Tasmania-bound

Island cultures, island identities – and don’t forget the weather!

2011-10-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

There are dozens of things I love about doing a PhD – particularly since my topic is islands – specifically how artists on the islands of Newfoundland and Tasmania express their "islandness" through their art.

One of the perks is getting to travel to so many wonderful islands – mostly for meetings or conferences or to do my research, but sometimes for pleasure, too. Over the years I’ve noted that most of these islands have been cold-water islands: Iceland, the Faroes, and Åland; the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Herm; Bornholm in Denmark and Ven in Sweden; Kagoshima in Japan; and Tasmania and Bruny Island in Australia. And then there are those closer to my home island of Prince Edward Island: Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island – not to mention the island on which I spent many of growing-up years: Vancouver Island. But in recent years, I managed to find a few warm-water ones, such as Maui; Isla Mujeires and Isla Holbox, off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula; and Hamilton Island, in the Whitsunday Islands in North Queensland. The cold still outnumber the warm, but I keep dreaming. I think it's part of my conditioning that the warm-water islands seem so much more exotic than the cold, but are they really?

Isla Holbox, Mexico

All these islands have their different and distinctive attractions – but there are a few things – beyond the obvious water that surrounds them – that bind them together. Sometimes it’s difficult or expensive transportation links, isolation, or the insular nature of the island. Other times it’s jobs (or lack thereof), environmental concerns, or migration (mostly “out-“ but sometimes “in-“). Indeed, I first noticed the excitement generated by discovering shared traits of islandness at my first island studies conference, “An Island Living,” which we organized at the Institute of Island Studies back in 1992. The 50-some delegates didn’t stop talking from the time we picked them up at the airport until the time we dropped them off. It’s still the same. Usually the conversation begins with comments about the weather, with the conclusion: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” And it goes from there.

Two weeks ago I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, attending NorthAtlantic Forum 2011, a biennial conference that focuses on economic development and governance issues of North Atlantic islands. (And it rained most of the time, but at least it didn't snow!) Hosted by the North Atlantic Forum (which is based out of the Leslie Harris Centre for Regional Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland), the national Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF), Cruise Newfoundland and Labrador, and Memorial University, this year’s NAF had the added sponsorship of the Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI) – which looks at comparative island cultural studies. The theme of the conference was “Culture, Place and Identity at the Heart of Regional Development.”

Over a hundred delegates came from all over Newfoundland and Labrador, various regions of Canada, as well as Iceland, Denmark, and Tasmania. They included academics and business people, civil servants and rural development practitioners, and artists and musicians. At the heart of the discussion was how to keep our distinctive (mostly island) cultures dynamic in an increasingly globalized world, and how to share those cultures with tourists without ruining what made them special to begin with.

The keynote speaker who generated perhaps the most buzz was Zita Cobb, a native of Joe Batt's Arm on Fogo Island, off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. Zita did what many young Newfoundlanders do: she left for central Canada to get her education and find work, but ended up one of Canada's wealthiest women after leaving a top post at the fibre optic company JDS Uniphase.

Zita Cobb

A multimillionaire, she has now returned to her home to create Shorefast, a registered charity that encourages economic growth and revitalization in Fogo and Change Islands. Shorefast takes its name from the line and mooring used to attach a cod trap to the shore, and “is a strong symbol of the cod fishing heritage of the islands and a metaphor for being bound to place and community.” Zita believes in the power of authentic connections between individuals and their communities, culture, and physical place. She noted that many people suffer from a profound sense of disorientation, having lost meaningful connection to the natural world. Through “geotourism” – tourism that connects with the earth – and by supporting arts and culture by creating such offerings as international artistic residencies in purpose-built studios and an eco-friendly inn with art gallery, she hopes to create a place where, “if ever you feel lost in this world, you go there and you’re instantly found.” Zita Cobb’s efforts have not been without their detractors, but she is the first to admit that she’s continuing to learn about doing things at “the right scale, and the right speed.”

Midway through the conference, Godfrey Baldacchino, Canada Research Chair in Island Studies – and never one to mince words – did a reality check by talking about the pitfalls of place, culture, and identity, taking particular aim at the practice of “place-branding” by asking some searching questions.

Godfrey Baldacchino

Why, for example, are people leaving their place? Why are those most passionate about their place the CFAs or come-from-aways, or those who have left and returned? Why do we malign “the tourist gaze,” yet we construct cultural tourism products and package them for the tourist? Why, if we’re so concerned about the effects of global warming, do we want tourists to travel to us? Why do we encourage everyone to “buy local,” yet we export our goods and expect others to buy them? Why, when we are saddened by our own population decline, do we encourage newcomers, but we don’t question when they’ve left their loved ones behind? And where are the Aboriginal voices in all these discussions? Suddenly people started thinking about their presentations differently – and the final hours of the conference were dedicated to some solid brainstorming about how to be true to place, culture, and identity without sacrificing our integrity.

And, after listening to several presentations about strategies to attract refugees from the city – usually upper-income retirees – by citing quality of life, psychic renewal, and “belonging” in stunningly beautiful rural areas (e.g., Newfoundland’s Fogo Island), I ask: is there a danger that “place” will become the luxury domain of only the very rich?

Hard questions, yes, but ones that even now I ponder as, two weeks on, I find myself on what is almost an island – and a warm-water island at that: a little village called Puerto Morelos just south of Cancun on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. I say “almost an island” because the town is bounded by the turquoise waters of the Caribbean to the east and a government-protected biosphere of mangrove swamps to the north, west, and south – only passable via a three-kilometre stretch of road from the village to the main highway that runs along the Yucatan’s east coast. And occasionally the road becomes impassable when the mangroves flood, making it a 100 per cent island.

Puerto Morelos

We came for the first time last year and fell in love with the small-town feel of a working port that’s been brushed by tourism – unlike the overcrowded and over-indulgent tourist meccas of Cancun’s hotel strip to the north and Playa del Carmen’s Fifth Avenue to the south, and the luxury all-inclusive resorts that are popping up like mushrooms after rain on Isla Mujeres, Cozumel, and along what was in 1999 branded the “Mayan Riviera.”


Isla Mujeres ("Island of the Women")

Mayan ruins at Ek-Balam

Swimming in a cenote

Whereas some towns in the area showcase Mayan culture through folk dance and music, or offer guided tours to the ruins and cenotes, Puerto Morelos just is what it is: fishing boats tie up to posts along the sugary-soft white-sand beach, with mostly Mayan men alternating between fishing for a living and taking tourists out to snorkel on the second-largest coral reef in the world.

Puerto Morelos

A testament to weather...

Young and old whoop with delight when they catch a particularly big fish off the public pier – because they now know what’s for supper. Children walk home for lunch in their school uniforms and play hide-and-seek in the town square in the evening. A dull-sounding bell calls people to church on Friday night. Dozens of friendly and healthy-looking dogs roam the streets – some with collars but more without. Restaurants showcasing authentic dishes from all over Mexico – Acapulco, Guadalajara, Mexico City – featuring rice and beans and hot sauce, and lots and lots of fish – sit alongside David Lau’s Gourmet Chinese and Pizza. Vegetable markets and butcher shops across the highway at La Colonia is where you do your shopping. On the collectivos over and back to La Colonia you bump into farm workers and fisherfolk, locals and ex-pats, and young women and men on their way to and from work at the resorts that bookend the town, all the while passing air-conditioned tour buses carrying tourists to and from the airport or other tourist attractions – but rarely into the village.

El Cid Resort, south of Puerto Morelos

I’m selfish enough to hope it never changes, but at the same time I’d love to be able to organize my life so I could live here for six months of the year, thus contributing to what would seem to be inevitable. Here in this coastal paradise, it’s even more apparent: is place, culture, and identity a luxury that only the rich can afford? Or is this place resilient enough to hold onto what’s important while still benefiting from people who like it as much as I do?

And then there’s the weather…

We were here only three days before hearing about Hurricane Rina. On Monday morning, October 24, it was going to be a tropical storm. On Tuesday morning they were forecasting a Category 1 hurricane; and by the evening it was up to a Category 3. Wednesday it went back down to a 1, and by Thursday, when it hit, it was a tropical storm again. But all along the beach, and throughout the town, people boarded up their windows, brought in extra water and food, hauled out their boats, and generally prepared for the worst. They'd even evacuated the 3,000 residents of Isla Holbox, where we'd been just last year...

Ready for Rina

The massive sound and light show went on for hours; the rain bucketed and the winds whiplashed the palms. Always one to enjoy a good snowstorm at home, I was excited to see what it would be like – and I wasn’t disappointed. In the end, I was glad it was “just” a tropical storm…

But in the way of small places the world over, on the Friday-morning-after we were walking downtown, surveying the damage – which was pretty much non-existent – when we saw some guys with a TV camera. One of them asked, “Are you by any chance Canadian?”

(l-r) David Agren, CTV's Tom Walters, Brad (the cameraman) and Mike

We ended up on CTV news (October 28, 2011, part 3), one of Canada's leading national broadcasters, being interviewed by Los Angeles Bureau Chief Tom Walters about what it was like to be here during the storm. Only on an (almost) small island would we end up on national TV talking about the weather…

Singing Jane's praises

2011-10-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

Last year at this time I was in Tasmania.

I remember it well: the last weekend in September was the Grand Final - where I experienced my first Australian Rules Football championship match, and all the passions that went with it when St. Kilda tied with Collingwood in the last few seconds of the game. Collingwood went on to demolish St. Kilda team the following weekend, much to the dismay of many of my Tasmanian friends. And I just heard this year's result: Collingwood lost to Geelong - much to the delight of those whose credo is "anyone but Collingwood!"

On October 1, 2010, I travelled the Midland Highway to Launceston, in the centre of Tasmania, with friends Ralph Wessman, Jane Williams, and Emily Kelly where we attended the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, described in last year's blog post.

Now I find myself doing similar things on the opposite side of the planet. There was no Grand Final, but I was privileged to be part of the Pen and Inkling Festival in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Organized by the PEI Writers' Guild as part of Charlottetown's 2011 Cultural Capitals designation, the festival featured author readings, workshops, a gala dance, and the 24th annual Island Literary Awards, where dozens of prizes were handed out to islanders of all ages and stages of their careers.

On the Festival's opening night, I was asked to introduce one of my favourite authors, Newfoundland's Wayne Johnston, who was one of the writers whose work I explored for my master's thesis: "'The Circumscribed Geography of Home': Island Identity in the Fiction of Wayne Johnston and Alistair MacLeod." Wayne was on tour with his latest book, A World Elsewhere. I read it and it's hilarious... I recommend it highly. But don't just take my word for it: here's what The Globe and Mail has to say. Unfortunately, Wayne was in a bit of pain for his reading, having broken his toe in St. John's the day before. But despite this, he had the hundred or so audience members in stitches with his droll humour, consummate storytelling, and spot-on imitations of John Crosbie, former Canadian fisheries minister from St. John's. I'm looking forward to interviewing Wayne for my PhD research later in November.

Wayne Johnston

The final event of the Literary Awards is always the Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Arts on Prince Edward Island. This year I had the honour of writing the citation and presenting the award to Jane Ledwell. Here's what I said.

Jane Ledwell

Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts on Prince Edward Island 2011

If you grew up with your dad’s words ringing in your ears, “Never do anything practical when you can do something creative,” how would you have turned out?

Writer, editor, reader, music and art and pop culture aficionado, fiercely passionate Islander and supporter of what’s fair and just in the world, and, most importantly, friend… Jane Ledwell is all this and more.

Jane Ledwell tells me of her earliest memories of me: out-to-here pregnant with my first child, Heather, in 1985 – probably at some writing event, maybe at the Faculty Lounge at UPEI, maybe at the first ever Island Literary Awards, where she’d accompanied her dad, writer and UPEI professor Frank Ledwell. She was just a teenager and probably embarrassed because Jane’s mom was pregnant, too, with her youngest brother, Christian.

A few years later I remember her dad proudly showing me something she wrote – a gorgeous poem about making bread. She may have written it while she was away doing her BA in English at Mount Allison University or her master’s at Waikato University in New Zealand – where she was homesick as anything – but it evoked the feeling of family that has been her touchstone throughout her life.

Jane is the oldest child of six growing up with mom Carolyn and dad Frank on the Loyalist Road, along with Patrick, Thomas, Emily, Danny, and Christian. She talks about being a geek in school, in love with the trumpet section at Bluefield High School and listening to The Police while carrying Sting’s love-child.

I got to know her when she came to work as Conference co-ordinator at the Institute of Island Studies, working on “Message in a Bottle: The Literature of Small Islands.” She went on to succeed Harry Baglole as Institute Director before becoming a researcher and policy analyst at the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women, where she still works. She and I co-edited, with Frank, the conference proceedings, called Message in a Bottle, published in 2000.

I REALLY got to know her when we were band mates in KissinGord, a five-woman music ensemble specializing in Canadian-American-lesbian-feminist-indie folksongs, where she played guitar and sang lead and fantastic harmonies with Sasha Mullally, Janice Ployer, Shannon Hartigan, and me – all of us having worked at the Institute at one time or another. Jane always made sure band practice included wine and baked goods. Jane was the first of us to write her own songs, including “Five Days of Weeping” and “Island,” which Tasmanian Pete Hay says is one of the finest songs ever written about Prince Edward Island; he quotes it often: “Here I stand, here I stay. Among my family and my mistakes. And the people and land have long memories. And forgiveness is slow, but it’s on its way.” We also sang side-by-side in the Holy Redeemer Choir alto section for many years.

Jane was my right-hand person at The Acorn Press from pretty much the beginning in the mid-1990s up until I sold it last summer to Terrilee Bulger. Along with her dad, she helped with manuscript selection; she gave great feedback on grant applications, and edited several Acorn books – rarely for money, but just to get the experience.

Here’s what a few of those authors had to say…

FROM DIANNE HICKS MORROW, author of Long Reach Home, Kindred Spirits, and What Really Happened Is This: Jane inherited her father's diplomacy -- the nicest way of making you see the wisdom of her words. She has profound insight into what makes a poem tick, or bomb! I've never seen anyone else able to hold the lines of a poem in her head, with no printed copy to look at, only hearing workshop participants read aloud, just once. She did this repeatedly in her three-hour workshop on "where to turn the line" in poetry! Now that's one amazing brain!

FROM BETH JANZEN, author of The Enchanted House:

Jane was respectful, insightful, intelligent, and wise. I think she spoiled me by being so good! She is a real gift to the Island’s writing community.

FROM MARGIE CARMICHAEL, author of And Her Name Is: Stories from the Quilt: Jane’s poet's eye can spot the essence of the piece, but she also has an acute sense of hearing what is not being said in a writer's work, and is gifted in extracting what is missing. She pulled out the best out of me, teaching me so much.

FROM CATHERINE EDWARD: author of The Brow of Dawn: Jane reads the middle and all around the edges. She sees what one meant to say but didn’t; what one did say but could do better. How pleased one is to fix these things. How excited and relieved and honoured. How does she do that? I want to know what her mother Carolyn fed all those little Ledwells for breakfast... it’s seems to be a family thing, this portioning of genius.

FROM KATHLEEN HAMILTON, author of Sex After Baby: Why There Is None: Having Jane Ledwell as your editor is like putting on a tailored suit. She makes you look smarter than you are.

