The Weekend
The weekend began last November. After catching up with Bec and meeting Marc, the man from the other side of the she was about to decide to spend the rest of her life with, the discussion about cheap airfares to Tas came up and it was decided that the next time I saw them I was to get Bec a ticket to visit. 2 hours later the ticket was booked. Initially for 4 days over Australia Day and the fake long weekend, but shortened to 2 days due to Bec’s work not letting her take Friday off.
Bec managed to get down late of Friday night and I scared her with the suggestion of a late night swim in the gorge. To a lot of mainlanders, the thought of late night swimming in a gorge in Tasmania probably doesn’t sound that appealing, it took a while to convince her that it would be warm due to the constant sun the last few days, I was secretly convincing myself that it would be warm too. And I was right, we spent about half an hour floating about in the deep warm water. Night swimming in the gorge is one of the best things about Launceston, even better when the conversation is good.
The usal evening followed, removing spiders, looking at some photos, and crashing out. The next morning we headed into town for some breakfast, where we were joined briefly by my brother and his girlfriend, and then off to show off the office. We spent about an hour about the office, mostly running about taking photos of each other, the kind of photos that aren’t meant to be in focus and don’t have to please anyone but ourselves.
After the photo spree in the empty rooms and toilets around my office, we headed back up to the gorge, which takes on a different persona mid after noon on a 28 degree day. Following that we headed off to the museum and looked at art, culture and even my little exhibition, which is now housed in the migrant section. Then to the monkeys! Why doesn’t anyone believe me when I tell them there are monkeys in City Park?
By this stage it was time for ice cream, which was disappointing; the place had just got in their range of ice creams and had no idea what was what. Bec wanted the chocolate, she got coffee, then that was replaced with what was supposed to be caramel, but ended up being orange gelato, we gave up and went and got a smoothie from a more reliable place.
We then drove to the north east via Derby, where we tried to get past the blackberry infested rivers edge under the bridge to go for a swim, with little success. Our delay at Derby also meant that we missed the Pynegana cheese shop, which closed about 5 minutes before we got there. That was a sad, Bec and I have a long history of cheesing, including the first time we discovered that we were both big fans and bought each other our local cheeses in a shop in Melbourne.
Then it was onto the beach at Beerbarrel, where I managed to get a photo of Bec giving me an evil, which turns out to be one of my favourite photos of her from the weekend. We spent some time there just watching and listening to the water, then a couple of photos up on the dunes and back to the “shack” for dinner with my mum and her friends. That evenin was taken up with beer and laptop on the balcony, showing my photos of OS and playing with some of the photos that were taken earlier in the day.
Then it was a typical sleep over, lots of talking over a few hours.
After a failed attempt to go take some photos of sunrise, ie alarm went off and it was deemed too dam early and more sleep was had. When we finally did get around to getting up, we headed to Binalong Bay for breakfast, the normally amazing view of white sands and blue water was obscured by the sea mist. The mist left re assured us that sleeping in was good and also provided some cool macro spider web shots.
We then headed via backroads to Ben Lomond, one of my favourtie places in the world. Bec had taken me up to Mt Buffalo a few years before, which is her favourite place, and like our trip there, there was nothing to see, lots of mist and poor visibility, a great spot to take some more photos.
Then back to Launceston, a beer, more taking and to the airport to end the weekend. It was Bec’s first goodbye, she has many more to come before she leaves to join Marc somewhere south of Amsterdam in a few weeks. I know we will keep in touch, it’s just a long way away. I will miss her heaps, but who wouldn’t miss their closest friend? I’m glad she came down, we have some great memories and the photos to take us back to them.
And then, as an after thought to the weekend, I booked a wedding in Scotland, the weekend before Bec’s birthday, so Netherlands here I come!
