Bicheno

I realised I didn't write down the second half of our Tasmania holiday, so I'll put it in here in case I forget. We had originally thought about going a bit west and doing walks around Cradle Mountain which is supposed to be beautiful. But we couldn't make the itinerary work so gave up and decided to explore the east coast instead. And, best decision EVER, because the weather when we were there was appalling in the west and not too bad on the east coast where we were. I had never seen a specific 'bushwalker's alert' on the weather report before, but they had one for Cradle Mountain. So we will do that another trip, and probably not in September. 

We stayed in Bicheno, which is a small seaside town, in a lovely house backing onto the ocean with beautiful views. We spread out our stuff for a few days and listened to the sea. 

We did all the usual things - walks along the beach.

Lobster rolls.

Wine tastings.

We also went on a fairy penguin spotting tour in the early evening - this is when the wee penguins come out of the water (hunting and eating) to cross the beach to go back into their burrows and lay their eggs or feed their chicks depending on the time of year. There were dozens of them and they are extremely cute - waddling and flapping - but I found it all strangely stressful. This is the most dangerous time in a penguin's day and all the behaviours - grouping, freezing, shouting at each other - are designed to protect them from predators. They are clearly going through it, and I found it hard to enjoy. Anyway, here is the traditional appalling photo of penguins running at speed in dim lighting. 

Random arty things

Between being sick and travelling I haven't had much stamina for anything difficult or time-consuming on the art front. So I've been doing lots of doodles or splotches or copies that make me happy enough to be moving paint around, but don't require too much thought. 

This was using a palette knife on watercolour. Very much something I would never have thought to do, but surprisingly cool. A palette knife is very unwieldy with watercolour and you get unexpected results.

I did these just because I know they will work. And the colours are pretty.

A Brian Huntress head.

And a Gary Fredericks person. My people look more like people when they are wildly wrongly proportioned than when I try and be accurate. Why is that?

Proud parent moment

We went down to Melbourne last weekend because number two had a play being read, by professional actors under a professional director, at a very serious and proper theatre company!!!!! There is a festival of new writing where the theatre company picks three plays by emerging playwrights, who then get to choose a cast, director and dramaturg to work with, and then rehearse and read the play to an actual paying audience ... it is very competitive and an extremely big deal to be selected, and we are just bursting with pride for our incredibly talented and hard working child. 

It sounds like it was an intense process of rehearsing, workshopping, LOTS of re-writing, agonising and collaborating .. but apparently that's what all plays go through even before the actors stand up and start moving about. The more I think about it the more in awe I am of this achievement - not just to write a whole play which is incredible enough - but then how exposed it must be as a writer to put your words out there and try and make them live! The arts, brutal. Anyway, I thought the play itself was fantastic: pacy, funny, emotional, true. I even coped with the sex scenes (just) and the autobiographical references ('not actually about me, mum'). 

It was lovely to see number two so excited and surrounded by friends, all super excited too. We stopped briefly for drinks afterwards (lots of squealing, that is why the photo above is so terrible) - introduced ourselves as the proud parents and got so many lovely comments - but we were definitely the old and uncool ones, as parents should be. I hope there is lots and lots of edgy theatre in our future, it was wonderful. 

The weekend in Melbourne was interesting too - we took the opportunity to explore St Kilda and the bay, where we hadn't spent much time. It's not exactly one of the world's great beaches! But Melbourne continues to be cool, and we had some wonderful food.

Human again

After a very mucky ten days I am back to feeling almost entirely normal again - just a bit of a bad cough. Work has been decimated by various illnesses, it seems to have hit everyone hard! The king is visiting on Monday so I'm hoping they've given the building a good hit with the Glen20, he doesn't look able to withstand much. 

We went to the beach on the weekend but I didn't do much of anything, just sat about and let my husband cook me meals :) One feeble walk to the beach which was nice but super windy. He went on serious walks while I put my feet up. I did sort out my wool tub though, which the cat thought was best fun ever. 

And we picked a lemon or two! The crop wasn't very big, I think the tree is still recovering from its pruning. But perhaps it would have more lemons if it didn't put all its energy into the size of these fruit, look at that thing. Potato-farming hand for scale.

Perth

Here are some photos from my few days in Perth last week. That all? It feels like months ago. I made it through this week held together by nurofen and coffee, mostly got everything done but sure felt like shit. Let's see, Perth, which I have always found to be Australia's least charming capital city. People from there love it, and it certainly has very beautiful beaches, but who wants a city for its beaches? It's a five hour flight and I've never felt like it was worth it ... although Qantas did kindly upgrade me on the way over so the five hours just flew by. Not as happy as the guy next to me though, who had SEVEN jack daniels and cokes before they cut him off. About five more than he would have got in economy. 

Anyway, in the interests of fairness I took a day off on Monday and gave myself a 'enjoy Perth' day to see if I was just being cranky. It was a glorious sunny 23 degrees with a light breeze, and I had bacon for breakfast, went for a very long walk by the river (beautiful) and then hired an e-bike for an hour to do the 10km bike track loop on both sides of the river. 

It was stunning - not many people about, well maintained tracks, lovely views from every vantage point and, thanks to the wonder that is an e-bike, I barely raised a sweat. OK I thought, this is actually quite a nice place. I gave the bike back, had a cheese scone, went to the art gallery (awesome) and then did a little light shopping. Two thumbs up for Perth, I will have to come back on an actual holiday and do some exploring of the region.

Work itself was busy but quite fun - involved traipsing all over the city which has the usual traffic of somewhere with over two million people and not quite enough freeways - and enough time at the seaside to keep me happy. 

It never stops

Since Tasmania I have been up to Western Sydney for a couple of days and then over to Perth for the best part of a week ... I was so looking forward to this weekend just been because it was a long one for Labour Day and I was going to do just nothing. So of course I got the worst cold ever (planes, filthy things) and spent it lying around feebly. And I am still super sick but back at work because it is one of the very rare occasions when there is no-one else around and I have actual things to do that matter. Honestly,  most of the time, if I don't get to something it can wait a day or two with no problems but today not so much.

Not many exciting photos of Western Sydney I'm afraid. We stayed in Penrith and went for dinner at the Panthers football club, which is not somewhere I would normally go. It was absolutely massive and had giant panther statues at the door. Heaps of restaurants, bars, a theatre, casino, the whole shebang. We chose tapas and it was delicious (and then on Sunday the Panthers won the NRL grand final, which is a big deal if you are into that sort of thing, and I felt a sense of connection, given the tapas). We also stayed in a much fancier hotel than we normally do, so I took a photo of the sitting space they had just outside the lifts. You can tell it's fancy when there are Unnecessary Sofas.

The first day was 30 degrees, hot and stormy and the second day was 16 degrees, cold and rainy. Spring! such a delight. Here is the view from Penrith looking towards the Blue Mountains. I can't imagine ever going back but hey.

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.