Travel over country

Just back after a few days in sunny Adelaide. Yet another trip to South Australia where I see nothing but the airport and Henley Beach area. But am I complaining?
I arrived in the evening, laden with enormous lightweight luggage packed to the gunnels with plastics. VT picked me up and whisked me to her home, where before we had a cup of tea, the show was hung. Fast action. I was pretty happy with my decisions, and it felt nice to resolve the work in this way and see it realised.
Her 18 year old son, Harry played some awesome Hendrix, and sang a ballad he had written about the bush fires that I can only describe as wonderful and he should have it copyrighted.
In the morning we got up and headed straight to said beach where lolling in the gentleness was par for the course. Extreme beauty and relaxation. Breakfast at the kiosk on the beach was so delicious I kept feeling like Bo Derek on a good day, then back to the house/gallery where tedious labelling awaited me. Art can be so easy, it is the paperwork that is brain numbingly frustrating, but after hours I got it done. I realised why she was so keen to show these works, as she is a blue and white china lover, and I raided her cupboards for articles to place in a vitrine, in the space, as kind of reference materials. It looked good. Whilst raiding the cupboards I found a lovely blue and white sake bottle, and was holding it, and she said watch out,don't drop it, and it literally sprang from my hand and smashed on the floor. How typical! I still used the shards in the work, cataloguing the breakage as an act that intensifies the difference between china and plastics...but still feel terrible, have to find her a new one.
Had another swim in the afternoon, after completing the hard work, did some yoga in the backyard and just took it easy while waiting for the boys who were coming over to take me out for a quiet beer up the road. James Dodd's expert tatt. JD and his friend S came by and took me down the road to the Ramsgate, a beautiful old pub overlooking the jetty. We had dinner and sat outside and I watched the golden crescent moon descend in the sky. Feeling mellifluous after 3 beers, we parted ways and I went along the long jetty, it was dark and many fishers were throwing their crab pots into the water. So lovely, strolling in the warm wind, a bit drunk, and happy. I couldn't go straight home so I walked along the promenade for a while, passing only one person, a woman singing softly to herself on a bench.
The next day it was the same routine, early beach, breakfast then some chores. It was hot like an oven door opening and the afternoon saw more swimming. Divinely cleansed, VT took me back to the airport where I flew home.
But what I had wanted to write about was the plane journey; up in the air, on leaving Sydney I was glued to the window, as usual. Incredible beauty on such a grand scale, soaring at 36,000 feet, with the vastness of the country laid out for me. The glimmers of water in valleys and dams shining so bright, and the dark green rolling hills stretching as far as the eye can see. A few hundred miles later they start petering out, and becoming more brown and less densely forested. Occasionally a calligraphic swirl of a ridge on the flat plains, and then just land. Towards Adelaide, the hills rise up again, and the difference between cultivated land and that left untouched is so extreme, such a divide. So much more barren down here, so different. On the return journey, at night unfortunately, I got to enjoy the lack of lights on the country below. The captain announced that we would be flying over Canberra and I am craning to see what it looks like at night, but it was so small I thought it must be Goulburn or Yass, but they were even smaller.
PJ picked me up at the airport and it was lovely to get home and make some soba noodles and sit.