Jeez... it's been too long between posts, and this is just one of about six posts or more that I need to get going since moving to the U.K. As you can expect, we've been traveling as much as we can (time and finances dependent) given our proximity to so many amazing places in relative arms reach, and after hearing how epic the Lake District was meant to be we set off with some friends during the early spring for a long weekend away.
For this trip I packed the ever awesome X-T2, along with the battery grip, XF16mm and the XF50-140 for that compressed landscape imagery. I'm not gonna rant on how much I love my Fujifilm kit, you know I do and the X-T2 has been an incredible travel and work companion on numerous occasions. To me it's become an almost 'modular' camera system with how you can adapt the kit to suit certain needs, whether it's street shooting, professional wedding photography, or getting out into the wilderness. When it comes to the streets its lean as with the XF35mm, and when I need beef the added battery grip and the XF50-140mm are a high performance combo.
Ok... I ranted. On to the snaps.

Cheers - Mathieu

Well, it's been a bit longer than I'd like between posts but that's to be expected when getting ready to move countries. We're currently 'in-transit' with our move from Melbourne, Australia to our new home in Oxfordshire, U.K. enjoying a unique winter in Denver, Colorado, and the copious amount of food that comes in an average serving of food over here. Lord help me!

During November we were lucky to have one of our dearest friends from Brasil join us again for some travels in Australia; our first visitor from there who isn't family! As a little show of appreciation for her efforts to get down to Oz and see us we decided it'd be nice to take her down to Tasmania for a few days, and it was also a good excuse for us to see more of this wonderful part of Australia.

You may have seen an older post of mine here when we previously visited the south and central parts of Tasmania for my 30th birthday, where my wife gifted me the lovely XF16mm F1.4 from her, my friends and family. This time around we focused on checking out some parts of the north of Tasmania up in Launceston, Cradle Mountain, and Meander, as well as a few other spots. If you're someone who loves airbnb and plan to stay in Tasmania some time I cannot recommend strongly enough that you stay with Bodhi and Martin in Meander. They're just wonderful people to stay with and their immense property is full of adventures, one which I will talk about below!

As usual the Fujifilm kit came along for the ride including my new XF50-140 (still not sure if it suits me) and a recent acquisition of a tilt-adapter with an old Helios 55 F2, among many other parts of my kit. The X-T2 perfromed flawlessly throughout my travels of course ;)

So, let's just take a moment here to talk about how awesome it was staying at Bodhi and Martin's property in Meander. Aside from providing a beautiful homestead, expansive property to explore, facilities like a dojo and sauna, Martin also gave us private tours with one particular tour of his preserved old growth forest. Many years ago the native forest that their property backed onto was set to be cleared for logging, then planting of fast-growth trees for further logging and pulping for paper. Martin purchased a large portion of the forest that is abundant in native ferns, blackwood trees, oaks, and many other native flora and fauna in order to prevent this. Champion!

One night my wife discussed with Martin how she wanted to see the glow worms in a cave that was unfortunately flooded earlier in the year. With a little discussion Martin gave us a ripper story (you can go visit him to hear it) of how he came across some glow worms on his property in the old growth forest! Quick snap, we were off for a tour and before we knew it 4 of us were inside of a very large old tree looking up to a population of glow worms at sunset. MIND BLOWN! Our friend Sara was even luckier, as she got to bring a local critter back with her in the form of a leach on her ankle that was nice and fat after a 3 hour feed on her. Good times!