There was Perth

I went to the state of Western Australia for a week in early October for the Southern Hemisphere Felters Convergence. Just me. Flew to Perth for a couple days and then a 2 hour drive south to Bunbury. It's right along the left bottom edge of Australia where if you fell off, you'd have to swim to Africa and that's really far.

I've never been anywhere so beautiful in all my life. No disrespect to Rainbow Valley or the prairies of Illinois or a Virginia woodland in April; it was just prettier.

and I was all by myself which was great most of the time but hard by day 4 when I missed my baby and really hard when I took Cave Road and went into an enormous cave and had no one to point at things with.
I let the Indian Ocean lick my ankles. I wondered why no one was in the water but took it as good advice.
I was in Bunbury to make felt and learn about it and meet 150 other felters and see their gorgeous art. I got to live in a dorm at the Cathedral Grammar School with 7 other crazy broads.
I made friends and walked in woods and said I hoped I saw a possum before I left and one was outside my window the next morning.
It all worked and the spell hasn't broken yet. I'm creating and making notes of ideas and selling my work and stealing other ideas and enjoying it immensely.
I will take my men there in 2012 and I hope they love it as much.

PS I've left room for photos if I can ever access them. White sand, blue sky. Possum like a big-eyed, really soft cat in a tree. Pine forests underlain with white calla lilies and circled by screeching egrets, pelicans so big they could swallow a child, sunsets like crazy.