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| Bruny Island |
My sister-in-law called me on Sunday afternoon from Bruny Island, which is a gorgeous little island off the coast of Tasmania, amazingly similar
in size and shape to Whidbey Island but with about 1/50th the
population – just 600 year round residents.
Our family has a “shack” (beach cabin) over there and my sister-in-law
and my brother were returning from a hot, sunny weekend with my mother and
their son. They had just missed the ferry,
so decided to walk over to the café by the ferry dock, which they almost
never do. There they met a man and his
wife who had been visiting the island on a motorcycle. In the course of the conversation, it turned out
that the couple was from Washington; not just Washington but Whidbey Island, and not just Whidbey Island but Clinton, the same rural area where
we live on Whidbey. Not only that, he
knew who I was because he’d eaten “Rosie’s potatoes” at Bayview Farmers Market
where I had had my food concession trailer, “Rosie’s Tucker Wagon” for 10 years.
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| Whidbey Island Ferry |
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| Our Whidbey neighborhood |
We made phone contact, and they were leaving town the next
day to head to Port Arthur and then up the east coast, where they were going to
meet another Whidbey Island fan - Kate from Kate’s Berry Farm in Swansea (see upcoming post).
Before they left, they stopped in to
visit me in Hobart and we found out that not only do
they live in the Clinton area but we are actually neighbours - they live less than two miles from our place
on the island!! In such a small place you
would think our paths would have crossed somewhere closer to home than the Farmers
Market, or that we wouldn't have to travel to, literally, the other side of the world to meet
each other! We only had a few moments to
chat before I had to prepare for the arrival of a big cruise ship, but we
exchanged information. Actually, I gave them my Island Time Tours business
card, and they mentioned how I could find them in the little Whidbey Island
phone book and we made plans to meet get together on the island next summer.
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| Songlines connecting! |
My daughter swears that there’s the equivalent of an
aboriginal “songline” between our two islands, invisible lines that connect and
interweave two significant places on the earth.
I can’t help but think she’s right!
Thanks for listening…
Rosie
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