Jane always amazes me with the power of her pen. She writes quickly and elegantly, churning out documents such as the proposal for a Master of Arts in Island Studies (which has changed my life immeasurably); briefs to Standing Committees; letters to the editor – always demonstrating her strong appreciation for the value of using the written word to interpret Prince Edward Island to Islanders. Her creative writing has brought her prizes in the PEI Literary Awards, and BOTH poetry and short story categories in 2001 in the Atlantic Writing Competition. She has been published in anthologies and broadcast on CBC Radio, and is author of Last Tomato, published in 2005 by Acorn Press, which was a finalist for the Prince Edward Island Book Award.

Jane was a researcher, publication co-ordinator, and writer of the literary section for First Hand: Arts, Crafts, and Culture Created byPEI Women of the 20th Century, a public history project featuring Island women's creative works, and created by the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women and PEI Interministerial Women's Secretariat to celebrate women's history at the turn of the millennium. I still find myself referring to it in my own work.

Jane continues to write, edit and publish: indeed, she just finished an essay about Elaine Harrison, soon to be released in an exhibition catalogue co-published by Confederation Centre of the Arts and Acorn Press. And she has agreed to edit my poetry book. I mean, after all the fantastic feedback I got about her editing prowess from my authors, how could I not go to her?

She is also doing artistic collaborations with her husband, artist Stephen McInnis. You may have seen them with their most recent in Rochford Square in August: they were the creators of “The Rumour Mill,” a gossip-powered human machine for generating poetry out of tourism. It was one of the hits of “Art in the Open," part of This Town is Small.

But I leave mentioning her perhaps most important job til last: being mom to Anna, aged 5, and Sam, aged 2. One of the best revenges a mother can have on her child is for that child to grow up and have a child just like she was. Well, Carolyn can correct me if I’m wrong, but I hear Anna is just like Jane was. For example, I understand that she insisted from the age of two that her parents read her the REAL Anne of Green Gables, and NOT the baby version. I just wonder if Sam will grow up refusing to play board games like his Uncle Patrick…

I’ll leave you with some of her words echoing in your ears: from her poem, “Why I stay”: “because I have already crushed too much stone to red dust / under my feet and I wear all this sand on my tongue.”

It seems only fitting that we should honour Jane today; coming full circle celebrating the accomplishments of the daughter of Frank Ledwell, the first recipient in 1985 of the Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts on Prince Edward Island. He’d be proud of Jane, just like her mom Carolyn and family members and all her authors and friends - including me! - are today.

I present to you Jane Ledwell, the 2011 recipient of the Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts on Prince Edward Island.

Follow the Yellow Boat Road

2011-08-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

In April I had the privilege of spending a few days with Michaye Boulter and her family – husband Rob Pennicott and children Maya and Noah – at their magnificent house on Bruny Island (for more photos, see an earlier blog post, Abalone for Tea). Michaye is a Tasmanian visual artist who has impeccable Prince Edward Island credentials. Her father, Charlie Boulter, was a Prince Edward Islander who, in his youth, travelled to Australia, where he met and married Irene from Alberta. After building a boat and sailing from Brisbane to British Columbia, then through the Panama Canal to New Brunswick, with their daughters Michaye and Jeanette, they eventually settled in Tasmania. I met Michaye through her aunt, my friend and renowned batik artist Sylvia Ridgway, who lives with her husband Bill in Victoria-by-the-sea, Prince Edward Island. Michaye’s PEI cousins include my fellow Charlottetonians: the Ridgways – Greg and Jennifer (Jennifer runs Moonsnail Soapworks) – and the McCardles – Darcy and Shawn.

Michaye remembers vividly the weeks and months spent daydreaming on the boat – memories that continue to inspire her painting. She very kindly agreed to be one of my interview subjects and we spent a couple hours with my tape recorder in her studio at the Salamanca Arts Centre. I’m looking forward to writing up what she had to say about how her “islandness” comes through in her art, and incorporating it into my PhD thesis.

Michaye Boulter, her paintings, and me at the Handmark Gallery in Hobart

But today I want to bring your attention to an initiative of Rob’s – Follow the Yellow Boat Road – which he enthusiastically told me about on that weekend back in April. In an effort to raise money for Rotary International (along with Bill and Melinda Gates) to eradicate polio from the planet, he and his long-time Bruny Island Cruise fellow skipper Mick Souter set out from Sydney May 31 on a fundraising campaign, circumnavigating Australia in two 18-foot motorized yellow dinghies. The trip will total 12,000 nautical miles. They’re scheduled to arrive back in Sydney September 2.

Documenting the trip is videographer Zorro Gamarnik, who is providing an amazing and inspiring record of the journey. Zorro’s videos are fabulous – giving a rare opportunity to see Australia’s amazing coastline and meet some of the fabulous people who are helping them along the way. (The logistics - fuel, food, and accommodation wherever possible – have been an amazing feat alone – not to mention making the videos onboard a tiny boat and finding an Internet connection to post them!) I’ve been keeping track of the trip through Zorro’s videos on Facebook and through Rob’s website: http://follow.theyellowboatroad.com. But as the crew comes down to the crunch, I'm compelled to use these inter-island connections to help spread the word to whoever will listen!

Tuna-fishing off Bruny Island with Rob and family

To date the crew has raised $144,330 – 92% of which goes to polio eradication and 8% to the Pennicott Foundation for environmental conservation. In addition to the “donate” button on the website, they’ve been auctioning off spots on the boat for the various legs of the journey. So far the highest bid was for the leg from Port Gregory to Geraldton, bringing in $3,000. The next highest is for one of the Tasmanian legs – Strahan to Hobart on August 23 – which is now sitting at $1,500.

If you donate over $10 AU, you’re eligible for a draw for two people to travel on the final leg from Uladulla to Sydney (estimated to be Friday, September 2). This will include flights from anywhere in the world, along with two nights’ accommodation and a five-day holiday in Tasmania. (If you enter the competition, $10 of your donation is not tax deductible as this is your entry into the competition.)

Noah and Rob

Michaye and Maya

Needless to say, I’ve donated… I mean, how often does one get a chance to donate to a worthy cause, hang out with Rob Pennicott on a boat for a day, AND get to travel to Tasmania? (Actually, now that I think about it, I've done it, and can attest to how great all three are!)

For more details, check out Follow the Yellow Boat Road. And if you’re on Facebook, be sure to “like” what they’re doing – Zorro’s videos are worth the click alone!

Rob and Michaye

The blood of so many tongues

2011-08-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

My friends Claire and Julea and I spent the best day of summer so far – August 1 – baking on the beach at St. Peter’s Harbour, one of the few strips of sandy coastline along Prince Edward Island’s North Shore that isn’t part of PEI National Park. We were sitting with a woman whose name was in the news last week: summer resident Joan Butcher, who had been interviewed about a construction project taking place in the dunes between her cottage subdivision – a former farmer’s field – and the beach. Someone was digging into the dune, ripping apart the base of it to make way for a summer cottage.

When I heard the story – first through Facebook and then on the CBC news – I was shocked and appalled – then saddened at yet another example of the stupidity and arrogance of humankind. I wasn’t alone – others who care about the fragile ecosystem that is this glorified sandbar expressed their outrage, too. (Be sure to check out some of the comments below the CBC News story.) Especially when it was reported that the owner planned to put the sand back when he was done. Doesn’t this person know anything about dune systems? Has he never read the interpretation signs on any of the National Park beaches? Does he not know why we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building boardwalks to take people over the dunes so we don’t destabilize them with our incessant urge to make destructive pathways through them? Does he not realize that the dunes, the beach, and the million-dollar view from his soon-to-be-cottage won’t be there if the marram grass holding the dunes in place is destroyed? Doesn’t he care? Is it one of those classic cases where he thought it was better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission? Or is it yet again about the money, or maybe the centuries-old and centuries-tired argument: “It’s my land and I can do whatever the hell I want with it”?

In their investigation, the media reported that the powers-that-be cited “proper channels” and “grandfathering” – because the lot-owner – who remained nameless – had kept active a building permit issued BEFORE there was legislation protecting our precious dune systems. Government lawyers said there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. There’d be no fines, no rap on the knuckles, no nothing. And because this is a small island, where everyone keeps their mouths shut, he probably won’t even be ostracized for it.

We asked Joan if she knew who this person was. She did. When she said his name I was absolutely mortified to learn that I KNOW – and LIKE – this person. I KNOW – and LIKE – his wife and children and members of his extended family. His mother-in-law is a well-respected former politician whose good works, among other things, include protecting the Island’s land and environment. I thought about what I would say if I bumped into any of them. And I came to the sad realization: probably nothing.

This is a part of island living that gives islands a bad rap. Most of the time I feel happy and secure being an integral part of what historian Ed MacDonald calls a "kinship web." But this example is the downside to everyone knowing everyone else’s business. It’s insular. Parochial. Small-minded. In the face of possible confrontation, we shut down. We close ranks. Let’s face it: too many of us are afraid to rock the boat for fear that someone might not like us. And god forbid that we hurt anyone else’s feelings.

My friend Pete Hay, a feisty poet, academic, and environmentalist from Tasmania, has commented that Prince Edward Islanders are too nice when compared with his fellow islanders. He knows families and communities in Tasmania who have been ripped apart over environmental issues such as land use, forestry practices, and pulp mill construction. They publicly argue with one another, and then they spend the rest of their lives openly criticizing or studiously ignoring one another. Like painter Christopher Pratt when he talks about his island of Newfoundland, “Nobody apologizes for hating anybody here.” Pete won’t come right out and say that we PE Islanders are too nice for our own good, but I will. You’ll notice that I haven’t even named the guy, even though his identity is an open secret around PEI’s water coolers (and I’ve given some pretty darn good hints here, too).

But it’s also an island thing that we only have so much land to begin with. And if we keep destroying the dunes and beaches that protect it, we’ll have even less. No million-dollar view, and probably no cottage either: a couple winters from now and a wild storm could wash it away. It’s easy to say we’ll all be dead before global warming and sea-level-rise claim our beloved island. It’s easy to pass the buck – and our mistakes – on to the next generation. But an island isn’t like other places – if we keep destroying what’s taken centuries to build, there’ll be no island left to pass on at all.

Two of the things that this island has gotten right are the Island Nature Trust, established in 1979 and dedicated to protecting and managing natural areas on Prince Edward Island, and the L. M. Montgomery Land Trust, created in 1994 to “preserve the scenic agricultural coastal lands on Prince Edward Island’s north shore.” Both charitable non-profit Trusts raise money to purchase land in order to protect it. In particular, the L. M. Montgomery Land Trust purchases land from farmers whose “RRSP” or “registered retirement savings plan” is their land – subdivided and sold for big bucks as building lots. (And the irony of Joan’s summer cottage is not lost on me: the Trust wasn’t in existence back when her cottage subdivision was created.) This way, when the Trust buys the land at fair market value, a covenant is put on it so it can’t be developed. Often it’s leased to another farmer who keeps it in agricultural production. It is a way of protecting our most precious resource – the iconic working landscape that we know and love, and which keeps tourists coming back year after year. After this debacle, I have renewed respect for their work, and when I’m no longer a poor PhD student, I’ll be donating money to both their causes.

So our August afternoon at the beach was punctuated by kids climbing up and sliding down the dunes, some on their butts, others on boogie boards. We couldn’t help but marvel at one young fellow doing backflips off the highest dune – he was talented all right, but didn’t he realize the damage he was doing? We wanted to just shake a dad when we saw him hauling his toddler daughter up the dune so she could slide back down… fine role model, that. Joan told us about their efforts over the years to educate the residents of their subdivision on the fragility of the dunes, and about the signs that they’d carefully paint and put up, only to find them torn down and in pieces the next day.

So futile. But Joan is not so jaded that she doesn’t still get angry. After she told us the name of the dune-destroyer, she said, “I wish I knew where he lived. I’d take a front end loader to his foundation.” I almost said, “I know where he lives.” But I looked at my friend Claire and she looked at me, and neither one of us said a thing.

In the words of one of our best-known storytellers, David Weale, Island soil is red from the blood of so many tongues being bitten.

Scrubbed

2011-07-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

It’s been four weeks since we landed on Prince Edward Island – which was 28 years to the day since I first set foot on this island and planted my flag declaring “home.”

On June 23, 1983, how could I be so certain? I who had lived all those other places: first Ontario, then British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, then again in Ontario then back to BC, then the Yukon, then Ontario again (21 schools under age 21)… before finally turning left instead of right on the TransCanada Highway and ending up on Prince Edward Island by accident. How, at age 24, could I know this island was home?

All those thoughts wended their circuitous way through my brain as we made our slow descent under a sky that had been scrubbed clean. The short flight from Montreal brought us along the North Shore where we could see New London Bay and the seemingly precarious spit of sand separating the bay from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I tried in vain to pick out Elaine and Allan Hammond’s summer cottage at Stanley Bridge, knowing they’d probably be there by now, meaning that summer could officially begin… We followed the fingernail of beach, bright white sand edging polished blue, before turning inland at Brackley Beach and over ochre-red fields so freshly plowed they looked like they’d been swept just for us.

Through the haze of exhaustion, and the beginnings of a hangover (those three rounds of margaritas in LA where we had an amazing Mexican supper with Thane and Carol were exacting their revenge), the end of our 40-some hours of travel was in sight.

We’d begun in Katoomba the previous morning, taking the train into Sydney, collecting two of my bags that I’d shipped by Greyhound from Hobart, and catching the shuttle out to the airport. At our snowy dinner the night before, we’d had our first inkling from a fellow diner that the Chilean ash cloud was wreaking havoc yet again on its second pass around the world. And the buzz on the train was confirmed when we saw the newspaper headlines at the bus terminal screaming “20,000 stranded in Sydney.” When we arrived at the airport, our fears were confirmed: our flight, which was supposed to come in from LA, had been cancelled. Fortunately, the wonderful folks at United (I’ll never again play “United Breaks Guitars” onYouTube) were able to book us on a Qantas flight only three hours later. They apologized to Mike that they couldn’t promise the vegetarian meal he’d requested. No worries, mate…

On the flight from Sydney I had even managed to get a bit of sleep – actually for eight of those fifteen hours – and I slept so soundly and so still that the woman next to me said she had to check every couple hours to make sure I was breathing. (Thank you, Sir Atavan!) We barely had time to make our connection in Montreal, but our bags – all FOUR of them – mercifully kept pace. We got home, eventually found the keys inside one of the bags, and collapsed. We are definitely looking forward to the day when “Beam me up, Scotty” isn’t just a TV show on reruns.

In these intervening weeks since I’ve been back, I’ve been acclimatizing to the new routine. I didn’t dare drive until the jet lag passed about two weeks ago: my brain was still wired for driving on the left-hand side of the road all those months. Even now the windshield wipers invariably go swish-swish when I signal a turn.

I’m back to my early-morning walks around Victoria Park, remembering how it looked when I was home at Christmastime and being thankful for my 29th Island summer.

I’m seeing familiar faces from last summer: the two 20-something sisters who run together every day – they MUST be basketball players, they’re so tall; the bleached-blond suntanned woman with her three poofy slipper dogs and her black SUV; the dressed-up woman striding purposefully to work in her sneakers, shoebag firmly in hand. Edging the boardwalk is Charlottetown Harbour, rising and falling in the same old way.

