An AMAZING Tale from Two Islands!!

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 1/50^th 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.  

 Whidbey Island Ferry

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. 

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

Back on Whidbey Island

We made our way back to Whidbey Island from Tasmania via Indiana, New York City and Camden, Maine.  It’s so nice to be back on my own familiar bit of America – the rest all feels pretty foreign but this island is my other “home”.  Even the rain feels familiar, although it would be a lot less thrilling if I’d been living with it for the past 9 months and wasn’t anticipating the arrival of summer after July 4^th as is so often the case in the Pacific Northwest.

Coyote Lake

I was so happy to see my pig Isabel and she was happy to see me and the leftover gingerbread that I brought her from our Christmas in Tasmania.  When we lived on Whidbey we always had a tradition of building a very big, imperfect gingerbread house that the family all decorated with abandon, then ate for a while before giving the leftovers to Izzy after the holidays were over.  

There was a lot of gingerbread last year, and  after a while we started to suspect that the possum that occasionally comes in through the cat door had been chowing down on it which is a good excuse to throw it away, but not nearly as satisfying as feeding it to an appreciative pig.  Although the wallabies and pademelons that spend every night in our yard, mowing the lawn (much to my husband’s delight) would happily eat it, it’s not good for them, so most of it ends up in the garbage.  But I always save a big bagful for Izzy so she knows we were thinking of her.  My kids all roll their eyes at this but I swear she knows!

Izzy outside our apartment

After weeks of being on the road I’m enjoying being at my own little apartment and settling in to my own tiny kitchen.   Apart from seeing Izzy and catching up with friends, my favourite activity is wandering the property on a sunny evening, wineglass in hand, marveling at how much the trees we planted have grown.  There is nothing like planting trees to give you a sense of time and place.  Or adding a few flowers to pots to make it feel like summer, even if it’s a short one.  Or eating Screaming Banshee bread dipped in oil and balsamic vinegar to remind you that you really are back on Whidbey.

 I also think that I like that overgrown, wild garden look for now and it’s not yet time to think about weeding.  Instead I make lists, and then anticipate one of the most exciting aspects of my return to the island.   There is a movie showing at the Clyde that, by some miracle, in spite of watching five whole movies on the flight over, I haven’t seen!  Not only that, it’s raining, which eliminates that summer dilemma: you want to go to the Clyde, but the movie starts during the shank of the evening when the sun is casting long shadows over the wildlife pond, which is almost impossible to tear yourself away from…but sunshine is forecast for tomorrow, so it's perfect!

Thanks for listening. 

(see www.islandtimetours.net.au or the Clyde Theater website for more information on why the Clyde is so special)