Tas-MANIA

Cheap flights prompted a voyage across the seas on a 3 day excursion to our estranged state. No expectations were set, all of us content just to get away for a few days where all talk of school and work was declared disallowed. While a good part of the mini holiday was spent eating beautiful food and sipping Pinot, we did manage to persuade the struggling engine in our tiny hire car to show us a few of the sights. Our first trip was to the tip shop. Interesting concept, amazing outcome. The name is fairly self explanatory. The tip shop is a place where all of the treasures rummaged from the local tips come together and off themselves to the public for budget prices. Cheap trash? Who would've thought. While the tip shop would be great if you actually needed something obscure (new microwave plate, knight's helmet, new years eve float character etc etc) it also had a vast array of records, books, clothing and... pretty much anything else you can think of. The best part was that everything is grouped with other things of the same nature, so there is big piles of drawers, next to big piles of broken brooms and mops which sit behind a wall of soiled fake flowers that blocks the view down to where it appears a mothers group have left all their infants while they go for a browse around the store (but which is actually the place where all the prams which have ended up in the tip now reside). As is customary, I forgot my camera but managed to purchase an overpriced disposable on arrival. Unfortunately most of the photos of the tipshop bonanza are on my phone and at the moment I really can't dedicate time to figuring out how to transfer pictures from one device to another.



But Tasmania isn't just full of used garbage for sale. It is also has a tremendously beautiful landscape and coast. One afternoon we headed along the coast towards Point Arthur stopping intermittently for fresh air and views. Standing on the edge of the country looking out to a seemingly endless ocean seems to put things in perspective somehow. Silence is the only option to take in this sort of a view. Places like this make loneliness appealing. If only that sort of solitude was accessible closer to home, somewhere to escape to and make believe you are the only person left on earth. Sea breeze licking your cheeks, thundering of the waves below blocking out all other thought. Bliss.