I’ve been to the Farmers’ Market where my faithful coffee cup, purchased in the summer of 1993 when my girls were a particularly whiny seven and three, was waiting for me on top of the cappuccino machine.

I’ve been to the Churchill for trivia and two-for-one curry night (chicken korma, half-and-half) and a few pints of Rickards Red.

I’ve gone for a bike ride along the North Shore, and hung out on Victoria Row with friends.

I’ve answered lots of questions about how Tanzania and New Zealand were. I think I’ve met everyone who knew I was away, with variations on a theme: “Tasmania was fantastic – SUCH a great experience.” “No, I’m not moving to Newfoundland.” “Yes, I plan to go back.” “No, I don’t have to go back to work right now.”

I’m not homesick for this Island anymore. But what HAS surprised me is that I’m missing Tasmania so much: Monday cake day in the Geography tea room, coffee in Sandy Bay with Millie and Anna and Catherine, my meetings with Pete and trips to Bruny with him and Anna, Maddie and Harry and Denbeigh and Stewart, hearing about snow on the mountain…

Is it disloyal to feel this strongly about TWO islands? Or is it just part of the human condition to always be looking back, to never be satisfied with what you have?

* * *

The first week we were home we felt like Charlottetown was putting on the dog just for us. First it was Canada Day July 1, with fireworks and concerts and a general party atmosphere celebrating the country’s 144^th birthday. But, ironically, it was all just a warm-up for the REAL celebration: the Royal Visit July 2-4. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Will and Kate, had people camping out overnight just up the street to get the best view of the newlyweds on historic Great George Street… complete with the RCMP on trusty black steeds riding shotgun. I know that THIS household was more than a little relieved when all the helicopters were gone, and we could get inside our door without having to beg our way through the barricades.

Their visit seemed like a bookend to my arrival 28 years ago, when the City scrubbed up for me the first time… or maybe it was for that other Royal Couple, Prince Charles and Lady Di…

Mike’s excellent adventure down under

2011-06-21T03:36:00.000-07:00

My trip under down under is coming to an end. Now I’m just down under, on what Tasmanians call the mainland.

My sweetie has come to fetch me home… but before we get on the plane tomorrow, I want to find out what he thinks about this place on the other side of the world…We're in the Brasserie in Katoomba, drinking James Squires Amber Ale, then across the street in Cafe Zuppa, eating delicious vegetarian food for the third night in a row... I mean, why mess with a good thing?

LB. Tell me three things you knew or thought about Australia before you came.

MM. 1. That Ayer’s Rock - or, as it’s called now, Uluru - was the place that everyone was supposed to go to. But you told me early on that it was too far for this trip since it’s miles and miles and miles from nowhere. Well, except Alice Springs, and even then it’s 300 kilometres to Uluru. Plus it costs a whack of dough to get there.

2. That I wanted to see the Opera House and Sydney Harbour and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and I also wanted to find out where one of my favourite TV shows was filmed, and that’s not Skippy the Bush Kangaroo or The Flying Doctors – but… wait for it… Water Rats! I kept looking for someone the right age to ask… Turns out I had to check it out on Wikipedia. Some episodes were filmed on Goat Island, which we passed on the ferry to Manly Beach.

3. That I expected two kinds of characters: Crocodile Dundee or a California-surfer dude.

4. Until I met you, I never even realized that Tasmania was part of Australia.

LB. How did those preconceptions work for you, Mike?

MM. Those stereotypes came back to boomerang me in the ass. I didn’t meet Crocodile Dundee or a surfer. I met artists and historians and ordinary people. These people are not unlike… home.

LB. What do you mean?

MM. Melbourne was like Montreal. Sydney was like Toronto and Vancouver. Hobart was like Halifax.

LB. So do you feel like you got your money’s worth?

MM. Absolutely. Since almost the first moment I stepped off the plane, I stopped thinking about how much it cost to get here. It’s not a terrible thing to learn that Australia is like a lot of places on the planet. The similarities aren’t so disappointing. There were still enough unique experiences that put the commonalities in perspective. But as soon as we left Melbourne or Sydney, and came to places like Airlie Beach or Katoomba, we found something distinctive.

One of the things that’s been great about the trip has been learning about its history, in comparison to that of our own colonization, or of the Spanish in Mexico, Central and South America. What came as a surprise was the relatively short history of colonization and development, compared with other British colonies. Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1534… as opposed to 1770 or so when Cook visited Adventure Bay in Tasmania. European contact at home came over 200 years before it did here.

The uniqueness is in the people’s histories – they’ve come up with the same types of societies… As early as the 1950s, Sydney was a backwater. The site of the Sydney Opera House was the tram garage. If you use urban centres as a measure, our societies have evolved very similarly, except they were on fast forward compared to ours.

I found it surprising that the convict story plays such a huge part in people’s memories here. I didn’t expect that.

And then there’s the Aboriginal story – their treatment echoes any colonizer’s attitude or mindset toward first peoples. We did it in Canada; they did it here. We’re still dealing with it in Canada; they’re still dealing with it here.

LB. What underwhelmed you?

MM The wildlife. I didn’t see ONE kangaroo, or ONE wallaby. I think I saw a possum. I saw some cockatoos and a white-breasted sae eagle in the Whitsunday Islands, and one gigantic Huntsman spider in the closet at Airlie Beach… no snakes… I never even came close to seeing a crocodile!

LB. Tell me three things that stood out for you on this trip.

MM. Only three? Okay. How easy it was to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Except every time I went to use the signal light I’d hit the windshield washer.

My heretofore ignorance of the country: how little I actually knew about Australia. I could have read up on it before I left, but it took coming here to really know it. Plus Bill Bryson’s excellent book, In a Sunburned Country… and a novel called The Roving Party by a young Tasmanian, Rohan Wilson – which I bought at a reading in Hobart after he won the Vogel Award… and the non-fiction Van Diemen’s Land, James Boyce’s award-winning history of the island – which went hand in hand with the fiction.

There were some moments like when I was stuck in noisy traffic or in a crowded bar in Sydney, when I think: I came halfway round the world for this? I could have stayed home and experienced the same thing. But then something would happen.

Like having lunch on the rooftop of the oldest bar in Sydney, with the Opera House and Bridge a silent backdrop…

Yesterday spent in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, overlooking Jamison Valley from the first cable car ride in my life…

The field trip before the conference, when we visited Hook Island and the cave of the Ngaro People, followed by snorkeling off Whitsunday Island then a picnic on Whitehaven Beach…

Singing, with the most spectacular sunset backdrop imaginable, at Airlie Beach…

Sitting around Peter MacFie’s kitchen table in Richmond, eating potato and leek soup and trading songs, before having our own personally guided tour of Port Arthur with Peter – who had been the historian who developed the site’s interpretation…

Sunset on top of Mt. Wellington, overlooking Hobart Town…

A most memorable day spent on Bruny Island…

LB. So, on your last night in Australia, is there anything else you’d like to add?

MM. Yeah. It snowed.

Leaving by boat

2011-06-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

It’s a given that coming to an island by plane is different than sailing to one. Crossing the water, seeing the island slowly fill your field of vision – dots on the land growing into houses, docks, cars, trees, people. You drive or step off the boat, feeling like you’ve had a brief respite from your life – and if you’ve managed to cross on a warm day and found a spot where you can bask in the sun on the top deck, it can be like a mini-cruise – or a great place to sleep off a hangover. The moment your tires or your shoes leave the metal ramp and hit the island, you feel grounded again, and ready for that last push to your final destination.

In contrast, of course, coming by plane is fast. Flying to Tasmania from Sydney was an hour-and-a-bit – one minute you’re in one city, breathing mainland air, talking to mainland people; and eighty minutes later you’re on Tasmania, breathing blue island air, talking to people who look just like the neighbours back home on your island. There’s nothing leisurely about this kind of crossing: it’s hurry up and wait as you rush to make your obligatory one- to two-hour pre-flight check-in, then negotiate long line-ups, grumpy airline employees, stern airport security, and bad expensive coffee, only to be told that the flight is delayed. No wonder you want to wash down an atavan with a beer or three, and say wake me up when we’re there.

Leaving by plane you do the whole thing in reverse. But I didn’t want to this time. I’m the kind of person who likes to get in the water a toe at a time; leaving by plane would be like diving headfirst into the hole cut out in the ice. I’d be wrenched from the ground, hurled into the air, and then I’d be gone. Hardly the proper way to say good-bye to a place I’ve grown to love. Leaving by boat was really the only thing I COULD do. As we bussed up the Midland Highway for the last time, I felt like I was saying good-bye the proper way, one kilometer at a time. It was a thoughtful good-bye, in keeping with the last couple of weeks leading up to my leaving. But as with those good-byes, which I assured people were NOT good-byes, but rather so longs, see you laters, it was measured, like a lingering farewell kiss.

As we passed through Oatlands and Ross, Campbell Town and Launceston, I was remembering all the trips up and down that road – probably a dozen in all. There was my first trip with Jane and Ralph and Emily to the Poetry Festival, stopping at St. Peter’s rest area and taking photos of each other by the graffiti’d water tanks. Then with Kate Booth to the “Sounding the Earth” conference, Kate explaining to me the forestry “peace deal” that was all over the news that day, and laughing at the kitschy cut-out western figurines edging the dusty desert horizon. Then with Pete (and other times with Sebastian and Blakey and Robbo and/or Mom along for the ride) for cricket in Branxholm, Forth, and Ross, and Low Head – and on the way back trying to remember lyrics to songs to keep us awake that last hour into Hobart. Being thrilled when I realized I felt a flutter of recognition as the contours of the city lights against Mt. Wellington’s imposing black blackdrop were laid out in front of me. Then with Mom on our trip to the northwest, then by myself to the Island Youth Theatre Exchange performance in Launceston, then with Pete and Matt Newton to Marrawah… Remembering certain bends in the road and names like Paradise and Meander Valley and Mole Creek; looking for the tumble-down remains of Halfway House; and being disappointed the bus didn’t stop in Campbell Town for one last visit to Burger Me (home of the best veggie burger, orange poppyseed cake, and flat whites on the island). Letting the horizon line of the Great Western Tiers imprint itself on my memory bank… Seeing the chocolate brown soil, and knowing that it’s not much further past Devonport that it will turn to red, reminding me of the Island soil back home…

We arrived at the ferry in East Devonport at 3 p.m., but found we couldn’t board til 6. So on the advice of my friend Pamela we lugged our suitcases over to the Gingerbread House Café and Hostel about three blocks from the ferry terminal. A renovated parsonage that was built in the late 1800s, the charming gingerbread house was a welcome place to spend our last few hours in Tasmania. The proprietor, Melissa Houghton, invited us to make ourselves at home – to use it as they intended: waiting for the ferry. A cup of strong coffee, gingerbread fresh from the oven topped with ginger ice cream, a chess game (my first in 30 years), and a couple glasses of wine later, we were ready to head back to the terminal and board the Spirit of Tasmania to Melbourne.

By the time we pulled away from the dock, we’d scouted out our cabin, had a beer in the lounge, and were enjoying a pre-dinner glass of wine in the dining room. I pictured the leaving as a gentle separation, like disentangling yourself from the arms of a lover, knowing the return will be sweet. Knowing that when I come back, I’ll do the things I missed this time, like visit the beautiful Freycinet Peninsula and hike into Wineglass Bay; camp on Maria Island; go to the Circus Festival at Golconda and the Cygnet Folk Festival in Cygnet; stay at a shack at Eddystone Point on the Bay of Fires; spend a weekend on Cradle Mountain; take daytrips to Marion Bay and Recherche Bay; fly on a bush plane into Melaleuca; cruise down the Gordon River to Macquarie Harbour and Sarah Island; go on tour with the Thylacinian's 11 to Flinders Island…

People have suggested I might need to change the name of this blog, since I’m no longer in Tasmania. I think of another meaning of “bound,” and shake my head.

It’s feeling a bit dreamlike, this departing… feeling Tasmania brush my cheek as I slowly turn and head for home.

An-ti-ci-pa-a-tion...

2011-05-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

“…is making me late, is keeping me waiting…”

For some reason, Carly Simon is rolling around my brain this morning...

… or maybe it’s the Heinz ketchup (oops… tomato sauce!) commercial… remember that one? Thick red ketchup oozing toward the bottle’s neck, slow as molasses in January… where it inevitably gets stuck and you need to use a knife to unplug it and then – splat! - your French fries are swimming in it…

Oh, I know why I’m on tenterhooks: my sweetie arrives in Hobart Monday - only four more sleeps! Then I get to show him everything I’ve been saving up of Tasmania… our version of “Ten Days on the Island”! And then we’ll be heading home…

What prompted this post was a note via Facebook from my daughter Heather – who’s had to go home to Canada from London, England, where she's teaching, to renew her visa. She was in the Toronto airport, enjoying an ice-cap* at Tim Hortons. It made me long for home - and I don't even like ice-caps! All these triggers: a photo from David Sims of one last dirt-encrusted snowpile on a bed of dead yellow grass; photos of Mikhala and Mike crossing the stage at UPEI’s graduation; a shot of Michaye Boulter's golden retriever Splash looking up at me, thumping her tail expectantly; Frank and Jude Driscoll on the front page of this morning's Charlottetown Guardian; Heather's words reminding me of my last visit to Tim Horton's in the Toronto airport, waiting for the plane to Charlottetown last December... (And just for the record: I also don't like Tim Hortons excuse for coffee - especially after all the good "flat whites" I've been drinking here!)

But that also means I’m leaving this wonderful island in two weeks’ time. So it got me thinking: what will I miss the most?

Stewart and Denbeigh and Maddie and Harry… Maddie’s six a.m. thump upstairs as she hits the ground running, and the big hug when I come up for breakfast... Three-month-old Harry’s gurgling smiles… Denbeigh’s fabulous cooking and our chats about parenting... Stewart’s fabulous cooking and our chats about academia and islands…

Lunch with Pete at Shippie’s – bangers and mash and "skinny" beer, and talk of islands and poetry and art and cricket…

Ferry rides over to Bruny Island with Pete and Anna… anticipating the fire at the shack and walks on Nebraska Beach with Ollie and Flossie… and that mad dash at the end when we close everything up and spin out to catch whatever ferry we’re trying to get…

Coffee with Millie and Anna and Catherine at Sandy Bay Coffee Roasters or The Jam Jar in Battery Point – talking methodology chapters and writing, commiserating about the PhD life (and afterlife), and editing papers... we're each other's “guerilla supervisors”…

The walk in the morning along Proctors Road – seeing the huge palm tree that is so distinctly “from away,” like me…

The sunrise over Hobart from my bedroom window or the Tasman Bridge fairy lights at night…

Playing Scrabble with Millie and Garth and Tessa and Qug in their wonderfully homey sharehouse on Wellesley Street…

Beating Pete at crib… and Anna beating both of us at Scrabble...

My officemate Jenny, and hearing all about her stories about kayaking around Flinders Island, or weeding on Maatsuyker Island, or her involvement with the rabbit eradication program on Macquarie Island…

Morning tea downstairs in Geography, where conversation with Dave and Annette and Tracy and Kate and Trish and Paulene ALWAYS comes back to sex… having them complain about my too-strong coffee (I have to have it that way – I brought my aerolatte milk frother with me!)… remembering the look on everyone’s faces when Kate brought in her gigantic bowl of tiramisu for Monday cake day …

Jane and Ralph, and Valentine’s Day lunch at their house on Poet’s Road, when we drank champagne, ate chocolate, and read love poetry… and sharing a house and drive, with Emily, at the Poetry Festival in Launceston… and a spring morning at the Botanic Gardens with Jane...

