Home in Tasmania again

Spring daffodils in September

I dropped the ball on this blog for a while and, in picking it up again have found it to be bigger and much more noticeable, like a bright, shiny new basketball that bounces enthusiastically with resilience and zest. 

After a northern hemisphere summer spent at my Whidbey island home, (one of the most beautiful summers Washington state has ever seen) I have arrived back to a green, lush Tasmania that is buzzing with anticipation of a tourist season that promises to be one of the best ever. 

Log cabins in the bush

The secret is out; the one we have been telling people about in the USA for the past 20 years.  The Tourist Information Centre in Hobart (www.hobarttravelcentre.com.au) where I work part-time, is already bustling with activity, both in person and via email and phone calls.

Mainlander Aussies (and people from all over the world) have found out that Tasmania is the place to visit, especially in the summer.  While they are burning up in the scorching desert heat west of the great dividing range, or sweltering through a tropical summer in northern Queensland, Tasmanians will be experiencing one of our uniquely refreshing summers  – mild, sunny and dry for the most part, with every other possible combination of weather added in, but rarely the sweltering heat of mainland Australia. 

Bush daffodils

As I tell people in the USA who comment on the fact that I never spend a winter anywhere, with my seasonal rotation through spring, summer and autumn in Tassie, then summer in the USA, I get plenty of winter experiences in Tasmania in the time I’m here (snow on Mt. Wellington right behind my house a few days ago is a case in point!)

It’s lovely to be home, with the fresh smell of eucalyptus forest in my back yard, the wallabies hopping away from the lights of my car when I arrive home after dark, and kookaburras laughing raucously at the sight of me hanging out the washing, as if they get the joke -  that just because the sun is shining at this moment, it’ll probably be pissing with rain 10 minutes from now!

I took a friend out to our bush property about an hour from Hobart yesterday and the sun stayed with us most of the day, along with a gentle wind and occasional clouds blowing through.  The daffodils were still out, an incongruous sight in a bushland that feels like it’s hundreds of miles from anywhere, and I was reminded again of why I love this place so much – it is the silence.  Apart from the wind and the occasional call of native birds, the overwhelming feeling is one of peace and stillness – an undeniable call to pay attention to the natural world that is so often forgotten when one’s head is buried in a mobile device that suddenly seems terribly important, even though I just lived without one for 4 months and my world didn’t end. 

I will always remember waking up one morning in the "big cabin", and as I drifted up to consciousness I was vaguely aware of an unfamiliar sound.  As I became more alert I realized what it was – in the morning stillness I could actually hear the sound of my own heartbeat. 

Now I’m back in my office with the view of the city and harbor in the distance that will soon be bustling with waterfront festivals and the arrival of a record number of cruise ships.  The ferocious winds blowing down from Mt Wellington and the sulphur-crested cockatoos in the morning are a more noisy reminder of Nature’s presence in this wild and wonderful island place.

It’s good to be home.

Cheers,

Rosie

Christmas Traditions - gingerbread houses and potbellied pigs

The post below appeared as a guest post on Communicating Across Boundaries, a blog from Boston, Mass. USA.  Marilyn invited posts about Christmas Traditions - many thanks to her for sharing this with her readers.

Profile tour photo

Christmas in Australia is quite different than in the northern Hemisphere.  When I was a kid I loved that it came at the beginning of the summer so when the excitement of the holiday season died down you still had the whole summer vacation to look forward to, plus the summer weather meant you could actually ride the bike you may have received!

With 7 siblings and no extended family, we had to create our own Christmas traditions that included singing carols around the piano, Christmas crackers and party hats, big lunches of fresh green salads and cold ham and special local “pinkeye potatoes“, family photos, and a softball game at the local football oval.  This all happened after going to church to sing and listen to the choir, but then “sneaking” out (as only a family of 9 can do) before the sermon. The one time we stayed it was about people who only go to church on special occasions!

One of our very imperfect gingerbread houses

When I married an American and moved to the USA there were times when my heart ached for a Tasmanian family Christmas.  For several years I yearned for those old traditions, but as my kids got older I came to cherish our little family of five and our quiet, peaceful Christmases at home, with no other family dynamics.   And when we started our annual Christmas carolling party at our home on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, the mild ache of not having my sisters and my brothers’ wives to sing the descant in “O Come all ye Faithful’ was mitigated by having a local musical genius from New Zealand playing the piano just like my father did, as well as knowing the Downunder version of “Away in a Manger’.

