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.
Read MoreIT 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 […]
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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.
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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...
Read MoreTasmania, 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.
Read MorePERHAPS I DIDN’T KNOW how to enjoy hardship. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. Perhaps the authors of those adventure books I had read were misrepresenting the experience.
Read MoreTasmania, 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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