Walking along the waterfront to the Art School Library, and writing poems at “my” table by the window…

Drinking coffee at the Wrest Point Casino Coffee Shop with Leo Cheverie's cousin Pamela and her partner Paul...

Getting to meet my artists and writers, photographers and musicians, in their homes and studios and favourite haunts…

Driving the island with Pete, for cricket matches or interviews or a Tassie Tiger Beer at the Thylacinians' 11 home pub in Mole Creek...

Having Mount Wellington looking over my shoulder...

Tromping on yet another glorious beach...

There’s so much more… so many more people… I suspect this post will be a running post. I'll pass something, knowing it’ll be for the last time, and think, I'll miss that, I must write about that...

But for now I’m waiting waiting waiting… that delicious in-between time when it’s hard to focus for the bubbling stomach… knowing that I’m finishing something here, but starting another anew...

*iced cappuccino (a quadruple hit of caffeine and sugar)

A shack of a different stripe

2011-05-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning, and we’re heading to the northwest – to the village of Marrawah and Joe King’s shack, to be precise. It’s not your ordinary shack – the vacation kind that many Tasmanians have on the beach or in the bush – the place for all the things worn out at the house but too good for the tip…

No, Joe King’s shack is a place where the main window of the house doesn’t face the beach – the same spectacularly raw beach that you’d find just a few kilometers south at the Edge of the World. An 8’ x 16’ grey weatherboard box that looks like it was washed up on the shore – as my friend Matt Newton says – like a movie set dropped in just above the high water mark. A place where the sound of the surf at your back door doesn’t penetrate the walls or the howling wind doesn’t shake the floorboards. The only place you can expect to see live Tasmanian devils in the wild.

Joe started his business, "King’s Run,” in 1999, when his friend Nick Mooney, a conservation officer who worked with endangered species for the State Government, suggested that it was possible to show people Tasmanian devils feeding just after dusk using a halogen light. This way, he reckoned, people might begin to care that what was normally considered a nuisance was under threat from the Facial Tumour Disease that was devastating the devil population in other parts of the island. At the same time, Joe was looking at a way to restore his land – on which Kings had farmed cattle for generations – back to its original state. Joe recognized that it was also a way of caring for a land that had obvious remains of Aboriginal settlement – middens and hut depressions and seal “hides,” where Aboriginals hunted Australian fur seals. To ensure that devils didn’t become dependent on the road kill that Joe leaves for them, Joe started taking tourists in only five nights in a fortnight. It’s one of the more popular (and I hate to use the word, but it seems terribly appropriate) “authentic” things you can do when you visit Tasmania.

The purpose of our visit was for Pete to interview, and Matt Newton to photograph, Joe for a book on Tasmanian activists. This is their second collaboration – the first was The Forests, published in 2008 and featuring Matt’s evocative black-and-white photographs documenting Tasmanian activism: confrontations between loggers and activists over Tasmania’s Draconian forestry practices. The cover image featuring “the Weld Angel” has become the iconic photo representing the conflict that has been the Tasmanian forestry situation for the last fifty or so years. Indeed, Matt was a 2011 finalist for "Australian of the Year" for his work defending the forests.

We met Joe at his house in Marrawah mid-afternoon, where he had just opened a bottle of Ninth Island Pinot and was getting ready to sit down to watch footy. He set up the tape for later, then whisked us out the door – wine and a pot of seafood bouillabaisse in hand. We followed him toward Arthur River, before turning onto a winding gravel road. At the first gate he tied a small dead wallaby (he collects roadkill and freezes it) behind the truck, which bounced along just ahead, laying a scent for the devils.

At the second gate we transferred our gear to his truck and we set off for the shack. As we got closer to the shore, gravel turned to sand, taller scrub trees to smaller, until finally none at all – just grass, dunes, and the big blue ocean – knowing that if you kept on going you’d end up in South America, missing entirely the Cape of Good Hope. It looked like a giant hand had strewn chunks of dolerite all around the sea’s edge then churned up the sea to make sure they were knocked silly every few seconds. The largest lump, called “The Church,” dwarfed the shack.

After we took in our gear and Joe got the fire going, we headed out for the photo shoot, and a walk along the beach.

Joe showed us middens and the seal hides, devil tracks, wallaby and wombat poo, and the places where four-wheelers had ripped up the dunes, revealing layers of middens that had been buried in the sand for centuries. At the top of one of the highest points was a depression in the hill, which Joe told us had once been the site of an Aboriginal hut. Surrounded by a wide ring of seashells, it felt like a sacred place. From up there you could see all up and down the coastline, rugged and wild and achingly beautiful. You knew that the Aboriginal people had probably chosen it for the same reason – plus the wind that would keep away the mosquitoes…

Just before dusk we headed back to the shack, where Joe set up the outside light and staked down another dead wallaby. He turned on the baby monitor so we could hear any action… then he warmed up the soup.

Matt had just been up in Sydney, attending a photography exhibition, and had spent a lot of evenings looking for THE great restaurant. He said the meals he ate didn’t compare with our bouillabaisse – fresh-cut Tassie salmon, abalone, and shark (and a few imported prawns from Asian), with some cooked whole potatoes that I added to my bowl for good measure. If Joe ever gives up on devils, he could always become a cook.

After dinner, Joe turned off the light, lit a candle, and while Matt and I enjoyed the wine, he answered Pete’s questions about his decades-long struggle to protect the Arthur and Pieman Rivers coastal zone – along with its extensive Aboriginal middens, hut depressions, and hieroglyphs – from ATVs, motorbikes, and other destroyers of local environment and heritage. I look forward to reliving the interview when the book comes out.

During the interview I was appointed chief devil spotter through the uber flat-screen TV masquerading as a picture window, but it got darker and darker and no critters big or small appeared. After the interview, Joe headed home, leaving us with the rest of the Aussie cab-sav, the Ninth Island, and some Aberlor single malt – and the hope that a diner would turn up. And at around 9:30, one did. Really. It’s not just the scotch talking. The healthy young devil was a little nervous at first as he seemed to look straight up through the window at us peering back at him, but soon the food became much more attractive than sketchy shadows behind the glass. We watched the black furry creature with the extraordinarily strong jaw tear into his food for about half an hour, before movement from what could have been another devil scared him off. We waited for a bit longer before throwing another log on the fire and heading off to bed. Long after we stumbled into our bunks, I heard crunch-crunch-crunch through the baby monitor, but my sleeping bag was too warm for me to leave it and go check it out. In the morning, the tattered remains of the wallaby were proof that something had returned to feed. It wasn’t just my imagination…

Joe came back to fetch us at 8:30 on the dot – happy that we’d seen our devil. But even if we hadn’t, he knows that if one doesn’t show up, that’s fine, too – it means that the animals aren’t becoming dependent on us humans for their supper. But he also knows that we left with a greater appreciation for the endangered critters – and for what he’s trying to do at King’s Run.

We were sorry to leave such a magical place. I felt like I’d been given a gift that not many people have had the honour of receiving. Plus the sky was washed clean, the sea was running hard – and Joe was going fishing.

Abalone for Tea

2011-05-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

“So it’s abalone for tea tomorrow night, guys,” Rob says.

We had just finished catching two bluefin tuna and he was already planning tomorrow night’s dinner. Now THAT’S forward-thinking.

It all started about a year ago when word got out that I was coming to Tasmania. My friends, the artist Sylvia Ridgway and UPEI’s Assistant Registrar Darcy McCardle, told me that I HAD to meet Michaye Boulter – Sylvia’s niece and Darcy’s cousin who lived in Tasmania. Sylvia told me that Michaye had sailed with her mom and dad and sister Jeanette from our part of the world down to Tassie when she was just a child. Sylvia’s brother Charlie – Michaye’s dad - had been a fisherman and boat-builder, and he and his wife Irene obviously had adventure in their blood. Sylvia and her husband Bill had been to visit Michaye at their house on Bruny Island, and Michaye and family had been to Prince Edward Island. Plus she was an artist (like her aunt!), and her husband Rob Pennicott owned the award-winning Bruny Island Adventure Cruises.

So just before Christmas, I found out that Michaye had an exhibition at the Handmark Gallery in Hobart. I popped in to introduce myself. She was due in any moment, so I hung around looking at her paintings that transformed the walls: amazing water and sky and rocky island outcrops in these stunning blues and whites and ochres - and I just KNEW she had to be one of the artists I would interview.

When we met it felt like we’d been friends forever. She said my Canadian accent made her feel like home. I almost cried (remember: I was THAT homesick!). She immediately agreed to my interview request, and I told her I’d carry her love and hugs home to PEI for Christmas.

So a few weeks ago I interviewed her in her new Salamanca Place studio. It was just as fantastic as our first meeting. When I was leaving, she said, “We’ll have to get you over to Bruny Island for a visit.” And that is how I ended up, just after Easter, on a boat in the Great Southern Ocean with the prospect of tuna for dinner that night, and abalone the next.

We headed out on one of Rob’s yellow power boats mid-afternoon Thursday. With us were his sister and brother-in-law and their three teenagers, as well as Rob and Michaye’s son Noah and his friend Mika. We zoomed along the coastline for a while, darting in and out of inlets and admiring the spectacular rock formations and caves, before heading out to sea.

Mika

Noah

Eve (right) and her mom, Jude

Wilson and Jock

Eve and Wilson

Michaye has this amazing ability to spot birds frenzy-feeding above the horizon from what seems miles away – must have something to do with being the daughter of a fisherman and spending her early years on a boat… And birds feeding equals little fish feeding equals tuna feeding! We headed for the birds, where we dropped in two lines and trolled around for a while. There was a bite – but it turned out to be Uncle Rob yanking on the line…

Michaye spotted more birds, so they reeled in and we headed after them. As we got close we could see the ocean roiling in front of us – silver glinted below the surface as scores of albatross swooped and dived in figure eights above. Everyone whooped in awe at the bubbling sea before quickly dropping in the lines again. It was only a few seconds before Wilson and Eve had tuna on the line… Eve’s dropped off, but Wilson’s hung on.

Eve getting some pointers from her Dad

Wilson with one on the line

Wilson worked hard for that fish – probably 15 to 20 minutes of reeling it in and playing it out – while everyone cheered him on. When we first caught sight of the tuna beside the boat we could hardly believe it – so shiny and silver and beautiful and healthy-looking – but it was what we were here for: tonight’s supper. Finally it came close enough to catch it with the gaffe, and Rob and his brother-in-law Will had it in the boat and on ice in the Esky in 10 minutes, tops. It’s important for the quality of the meat to get it chilled immediately.

We asked how big, and Rob estimated it to be around 30 kilos and worth about $1,000. I told them about the giant bluefins caught at North Lake – 900 kilos? – but it turns out I was mixing up my kilos and pounds… an internet search later brought up the record number of 1,150 pounds, which is about 520 kilos… still a whopper compared to this tasty little guy. I’ll have a whole new appreciation for the feat next time I see one of the North Lake variety on the front page of The Guardian…

We found some more birds to chase, but it was only after we’d almost given up that unexpectedly Jock had a bite… and within maybe 10 minutes we had our second fish on board. It was only slightly smaller than Wilson’s. Both boys were over the moon at their catches.

When we got back to the dock Rob made fast work of the filleting, and bagged up several portions to share. That night I had my first taste of sashimi (yum!), and Rob barbecued some of the tuna, along with flounder that he and Noah had caught the day before. It was a feast. But he reminded us: abalone for tea tomorrow night…

So Friday morning he packed up his diving gear, and we headed down to Cloudy Bay, boat in tow. It was a calm morning – hard to believe that Mia’s friend Lizzie had been surfing on it just a few days before…

We putt-putted out into the bay and after a while dropped anchor close to some boulders along shore, where Rob donned wetsuit, snorkel, and mask. The water was cold, grey, and not very inviting… I was glad Michaye and I were snug and dry in the boat. He came back a few times to deposit the heavy six-inch abalone into the bucket. We marveled at the way our fingers stuck to the muscle that would become the meat, and the beauty of the pearlescent shell hidden underneath the black frilly edging. I couldn’t imagine how this would become our tea…

After he was back onboard, Rob measured the shells, and threw back the smaller ones – their lucky day. We had 11, worth about $40 each in the shops – more than enough for a feed, plus some for Rob’s mom’s birthday present.

Late that afternoon Michaye showed me how to prepare them. It was hard work getting the big muscle out of the shell, and I was amazed at how quickly they went from being soft and spongy to being hard as the proverbial rock (and that I wasn’t grossed out by all the squishy bits in the compost!).

Michaye cleaned them like the pro that she is, and sliced them into strips that she then smashed with a mallet out on the deck. (My job was to wear the headlamp and to keep the bubbly flowing. Their golden retriever Splash's job was to clean up the juicy mess…)

Rob came in from setting craypots with Noah in time to fry them up in butter. He added garlic to the second batch. They were delicious – like taking a bite of the ocean.

Saturday morning Rob asked us all how many crayfish he figured the two pots would bring for our lunch. I said five - one for each of us – which was probably a bit greedy, since crayfish in Tasmania sell for about $60 a kilo.

We set out in the boat to collect our lunch, but on the way, Rob and Noah (incurable fishers that they are) threw in some lines and quickly landed eight or so cockies (a small version of Tasmanian salmon). Then Rob handed the line to me. I was amazed when I caught two, too! (Though Rob did the deed and took them off the hook for me. Does that still count?)

When we got to the craypots, we were disappointed to find that they’d been emptied already by a poacher… Rob knew that the pins weren’t the way he’d left them. Grrr…

Two undersized crays inhabited the first pot – which I’m sure were thrilled when Rob and Noah dropped them back into the depths of Cloudy Bay. Before they went overboard I noted the difference from our lobster: their front claws are much smaller – not as much meat…

And there were three ugly shark fish in the second. We were GLAD to throw them back.

We headed back to the house to see if Mia wanted to go water-skiing - the glassy surface was too good to be missed. She was up on the first try and skied like the pro that SHE is.

Back at the house, we had to be content with leftover tuna and abalone for lunch. Oh darn. When we got back to Hobart, Rob presented me with a chunk of the tuna. The joy of that day will live on for another meal or two!

So… abalone for tea… tuna fishing on the Great Southern Ocean... catching fish on Cloudy Bay... definite firsts for me. What’s next, I wonder… raw oysters from Malpeque Bay? Rob and Michaye, Mia and Noah: thank you so much for your wonderful hospitality. I'll remember my visit forever. When oh when are you coming to Prince Edward Island?!

Runnin’ the roads

2011-04-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

People have been telling me that I’ve seen more of Tasmania in eight months than many Tasmanians have in their lifetime. It’s probably true. I’ve been to three of its four corners and travelled three of its four major north-south routes.

Some of it’s due to cricket – attending “Thylacinian’s 11” games in out-of-the-way places like Branxholm, Forth, and Ross, and doing some sightseeing along the way. Some of it’s because Pete has been good enough to take me to see his old stompin’ grounds in the Stanley/Wynyard/Burnie area in the northwest, where I interviewed writer Rees Campbell in Somerset. And some of it’s because of my mom’s visit: we headed back up to the northwest on St. Paddy’s Day for my second interview with Rees, stopping at various hotspots along the way.

