The Manna House: There was movement at the station for the word had passed around...

...that the girls from old Killarney Vale had made it to the high country. Yee haa round 'em up boys, here we are in the Victorian alps, where the Snowy River runs and so did the Kelly gang, once. Since Vicki last wrote, we left Eden and almost immediately entered Victoria which was a milestone for me having only ever been to Melbourne on a stop-over to Bali in 1987 or around then. I have to say, it's not like going to another country or anything, but we did stop for a photo by the 'Welcome to Victoria' sign. Driving along an endlessly bushy road I soon noticed the aqua coloured leaves on the gums (and wattle) and had a small light-bulb moment. When I saw the McCubbin exhibition in Canberra I remarked to Vicki that he used a lot of aqua in his paintings and perhaps that was because he was influence by European artists as our trees (eucalypts) are more your reddish-green. But there you go... he was from Victoria afer all and to paint the bush truthfully here, one must include aqua in the palette.

Now, where are we again? Omeo, Omeo where for art thou...? We're in Omeo on our way to Bright tomorrow. Last night we were in Nowa Nowa and before that we had 3 nights in Mallacoota. I thought Eden was terrific between rain showers and howling gales. I was thrilled with the prolific bird life (need to get a What Bird is That book) particularly the Lorikeets that deeply appreciated our offerings of fruit, and I managed to get a few sketches and watercolours done... (You can see a few of my paintings thus far here)

Mallacoota is beautiful too. Lots of water and pelicans and boats and nice people and things like that. We visited St Peters Church on Sunday morning and got chatting with some of the friendly locals, and had a night 'on the town' at Lucy's noodle bar, where we slurped chinese noodles and had a game of scrabble debating whether 'bra' is a valid word or an abbreviation... my argument being who on earth says brassiere? (I got to use 'bra' but some others of us were feeling there was some cheating going on). The highlight for me though was getting up in the middle of the night on our last night to put away the awning which was flapping about in the breeze and threatening to detach itself... (hold on, it gets better) and even in my hasty, get-me-back-to-bed state, I took a quick peek up at the clear night sky and just about had my socks knocked off. The stars were 10x bigger and brighter than the stars we had in the Byron hinterland when I lived there out in the middle of nowhere. I looked at the channel marker lights in the bay and the stars in the sky were the same brightness. (I sware!). The Milky Way was way milky and had it not be so freezing I would have lain on the grass and watched the sky for the rest of the night. I tried to prove my experience to Vicki last night at Nowa Nowa but there was hardly a star to be seen for the clouds and haze. It's cloudy again tonight and now I'm beginning to wonder if I was perhaps having a slight delusion. Well, anyways, I'll be having an eye on the night sky from here on just in case.

I'm pretty excited about being inland because the coast is all very nice, I mean, it's incredibly beautiful, but I think inland is more various and interesting and painting-wise, more inspiring. I've been poring over paintings by the Australian Impressionists (Streeton, McCubbin, Roberts, Conder etc) trying to work out how they did what they did so wonderfully. Not as easy as it looks (see my art blog).

You know you've relaxed when wearing jeans feels too formal. It's all about nuances of dagginess in tracksuit pants. There's the good ones that haven't stretched much yet for Being in Public days, the worn in ones looking baggy around the back bits for Cold and Rainys, and then there's the painting ones... holey and colourful. Yep, love those trackies.

Alright, better save a few things for Vicki to say, bye for now,

Marnie