Tuesday morning continues our string of basically beautiful weather. After caffeinating we load David and Helen’s diesel Range Rover, get $225 of gas poured into its two tanks, and motor about three-plus hours to Sandy Point, a beautiful beach community with all of 200 houses secreted behind large dunes covered in forest-like scrub 200 meters from the waters of the Bass Straight. Tasmania over the horizon stage left.

We unload the car and prepare to take a walk up and over the forested dunes on a very narrow path when David (“W” for the next few days to distinguish him from Bartelby, your trusty scrivener) says, “Careful on the path. There’s a Tiger Snake on it but we’re not sure where its hole is yet.”

Helen says, “Aggressive, they are (she occasionally speaks like Yoda). You’re dead before you get to the hospital; so be watchful.”

We stare at them and they simply smile. W gets it and after a heartbeat says, “Yes. Yes. Very aggressive. They’re not scared of you.”

We walk under the Manna gum tree in their back yard — “Don’t see the koala right now but keep an eye up and he may come” — and start climbing the narrow, brush-enclosed path up the dunes.

We survive the twisting path to the long sandy beach and walk through seaweed and chat about life in general. W and Helen stayed with us in DC for two/three weeks about two years ago and it’s great to see them again. They are curly haired ex-hippies who have been teachers and political activists and collectors of interesting art.

We return to their batch (what summer or second homes are called in NZ but not in Oz) where W has stocked the proper fixings for a true Negroni (remembered from his stay in DC) and we sit and chat with them and with Jim Jennings and Jenni Doull (curly haired ex-hippies who have been teachers and political activists and sheep farmers and boat builders in Hong Kong).

This is a Big Chill weekend with a fire going in the Franklin-type stove in the large central room and we get our mellow going with several bottles of wine and a delicious dinner prepared by W and Helen while five crimson rosellas vie for the sunflower seeds we put out on the back deck’s railing.

Another day with good friends in Oz.