so far with technology that a lot of my digital files are now safe in the cloud, but my negatives are not.

Which brought me to the thought of offering a film scanning service, you entrust me with the care of your digital negatives, and I scan them into digital files for you to save to your computer, or your own cloud service.  At the moment I am waiting on the delivery of my scanner – one of the downsides to COVID, the post is REALLY slow and a bit late to the party, but I am eagerly waiting to try it out and see what I can do with it.

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ENCORE CLOTHING OP SHOP – YOUNGTOWN, LAUNCESTON

05/09/2019 

Encore Clothing is located on Hobart Road in Youngtown.

Encore clothing is a Self Help workplace, they are unique in the fact they wash and iron all the donations prior to putting them on the shelf. Encore always have a high quality of clothing out for sale and when I went this week everything was on sale for $3!

I found a few bargains.

414 Hobart Road in Youngtown

Phone: (03) 6344 7133
Fax:     (03) 6343 0651

Monday to Friday: 9am to 4pm

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Address:

405/407 Hobart Road
Youngtown TAS 7249

Phone: (03) 6344 8546

Weekday Trading Hours

Mon – Fri

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Weekend Trading Hours

Saturday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Sunday   Closed

02/09/2019 

My husband, son and I took a drive up to Poatina last Saturday.  Poatina was once a town built for the purpose of housing the workers for the Hydro Electric Commission.  Now it is a time capsule featuring several amazing mid century buildings, and an op shop!  The Op Shop is unattended, so when you have selected your items for purchase you need to pay at the General Store which is in the middle of the town centre.  I was lucky enough to find some corduroy jeans whoo!

Poatina is located 163 km north of Hobart and 60 km from Launceston via the Bass Highway and Poatina Road.

08/05/2019 

Hello!

I don’t know if anyone even reads my blog anymore but anyhoo…

In the process of rebuilding my blog and trying to get all my content back online, I began to go back through my old hard drives.  A few years ago on Australia Day we had an instance where our street received a bushfire warning and we had to evacuate!  One of those moments where you grab your most precious things and hope for the best.

The first thing I grabbed was my external hard drives that I have backed up my digital files on and a plastic box of film negatives and photos.  If I had tried to lug all my photo albums that would have been a nightmare – but in saying that I do not have all my old images scanned.

Some “helpful” person dropped one of my hard drives on the way out the door – eeek!  Thankfully it still works (just) but this week I decided I need a better plan.  I tested another old hard drive and it doesn’t even want to load the stuff I have put on there for safe keeping!!! Not very reliable at all.

So I am uploading my really old back ups to the cloud.  There are MANY options for cloud back up and I won’t go into them all but for now I am using Google Drive and faithful old Flickr (although that keeps getting dearer)

It’s going to take some time to get them all backed up and I probably should go back and scan photos prior to the digital age for extra safe keeping.

Here is an article I found about me when I first started photoblogging back when I still used the name astrogirl 😀

What would you grab if you had to evacuate your home?

NOVEMBER 5, 2015 

Earlier this year some friends of mine got married on May the 4th. Yes that’s right, Star Wars Day! So I decided to make them a personalised wedding card for the day. I took Han and Leia on a photo shoot to the front yard.

I had to go out on two separate occasions as it was a bit windy and the couple keep falling for each other. 

Holding Hands whilst gazing into each other’s eyes

Side By Side – Looking at camera with or without blank expression

Now look at each other…..awwww

Cheek to cheek

Featuring her

Featuring him

Give her a hug Han!

Her behind him

You guys are so cute!

Now hold hands and face each other