September 1994, a bruising time

I offer for your enjoyment the following correspondence from August and September 1994. This is about a quarter of the letters.  I am not sure why I kept them 30 years but they are now all thrown away.

Launceston

Here are some more of our Tasmanian adventures - we spent a couple of days up in Launceston. As ever, we randomly airbnb'd our way around - this time it was in something called 'quirky cottage' which usually means small and damp. It was, but also quite adorable, and very cosy and with probably the best-stocked kitchen I've seen in a rental house for quite some time. 

My expectations of Launceston were low - it is a smallish town with not much going on - but we had a lovely time, despite cold grey windy weather. There's a great art gallery and museum and some nice walks. We went up Cataract Gorge which is a remarkable piece of the landscape. Apparently all the rocks make waterfalls when it rains.

We did the walk in from the bottom which was fine, then after the art gallery and lunch went up to the top section. There's a walk you can do around to another park but the ford was flooded so we couldn't go that way. 

And there was no way I was going the other way. My husband went out to take photos but said it was wobbly once you moved on it! Didn't bother him but I was not going to set foot on it. It is much higher than it looks in this photo.

So instead we went and did a historical buildings walk. Much more my speed.

Hobart

So the upside of me getting the wrong date for our MONA tickets last year is that we had to go back to Tasmania and use the credit they very kindly gave me! We were slightly earlier this year and the weather let us know it was still winter. We stayed in the same little historical cottage and it was exceedingly cold outside, and super windy, the sky was mostly like this.

We went to the markets again on Saturday morning and got sleeted on - so abandoned all plans of a walking afternoon and drove to a restaurant on the top of a hill for lunch. It was delicious and very good views but those white spots are hail thinking about becoming snow.

We hired a car this time, so on Sunday we drove down and took the car ferry over to Bruny Island which was just lovely. Feels very remote (it's "the Tasmania of Tasmania" apparently) and would be just beautiful in the summer time. 

The beaches were gorgeous but I was not tempted. Luckily it's a foody place so we tasted cheese and beer and had a very yummy lunch.

The MONA trip was also excellent - another ferry, which makes me nervous. The car ferry was only 15 minutes which is fine but the MONA ferry was half an hour ... I was happy to get off, even a fast cat up a river is too much for me. The museum itself is quite overwhelming, after a couple of hours I was glad to stop for lunch (we went to the very fancy and expensive restaurant there, it was definitely the experience). But some wonderful artworks of all different sorts. I will go back, for sure, I only saw about half of it.

At the time I was reading Bianca Bosker's book about the art world - highly recommend, very interesting and well written - but it's a bit scathing about the value of art. Not the value of art in general but the relative value assigned to different artists and works ... and whether art that relies solely on context to carry any meaning actually has any meaning? Very interesting questions and I enjoyed thinking about them but not a useful book to have in your head when you are staring at a life size replica of a tank stitched out of leather or a really quite appallingly painted picture of Harry and William or a light sculpture. 

Negative painting

Negative watercolour painting is where you put a light wash down, then a darker one, painting around the shapes you want to keep light, then a darker one again, painting around more shapes ... and on and on until you have all the layers. It involves pre-planning and precision brush control, not my strengths. But the good lessons required negative painting of fish, so away I went.

I am quite pleased with the result, although my fish may not have the correct fins, as is normal. 

I gave it another go with trees, which didn't work quite so well. I think I should probably have painted the trees and not left them so pale, it looks odd.

I gave up on negative painting and did some cupcakes to make me feel better. They were very simple and are pretty. Also a furry blurry cat.

More ancient history

It's definitely spring, although we are still putting the fire on most nights, because it is pretty. My husband has sanded and re-varnished the garage door and it looks AMAZING, I am very impressed. He has a can of varnish left over so will do the front door as well. 

We are continuing to go through the tubs. Here is my graduation photo, with exactly the haircut I have now! I went through many many hair variations from there to here ... thirty five years worth. But hey you work with what you have. 

When I became an officially recognised de facto spouse (for the purposes of the Australian government paying to move me to Australia, excellent lurk, five stars) I had to have a medical exam. This is what the doctor wrote. Apparently I was outraged at the time ... I am STILL outraged. Well built indeed.  Who says that? NO DEFORMITIES??????

