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.

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.