In: from New Zealand / Australia

From New Zealand I received this postcard showing the beautiful Australian Great Barrier Reef.
The postcard was sent by Devi. I didn't know the sender personally, but I got curious when I happened to read on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter about her journey. She is an enthusiast cyclist, poet and storyteller, and is traveling the world by bicycle and by boat to collect stories from people about water and climate change.

I decided to join the funding, and as a 'thank you' Devi has sent me this postcard. The back side of the card Devi had written at sea, while traveling hitching on a cargo ship from Australia to New Zealand. She stamped and posted the card in New Zealand.
Reading the card, in which she tells something about her journey, makes me dreaming of traveling that way, too! Well, probably I am stuck too much with the certainties and obligations I feel and have in my present life. A joy to read her card though.
For me, not born in the neighbourhood of a sea so usually not that much attracted to it, some of her words touched me, like these: "The sea has lots to teach me about surrender."

On her blog I found this nice post, and while enjoying her long text on the card I am happy that she loves snail mail, too!



If you are interested to support her journey monthly you can become a patron (see the website) or you can donate an amount once, see the kickstarter website.

Sunday Stamps: Fish in the water

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Fish in the Sea (or lake, or ocean)'.

First I thought it would be hard to find fish stamps, but wandering through my received mail, there appeared to be more than one Fish stamp!

The first fish I would like to show is a fresh water fish, the pike ('snoek' in Dutch).
This fish stamp is from the United Kingdom (thank you, John!):



I have an old Dutch stamp sheet which shows a pike, too, but alas I can't find it to scan for you at the moment. Fortunately you can see it somewhere else on the internet. That stamp sheet was issued in 2005 and showed flora and fauna in the Naardermeer ('Lake of Naarden'), the oldest protected nature area in the Netherlands.
Recently, ten years later, the Dutch post issued a new stamp sheet on this lake. This time a ten stamps sheet, of which the bottom two show underwater life. Among them the pike again:



From the lakes in the countries at the North sea to some more southern European sea, close to Spain. Eva sent me fish mail (not to be confused with fishing mail :-) ) and on the cover were two sea mammal stamps, and two fish:



A stamp from the far south. In the South African sea beautiful fish are living. Among them this one:



And from the south to the far east. I was so lucky to receive some Asian fish stamps.

From China:



From Taiwan:



From Sri Lanka:



And finally, a stamp from the Netherlands, showing an Indonesian fish:



More interesting and beautiful fish stamps you can see on the Sunday Stamps blog and the related links mentioned there!