Touring the Colonies

 I reached out to my Tasmanian correspondent the other day something I am reluctant to do ever since the "unpleasantness". Still she was technically my employee (or at least she would be if I paid her anything) so I felt within my rights to get in touch.  She obviously had a different opinion around the entire "get in touch" scenario but after a great deal of effort I managed to coax her onto a video call.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Fine," she replied with that sort of studied neutrality that implies an awareness of impending disaster coupled with uncertainty about its direction.

And that's where things stopped.  Having gone through all the effort of getting in touch it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to have anything to say.  Suddenly inspiration struck.

"It's your birthday soon isn't it?' A look of pure horror crossed her face.

"No," she whispered, her voice a desperate plea.

"I might come down..."

"Dear god no!!"

"... and visit you."

"If you come anywhere near me..."

"I'll bring a present."

"I'll pick you up from the airport."

It is deep, dark Winter in Tasmania.  The days are short, the nights are cold and twisted creatures roam the howling wilderness seeking prey.  But enough of the Hobart night life.  I shall enjoy my correspondents hospitality (when she heard I was staying the night she was kind enough to insist I stay at a hotel) and will spend the days roaming the bush or the city or wherever else my correspondent abandons me as she makes her getaway.  I've bought return flights which in retrospect seems a little optimistic of me.

Tasmania has remote bushlands abounding in platypus and fungi and all of them (my correspondent assures me) unlikely to be disturbed should an interloping mainlander wind getting buried there.  Some of those remote bushlands are disturbingly close to my correspondent's home.  On an unrelated note she informs me she has recently purchased a new shovel "for gardening".  My correspondent expressed a hope that I would see a platypus which I thought was rather nice of her although I'm not sure why she felt obliged to add the words "one last time" to the end of that sentence.

So in a spirit of eagerness and trepidation I approach the weekend looking forward to when our nation's largest surviving airline shoves me into a metal tube and essentially throws me at Tasmania.  It's not enough that I have to survive my correspondent.  First I have to survive Qantas.