Islander...

for Knots in the String...

I live on the island of Tasmania, one of the states of Australia. It’s far south, separated from the mainland continent by water and one can only get on or off the place by plane or sea ferry. Currently, the sea ferry is cancelled because there’s a severe weather warning out, brought on by La Ninã down the east coast of Australia. The planes are still flying, but we are what we’re meant to be just now – islanders.

There’s any number of words for that imply island: isola, isle, islet and my favourite - holm. It sounds like home.

Indeed…

Despite the idea that Google tells us an ‘Island mentality is the notion of isolated communities perceiving themselves as exceptional or superior to the rest of the world…’ I don’t see any type of superiority on my island. I think we believe we live in an exceptional place, but I think we’ve been the butt of so much sarcasm from the mainland of Australia for so long, we probably might have somewhat of an inferiority complex.

We bolster ourselves with names. International sportspeople like Richie Porte of Tour de France fame, cricket’s David Boone and Rickie Ponting. Or royals – Princess Consort Mary of Denmark, known as ‘Our Mary’. Actors – Simon Baker, Essie Davis, Errol Flynn and more. Dance choreographer – Graham Murphy. Sexual assault advocate, Grace Tame. There are dozens of others in many fields and it’s fair to say we bat above the average. But I’m pretty sure we’re not superior or arrogant about being what we are. People from a small rugged island of 541,000 people.

All the name fame aside, I love being an islander. I always feel that if worst comes to worst, as it did with Covid, we can pull up the metaphorical drawbridge and separate from the world. Not such a bad thing. There’s a comfort to it – a belief that it’s not just a safe little place but a place with pockets of precious beauty far from the madding crowd, but which in truth are perhaps less than an hour from the cities. There’s always a dirt road not too far away where one can pull up and listen to the sweetness of the bush while breathing its sharp astringence and where currently, streams trickle and chunter. There are hidden coves (yesterday we found Drippy Beach) that look south to the Antarctic. There are lighthouses perched on dolerite, where waves crash below in a never-ending suck and pull that is as awesome as it is dangerous. And for me, there are white deserted beaches that fulfil all my dreams of solitude.

When I fly away from the island, there’s always a pocket in my soul where homesickness lurks – a wistful yearning to be tucked up in my own island space. They call it ‘home woe’ or ‘home pain’ and in the many years I lived away from the island, I believed it was grief. The loss of my identity – ‘islander’. I would travel to a beach south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula and gaze over Bass Strait, feeling as if my umbilical cord was stretching across the water and keeping me tethered to my life-giving heart home. Sometimes, cranky at the world, I’d hear jets fly over on the way to the island and I’d mutter darkly, ‘Bastards!’

They say that Tasmanians always come home and it’s true. It’s an invisible pull - that umbilical cord I mentioned. I returned, and in their time so did my daughter and son – there’s many others who’ve done the same. Even Princess Mary comes home periodically. The jet lands on the short Hobart runway with a screech of brakes and a violent shove back into one’s seat, and when one pokes one’s head out the door, there’s a rush of the purest air, filled with the scent of eucalypt and the immensity of the Southern Ocean. The air fizzes through blood vessels like champagne. It’s enlivening and for a Tasmanian, reassuring.

There are times when it’s nice to know one is on an island, living with the sea all around and in the far reaches of the southern hemisphere. We might not be immune to the issues of the world, but we’re at least sequestered a little from the worst of them.

I count the blessings.

My time:

Masses of gardening to the point where the lower back has a twinge. B)

Ballet, two hours weekly and I feel I now have a moderate handle on the choreography. Also loved the adage we learned. Beautiful morning.

Walking, walking, walking with the terrier.

Some writing of The Mapmaker’s Scroll (affirming).

Yesterday away with husband and terrier, pootling along dirt roads around delightful Cygnet and Lymington.

Appeared on the international historical fiction podcast Rock Paper Swords which was such a thrill! (You can listen via Spotify-

Reading:

Postcards from a Stranger by Imogen Clark on Kindle. Not sure about this… perhaps not to my personal taste.

My print copy of Henry Beston’s The Outermost House has arrived. The poetic descriptions of his life in the sand dunes of Cape Cod just sings to me.

“From the moment that I rose in the morning and threw open my door looking toward the sea to the moment when the spurt of a match sounded in the evening quiet of my solitary house, there was always something to do, something to observe, something to record, something to study, something to put aside in a corner of the mind…” 

Sourcing legends for background for The Mapmaker’s Scroll. The legend of Heng-O, the Moon Goddess. She had a cameo in the last fantasy I wrote back in 2012 and was called The Moonlady. It’s a fascinating legend and with tweaking, I would enjoy weaving it through this latest narrative.

Listening:

Finished A Pocketful of Happiness. I hold this close to my heart and place Richard E. Grant and his wife, Joan Washington, on a pedestal.

Richard will be in Australia in November and I would love to fly to Melbourne to listen to him at Hamer Hall at the Arts Centre but we have tickets for another function on the north of our island that weekend. Honestly, we don’t often attend events so I was miffed when the two things collided.

The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Locke. An Audible freeby. When it began, I was a little concerned. A few weeks ago, I finished Holly Ringland’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart which in a nutshell is about a troubled young woman who finds herself in the Australian Outback. When this latest began, lo, it was about a troubled young woman who finds herself in the Australian Outback.

But I liked the premise of this story – an obstetrician with issues (I won’t give the story away) and who suffers vast and disabling panic disorder. Her journey with her little dachshund, Wasabi, is colourful, emotional, filled with light which perfectly balances the dark. It’s a good book, uncomplicated and straight forward and the narrative flows. Her characters are delightfully clichéd Australians but beautiful for that. And Wasabi is gorgeous! Five stars.

I’m off back to the coast (thank the stars) where I will pull on my islander coat, stand at the edge of the sea (which we’ve been told will have waves of up to 6 metres) and marvel that centuries of such battering has shaped our island into a heart.

Maybe that’s why Tasmanians love being islanders…