Australia on vacation

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my time on Hive since June 2017 is the handful of connections I've made with whom I'm privileged to communicate off the platform with phone, WhatsApp, Threema, email and by postal service. There's only a small few, but I value them greatly and see them as a very valuable reward for my time on the platform.

We send each other things from time to time and the other day I bought a cool Australia book to send to one such person, the legit @ginnyannette from Florida, USA. I also have something for @eveuncovered but the timing isn't right.

We've swapped books before, books each of us had read and enjoyed; there's something nice about sharing a once-read book with a like-minded person, and other things as well and when I came across this book in a cool bookshop I was in last week I thought it would be a great way to show off the diversity in this country and because we both love books it aligns more with who we are rather than simply going to a website.

People who have never been here often don't understand the diversity the country has.

There's modern cities full of millions of people, mountain ranges and snow-capped mountains, rain forests, wetlands, deserts and arid lands that were once the sea-bed, open plains, savannah, fertile hills and valleys, amazing coastal, lakes and rivers, dense scrubland and more. The country is very cosmopolitan and affluent but also has outback and extremely "country" places and people as well. It's vast too, the entire United Kingdom can fit into Australia over 32 times and the single State of Western Australia is 10 times larger than the entire United Kingdom - that leaves a lot of scope for diversity.

Anyway, by the time you read this, the large hardcover picture book will be on vacation - on its way to Florida, USA - and before long its pages will be revealing some of the diversity of the country to some people who, I hope, like what they see.