Rain pelts our bedroom windows through the night and we wake to a light drizzle. Thankfully, our seventeenth bed on this trip — yes, you read that number right — is firm and comfortable and we have a lazy morning. Toward noon, Cynthia goes to the Salamanca Market — it specializes in selling artisan gins and honeys, and she has a salmon and trout sausage sandwich for lunch —while David stays home, drinking coffee and catching up on the blog … and thoroughly enjoys being alone.

The rain lets up but the sky stays a leaden gray. In the late afternoon, we prepare smoked salmon, our signature caper-mayo spread, and a variety of olives and cheeses, and put the finishing touches on the bourguignon while we wait for Stephen and Maureen to arrive.

They arrive and Cynthia and Maureen squeal with delight and wrap each other up in their arms while Stephen and I shake hands like civilized people. It’s been 34 years for the two gals. The last time they were together, Maureen was visiting us and helped us move out of our apartment on “I” Street and into our first home on Veazey Street.

We make cocktails; we put on some jazz; we learn about each others’ lives and childrens’ lives and decide to take a constitutional before dinner. David discovers that he’s lost his camera. Not lost it in the house. Lost it somewhere NOT in the house … yesterday. It’s not just the value of the camera — after all, David the Destroyer of iPhones is a practiced hand at running up serious expenses — it’s the loss of the chip with every photo he’s taken to date during this trip that tears at us.

David says “Go. Take your walk. I’m gonna hunt for my camera.” But we can… Cynthia says. “Just go,” David snarls in anger at himself and frustration at the unfairness of life … right on the knife-edge of rage and despair. They leave.

David goes to the liquor store a few blocks away where the same fellow who recommended a Tasmanian bubbly for Cynthia smiles in recognition but shakes his head when asked if, by chance — “par hazard” runs through the mind — a small black camera in a case was left yesterday.

David goes around the corner to the Salamanca Market and practically attacks the first young woman he sees who wears the store’s candy-striped uniform. “I’m hoping I left a camera in a small black case here yesterday. Would you know if it’s here?”

“I can ask downstairs,” she says, moving to the cash register, which she opens, removes the camera and, with a look of surprise and wonder, hands it over.

David feels like Chief Dan George in Little Big Man. “My heart soars like a hawk.” He thanks the amazed youngster profusely and runs out the door, around the corner, down the street and catches up with Stephen, Maureen and Cynthia. We walk in the narrow streets of Battery Point to St. George’s Anglican church whose massive thick columns support a massive, thick bell tower with a massive thick cross that rises above all the very well appointed houses around it.

We meander back to the apartment for dinner and Stephen shows David pictures of the Celtic lap harps — and some larger — that he makes and sells. They are beautiful, hand tooled and constructed with five kinds of wood. Stephen, of Danish extraction with curly white-ish blonde hair, uses tools his grandfather, a carriage-maker at the turn of the last century, has passed down to him.

Another extraordinarily lucky day in Tasmania.