Mrs Hunt’s Cottage, Maria Island. Picture by Tom!
After a pretty rough past couple of weeks, this one has been really good for the soul.
We went to a family wedding up on the east coast, and you can’t help but feel happy at a wedding, surrounded by love! This one was particularly sweet and romantic, and it was lovely to see some people I haven’t seen for ages. We decided to make the most of being in the area and took a day trip to Maria Island - a place I had never been, and was utterly blown away by. It was one of those places that is truly magical, that pictures and words will never do justice to. If you ever visit Tasmania, it is a must do. We’re already planning a return, but staying longer!
I had also forgotten the profound impact that a change of scene can have on your mood and outlook. We’ve barely left the house since the borders opened and I hadn’t appreciated how much we needed just a little break in the routine. It has been a literal and metaphorical gust of fresh air!
Favourite experiences of the week
Maria Island was absolutely spectacular. We haven’t stopped talking or thinking about it! The ferry from Triabunna was a breeze - though I highly recommend booking as far ahead as you can. I stupidly left it to the day before, thinking we could stroll up to the marina like we did with Rottnest Island when we visited Perth in 2020 (before covid). It wasn’t a complete disaster but as the earliest and latest crossings were already full we only had half a day to explore rather than the full day. But that’s OK, we’ll definitely be going back!
I just love spending time in nature, and getting up close and personal with adorable wombats was one of the highlights of the visit:
One of about a thousand pictures we took of a mother wombat and her joey, who were totally unbothered by the presence of humans.
A Cape Barren goose in its lush natural habitat.
The lesser-spotted writer of this blog post on the deck of Mrs Hunt’s Cottage (the house in the first photo).
The Painted Cliffs.
A beautiful tree.
I mean LOOK at that water!
It was extremely hard to pick a leading image for this week’s This Week, let me tell you!
With my husband of nearly twelve years! Attending a wedding always makes us feel very nostalgic for ours!
The wedding was also a highlight, because it’s always wonderful to be in the presence of love and joy. Whenever I go to a wedding I can’t help but be overwhelmed with happy memories of my own, remembering the incredible high of it all and how full to bursting with love you feel, not just for your new spouse but for all the people sharing in your excitement and wishing you well. And it’s so wonderful to know someone you care about is having the same experience, and you get to be a part of it. The happy couple were also very blessed with the weather, it was an unseasonably warm and sunny autumn day, and the setting was stunning.
We enjoyed the festivities so much that one of my sisters suggested that Tom and I renew our vows at some point and have another wedding for all the Australian family who couldn’t make it to London in 2010. We’re certainly thinking about it!
Looking forward to
Another upcoming wedding, this time of a dear friend. Another dear friend visiting Tassie soon. Finishing the introduction to my thesis. Potentially another trip to Maria Island before the end of the season!
Reading
The Writer Laid Bare by Lee Kofman - I’ve just started this and just want to tell every writer I know to buy a copy and read it ASAP. Incredibly insightful and relatable!
The Practical Australian Gardener by Peter Cundall - I plan to make good use of the Easter break and get some jobs in the garden done as the fruitfulness of autumn is starting to wind down.
Bigger than Us by Fearne Cotton - a lovely book I dipped into each night at bedtime, about intuition, connection and “finding meaning in a messy world”. Some really beautiful reminders to trust the Universe a bit more and to stay open rather than close down when life gets tricky.
Sydney Review of Books: Plath Traps by Felicity Plunkett
Poetry Foundation: Sylvia’s Table by David Trinidad
Listening to
The Shift: Marian Keyes on menopause, Botox and learning to be shameless - I particularly loved this quote from Marian, “Other people’s anger and judgement is utterly survivable and, ultimately, it’s not even important.” I also enjoyed the follow up with Marian which aired last month.
