Wanderlust

Sometimes I want to be alone and do passive things. At other times I want to do active things in the company of others. I think these two combinations (passive while alone and active in company) are ones with which we are most familiar. But then there are also passive in company and active while alone. The former is things like sitting silently in the company of loved ones just whiling away the time. The latter is what I have been in the mood for a lot in recent weeks. I am yet to properly sate this desire however.

I want to walk paths I have never walked and turn corners to see things I have never seen. Even if it is just a neighbourhood I have never visited. I have half a mind to go jump on a V-Line bus to some secluded town and get a room at the local inn just for the heck of it. Normally if I felt this way I would then start suggesting particular friends consider getting together to go away for a few days. But this time dammit I may just do it all by my lonesome. That way I can set my own pace and do my own thing. There is just one problem with all of this - the wintery months.

It is cold and frequently wet and that tends to disuade me from my inclination to go walkabout. Winter puts a dampner on almost everything. There is one thing that may still work however.

Port Campbell is a small township on the southern coast west of Melbourne (close to the Twelve Apostles). It is very much a tourist town now but its tiny windswept inlet facing open ocean puts me in mind of the smugglers coves in old tales. It is the kind of location that looks and feels right this season. Standing on the local jetty while waves that have rolled in directly from Antarctica (allow me some poetic licence) wash below my feet is a thrilling and sobering experience. I went there over a year ago with friends (six of us in two cars) and we stayed in one bunk room at the local youth hostel. I might however get a fuller sense of the locale if I went there alone. I can get a coach there one day and return ride the next day.

Of course now I have put this on my blog I will feel as if I have made a commitment to the world to go and do this rather than just contemplate it. Others will now ask me "so been to Port Campbell yet?"

Update

Bugger. I have just visited the V-Line site and the coach to Port Campbell only operates Fridays. In other words I can stay there for a week or not at all. It takes me back to the days of my conducting of a long-distance relationship between Melbourne and a tiny town. How the rural kids can cope at all is a wonder to me. Can I delete this post in its entirity now?

Another Update

It is three or four months on from this post and I have since had some chances to get away from the big city and its attendent suburbs. There was one rehearsal camp but that is barely getting away from it in the sense that one is transported door-to-door from home to the campsite and then stuck there the whole time rehearsing. It is fun but hardly getting to experience much of another locale.

However just this week past I had a wonderful weekend date in the picturesque and bigger-than-expected township of Warragul. Walks and restaurant food and a movie all during a warm crisp Spring weekend. I even got some party propaganda letterboxing into the old town during some time alone.