Big Day Out in Bairnsdale

Ambulance Opportunity? They sell those in Bairnsdale?

Marcus the Scottish Fold cat travels everywhere in a caravan with his doting staff. I spotted him through their annex window on my way back from the laundry and went over. Can I have a go of your cat? I asked. Marcus' staff were happy to tell me every detail of his life with them but I never got a pat of his velvety fur. Marcus was folded up in his soft bedding and carried back inside the van before I was able to get my hands on him. We do miss having a cat.

I'm into juxtaposing things.

We don't however, miss having a dog. Especially the kind of dog that laid a trap for David's boot in Paynesville. We can just picture its face as it did so. No doubt a deliberate trap for gawkers like us who come to Paynesville to look at the amazing Lake Victoria and the also amazing and luxurious canal houses built thereon, all with private jetties for the amazingly luxurious pleasure craft that rich people in this area all seem to own. It seems Paynesville is Mecca for the boat crowd, positioned as it is at the heart of the East Gippsland Lakes system, with access via lakes Entrance to the Bass Strait. Enough to give you the shits really.

Fort King Island, Paynesville, at dusk

Before the invention of the internal combustion engine, and our generation's brief and deluded dependence on fossil fuels, there was life in Bairnsdale which did not depend on petroleum products. This life is documented in the rather excellent Bairnsdale Historical Museum, a gentle bike ride away from our little home. We spent an educative two hours there this afternoon.

Kitchen/laundry stuff - this is a washing machine

These little museums are a delight. No curators or conservators trouble you while you touch and fiddle with the exhibits in perfect solitude. Nineteenth century life is vividly evoked in all its hardship and ordinariness. There was a room devoted to Crime. One, famously unsolved local double murder tops the bill. Two single men, one the landowner and the other his station hand were discovered shot, one in the back and one in the head. It seems the Brokeback Mountain explanation was not on anyone's agenda. but the retired psychologist and silver fox solved it straight away. A gay murder-suicide. No doubt whatsoever.

I love the expression on this little fellow's face.

In the evening, a bike ride to the Grand Terminus Hotel, at the recommendation of the Boroughs, for dinner out. Then some hours later another bike ride, very brisk, back home. But we survived. Can you be arrested for being drunk in charge of a bicycle, we wondered?