Whether its seals or seagulls, in cities, people and animals coexist and both can come out the better for the relationships they develop…

CAUGHT BETWEEN rapacious extractive industry on one hand and the sublime beauty of nature on the other, Tasmania remains a paradox in the Australian political landscape. Now, there’s something else to add to the offshore contradiction that is this southern island state – Launceston’s air. Launceston is a small city of around 70,000 that spills  Read more »

It was late on a cold Friday evening when I dropped into Desire bookshop. Cars’ headlights had been turned on and clusters of commuters, hands thrust deep into pockets and heads bowed, scurried homeward along the Corso from the ferry wharf. The day was drawing to a close and a chilling wind was blowing in  Read more »

I’VE JUST FINISHED reading Johnson Dean’s Shooting the Franklin — early canoeing on Tasmania’s wild rivers, and have come away with a feeling of great admiration for those early adventurers who made hazardous voyages into what was literally the unknown. Curiously, I came across Dean’s book while in Tasmania during December of 2008. I was  Read more »

We inhabit our own geographies… geographies formed by patterns of movement from home to work, from home to our recreational haunts or to the homes of friends. But geographies remembered and real do not always accord…

Vignettes of Launceston, a small city on a wide muddy river where the past collides with the future and distant views trigger memories…

Tasmania, some time in the 1970s. CLAAAANG! Someone slams the car door and the party sets off into the early evening gloom of the rainforest. A short slope leads  from the forestry road to the Fish River. Here is the first challenge. The river is perhaps 10 metres wide and too deep to wade, even  Read more »