Break from Brunswick: Hobart

I grew up in Tasmania, on the North West Coast, in a small town called Penguin. Then we moved to Hobart, where I attended Hobart Matriculation College for one year and then went to University of Tasmania in 1972. I completed a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in German and Political Science and then did an Honours year in German. Then I left.
Re-visiting Hobart is like exploring past times, both my own and those of the island.

Some of the old Tasmanian myths are always on display, witness the exhibitions at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery: the Mawson Antarctic expedition and the thylacine. Two of Tassie's great claims to fame: proximity to the end of the earth (the South Pole) and a propensity to destruction and loss. At my friend's place, I have raided her bookcase and read Richard Flanagan's latest novel, "Wanting", a biting reworking of the Franklin and Lady Jane myths. Reality conspired with my reading and I discovered a beautiful shell necklace at the Antique Fair in the City Hall (I did not buy it) which led to some research on the indigenous art of making shell necklaces. The Marreiner shell necklaces are both a relic of the destroyed past and a living tradition, still carried on by contemporary Tasmanian indigenous artists. After a trip to the West Coast and a cruise of Macquarie Harbour and the infamous Sarah Island, which was one of the world’s biggest shipyards in the 1820s, I read Flanagan’s ”Gould’s book of Fish”. A surreal story, but it is about an incredibly savage time and place. One doesn’t know where reality ends and fantasy starts.

I have relished the wonderful bounty of natural food: we had a crayfish for New Year’s Eve dinner, sitting on my friend's balcony overlooking the Derwent River. We have bought cherries, raspberries, apricots, blueberries, pink eye potatoes and more at roadside stands and markets. We have enjoyed the many wines that are not available in Melbourne. Our holiday is one continuous "Taste of Tasmania".
I remember a vitriolic debate on television in the 1970s, between loggers and conservationists. One young logger stood up and shouted: "What do you want us to do for a living? Grow bloody raspberries?" Yes yes yes I say, grow those raspberries and leave the old growth forests alone. I like to think that man is now growing fruit or at least profitting from the nation's love for Tasmania's wild places and natural produce.

But the battle never ends. Even as I was relaxing on the balcony, Miranda Gibson was the latest activist to put herself between the old growth forests and the loggers. Fortunately she has internet access on top of the forest canopy. Check out the Observer Tree. Another Tasmanian story in the making.