The first was the famous Ross Bakery, known for its "vanilla slice." The bakery, which is over 100 years old, has become shrine-like for many Japanese because it features in a Japanese anime book, the much-loved "Majo No Takyubin" - loosely translated as "Kiki's Delivery Service"... (Sound familiar?) Vanilla slice is a many-layered cake with a gelatinous inch-thick layer of vanilla custard. It's, well, different... but I ate it - every crumb - before I remembered I should have taken a photo of it first...

Our second stop wasat the devil park in Mole Creek, run by Thylacinian’s 11 Androo “Roo” Kelly. Called Truwanna Devil Park, it's one of several quarantine centres for the Tasmanian devil, which in recent years has been dying out in great numbers due to a facial tumour disease. Along with the devils are wombats, wallabies, and birds. Stephanie, our guide, introduced us to Maggie, a wombat who had been found in its dead mother’s pouch after she was hit by a vehicle.

I remember as a child saying a prayer for all the dead animals we’d pass on the road. Here I’d be praying the whole way there and back – roadkill in Tasmania is THAT prevalent. But Stephanie told us that Wildlife Tasmania runs a program whereby drivers – especially truckers – will, if they hit a marsupial, check to see if there are young in the pouch, and take them to a volunteer who will foster them until they’re old enough to be released back into the wild. Maggie was one such baby. At six months old, she’s a regular visitor to Truwanna, where visitors like us get a snuggle. Stephanie invited us to "knock" on her back, just above her tail: the thick cartilage is the wombat's protection against intruders. The wombat will head into its hole, stick its butt in the entranceway, and no one can break down the door.

Mom and I then headed down to the Mole Creek Pub – the Thylacinan’s 11 “home pub,” and sampled some Tassie Tiger brew. The “thylacine” or “Tassie Tiger” was hunted into extinction early last century. At the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart is an old video of a thylacine in captivity, trying to jump out of its pen. The video runs on a loop – and each time I see it I think maybe it’ll manage to escape THIS time...

We made a brief stop in Devonport, where the ferry, Spirit of Tasmania, leaves for Melbourne at 7:30 p.m. daily (the crossing is about 10 1/2 hours). Mom’s friend Joy, who now lives in Victoria, had spent a year in Devonport a l-o-o-n-n-g-g time ago, so Mom wanted to buy her something to reassure her that it was still there.

We ended the day in Somerset, with Rees and her wonderful partner Col. They took us along to their regular writing group meeting – Wordplayers – in Wynyard, where we all shared poems and short stories in the newly renovated Community Arts Centre. Rees’s poem “The Last Tasmanian Devil Died Today” was an evocative reminder of where we’d been earlier in the day.

Rees Campbell is the author of two books, The Legacy (a fictionalized memoir about her growing-up years in Tasmania) and A Thousand Treasures, A Million Pleasures (an informative book that brings together her vast knowledge of seashells and other beach finds). Rees is a passionate Tasmanian, and her writing and photography articulate beautifully her attachment to place - and remind us (because it seems that we need it, time and time again) that what we have here is worth preserving. She’s currently working on a book of poetry and photos called Brazenly Pure - the truth and beauty of Tasmania.

The next morning we headed into Burnie, to the Makers’ Workshop, where I met with the Director, Jenny Cox. Burnie had been a one-industry town for decades, reliant on “the Pulp.” A few years ago the pulp mill closed, throwing the town into an economic tailspin. But the city has worked hard to reinvent itself, and one of the things it did was create the Makers’ Workshop – a $5.5 million world-class arts and culture centre that celebrates - and builds on - the legacy of paper-making.

Here you can watch artisans making beautiful hand-made paper – including exotics such as Roo Poo and Wombat Poo Paper, as well as the more traditional kinds. The Workshop also offers studio space for painters, printmakers, photographers, papier-mache artists, sculptors, jewellers, glass artists, whisky makers, and fabric artists to come and demostrate – and sell - their art. Although there are some who think the ultra-modern glass and steel architecture doesn’t fit with the landscape, the gift shop and café are popular with tourists and (many, if not all) locals alike.

Late that afternoon the Workshop featured the Ten Days on the Island opening of “Shorelines,” an art installation in two parts - along the boardwalk and in the Burnie Regional Art Gallery.

The show featured the work of six artists from Ireland and Newfoundland. I met two people from close to home: curator Charlotte Jones and artist Pierre LeBlanc from Corner Brook – and we’ve planned to meet up when I’m in Newfoundland this fall. Nothing like familiar accents to make you miss home!

Jennie Cox (Makers' Workshop, Burnie), Sean McCrum (Ireland), Charlotte Jones and Pierre LeBlanc (Corner Brook, Newfoundland), and me!

Installation artists Anthony Kelly and David Stalling (Ireland)

The installation along the boardwalk consisted of solar-powered cabinets and audio playbacks featuring moving images and objects found along the beach at Burnie.

We were treated to champagne and nibblies brought up from the beach by some local surfguards.

The next day Mom and I got up before dawn and headed to Arthur River on the west coast, where we caught the stately red wooden boat M. V. George Robinson for the Arthur River Cruise.

Our skipper, “Wog,” entertained us with stories about the river, including one of a 50-year-old sea eagle whose original mate had drowned when he was caught in a wave. She had been on her own for several years when a much younger “boy toy” came along; they’ve since raised several young in the “Arthur River Hilton” – a two-metre-wide nest in a large eucalypt, well-fertilized by eagle droppings, along the shore. We were treated to a feeding demonstration (Tasmanian salmon – only the best!) for the pair and their fledgling that hatched last October. Wog assured us that the young eagle – who had just learned to fly in February and was now the same size as his parents – would be getting “the boot” shortly and would have to go find his own patch of sky.

Wog gave us a good idea of the tenacity of this female eagle. A staunch defender of her part of the river, she took on a neighbouring wedgetail that was encroaching on her territory. In a kamikaze move, she flew underneath the wedgetail, turned upside-down, and took out talons-full of feathers and blood before swooping down and scooping up a trout right from under its nose.

We stopped at Turk’s Landing for lunch: burgers and snags on the barbie (not suitable for veg-o's), along with various salads. Our welcoming committee of a couple of tiny pademelons was not disappointed.

The five-hour trip along Tasmania’s last undammed river was a lazy one. We went through a couple of different weather zones featuring scrub bush clinging to the bank, large branches sweeping the river, then rainforest-type foliage: patches of large ferns.

Pete says that if ever he was to see a “blackfella come out of the woods” it’d be somewhere along here. His poem “Arthur River Suite” captures the atmosphere of the river – and some of its history: of George Augustus Robinson (the “Conciliator” tasked by the governor in the 1830s to round up the Aboriginal people and take them to Flinders Island) being rescued by Truganini at the mouth of the Arthur River. Pete gave me permission to reprint the first part here…

Arthur River Suite

(for Joe and Margot King)

1832: George Augustus Robinson at the River

At the river, it will be told,

the men from Sandy Cape

danced the death

of the Mission blacks.

Only time

in all the Mission’s fraught wanderings

that George Augustus Robinson, Conciliator of Aborigines,

faced a bloody dying.

Even at the death camp Wooraddy

will cloak in the old way, hunt in the old way.

Now he urges Truganini to the bush.

But she stays.

No swimmer, hard pressed,

The Conciliator chances the river on a spar

propelled by Truganini, his saving grace.

I stand at the spot – the likely spot – of the haulout.

Here at the river

is a moment of fractal portent,

possibilities intersecting, branching, pointing forward,

some – it may be all – to a doom.

I conjure descission in the island’s story –

Truganini slips, with Wooraddy, to the scrub,

Robinson dies on a Sandy Cape spear,

and all is changed.

I tread paths not taken in 1832,

eager for their turnings

even as the imprinted ways falter

on the brushstrokes of the intruding bush…

(Reprinted with permission Pete Hay from Silently on the Tide, Hobart: Walleah Press, 2005.)

Wog told us to be sure to drive a few kilometers to the Edge of the World where we could see the river mouth from the other side of this bridge. We did. As you can see from the photos, it was worth it. We then headed up through Marrawah to Montagu (not a typo: it’s missing our familiar “e” on the end!), on the far northwest tip of the island, to stay with Rees and Col at her daughter and son-in-law’s house. This stretch of beach is Rees’s “place.” It’s looking out at Robbins Island that she really gets a sense of Tasmania as an island.

The next day we headed home to Hobart – through the mining town of Waratah, and over to Strahan, which is on MacQuarie Harbour, where you can take the Gordon River Cruise to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station and Sarah Island, the most remote of Tasmania's historic penal colonies.

I thought the 38-kilometre detour off the main road wouldn't slow us down too much (we had to be back in Hobart by 7 p.m.) – but I failed to heed the next sign: "Strahan 40 minutes"… For its twists and turns it wasn’t quite as bad as “The Road to Hana” in Maui (where you can buy a T-shirt that boasts "I survived the Road to Hana") or the highway from Ucluelet to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island – but it was a close third!

On the last leg to Hobart we went through some spectacular scenery... and some devastating stuff, too (especially at Queenstown, an old mining town) - but we didn't really have time to stop for photos. Next trip...

But we made it home, safe and sound. And, most importantly, I'm happy to report we did NOT contribute to the road kill count. I slept well in my bed that night – with the sway of the car zigzagging through all those kilometres (about 1,100 over four days) rocking me to sleep!

A day on the Tasman Peninsula

2011-04-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

There seem to be LOTS of public holidays in Tasmania, particularly at the beginning of the year (but, hey, I’m NOT complaining!). Monday, March 14, was Eight Hours Day, our equivalent to Labour Day. So Mom and I decided to spend $195 each and do one of Rob Pennicott’s award-winning wilderness cruises and set out for Tasman Island.

We caught the bus from downtown Hobart. Our driver, Phil, was full of stories as we headed down to the Tasman Peninsula.

We stopped for morning tea at Stewarts Bay Lodge before picking up more passengers and one of our guides (Ben) and meeting our other guide (Damien) and the boat at Eaglehawk Neck.

We were kitted out in bright orange ponchos and offered homeopathic seasickness tablets made from ginger. Damien teased us that they were free now, but were $100 each if we needed them partway through. I think pretty much everyone took him up on his free offer.

Ben

Damien

Daredevils were invited to sit in front – with seatbelts – and those who were less brave and/or who had back problems could stay closer to the rear. Mom and I sat in the middle.

The coastline is rugged in the extreme. Huge columns of dolerite jut 300 metres high right out of the sea. They told us that people climb them for fun.

Mom

We passed a huge disturbance in the water: hundreds of seabirds, including sea eagles and even an albatross, were having their own fish frenzy.

Ben and Damien took turns gently nosing the boat into and out of caves with spectacular clear blue water. Before Christmas I had viewed the coastline from above when we visited Tasman’s Arch and the Devil’s Kitchen. Now I got to see them from below.

We passed a few lonely rock islands, the Lanterns and the Hippolyte – lonely but dangerous: the latter was the site of shipwrecks in 1883 and 1915.

As we crossed the last stretch of water to Tasman Island, the water was noticeably rougher (but the ginger tablets did their job!).

The island was inhabited by a lighthouse keeper until 1977 when the light (like so many others around the world's coastlines) became automated. The only way up – for goods, people, and animals – was by a cable pulley system, now rusted. The staging area and building still stand, though are definitely worse for wear. You can see the remains of a very steep track up which everything was carried to the plateau. Now Friends of Tasman Island come by helicopter to maintain the lighthouse, cottages, and weather station.

The largest inhabitants are the mammoth seals basking on the rocks – whose warm, cloying smell you can catch the proverbial mile away.

Ben and Damien told us about the feral cat eradication program to which Rob Pennicott has donated $100,000 from adventure cruise ticket sales. (Cats, who had been brought to the island as pets, had decimated the bird population, particularly the fairy prion.) Begun in 2010, the aerial-baiting program has now been declared successful: no more cats. They made a big deal of thanking us – the customers – for supporting this important ecological endeavour.

After the cruise we hopped on the bus to Port Arthur Historic Site, one of Tasmania’s infamous penal colonies, which institutionalized the hardest criminals from Great Britain and Ireland, as well as Australian re-offenders, from 1833 to 1877. Because the peninsula is almost an island, joined only by a narrow isthmus called Eaglehawk Neck and patrolled by half-starved dogs called “The Dog Line,” it was thought to be escape-proof – though a few, like the notorious bush ranger Martin Cash, managed to get away – twice. The second time, in 1842, he went on to wreak havoc around Tasmania.

The site’s interactive interpretation is very well done – you receive a playing card when you go in, which links you to a particular prisoner whose story you can follow, giving you greater insight into what it must have felt like to be there.

A cruise boat takes you around the harbour so you can get a better sense of how isolated Port Arthur is. You can be dropped off on the Isle of the Dead, which was the prison’s burial ground (1,646 convicts are estimated to have been buried there), and Point Puer ("puer" is Latin for "child"), which was where boys as young as nine were incarcerated and “reformed.” One of Pete's ancestors was a "Point Puer boy."

Point Puer

Isle of the Dead

In the gift shop I bought a deck of playing cards and a copy of Marcus Clark’s For the Term of His Natural Life, a novel published in 1874 about life in the penal colony.

It was a gorgeous sunny day as Mom and I toured the remains of the buildings, including "the Canadian Cottage."

It was hard to imagine life in what many describe as a hell-hole - rain and cold would make it easier, I’m sure.

But I didn’t need rain and cold to feel the tragedy of the massacre that happened April 28, 1996, when Martin Bryant went on a killing spree at Port Arthur. He shot and killed 35 people and wounded 21 more. It’s one of those days - like the first moon walk or when JFK was shot - where Tasmanians remember what they were doing when they heard the news. The remains of the Broad Arrow Café where 20 were gunned down - now just brick walls surrounded by shrubs – is a stark reminder of the horror. A still "pool of peace" and several plaques memorialize those who were killed.

It was a memorable day – from the sublime to the tragic and almost back again: the chocolate we bought at the Federation Chocolate Shop on the way home could never come close to being an antidote.

How I learned to love cricket

2011-03-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

So we were up at sparrow’s fart,* heading to Low Head for a cricket match. Most of my friends here in Tasmania think I’m nuts. Why does a Canadian, who grew up watching winged ice-men chase a puck, want to waste a perfectly good Sunday watching boring old cricket?

Before coming to Tasmania, I’d had three experiences with cricket. One was at my kitchen table in October 2009, watching Pete search The Guardian for cricket scores (sheer futility). The second was drinking beer and eating oysters with Pete and Lobie Daughton at Lobie and Marilyn’s loft in Charlottetown. For those of you who don’t know him, Lobie is the sole soul of cricket in PEI; until he came to the Island, I don’t think there was ANY. So when Pete was jonesing for cricket, Lobie brought out his cricket bat… and an orange. No juice was spilled that night. The third was a few days later, at a poetry reading at the Haviland Club. Lobie brought along his favourite cricket ball for Pete to hold (he still had a couple weeks to go in PEI...). When Pete got up to read, he passed it to the fellow from India who was sitting next to him to hold. The fellow must have thought it was a gift. Apparently he beamed beatifically, then disappeared seamlessly into the night. With the ball. Never to be seen again on the Island. Pete felt so bad that when he got home to Tasmania he arranged to have author Richard Flanagan’s daughter take a brand-new expensive cricket ball to her soccer game, and she gave it to David Boon's daughter to take home to have the (Tasmanian) “great one” sign. The package arrived in my mailbox, which I dutifully took to Marilyn and Lobie’s 20^th wedding anniversary party last August. You’d have thought it was his first-born - Lobie held it reverently before stashing it in his bedroom. Locking the door. He still tells the story at the Farmers’ Market.

