Solitude

I've been hibernating by myself for the past week and it's been a time of quiet contemplation. It's a real change for me: I'm usually very talkative and I surround myself with people and bustle ... but down here I've only had the company of my dogs and the birds in the trees and on the beaches nearby. The house is quiet, with no TV or radio, just me.
Life has shifted down a gear or two.

A bird in the hand

Yesterday on the beach I found a little injured penguin. I called him Fonzie because he looked like a cool guy in a little leather jacket and white t-shirt, and I took him to a wildlife rescue place in the next town - hope he recovers! He had beautiful petrol-blue feathers on his sides which inspired me to think about dark and glamorous colours in fabrics and interior design ...
(odd, perhaps, but that's how my brain ticks!).

Unfortunately this is the only picture I managed to take as I had my hands full and was hurrying back home with the dogs before it got dark.

This afternoon I took some photos with my phone, and although I wasn't really able to see the screen display in the low afternoon sun at the time, I'm glad they caught the light on this beautiful first day of winter.

Bracken seems to be growing some Victorian-style sideburns at the moment .... very Chap!

A little summer road trip

We flew to Adelaide on Christmas Day and took some time to pootle home along the coast the following week.

We had sunshine every day, and it was super-hot as we made our way along the Great Ocean Road on New Year's Eve; the wind felt like a furnace blast - it was 39°C, without a cloud in the sky.

We went straight to the surf beach and braved the waves as soon as we reached Apollo Bay! In the evening, a BBQ on a wooden deck overlooking the beach was followed by silly dancing with sparklers under the stars .....

~ a nice gentle way to ring in the New Year!



(click sparklers for image sources)

Port Fairy dreaming

We're currently on a mini-break in this beautiful little town on the Shipwreck Coast in Victoria's south-west ....



I wonder if we could live here? I've found the perfect house, close to the centre of Port Fairy, the Moyne River and (more importantly, especially for Gus) the beach!

This little town is quiet and pretty, with quite an artistic atmosphere, and it could offer us a chance to live life in the slow lane for a while.... This area of the state doesn't suffer from the water scarcity that affects so much of Australia's eastern coast - the grass is green and the volcanic soil fertile. Each year Port Fairy hosts popular music festivals, and it's also situated on the area of coastline along which Southern Right and Humpback whales migrate each winter as they travel north from the Antarctic to calve and raise their young. 

... dream dream dream!



(Images from here, here, and here)

Friday night

On Friday evening I played the corporate wife, as we were invited to drinks at Godfrey's boss' house (a totally executive-designer-decorated 19th-century mansion). 'Power handshakes' did the rounds along with delicious canapes prepared by a team of chefs and catering staff in the kitchen. We felt like Samantha and Darren going to Larry Tate's house on Bewitched, only the Tate's events were somewhat more low-key.


One of G's colleagues asked me what I do, and when I replied that I'm soon to start teaching Environmental Science at Melbourne University, she looked at me blankly and said, "....... Huh. Well ..... how are you going to make any money doing that?!"


..... it was a rather weird evening.

We had arrived in Brighton a little early so we went for a walk along the beach. Summer has returned in full force, with temperatures in the high-30s and 40s predicted for all of this coming week too. ugh!