Night of the round table

I have just cleared off the small round table, and plonked my drawing things on it. Ideally, drawing will now ensue. But first, blogging. I have been rubbish at blogging this year. Bloggable things have been happening but sometimes the thought of putting on my "writing voice" just wearies and disgusts me. But if I never do it then I'll never do it.

Today is Australia Day. The Australian people broadly fall into two camps: flag-worn-as-a-cape Aussie-pridesters, and progressive types who go to the "Invasion Day" march in the morning but quietly enjoy the afternoon with a few Coonawarra red wines and some of the later Nick Cave albums.

I know, I know - you and I don't fit into either of those categories. But I don't think Australia Day has ever been bigger - more polarised, more loudly pumped up by the bogans and more studiously deconstructed by the progressives. Some people are even writing blogs about it.

We felt that we wanted to be out of the house for the day, but somewhere quiet, so we did the Cygnet loop. From Hobart you can drive south over the mountains to Huonville, then east to Cygnet. From there you have a choice of several winding mountain roads to take you over to the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, with lovely views out to Bruny Island. From there the Channel Highway takes you back to Hobart.

Cygnet has just hosted its annual folk music festival, and was pretty much shut down for the public holiday, so we had lunch at Fleurty's Cafe in Birch's Bay, on the Channel. The cafe is on a farm which grows irises, blackcurrants, garlic, hops and mountain pepper berries (which they distill into oil).

The outlook was stunning, the food marvellous, and the service friendly and attentive. Thumbs up all round, except that I didn't like having commercial radio on in the background. You just don't do that in a swank cafe in a beautiful setting. Bush dusted salmon fillet with orange pepper berry glaze and crazy bargains from our very good friends at Muffler World - the combination is not right is it?

But to be positive - Marcus and I had the salmon and brie tart with a magnificent salad - the minted beetroot was so good. Michael enjoyed his toasted ham and cheese panini. Elf had a goat cheese tart and it was also excellent but I liked mine better.

This evening back home Marcus and I went I up to the cricket nets, and I introduced him to the physics of the taped-up tennis ball.

Salty sea dog

Today was the Australia Day holiday. This morning I spent over an hour experimenting with tying down the wave ski and paddle. We were not actually going anywhere, so I didn't feel any pressure to get it right straight away. After workshopping it for a while I have finally mastered state-of-the-art ratchet technology, and I feel I am now a proficient user of my tie-downs.

Once it was all trussed up and not going anywhere, we had a chat about maybe all going to the beach. But we were all enjoying just flopping about at home, so we didn't.

I then fell asleep reading a book and generally slipped in and out of consciousness for an hour or so. My inner Solo Man took over and I decided to take the wave ski down to Browns River... alone!

Before I turned off Beach Rd to get to the river, I saw flocks of proud Australian youth, with Aussie flag sombreros, cloaks, bikinis etc, walking to and from the beach. Recently Australia Day has become an over-the-top nationalistic beano, with a booze-fueled anti-social aspect that just makes you want to spend the day at home. Most of the kids were just having a good time, but there are always those aggressive over-revving hoon units cruising around as well.

I was pleased to see the wave ski was still on top of the car when I got there. I got it off and in the water, worked out a nifty way to leave the tie-downs on the car with the ends locked inside and squished safely by the back windows, and paddled happily up and down the river for about an hour.

On one side is a golf course, but on the other is a series of houses backing onto the water. Some are fancy new places, some are older and done up, some are pretty much untouched renovators' delights. Their various attitudes to the river were interesting - some are very engaged with it, with jetties and boats or kayaks pulled up - others have just fenced it off.

In the distance the pub's PA thumped as a cover band murdered Centrefold by the J. Geils Band. Between the riverside houses I could see cars and kids streaming up and down Beach Rd. I imagine the beach probably looked like Bondi, with a towel every three feet, umpteen games of cricket, volleyball and beach soccer, and record levels of horny teen perving.

Meanwhile the serenity on the river was blissful. An old bloke watering his plants on the back porch wished me a good afternoon. Some kids up on the road saw me and yelled "Happy Australia Day". I did not see another soul on the water.

The river here is tidal, and pretty salty. By the time I got back to the car and got the ski back on top, I was feeling very much the salty sea dog. Now, the next step is getting Elf off with the wave ski on her own so she can have a good long paddle too. It's a different business entirely when you are not hurrying back before the kids get bored.