Saw our first kangaroos whilst walking in Mount Ainslie Nature Reserve this afternoon. Also a brief encounter with a lone cockatoo. Maybe a duck-billed platypus tomorrow?!
Author / canddaway
Flag number three
Great to be with friends in Canberra (yet more ginger biscuits. Hurrah!)
The indigenous art in the National Gallery was soul-stirringly wonderful this morning.
We feel ready to set off and find that elusive kangaroo!
Leaving & arriving
We passed close by this island somewhere in the Pacific between leaving Fiji and spying the east coast of Australia.
In Fiji time everything slows down and it seems easy to live more fully in the present moment. A gift of a week. Vinaka – thanks.
Veseisei village
This village is believed to be the landing site of the first Fijians to the island.
The current chief of the district uses the thatched Bure to transact the community affairs. This open space is used for community gatherings and is respected by all including the children who play elsewhere.
Bounty Island
A fast boat to walk, snorkel and fish off this beautiful island.
The tropical fish we saw were absolutely astounding; an array of colour, shape and size . . . including a shark!
In Paradisium!
Second flag
The flag was due to change on 10 October 2015. Most Fijians we talk to don’t want a new flag. As far as we know the change has not taken place.
Bula!
We have arrived in Fiji. We spent the first day here slowing down to Fiji time, walking the beach, reading, watching the bird and fish life and enjoying a different rhythm of being.
The Fijians are kindly, friendly folk. Their greeting of ‘bula’ goes beyond the simple ‘hello’ and incorporates a spirit which literally means ‘life!’
Words for a traveller
‘Smile, breathe and go slowly.’
(Tich Nhat Hanh)
Impressionists
SAM, Seattle Art Museum, is holding an exhibition of French Impressionists. This wonderful Odilon Redon painting ‘ Breton Village’, circa 1890, is imbued with a transparency of light.
Many thanks to SAM’s for allowing photography, a great help to those of us who need images to help us remember.
Panama Hotel
We stayed in the Panama Hotel in Seattle’s International District which was built in 1910. The hotel contains the last remaining Japanese bathhouse (sento), in its original site, in the United States. The image above is of the hotel’s cafe situated directly over the bath house.
We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island from where the first Japanese in the USA were interned in 1942.
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