Now You’re Asking, with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn: The High School Problem and The Co-Dependency Problem, both enjoyed while gardening. I love this podcast, Marian and Tara are so kind, encouraging and understanding with their answers to problems sent in by listeners (apart from the idiot who wrote in saying that he had cheated on his wife and now didn’t understand why she didn’t trust him - their response to that was gold). You might notice that my listening habits tend to reflect the fact that when I’ve really enjoyed an interview with a particular person, I start listening to everything I can find with them in it! I’ll try not to be too repetitive or boring in that regard, haha.
My main writing playlist on TIDAL - it’s so full of goodness, for my writer’s brain at least!
Eating
We made fresh pasta dough with chickpea water and it was utterly amazing. Like, life-changing. I couldn’t recommend trying it more highly!
It seemed to be the week of pasta - I also made a Moroccan pumpkin, chickpea and feta pasta which was delicious.
Lots of hiking and road trip food - energy balls, apples, muesli bars, mini packets of chips.
Today is Good Friday so I’ve procured fresh hot cross buns - as this is the appropriate day of the year to eat them, not on Boxing Day when the supermarkets start selling them! I enjoy a fruit bun as much as the next person but I do think we lose something when something that is meant to be saved for a particular time of the year is simply made available once another major holiday is out of the way, or even all year round as is often the case. OK, I’ll get off my soap box now.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the potatoes with garlic, oil, herbs and preserved lemon at my cousin’s wedding (made by another cousin)!
Picking
The remaining red (or red-ish!) tomatoes and there’s still a few zucchini that may or may not be coaxed into their fullest expression by the heatwave we’re expecting over the Easter weekend. I will also dig up the first potatoes over the long weekend, I think.
Watching
American Beauty - I hadn’t seen this film for many years and we enjoyed it last Friday night. On this rewatch, I found it more funny than I did dark (as I had on previous watchings) and I wondered why that might be so - perhaps it was because I found it rather amusing to watch a privileged white man explode his current life in the pursuit of a supposedly more authentic one. And I agree with Stephanie Zacharek’s take that American Beauty is “a movie from a time when we didn’t know what we wanted. From where we stand now, the dark, buried desires of affluent suburban men and women, no matter how ludicrously they’re presented, seem even a little touching. Maybe that’s partly because our eyes have been opened to the way so many men—unlike Lester, regardless of how you feel about him—have simply taken what they wanted, with no regard to whom they’re hurting.”
Fences (iTunes) - another great film based on an August Wilson play. We saw a clip of this played in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and were immediately intrigued. It’s set in 1950s Pittsburgh and centres around a middle-aged garbage collector named Troy (Denzel Washington), a man who appears jovial and charming on the surface but deep down is very bitter about his failures in life and his missed opportunities in professional sport, which were primarily due to being too old for the professional leagues by the time Black people were allowed to play in them. His son Cory (Jovan Adepo) now has the opportunity to go to college thanks to his talent in football, but Troy is dead-set against the idea. Odie Henderson said in his review that “anyone who had a strict taskmaster as a parent will find parts of Fences unendurable” and, indeed, Troy’s brutality and pig-headedness in dealing with his son is hard to watch and ends up driving Cory away. Unfolding in parallel is the revelation of Troy’s infidelity which devastates his devoted, long-suffering wife Rose (Viola Davis) and has some permanent consequences. It’s superbly acted, and very powerful, but we weren’t wild about the ending, which seemed a little neat and sentimental given everything that had preceded it. But worth a watch, for Viola Davis’s performance alone.
Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent)(Netflix) - our addiction to this fabulous show continues, but we only have a few episodes left! I hope they make more!
Wearing
I had at least five people comment on my outfit at the wedding - which was my glorious Keshet jumpsuit, both stylish and incredibly comfortable! The photographer came over at one point and just said “Keshet?” which made us both laugh! They are certainly a distinctive Tassie brand for those in the know. I do want to get some more of them because they are so wonderful to wear.
Quote of the week
“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.” - Jean-Luc Godard
If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post with me, please do! A Happy Easter and Pesach Sameach to those celebrating this weekend xx