dumplinggirl

Over 12 months I watched the complete Sopranos season and made a real event of it whenever I found a spare weekend to do nothing but watch a whole series. Each Soprano weekend had to be dedicated to solid Soprano watching with no interruptions and of course needed to involve Italian food, pizza, pasta (I even made home made ravioli one weekend), risotto and Italian pastry, well mainly Canoli as I’m a big fan of Canoli, mmmmmmmmmm. Besides all those boxes of pastries they take to one another were making me hungry. If being a Mafia woman means you get a lot of pastry’s then count me in. Not sure about all that gratuitous violence. They really are a bunch of sociopaths, but very likable ones I will add.

I’ve always wanted to check out Cradle Mountain so in April 2008 I took my first trip to Tasmania so I could finally make my way to the much talked about National Park. I was totally taken by Tasmania, it is such a beautiful piece of the world, stunning views and cute little towns and some yummy bakeries along the way, always a bonus. The weather at Cradle Mountain is often unpredictable and when we made our way there, it was a tad cold and dreary looking, however we were fortunate to have some clear weather on the day we set out for our Cradle Mountain stroll and had stunning views of the panoramic vista. The trail to view Cradle Mountain was not really much of a challenge at all, will need to go back and do the complete Overland Track, along with some paddling in the Franklin or Freycinet and more eating at bakeries, mmmmmmmmmmm

I made a trip in 2008 to Mount Macedon in Victoria where Peter Weir filmed Joan Lindsay’s ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’. I saw this movie for the first time as a young adolescent and it totally spooked me out, for a short time I thought it was based on a true story as there is something about the Australian bush that is a bit eerie and I thought it was totally believable that some strange force could entrance a group of (silly) schoolgirls and they would be hard to find in a remote area covered with rock structures and bushland. However upon reaching Mount Macedon, I am now convinced that they had a fairly hopeless search party in that movie, it was not as large and vast as I had imagined in my own mind. The fact that it has toilets and a cafe and signs everywhere seemed to take away from the mystery of the place, but I have to say at the top of that rock, there is still some strange eerie energy. Or maybe the myth of Hanging Rock is the powerful force. Lovely piece of country to wander through. And it was great to re read the book before I went on my adventure.