Okay, so I admit the first game I went to in Branxholm was, well, boring. Akin to watching paint dry. Eleven blokes out on the field standing around with their thumbs stuck up their arse. I almost went for a walk.

The field in Branxholm

Branxholm

The field at Low Head - next to the golf course (fore for a six!)

Instead, after a while I went and sat beside the score table. It reminded me of scoring bowling. I said something about computers having a few good uses as I watched Pete’s and someone from the opposing team’s pens flick up and down what looked like two accountant’s ledgers. Except with dots and circles, dots and squares, Ws and Ms and LBWs. I asked who was winning. Wrong question.

Lunch was great – mothers of the local netball team put on a great old-fashioned country spread with sandwiches and pies and a flotilla of cream cakes. In the end, though, Pete’s team, the Thylacinians' 11,** had lost. Afterwards they drowned their sorrows in beer in the clubhouse, while the opposition celebrated, and I got to match faces to the names I’d been hearing: Spread and Eddo, Fish and Robbo, Blakey and Boyler, Roo and Prickle. (Pete is Hayzy.) The best part was the piss-up later at Prickle’s pub in Scottsdale: Robbo found a guitar and we sang and drank beer til the wee hours.

Prickle and Laurie

Young Boyler (Peter Boyler, Warren's son)

Blakey and Hayzy

Young Boyler, Boyler, Sebo, and Prickle

Guess... nice outfit, what?

Entertaining Robbo entertaining

Sebastian sampling the wares at Prickle's Pub

Laurie doing the same

Next game was on Bruny Island. As with most travel to islands, there was a bit of “ferry panic” - it was touch and go that everyone would make the boat. A few of them had to park their cars and walk on, much to Captain Hayzy’s relief. At Alonnah, my job was to keep Flossie, Pete’s slipper of a dog, from beating up Milky, Roo’s dalmation. With Flossie on my lap I watched while Pete and then Warren “Boyler” Boyles (publisher of the magazine Forty° South) fussed over the Thylacinians’ score book; both kept a running commentary on my behalf, telling me there were six bowls to an over, 40 overs to an inning, and two innings to a match, with lunch in the middle. Lunch was great. But the Thylacinians lost. Again. Afterward, the beer and barbecue were great. The party at Pete’s shack was great. Cuffy cracked a bottle of champagne, and Roo contributed a bottle of Southern Fire Tasmanian single malt whisky. Both went down just fine.

We don't mess around with Roo

My third game was in Hobart. This time we walked the dogs around the field while Pete told me the names of batting swings: a forward defensive shot or push, a backfoot cover drive or cut, a late cut, an offside drive, a straight drive, an on drive, a pull or a hook, or a leg lance. All these to defend the wicket from being bowled off the stump, which means the batter has been bowled out. And if you have ten out, you lose. Period. With the ball coming at you at a pretty good clip, I just thought it was a miracle that the bat got in the way of the ball. We won that game.

Eddo crying in his beer on Bruny

"The speech"

Listening to "the speech"

My fourth game was, appropriately, in Forth. The night before had been magical: we’d stopped at the Thylacinians’ home pub (the Mole Creek Pub sponsor their team shirts and hats) in Mole Creek, near Deloraine, where Robbo was holding court with his guitar. Australia’s singing legend Ted Egan happened to be there, too. Songs traded back and forth, lubricated by Tassie Tiger beer. Eventually we had to drag Robbo from the clutches of an adoring young female fan; having 11 able-bodied cricket players the next day took precedence over scoring that night.

Just after we arrived the next morning, a fellow came up to me in the parking lot and handed me a huge block of famous triple cream brie cheese from King Island (worth, I found out later, about $200). The guy from the opposing team handed me their scorebook. I looked around desperately for a fridge, and for someone to keep score. The lunch ladies pointed me to the fridge, and Boyler ended up with the book. I followed his every pen stroke, like a batter watching the ball leave the bowler’s fingertips. After lunch, I took a deep breath, and asked if I could give it a try. I must say I was pretty nervous – I mean, I’d watched a total of 3½ games and an orange. I was grateful for the guys from the opposing team who talked me through the dot balls, the wickets, the wides and the byes. At the end I was in a bit of a daze… from knowing nothing about cricket to being able to keep score was nothing short of a miracle. We also won. Boag’s Draught (and King Island cheese) never tasted so good.

I now attribute my enthusiasm to my compulsion to want to put things in boxes – especially when not much else of what I do will fit. (My mom reminded me that this is what I did in high school, too, with all the sports I was hopeless at: basketball, volleyball, softball… always the manager, never the player…)

Sebastian Baglole's run, for posterity...

In keeping score I’ve come to understand the nuances of the game. That it’s not the win but the journey. It’s the elegance of Vishnu’s ballet as he whizzes in his fast bowl, or the eloquence of Hayzy’s lob that drops right in front of the batter, making it well nigh impossible to hit. It’s watching Blakey getting 40, a dogged 1 and 2 runs at a time, and Robbo’s grace behind the wicket. It’s the great bare-handed catches in the field - and the spectacular misses. The guys might get pissed off if the umpire calls an LBW, but mostly it’s annoyance at themselves – not too many of them “have a tantie and spit the dummy.” It’s the occasional 6 over the boundary – bringing cheers and honks from both teams. It’s the cap ceremony for the new players. It’s not yelling at the rookie (Sebastian Baglole from PEI, who batted his first game and even scored a run in Low Head!) when he forgot to run the next time, meaning game over for the Thylacinians’ 11. It's the brothers playing with brothers, and fathers playing with sons (and sometimes they're on opposing teams). It’s beer in the clubhouse… and the after-match speeches full of jokes and jibes… as the captain of the team we played at Low Head called it, it’s the “sociability.” And even though Hayzy admits he says the same thing each time, we don’t even notice because we know it’s from the heart.

Scorer in action

It’s also been a wonderful opportunity to meet people from outside Hobart – people who are not rarefied academics or eccentric artists but who come from all strata of Tasmania society. People who have come to be my friends. Roo and Gordie, Eddo and Blakey, Robbo and Spread, Andrew and Vishnu. Now I know why Pete went to all that trouble for a ball.

So that’s why I get up at sparrow’s fart on Sunday morning. And why I’m thinking I’ll change my PhD topic to cricket.

*crowpiss
**named after the extinct Thylacine or Tassie Tiger

"O Captain! My captain!"***

***Blog posting photos by Laurie and Robbo**** (including this one of Hayzy)
****aka Paul Roberts... Thank you, Robbo!

A mainland adventure

2011-03-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

The plan was simple: on February 23 I was to fly up to Sydney from Hobart to meet my mom, who was coming in from Victoria, BC, Canada, for five weeks. We were to have two days exploring this iconic city before flying north on the 25^th to visit my friend Phil Hayward and his family in Lismore, in northern New South Wales, for six days. On Phil’s advice, I’d booked seat sale tickets through Rex Air, a small regional airline.

On February 22, the afternoon before I was to leave, we were driving along the Midlands Highway, coming back from a cricket match and my first interview in northwest Tasmania. I said to Pete, “My mom should be leaving Victoria right about now.” She had told me she was leaving on the 23^rd and had made a comment to the effect that she left and arrived the same day. Except suddenly I realized it was only February 21 there. That’s when I had my first inkling that everything might not work out as I’d planned.

Sure enough, when I arrived at the airport in Sydney the next morning, there was no mom. I went to Denbeigh’s mom’s place and tried to track down my mom on Skype. She was happily drinking tea at my aunt and uncle’s house in Oak Bay, in Victoria, doing laundry and getting ready to leave the next night. I found out then that she was going to arrive an hour and a half after we were supposed to leave for Lismore February 25. I had the teeniest little hissy fit.

Too late to salvage the Rex Air ticket, I booked her another flight for Saturday afternoon, then set about enjoying my two days in Sydney. I hopped a bus for Circular Quay – site of the Sydney Opera House, a finalist in the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign. The shell structure was just as spectacular up close as it is in all the photos. (And I laughed when I saw that Martha Wainwright was playing there the next night, though I didn't go...)

That evening I went with Helen and her friend Peter to the Helenic Club and ate fabulous Greek food, listened to wonderful Greek music, and met some amazing Greek people.

Next day I took the ferry to Manly Beach, where I watched kids learning to surf and waded in bathwater-temperature water. I basked in the Australian summer, since it hadn’t really made an appearance in Tasmania this year. That night I had dinner in the Glebe with Denbeigh’s dad and his partner Suzie. It was the perfect mini-vacation.

I headed up to Lismore on Friday as planned, where I experienced the incredible generosity of Phil and his wife Rebecca Coyle, Phil’s parents Roy and Ruth, and Phil and Rebecca’s youngest daughter Amy. Both Phil and Rebecca work at Southern Cross University, Phil as Director of the Higher Degree Research Unit and Rebecca as Head of School, Arts and Sciences. Phil is the founder of the Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI) and editor of the island cultures journal Shima.

I first met Phil in Japan in 2005, when I attended the inaugural SICRI conference in Kagoshima (the conference where I had two marriage proposals!). The next year Phil and his older daughter Rosa stayed with Mikhala and me when they came to the Island to talk about hosting a conference at UPEI in 2007. Phil came back for the conference, where he and another SICRI colleague, Danny Long, helped me empty my liquor cupboard. But when I was saying goodbye at the Charlottetown airport, he said that was it – he wasn’t coming back until I came to visit him.

Then last summer Claire and I met Phil and Amy at the SICRI conference in Guernsey. We all stayed on Herm Island, and ate meals together in the quaint White House Hotel. We travelled back and forth to the conference on the ferry, the dock for which depended on the tides. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Phil, Amy, and me on the ferry to Herm Island, June 2010

Claire and Amy on Herm Island

Before Mom arrived on Saturday, Phil and I drove to Terania Basin in the World Heritage Nightcap National Park and walked in to see the spectacular Protesters Falls, where protesters in 1979 had successfully stopped a proposed logging operation. I was surprised to read the interpretive sign that referred to Tasmania:

“The struggle to save the forests of Terania Creek will be remembered as the birthplace of direct action in defence of old growth forests. The successful outcomes of Terania inspired direct action approaches in Australia, such as the 1981 Franklin River blockade, which successfully defended wilderness areas in Tasmania.”

Phil at Protesters Falls in Nightcap National Park

It thus seemed appropriate that the falls were boisterous and full – a result of all the rain they’d received – just as protests still rage here in Tasmania. (The latest is a proposed pulp mill for the Tamar River in the north-central part of the Island.) The rainforest was fragrant and rich, redolent with earthy smells and moist air. Tree roots twisted around other trees to pull them down, making room for their offspring. The lush vegetation was so NOT what I expected of what I always thought to be a drought-stricken Australia… but then neither were the floods that had devastated cities and towns in Queensland in January...

The next day Phil took us to a country market in Bangalow and the famed Lighthouse in Byron Bay – Australia’s easternmost mainland point - before meeting up with Rebecca and Amy for a swim in the teatree-oil-stained water at Lennox Head. The water was perfectly clean; it was just the colour of, well, tea. On the other side of the spit was a gorgeous wind-swept beach - just one of the squillions for which that coast is famous.

We then found front-row seats at the Lennox Head Hotel and listened to a fantastic music duo of the gorgeous Cara Robinson from Ireland on drums and washboard and her hirsute husband Hat Fitz from Melbourne playing dobro and guitar. Apparently the couple thought it was a great way to celebrate their first anniversary: they were still rocking when we left. It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I even bought their CD.

Cara Robinson

Hat Fitz

Phil and Rebecca loaned us their car for the next three days, so Mom and I set out on various excursions around the area. I honed my skills driving on the left-hand (I didn’t say “wrong”!) side of the road while negotiating busy towns and winding country back roads. We thoroughly explored the region, shopping and drinking morning coffee at Ballina, seeing what Mullumbimby looked like (small town, two streets!), swimming at Brunswick Heads, and lunching at Tweed Heads, where we could see off in the distance what a local fellow enjoying his lunch hour called “our own version of Manhattan” - the skyscrapers of Surfers’ Paradise which signal the start of the famed Gold Coast. Apparently, in a severe lack of foresight, the skyscrapers shade the beaches.

The view from Tweed Heads

You can just see the skyscrapers in the distance, marking the beginning of the Gold Coast...


Public art in Ballina

More public art in Ballina

Phil, Rebecca, and Amy were fabulous hosts. I loved their house and their 14 acres where Phil is reforesting what was once a banana plantation; the native trees and shrubs are thriving through his hard physical labour and watchful eye. Neither of them would let me help out around the house - they kept saying, no, no worries, just sit and relax. Finally I asked Phil, “When you and Rosa were at my house, did I wait on you guys hand and foot?” To which Phil replied, “Yup.” Oh.

The sunset bench

"All this will be rainforest one day?"

"Youbetcha..."

"... one baby plant at a time!" (i.e., the nursery)

"Yes, Amy, your folks ARE crazy..."

Not much happens in Modanville, so when someone gets a new mailbox...

Phil took us to the charming Lismore airport on Thursday morning. Because only prop planes fly in, Lismore doesn’t need to have the same level of security as most other airports. They just ask, “Are you carrying any dangerous goods?” It was most refreshing.

Next time I see Phil will be in the gorgeous and tropical Whitsunday Islands in the centre of the Great Barrier Reef, just off the coast of Queensland, where the 7^th SICRI conference is to be held June 12-16. I’m presenting a paper on island tourism with a focus on Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania’s cultural festival. Mike will be with me, and we’ll be heading back to Prince Edward Island shortly afterward. I have a feeling, though, that half a world won’t prevent this friendship from flourishing. Indeed, Phil, Rebecca, and Amy (and, fingers crossed, Rosa, too!) already have plans to be in Cape Breton in 2012 for the 8th SICRI conference. Now I just have to convince them that a day or two in Prince Edward Island is essential. After all, I have some more waiting on hand and foot to do.

Famous Reporter 42 Launch Speech

2011-02-14T22:14:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, February 10, 2011, I had the privilege of giving the "launch speech" for Famous Reporter 42, at the invitation of publisher Ralph Wessman. Between 50 and 60 of us packed into a hot and steamy Hobart Bookshop, where we were given the best of "gnosh and grog," a speech from a "come-from-away," and some readings by a few of the journal's contributores. I'm happy to report: a good time was had by all!

Caroline Dean, emcee, and Ralph Wessman, publisher

When Pete Hay attended the 7:30 p.m. launch of Deirdre Kessler’s poetry book Afternoon Horses in Prince Edward Island in the fall of 2009, he told me over a cup of tea afterward: “We don’t do it this way in Tasmania.”

He had just heard the publisher do a ten-minute introduction of Deirdre – that was me mostly talking about how the book came to be, including snippets of our shared experiences over the 27 years that I’d known her, and thank yous to the various people who had had a hand in its publication - followed by a 20-minute reading by Deirdre – which got an encore, pretty much unheard of at a poetry reading – then me doing the requisite “thanks for coming” and “Deirdre will sign books” (meaning, PLEASE buy books from my daughter at the back – preferably in fives and tens), followed by what we Islanders call “lunch” – crackers and stinky cheese and yummy dips, cookies and chocolaty squares, mostly contributed by friends of the author and the publisher, and washed down with cups of strong tea – all the while mingling to live piano-playing by the son of a friend of the author and publisher.

