A Tasmanian journey - PacificEdge

Lost in the highlands

It was in 1978, after a late night start and very little sleep, that a search party set out on Tasmania's Central Plateau looking for a missing boy...

Figure in a landscape—walking the Tasmanian high country

Solitude and reverence for the mountains experienced on a solo walk along the Overland Track in the Spring of 1980 is tinged with a sense that the journey is also a saying farewell to the beloved high country...

To the summit, one last time

It was a grand weekend adventure to climb Mt Anne but, unknown to the climbers, it was to be their last as a group of friends...

Home from the mountains— a stopover in Ouse

I remember her then. Checked wool shirt of the kind favored by bushwalkers and outdoor types. Warm wool trousers, dull khaki in colour. Petite wire framed glasses balanced on a delicate nose. Blonde hair tied back I'm bunches. Chunky leather boots. Pack on back...

Going to Launceston? Just don’t breathe too deep

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.

City in memory

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...

Misadventure on the way to the Walls

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.

Just a minor incident

Tasmania, the late 1970s. UP AND UP. Through a dark, wet forest of towering trees. Along a rough track that never saw the work of a maintenance gang. Squishing through muddy patches, slowing as we climb the steeper sections. All familiar stuff to mountain walkers.

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