One day when the kids were quite young I read about a great gingerbread recipe in the Seattle Times and so began my very favourite tradition that endures to this day.  I make a huge gingerbread house, complete with windows made of Jolly Ranchers (as much I love and prefer Australian “lollies” I’ve yet to find ones that melt perfectly to make beautiful stained glass windows).

The only rule is that everyone gets to do their own thing with their part of the house and no one is allowed to complain.  That includes comments about the gummy bears on the roof with toothpick spears sticking out of them, courtesy of our son.  Last year’s had an “occupy the North Pole” igloo, thanks to our oldest daughter and, from our other daughter, perfectly laid out flowers around the windows of what inevitably (and ironically) is a church every year, since we discovered the stained glass windows.

A happy and well-fed Izzy the Pig!

After several days or weeks of eating the gingerbread house till it becomes a sad wreck that looks like a survivor of a bomb attack, the part I used to enjoy the most was feeding the remains to my beloved pot-belly pig Isabel. She was appreciative in a way that only a 300 lb pig can be, and when we moved back to Australia I wanted her to know that we were carrying on the tradition and hadn’t forgotten her.  

So, even though she can’t be with us when we make the house, I now have a new tradition – I pack up a huge doubled bagged heap of the remains and present them to her every summer when we return to our property.  She is always very pleased to see me when I come back, even though she is loved and cared for by the people who rent our house, but she is even more pleased to see the gift that I carry 7,000 miles in my luggage to let her know that I miss her.

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

Hobart - one of the top 10 cities in the world!

The Hobart Waterfront

Lonely Planet has put Tasmania on the world map by ranking Hobart one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit – not bad for a city of just 200,000 people.  I hear from people every day about how wonderful Tasmania is and how they wish they had planned to spend more time here, but what really put us on the map was the genius and generosity of one man and his vision. 

Downtown Hobart - GPO

MONA The Museum of Old and New Art is the largest private art collection in the southern hemisphere.  David Walsh is a very successful businessman who made his fortune as a professional gambler and grew up in a dodgy neighbourhood near the promontory where his $80 million creation sits on the edge of the River Derwent.  The project is completely independent and privately funded, with no involvement of government funding, boards of directors or non-profit status – it is truly this man’s personal vision and he happens to be pretty eccentric.  

MONA contains a huge range of classic, unusual, controversial and sometimes confronting works of art.  The centrepiece is "Snake" by Sidney Nolan, a work that is so huge it has only once been displayed before but now has a permanent home at MONA.  The most controversial, disliked and yet most-viewed work is commonly known as the “poo machine,” a work well-sealed behind glass that displays the whole process of what happens to food when it is consumed and then finally emerges at the end into a toilet displayed at eye level.

View of Hobart from the top of Mt Wellington

For the first year, entry to MONA was free and it still is for locals who can prove their status by showing either a drivers license or evidence that they have two heads (a standard joke about Tasmanians from mainlanders who are becoming more and more annoyed with us, the traditional “poor cousins” of Australia!)  

I remember when MONA first opened less than two years ago there was huge excitement in the community that had watched this creation literally rise up out of the waters of the Derwent River.  Rumours flew that all sorts of A-listers and VIPs were going to be part of the celebration - word was that David Bowie and Mick Jagger were going to fly in for the occasion. 

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery on Hobart's waterfront.

What actually happened was that the typical VIPs and local players and heavies were made to wait in line for the free food and wine just like everyone else, and the press from mainland Australia who were all poised to deliver a scathing dismissal of this annoying little event in the backwater of Hobart, were shocked when David Walsh didn’t even bother making a statement to them.  His statement was in the welcoming atmosphere and stunning setting of his creation, with his VIPs and guests of honour being the tradesmen and workers who worked for years to bring his creation to life.  Several hundred random locals who had won a spot at the event in a lottery sat on bean bag chairs with everyone else and mixed it up in a true vision of humanity being what it is supposed to be – inclusive, welcoming, and accepting of everyone, even a kid from the dodgy side of town who rose up like his creation and stayed true to himself.

And now MONA’s being compared to the Guggenheim, but when people come  

to Tasmania to see it they will also be stunned by the diversity of history and culture,
world-class cuisine, wine and whisky that this little state also offers.

For people who venture out of Hobart there are some of the most pristine wilderness regions on the planet, small friendly villages, unique convict heritage, and world-class festivals and theatre and other art.  Oh, and the cleanest air and water in the world…

 

So thanks, Lonely Planet, and David Walsh of MONA for putting this magical little island on the map.  And for people reading this ... come and see us - Izzy the bus knows the way to all the special places here, and our “authentic, unhurried” philosophy at Island Time Tours is perfectly suited to this special island at the bottom of the world.   

Thanks for listening.....

Rosie