It was towards the end of 2012. My husband was in Melbourne taking care of our sick daughter. I was left at home in Tasmania and had the chance to take a young former student to Bruny Island. Bruny Island is named after a Frenchman, Bruny D'entrecasteaux, from Aix-en-Provence (he died in 1793. It is a magical little island in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel south of Hobart, Tasmania. It features two islands, joined by an isthmus where there is a lookout up a high dune, reached by a long series of steps. The island is reached by a ferry from Kettering, about 40 minutes drive south of Hobart. The island features fairy penguins, mutton-birds (shearwaters, or yolla, to the aboriginal people) which fly from the northern hemisphere and breed in Tasmanian coastal areas, black swans, and white beaches. It is the end of the earth in a place which is at the end of the earth in some ways. It is gorgeous. Adventure Bay is a place our family used to go together as punctuations when some-one was leaving to go away for a time. We loved to fossick in the rock pools. The day this visit occured, there was a high tide which made the rock pools inaccessible, so I could only photograph the kelp and weeds from other advantage points. I found no abalone shells washed up, that trip. Our daughter Maya was always the best at finding stray abalone shells at the high-tide mark. She always found the best! Maya has since died (in April,breast cancer, at 29) and I will always miss her, especially when we go rock-hopping around the coast.