Mother Nature, Bare Faced

Today was one of those wonderfully rainy wintery days where you just want to stay inside and make popcorn and watch movies in your fav hoodie and oldest jeans. Well that's what I wanted to do, so I did. It was so relaxing, I didn't even bother with makeup today. I know what you're thinking: Anarchist! But seriously, I rarely go out without at least a swipe of foundation and freshly applied lipgloss - not a pancake face which take shours to apply, just a little something that is probably not noticeable to anyone but me. I feel self conscious otherwise.

Anyway, late this afternoon the rain cleared and the sky turned a lighter shade of grey, so we thought we'd head to the Gorge to see the results of Mother Nature's furious downpour. For those of you not familiar with the Apple Isle, for one thing yes it is part of Australia and yes Australia Post do deliver here; and for another the Gorge is the most awesome local swimming place. It's totally free (except the carpark, but nobody pays for that anyway apart from tourists), 10 mins walk from the CBD, and honestly a spectacular setting for whiling away long summer days. In winter it's still amazing to look at but the main activity is watching the rapids. Lately it's been bucketing down, and the river flowing through the Gorge has flooded in a spectacular way, creating oodles of frothy rapids and rising to such a point that half the city turned out this afternoon to look at the after effects of the weekend's rain. And, as always happens when you're out in your daggiest clothes and bare faced, you run into loads of people you know *cringe*.

This is what the Gorge usually looks like:

The bridge in the background swings quite scarily, making it fun to jump on, there are two safe pools there in the middle, though they must've photoshopped out the teens who usually swim under the bridge and jump off the rocks depsite the warning signs; and in the right front corner you can just see a swing, which is a neat little playground. There's also a good cafe, gift shop, takeaway stand, restaurant, chair lift, peacocks who occassionally go wandering in the suburbs and lots of wallaby poo. But before this turns into an ad for Tourism Tas, here's what it looked like this afternoon:

The pics don't really do it justice. Yesterday the flooding completely covered the playground, and today there were big bits of driftwood lodged at the back. It's really very awesome, and the raw power of it quite chilling. Despite my reservations about uneven skin tone and mascara-less lashes, I'm pretty sure Mother Nature's bare face got far more amazed stares than mine garnered. At least I hope so, or I really need a new skincare regime.