There are a few variations on this – depending on the venue and the existence of a liquor license, and whether politicians have to be invited to make sure the funding doesn’t stop – but that’s mostly our after-supper launch formula.

Hobart Bookshop proprietor and bookseller extraordinaire Chris Pearce

So of course I had to ask Pete what you folks in Tasmania do. He said the publisher usually asks someone who has some connection to the author to do a mini-review of the book – which sometimes means receiving the manuscript ahead of time, or a copy of the actual book on the morning of the launch – and sometimes includes taking the piss out of the author. He said the author usually reads and I can’t remember what he said about the gnosh and grog – though the sales thing (in fives and tens) is universal. And it’s generally held before supper. But it’s absolutely delightful to know that the tradition of roping in family is alive and well here, too: just as I had my daughter sell books and Keith Baglole play the piano, here Ralph has asked his beautiful daughter Prairie to share her talents. Thank you, Prairie, for the gift of your music!

So when Ralph asked me before Christmas if I – a “come-from-away” - would launch the next issue of Famous Reporter 42 in February, I gulped and said, “I’d be honoured.” I mean I hadn’t had much success in saying no to Ralph up til then – so why should this be any different? I had only hesitated for a few minutes when he asked if I’d review Mark Tredinnick’s Fire Diary, on the night of the Launceston Poetry Cup… And I didn’t hesitate at all when, after reading a poem called “What the Apple Lady Sees” at the Tasmania Writers’ Centre presentation of “Small Island Dreaming” at the Lark in October, he asked quietly and politely if anyone had asked for this poem yet and, if not, could he publish it. I mean, how can a writer say no to that!

Indeed, how could anyone say no to Ralph, when you know how much he gives… but more about that later…

Ralph's daughter Prairie

It wasn’t until I received a PDF of Famous Reporter 42 a few weeks ago and saw that I’d been specially thanked in the acknowledgements that I realized that FR 42 is all about… ME! I counted: my name or my words are on 10 of the 160 pages – 12 if you count the Table of Contents. So maybe I should roast myself, thank you all for coming, and encourage you all to buy copies and we can start drinking NOW…

Oh, okay, so there are 148 other pages that aren’t about me…

Yours truly, with fellow PEIslanders Anna and Godfrey Baldacchino in the background

Before I talk about them, I want to say a few words about publishing a literary journal. Several years ago when I was thinking about my own career in publishing, I debated between creating a publishing company or setting up a literary journal. Everyone, including the great Cape Breton writer Alistair MacLeod, said, “You’re crazy to do a literary journal. Do you know how hard that is?” So I started Acorn Press, publishing books. Seventeen years and 55 books later, I sold it to come here to do a PhD. But here’s Ralph, publishing a literary journal for 24 years. And he’s still smiling. He reads hundreds of submissions a year – in all genres of writing, from all over the world. (He even published me, years ago, before me coming to Tassie was even a gleam in someone’s eye.) I know he has help - on this particular issue it was editorial assistance from Lyn Reeves and Janice Bostok; cover photo of Dove Lake, with Cradle Mountain in the middle background, by Rob Mackey, who also designed both front and back covers; and the always-crucial-but-inevitably-precarious funding assistance from Arts Tasmania by the Premier, Minister for State Development. But he has to correspond with all those authors – there were 80 accepted for this issue alone - and pin down reluctant reviewers who really don’t want to cast judgment on someone else’s writing; plus he attends literary events and writes about them, interviews writers and writes about them; designs the magazine and lays it out, proofreads it, negotiates its printing, launches it - in three cities this time… promotes it, maintains a website for it, sells it, AND PAYS ALL THE BILLS. Beautifully. Twice a year. PLUS he holds down a full-time job. Do you ever sleep, Ralph? Are you CRAZY?

Publisher Ralph Wessman with writer Peter Grant (right)

And then there’s the quality of the writing. I naively sat down to read it, cover to cover. And I couldn’t. Famous Reporter 42 is jam-packed. It’s like doing a bus tour through Europe in a week, or trying to get to know Tasmania in a couple of days. There’s so much to digest, to mull over, to think about. I had to dip in and out, take it slowly. Savour it. And I love the back cover featuring part of Fran Graham’s beautiful poem “Cradle Mountain” – how many of us have reached desperately for a piece of paper to write the BEST poem they’ve ever had pop into their head, and could only find the back of an envelope…

First there are the essays. Bruce Pascoe’s “Extraction” is an amazing snapshot of a culture in turmoil – the Indonesian occupation of Western Papua - written with a passion and humility that is refreshing in travel writing. He says, “I hate Indonesia and I do it with the complete arrogance of half a day’s exposure. They shouldn’t have let me in until I’d grown up.”

A very warm crowd!

All I could think of when I read Lisa Greenaway’s “On Going Down Swinging No. 30” was the generosity of a publisher – Ralph - to publish something about what could be thought of as “the competition” – the journal Going Down Swinging, published on the mainland for the last 30 years. Maybe I should have borrowed Lisa’s much more eloquent words when I was talking earlier about what Ralph himself does: “…journal editors open the doors and windows to artists all over the world, and invite the chaos in. The editor must create order, reach a number of pages or fill a round number of minutes, curating images and sounds into a coherent whole. Then a printer stamps it down, a reader or review encapsulates it all in a thought or a sentence, and we find a little portion of human chaos has been cut and polished, filed under ‘art’ or ‘literature’ in the local library. Does this satisfy? Of course not. Because once it’s done, we go and do it all again. And we love it. It might be a fundamental function of the human mind to swing from chaos to order. Telling stories. Making stories. There and back again.” She talks about “alchemy, blind trust, magic.” That’s our Ralph, too. Making magic on this side of the Strait… When I asked Ralph why he’d included this piece, he paid homage to Myron Lysenko, one of the journal’s co-founders. Ralph told me that he had sent a copy of FR’s first issue to Myron, who wrote about it in Going Down Swinging. Ralph says, “FR1 wasn’t much good in the way of things, not like Going Down Swinging which started off knowing exactly what they were on about, and publishing and interviewing really good writers from the start. I had to find my way. So Myron could have written anything, really, but he was generous, went on to comment on a couple of the stories, etc., and wished me luck. Small wonder I’ve had a soft spot for the magazine ever since.” Just another example of circles within circles… and the roles Ralph plays. Indeed, we had the pleasure of sharing a table with the very colourful and engaging Myron Lysenko at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival – there’s even a photo of Myron on page 121.

Sharyn Munro’s engaging essay, “The absolutely incorrect bad old days” about the “olden days” of newspaper reporting made me remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Ted Grant, her acerbic but wise editor played by the great Ed Asner - and kind of made me pine (for a few seconds, anyway) for the good old days when we didn’t have to be QUITE so PC all the time. And Ralph’s own compendium, “North to Garradunga,” captures one of the great events I unfortunately missed since arriving in Tasmania, the launch of Geoff Dean’s latest book, Mysteries, Myths and Miracles, launched by Pete Hay, our good friend and my PhD supervisor. I would have loved to have heard Geoff talk about how he appreciated getting unbidden fan letters – “like the woman who sent me a letter from Sydney, writing to say this was only the second fan letter she’d ever written. The first one she sent to Pavarotti.” I also missed the launch of Anna Krien’s book Into the Woods (whose book I still need to read), where she spoke with writer Amanda Lohrey (who I still need to meet). I was at the other two events Ralph writes about: “Island Dreaming” at the Lark, and the Launceston Poetry Cup. I’m glad to be able to take home with me such excellent precis of two of my favourite memories of my time in Tasmania: talking and reading poetry with Pete Hay and Deirdre Kessler about islands, and being one of 34 entrants in the “poetic event of the year.” (Ralph either has a phenomenal memory, or a very tiny tape recorder…) The Tasmanian Poetry Festival is an incredibly good poetry festival, by the way – and I’ve been to a few in my day. It was a fabulous weekend – made even more spectacular by my travelling companions, Ralph, Jane, and Emily. And within his description of the conversation at the Lark, Ralph has included a poem by fellow Prince Edward Islander Deirdre Kessler – who captures in poetry another event I had the privilege of being at: a field trip back home, led by Pete Hay. As much as I love the language of the Tasmanian bush, just like when I hear a Canadian accent here, my heart leaps with recognition of home when I read her poem with familiar words like goldenrod and bluejays, the Mi’kmaq and the Yankee Gale.

John Hale reading from "Squeak, Piggy, Squeak"

It is amazing to get to read so much poetry from Australians – Tasmanians and “mainlanders” (and thanks to Jane Williams for saving me early on from the embarrassment of referring to the mainland as “Australia”). And there are even four Canadians included… in the way of islands, there’s only one I don’t know – Newfoundlander Stephen Rowe who must live in Gander (famous for the American Airforce base - and its airport in times of emergency), from what I can deduce from his poem – but since I’m going to that island after I leave here in June, I’ll be sure to look him up. Deirdre’s house is about 30 metres from mine in Charlottetown, and I met the lovely Jacqueline Turner at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. Although even that meeting has a PEI connection: one of my best friends, Sheryl MacKay, who now lives in Vancouver, freaked out when she saw a photo, on Facebook, of the two of us sitting together at the Festival – Jacqueline is a good friend of hers… Okay, enough with the island connections…

I must admit that I didn’t always “get” all the poetry in Famous Reporter 42. But as it happens with any good poetry, I appreciated the language washing over me, the images searing onto my retinas, the smells and sounds and tastes immersing me in places I’ve never been… I’ll return to some of it again, to tease out the meanings, to roll the imagery round my tongue… As another testament to this journal’s quality, almost to a person the contributors have had books published already, or have been widely published in other journals – doing what we in the book publishing business call “getting a track record so we’ll look at your poetry manuscript.”

I loved the Tasmanian poets: in five tight stanzas Liz McQuilkin captures with gleeful irony the 21^st-century bride wearing white in her poem “The Bride”; Fran Graham’s “Cradle Mountain” is a gorgeous landscape poem with the lines “The landscape’s skin is moist with mist and rain… Waterfalls slap rock with whip and strain…”; and Libby Goodsir’s “Dawn Mothers Walking” is another “place” poem about wallabies that finishes with this evocative image: “side by side / sun licks our / new day.” Another poem that really resonated with me was Graham Kershaw, from Western Australia, called “Kissing Sheryl Hill.” The poem is about recognizing lost opportunity when he revisits his home street some forty years on: “New kids play on new swings, where I kissed Sheryl Hill / and carried her home on shaking handlebars, like a dill.” And Lucy Williams’ “hindsight,” about the death of a brother, is a courageous poem that says what we probably all want to, but can’t: “if I had known about the certainty of his death… I would wish for death fast as new love / … or the ocean rolling him under for keeps / the benevolent ocean flooding his lungs / any of this I would welcome”.

Peter Grant demonstrating why bloggers blog... "Is ANYONE paying attention?"

Peter Grant, not reading from the blog post in FR42...

I was appreciating the park in Launceston with the wonderful poet Jane Williams (yes, Lucy’s sister) and her amazing daughter Em when Ralph was in conversation with poet Peter Bakowski on one of the park’s benches. I had heard Peter read at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, and again a week later at the Republic, so it is illuminating to hear some of the thoughts that go into Peter’s poetry which provide new insight for me, the reader. Thank you, Ralph, for that. And after the interview Ralph had asked us if we had any questions for Peter…. So I asked about the prevalence of haiku or what he calls the “micro poem” or ultra short poem in Australian literary journals – since I don’t remember seeing much of it at home. As he says in the interview, “Sometimes I send my micro poems to magazines only to get a response that says ‘we don’t consider haiku.’ I can’t be bothered pointing out that they’re not haiku… just try to write a very good poem is what I say. And try to write as clearly as possible… You can’t beat clear and strong, you know.” Hear hear.

And speaking of haiku, there is haiku poet from Tasmania in FR 42, along with others from the mainland. It’s hard to quote a line from a gorgeous haiku, since there are so few lines: but Arjun von Caemmerer’s “Graveyard visit / On my garments / Stickyweed” packs a lot into three short lines. My favourite image is the following from David Francis of Victoria: “an earthworm pulls a crow from the sky.” Wow.

Fran Graham reading her poem, "Cradle Mountain"

As I noted earlier, when Ralph asked me to write a book review, my first reaction was squirm-squirm… But then I thought, why not? I LIKED Mark Tredinnick’s poetry. I really have to hand it to Les Wicks, then, who wrote six brief reviews (“Brieflings” – I love that!) of poetry books, many of which have sparked my curiosity enough to want to seek out the books. But I also liked what he said: “I don’t write negative reviews because I believe there are already too many reasons out there why people don’t buy poetry. Of course, I have to pass on a lot of books that I can’t be positive about.” Ever the diplomat. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I very much appreciated Stephenie Cahalan’s reviews of two books: Standing Strong, containing edited transcripts of stories by ten Tasmanian activists, and Into the Woods, about the conflict over Tasmania’s forests. Both are important books for Tasmania: “Both spotlight activists, their methods, their motives and how the public and establishment receive them.” She urges us to think critically while reading Into the Woods, urging that it “be recognized as subjective commentary, rather than incontrovertible fact.” Indeed, Stephenie’s reviews, while generally positive, do make us think about what we’re reading, and ask questions like “Whose voice is missing? What story isn’t being told?” – a crucial role for any civil society that prides itself on its democratic principles and freedom of expression. Thanks, Stephenie, for taking us beyond the page.

And all I wrote at the top of Liz McQuilkin’s review of Dennis Wild’s Just North of Bewilderment was: “I want to buy this book.” I’m sorry I missed his reading at the Republic in December. From her review I can see that his poetry is down-to-earth and accessible, with a quirky sense of humour and filled with “aha!” moments. Just the kind of poetry I love to read.

