There is something incredible about living in a city. Incredible in that you must live close to the hustle and bustle, within an arm’s reach of cappuccinos and French breadsticks and able to take a Saturday morning stroll downtown. There is something so incredible about it that every once in a while you are so ensconced in your lattes, apartment living and local, crazy man who screams at passers by, that you MUST drive your car as far away from it all that you can get.
When you feel that urge to just leave the city behind and drive to a place where all you see is rolling hills, horses and cows, and long grasses lit with magi hour sunlight give you heart palpitations. Yes, right now I am giddy at the thought of sun soaked grass. I need to get thee out of here.
We took a mini country bumpkin adventure to Bilpin, NSW last weekend. It was a bit of a failed adventure as the real reason behind it was slightly foiled due to thundery skies opening up above us in the middle of an apple orchard. Yes, we went apple picking and it didn’t exactly go the way I had hoped. I actually was dreaming of apple picking all week at work. It was the only thing that got me through. Knowing that on that Sunday, I could take my weary and worn cityfied body to the fresh, clean country air and really get back to nature by filling my hand made wooden bucket with juicy, red apples that I had picked myself.
Friends said I was nuts..”Why would you want to do that? That’s what supermarkets are for.” and “Do they pay you to pick them? You have to do the work and then you’ve got to pay for it? I don’t get it”.
I wanted to be one with the land, I wanted to get my own piece of country living, something so far removed from my life that it made me feel connected to something real again. So yes, we arrived at the orchard to discover it crawling with city folk just like us, to read a sign saying “No Apple Picking Today”, to then be told that we couldn’t pick apples (I had a quiet word with the farmer as he had emailed me earlier in the week to say we could pick apples), to then find apple trees bare and half eaten apples on the ground and to then have the heavens open up.
We didn’t buy one apple, I didn’t get the photographs I had needed and it was overall a rather large disappointment. I constantly create and imagine wonderful things in my head and they never turn out how I plan them. I should learn to aim a lot lower.
However, it isn’t enough, so Sean and I are driving to Melbourne for a few days. Great Ocean Road, here we come!
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On another exciting note, the lovely Suzanne of the fabulous and inspiring blog, S.HOPtalk, has featured me and my photography as her Blog of the week feature this week! There is such a beautiful write up about things I’ve been up to, so thank you so much Suzanne!
