May 9th, 2008
Beautiful Bright
A few people along the way had told us, “Oh, you should go and visit a place called Bright in the autumn, it’s just divine”. Well, there’s no question, it is, and we made a special detour to get there.
Given that we’d missed the good old British frigid winter for 07/08 we were, kind of, looking forward to the upcoming Australian chilly winter, though it’s not really that chilly is it to be honest? I mean this IS Australia and it mostly doesn’t get below 10 degrees. But the further south we now travel, the colder it is going to get. And Bright is a lovely quaint town that eased us into the new season.
We were just simply in awe of the colour of the leaves as we arrived in to town and would have caused a traffic jam had there actually been any cars on the road. We had arrived into yet another peaceful town where you can crawl along the streets and it be seen as normal behaviour, not something to be pulled over by the Police for.
Reds, yellows, browns, greens. But they’re not the normal shades; with the warm sun we had they were vivid, glowing and shimmering. And yes, Bright, is a word one could use to describe them too, ho,ho,ho. The kinds of colours you’d expect to find in Canada, or Scotland. Or England for that matter – all of these trees had been imported by the European settlers back in the late eighteen hundreds so perhaps the reason we liked this place was it’s familiarity.
We met a couple of super ladies, Helen and Rosemary, who had met up for a girly break together and shared a yarn with them over a wine in the early evening.
Not only is Bright pretty but it’s culturally advanced. Well, it’s not actually. But we took ourselves off to the local community centre that evening to listen to the choir sing theme tunes from popular films, just because it was on. I don’t really know why, it was one of those things you think you ought to do back at home but never get round to doing. It was entertaining. But I wouldn’t call it pleasing. Not quite in tune, and not really in synch. The men were just awful and some of the girls self-conscious, although one girl was very enthusiastic but that just became distracting. And then there was an embarrassing bit where one of the choir surprises the conductrice (who was actually very good) and her husband, who it turns out was the pianist, and interviewed them. Cringe.
We also did another community thing and, dragging Rosemary along with us, went to the History Tour of the town the next morning (with guess who as the tour guide? One of the choir girls). Really it was just an excuse to stroll around town and gawp at the beautiful leaves some more. It might also have had something to do with the free tea and scones afterwards?
Overall, it was all so lovely and quaint you just couldn’t help falling in love with the place. So if you’re ever in Victoria, you should go and visit a place called Bright in the autumn, it’s just divine.