And this is my lifetime driver's license that the NZ government went through a phase of issuing. You got your license - no photo - and kept it for 55 years. So this license was all mine at the age of 15 (because that was the appropriate age for operating a vehicle apparently) and has not yet expired. I don't think it is valid any more because they changed the rules but I am still amazed that anyone thought that was a good idea.

Urban sketchers again

After the excitement of the north it was a quiet weekend back at home. I spent Saturday sitting quietly (although I did get a haircut - sick of it blowing in my face!) and then on Sunday I went and joined the Urban Sketchers meetup again. This time it was at Parliament House, which was a bit like a work day for some of us, but we met in the gardens which are always beautiful.

I decided I'd do the beehives. There were lots of long vistas and big buildings and gorgeous landscapes ... all of which frighten me and none of which I think I can do successfully. I felt like tackling something a lot smaller. The only problem with the beehives was you can't get too close for obvious reasons, so I took a few photos and just zoomed in when I felt I needed more detail. 

I am unusually pleased with the finished result, although I did use a lot of artistic license in the layout. I felt like just using pen rather than trying to capture the landscape (dull gum-tree brown mostly) but it was a bit boring so I added in the bees! Completely wrong species of course, I think they are more bumble bees, but fun to do and got the point across.

Here is the group throw-down of all the sketches, some are absolutely amazing. Everyone is so supportive though, no matter what people do, I really like it.

Townsville

Last week I had a couple of days in far north Queensland - in Townsville - somewhere I had never been before! When we lived in Port Moresby we spent a fair bit of time in Cairns (which is about four hours drive north of Townsville) as a long weekend / shopping trip destination but I really haven't explored the area at all. My expectations of Townsville were quite low, given that it's beef, army, the reef and not much else ... but I was pleasantly surprised, it has a lot going on and it's very pretty.

I definitely think a long retirement driving holiday could be in order. Or maybe not driving, it is about 2200km from here if you go the boring inland route. It took most of the day just to fly there, via Brisbane.

This is me looking hot. It was only about 26 degrees and breezy but I am acclimatised to the Canberra winter. My flight back was at lunchtime so I went for a long walk in the morning along the esplanade which was very pleasant. I didn't bring my swimmers sadly but there looked like an excellent swimming lagoon. You can allegedly swim in the water without nets from May - October but I don't know if I would risk it.

Most of the time was work (or what passes for work in my world) - flying about in a helicopter with the ramp open.

And walking out onto a very windy wharf right on the east coast. It feels very remote, with a whole coastline of nothing leading to more nothing in both directions.

There was also some research tanks - heat resistant coral! Bring it on I say, thumbs up for all the people doing amazing things with their gigantic brains. 

T-shirt dress

I wore this to work the other day - very comfortable if perhaps not entirely professional. It is a t-shirt dress made from a 1990s jersey knit I bought at one of the church de-stash sales. 

It is quite unflattering with no seams or any kind of shaping ... which of course makes it lovely to wear, and if you put a cardy over the top who would know.

And it doesn't need ironing. I made it ages ago and haven't worn it, so it was on its last chance, but it was so comfortable and easy to wear that I will keep it.

Wildlife

I went down the beach for the weekend and saw an echidna on my walk! Dumpy dumpying along the beach, which is not a sensible place for a wee echidna, especially not an off-leash dog beach. They are so cute in the way they waddle about, and randomly dig; there was a whole heap of people watching and trying to shoo it towards the dunes. But not too close because spiky.

That was absolutely the most exciting thing that happened on the weekend. It was incredibly windy but not as bad as up in Canberra - in fact the whole country - where we have had unseasonably warm weather and gale force winds. Nasty, and a scary sign of the summer to come.

My walk also took me down one of the back streets towards the river ... and into the south coast equivalent of the bayou. It is rather pretty in its own way but I'm not sure I would build a house there. 

This is absolutely swampland - there is standing water underneath that house. God only knows how they got planning permission - you can't drive to the house although there is kind of a raised driveway - you have to park on the road. It just looks like malaria and snake-bite.

The creek is more my style I think.

Here is a picture that should not be on the internet, my chonky fat faboofadahs with a rather spectacular bruise. I was rolling on my art chair when I went over the cord of the hairdryer that I use to dry the watercolour paintings - the chair stopped rolling but I kept travelling into the sharp corner of the closet. A straight line bruise now going all shades of yellow. Nice.