Liz McQuilkin reading her poem, "The Bride"

I’m sorry I missed the launches that Pete Hay, Sarah Day, and Jackie Kerin wrote speeches for. I know Pete and Sarah, and can just hear their voices as I read these speeches, filled with awe and appreciation for these authors and the gifts of words they’ve given us. It makes me respect this role of launching a book (or a journal) even more. (But it makes me wonder about people who aren’t here tonight reading this launch speech afterward and me thinking about people reading it as I write it – and I get into a terrible muddle that borders on the surreal. Oh dear. )

Even though I’m a poet, I must admit my bias up front: I’m a narrative junkie. I love a good story. And so it was absolutely wonderful to read such fine short stories in FR42. I was drawn in by each of them and they left me wanting more. In Belinda Campbell’s “Ostwaren,” the main character, an Australian exchange student in Germany, shares the experience of living with her landlady – a woman with her own secrets. She writes, “Husband. The word spins me, threads a new tangle of letters through everything I have imagined, wraps itself around her shadow and hauls it into the room.” David McLaren’s “buoyancy” is a gorgeous story of love, found, lost, and found again, masterfully told from both the woman’s and the man’s point of view. Indeed, partway through I had to go back to check that a man had written it – he’d captured the female’s voice SO well. Anne Shimmin’s “The Martyrdom of Socrates” is a tension-filled romp with unexpected and hilarious twists, particularly at the end – and if I tell too much I’ll give it away… I loved her description of the beach, though: “a million grains of sand wince as the salty tide washed over their tiny sunburnt shoulders.” And, finally, there’s an amazing story by my friend John Hale, “Squeak, Piggy, Squeak,” which made me weep for the brutality of humankind. Of all the writing in FR42, this one has stayed with me the longest – I feel the shock reverberations long after I’ve closed the book. (I apologize if I’m sounding a bit “Monamist” here, but it’s true…)

Until recently, I’d never seen a blog entry reprinted in a literary journal – but then blogs are a pretty recent phenomenon. The last lines of Peter Grant’s “Recovering from Optimism” particularly resonated with me because of my interest in place and attachment to place. A “passionate Tasmanian-by-choice,” Peter writes: “Catch the right day, with the beach at peace and the cobbles warm, smooth and sensuous; with gulls strutting and probing the wrack, and oystercatchers stalking ahead of me like wary cyclists awaiting the velodrome bell; find it on such a day and I might believe that the interaction of wave and sand, cobble and creature, is nothing more than a long story of the deepest, most abiding affection. For it is all of these things, great and small, and the noticing of them, that bonds us to place. And noticing is vital, because it is far harder for we humans to wreak havoc in a place that we’ve come to know deeply and personally. For what is the sum of those things, if it’s not love…” I wish I’d written that…

And Lorianne Disabato’s “The Long View” about the practice of meditation is wise and comforting: “It’s a habit, like my grandfather’s view of marriage, that takes a long time to cultivate… but that’s okay, because it’s the practice of a lifetime. In the short view, we’re all just beginners stumbling our way through a play knowing our lines; in the long view, that play is a great cosmic dance that will lead, prompt, and nudge us, all in due time.” These blog entries have led me to seek more from these writers.

More audience

And isn’t it, in the end, what a literary journal is – to offer up a smorgasbord of the best new writing around… letting us sample new dishes and then getting us to order off the main menu when we come back. Please help me in thanking our own Ralph Wessman for ALL the work he does on behalf of writers – in Tasmania and elsewhere. The work that goes into creating such a gorgeous journal is incalculable.

But in an effort to mitigate that incalculability, I’ll just end with a suggestion that you all must buy or subscribe to Famous Reporter to support the fabulous work that Ralph does SO well for all of us – and I quote from page 149, where I’ve reviewed Mark Tredinnick’s Fire Diary… Says Kenneth Rexroth: “I’ve had it with those cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry and never buy a book.” Chris and Janet here in the Hobart Bookshop - and Ralph - would be happy if you did it - preferably in fives and tens.

Boy, do I know this feeling! "After the party's over..."

(Thanks to Pete Hay for taking most of the photos! And thanks to Ralph for inviting me to do this... AND, to top it all off: I got paid! We definitely don't do it like this in Canada...)

Windgrove

2011-02-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

As you know, the research component of my PhD studies is to interview artists (literary, visual, and performance) in Tasmania and Newfoundland, focusing on their attachment to place. With help from my supervisors – and many others I’ve come in contact with here in Tasmania - I’ve been working on my list of whom to approach. And one of them is sculptor Peter Adams.

Before Christmas Pete took me out to his place on the Tasman Peninsula, approximately two hours from Hobart, near Nubeena. (The peninsula could be an island, as there’s a bridge over a canal located at Dunnalley…)

Peter lives at “Windgrove,” where he sculpts beautiful pieces of art from wood while sculpting “home” from his 100-acre plot of paradise that borders Roaring Beach and the Great Southern Ocean.

Before leaving town I checked out his blog, finding professional-quality photos of his work and his home, interspersed with eloquent musings about art and life. The first one I came to was about gratitude, written over the American Thanksgiving weekend (Peter is originally from the US), about thanksgiving on a daily basis, or as he writes, “on an hourly basis,” and how it “is enhanced by how closely we observe what beauty actually companions us through each day.” Because I’m so conscious of the privilege that I’ve been given – to be here, on a beautiful island, doing something I love – I was anxious to meet this man.

A tall gangly fellow with a huge boyish grin, Peter is an open book. He lives his life with a generosity of spirit that is infectious – I felt within minutes of being in his presence that I had been given a huge gift.

When we arrived he was working on a roundish sculpture cradled on an inner tube in his outdoor studio. It looked like butterfly, or a shell, with a round stone inset in the wood where the hinge or butterfly body would be. He has since written about it on his blog, a wonderful and mysterious story about where inspiration comes from. Be sure to check out his photos, as the sculpture is much further along in its creation than the photos I took!

He then invited us into his home – a gorgeous light-infused house he started building nearly twenty years ago while living in an old bus out back.

You can tell he LOVES creating with wood – the beams are exposed and they, along with the walls, have benefited from the many windows: the wood is burnished to a golden brown that glows with warmth. Again, if you scroll through his blog, you’ll find photos of his place (I felt it would be an intrusion if I took any). I especially like the one of him soaking in his bathtub outside on the deck.

Peter treated us to some local smoked octopus and cheese on one of his decks, before taking us for a walk around the property. I longed to have tucked a tape recorder into his pocket so I could capture the stories he told us as we strolled: about the middens he’s found and how he would have liked to have been there when the Aboriginal people walked these same pathways along the top of the cliff, feasting on shellfish and leaving traces to be found a thousand years later; about the benches he created so people could enjoy the peace of the woods, or Roaring Beach from different vantage points; about the planting he’s done to reclaim a sheep paddock and restore it to its original native bush; about the friendship circle he’s created high on the hill…

His is a deeply storied place, and he has obviously developed what American writer Barry Lopez calls “an ethical unity” with Windgrove. Lopez writes, “If you’re intimate with a place, a place with whose history you’re familiar, and you establish an ethical conversation with it, the implication that follows is this: the place knows you’re there. It feels you. You will not be forgotten, cut off, abandoned.” The feeling that Peter’s land knows he’s here is palpable – or maybe it’s that he knows its stories so well, and is able to put words to them - I don’t know…

We talked about his relationship with his island place, how he realizes he could not be doing what he’s doing here back in America. We talked about how an island gives you the freedom to create – you can walk to the edge and then walk back - the psychological boundary ensures that your energy doesn’t “bleed away.” We talked about the books he’s reading, and how he uses mythology to bring deeper meaning to his sculptures while at the same time taking inspiration from the natural world, blending the two. And we talked about what will happen to his land after he’s gone.

I found a quote from him in a teachers’ resource guide at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), where I saw one of his bench sculptures in one of the rooms devoted to postmodern art. He says, “I try to heal humankind’s relationship to the earth – my choice of means is wood and stones… These materials have a vibration, a story we can tap into, that we as humans should learn from in order to find our meaningful place in the world” (from “Objects of Contemplation,” Craft Arts International, no. 42, 1998).

Such a place. Such stories. For me, Peter Adams is a conduit to this island – to understanding its significance to island studies through his art and words.

Before we left, he agreed to be one of my interviewees. And for that I am grateful, too.

Homesick

2011-01-24T22:19:00.000-08:00

One of the first things Pete said to me when I arrived inTasmania was, “You know you’ll be homesick, Laurie, and everything you do herewill be through the lens of homesickness.” Right. Thanks, Pete, for thatwonderful welcome. But I knew there was some truth in what he said, as monthsbefore there had been an evening at John and Claire’s – a dinner party wherethe wine flowed freely, before I even knew I had been accepted to UTas – when Igot up to go to the washroom, and sat on the loo looking at the folksysnowflake sign above the door, something I had given to John one Christmas –which read “My best friends are flakes” - and imagined what it would be like tonot be there and missing my family and friends and my Island and dinner partieslike this… There were tears – no doubt abetted by the alcohol - but my heartwas heavy with misery and the next morning’s hangover was ever so poignant as Iremembered the ache….

However, that didn’t stop me from coming to Tasmania.Obviously. I arrived the morning of September 3, 2010, and that same eveningwent to an art exhibition opening, where Pete’s wonderful poems hung on thewalls beside Christl Berg’s exquisite photographs of flotsam found “On theWaterfront,” and he told me about homesickness. But I was really in Tasmania.On the other side of the planet. About as far away from home as I couldpossibly get. I was thrilled.

Over the next several weeks I travelled with Pete and Annato Bruny Island; I went with Denbeigh and Maddie and “Gramps” for fish andchips at Fish Frenzy and to Salamanca Market, to Conington Beach and PeppermintBay; I went on a bushwalk with Millie and Lily and Sarah and Vishnu and Jane; I went with Millie and Garth to Salamanca Market then went with them toAnna and Dave’s for supper; I experienced my first footy Grand Final at“Boyler’s” house – along with the requisite “barbie” and pavlova; I went withJane and Ralph and Em to the Poetry Festival in Launceston, and with Jane tothe Botanical Gardens. I tasted the beer in Pete’s four favourite pubs and readpoetry at the Republic AND the Lark. I even got drunk with Pete and Deirdre,along with writer Richard Flanagan, photographer Matthew “Newts” Newton, andMarcus Morse, “the great river man,” at Knopwood’s.

But then Thanksgiving rolled around (that’s the secondweekend in October for those who aren’t familiar with Canadian holidays), andit was also the double-whammy of my birthday (I’m one of those people whoactually LIKES her birthday!), and there were Facebook postings about turkeyand stuffing and cranberries and rum pumpkin pie, and e-mails from home asking,“Who’s going to make the gravy?” (that was always MY job!) and “What aboutLaurie’s buns?”… and birthday greetings and “Wish you were here’s…”

Poets Anne Kellas and Liz Winfield

Jane Williams reading poetry, with Emily, Liz, and Peter Bakowski and his wife looking on

And even though Thanksgiving Sunday and my birthday werespent with new friends at a poetry reading at the Republic, followed by apotluck at Liz Winfield’s house, where the table looked just like the one athome would – sagging with scrumptious food and surrounded by a dozen newfriends on mismatched chairs, with the wine flowing freely and the conversationengaging and warm and funny – there was something missing: the turkey in themiddle. And the gravy and stuffing and cranberries and my Auntie Jean’s airbunsand my rum pumpkin pie. And my old friends. And Saturday morning Farmers’Market. And even the Superstore. And then it started. I walked into theuniversity on Monday morning, bumped into Kate Booth who asked me how myweekend was, and I started to cry. A divining rod would have jumped out of thediviner’s hands.

They say that homesickness is a pathology: you can be,literally, sick for home. Psychologist Douglas Porteous writes (and I quotedhim in my Master’s thesis): “The idea of home as a base, a source of identity .. . is the goal of all the voyages of self-discovery… Journeys are necessary inorder to discover primitive roots. Exile is likely, and even in exile one issurrounded by those who re-create home . . . home tugs throughout our adultlives.” While journeying, Porteous writes, “home remains the territorial core.The necessary sense of adventure gained by venturing from home is supported byknowledge that the home remains intact and the ways back to it are known.” As Iwrote in my thesis: in keeping with the idea of “primitive roots,” the self isso tied to its place of origin that it can become physiologically “sick” for“home.”

So there. It’s legitimate. I’m sick for home. And this, Iguess, is my journey for self-discovery. Ironically, I’ve exiled (ex-isled, inmy case) myself from home in order to learn MORE about my home – about myislandness. But, always, “home tugs.” And, ironically again, it’s exacerbatedby the means by which I stay close to home: e-mail and IM and Facebook andSkype… I am in touch with home on a daily basis – not like in the “olden days”when you’d write a letter which might take a week, and then you’d wait a monthfor a reply (if you were lucky), or if you were a student travelling throughEurope you might phone home once the whole time you were away (or if you ranout of money)… Thank you to Jane Ledwell for that crucial insight into howtechnology affects our relationship to home. It bears more thought, moreteasing out, in the context of my work about place – and placelessness – aboutwhat Canadian geographer Edward Relph has put into categories of belonging: “existentialoutsideness (feeling alienated from a place), objective outsideness (remainingpurposefully unengaged), incidental outsideness (dispassionately observing),vicarious insideness (appreciating a place without actually being there),behavioural insideness (recognizing familiar things about a place), empatheticinsideness (“getting” a place, being open to the significances of a place), andexistential insideness (knowing in your bones that this is the place where youbelong).”

That last one is me. At home. Where, according to LawrenceDurrell, in his book A Spirit of Place,I “have had particularly moving experiences,” from where I get my “vital sourceof both individual and cultural identity and security, a point of departurefrom which we orient ourselves to the world.” To me, Prince Edward Island isliterally a “field of care”; it is, paraphrasing Relph, “where I know and amknown.”

Fortunately for me and my disease, I have some verysupportive friends - both old and new. Claire gave me a pep talk: “This is justa very small period of time in the grand scheme of things. You’re thereexperiencing new things, meeting new people, seeing new people. We’re stillhere doing the same ol’ same ol’. You’ll come back and fit into our lives likeyou’d never left. Except you’ll be richer and wiser for the experience you havehad.” (She must have read my thesis!) And I realized through my blossoming friendshipwith Tassie poet Jane Williams that establishing these new links is why I’mhere… the rest of my life would be poorer if I hadn’t gotten to know peoplelike Jane Williams and Relph Wessman and Jane's daughter Em, Pete and his wife Anna Williams; fellowpost-grads Millie Rooney and her partner Garth, Anna Egan and her partner Dave, Lily Pearce, Jade Price, Vishnu Prahalad, Mahni Dugan, and Jenny Steiger;my officemate Jenny Scott; recent PhD grad Kate Booth (another of Pete’sstudents!) and soon-to-be-grad Andrew Harwood; Leo Cheverie’s cousin Pamela Balon and her partner Paul; and myhousemates Denbeigh and Stewart and Maddie, and “Nona” and “Gramps” and Suzie… Ithelped get me through the homesickness, and I could knuckle down to work onceagain.

But when Mike told me he couldn’t come to Tasmania forChristmas after all, all bets were off. An idea formed and fomented until itbubbled over the top: I asked him and Mikhala if it would be all right if Icame home for Christmas, instead of coming to their UPEI graduations in May. Butif I did that, it meant I couldn’t come home until June. Mikhala said,“Graduation, shmaduation… it’s a boring affair anyway!” And Mike said sure –he’d come to visit in May instead, and fly home with me when I left. So I askedthe-Queen-of-organizing- travel-itineraries Mikhala to start looking forflights; I booked it (paid way too much money - thank you, Acorn Press sale!);and then started counting the weeks. Pete said he was sorry I wouldn’t be hereover Christmas so I could see how they pack a whole year of fun into a month,and how they replicate a Northern Hemisphere turkey dinner in 35-degreeweather… I told him my body was craving the cold – it needed minus 10 and snow.It needed a Christmas tree and lights, singing in the choir for the candlelightservice and Midnight Mass at 9, Saturday trivia at the Churchill Arms, shoppingat the Superstore, a huge snowstorm where EVERYTHING stops, snuggling with mysweetie, and a Christmas turkey dinner - with cranberries and stuffing andgravy and buns and shortbread cookies - at John and Claire’s. My body justneeded to be home.

The countdown was interminable: I felt like a little kidwaiting for Santa. I counted sleeps.

But December 3 finally arrived… I said good-bye to Maddie,and told her I’d bring her some pictures of snow and Christmas trees… filled myborrowed backpack with socks from the Salamanca Market, and went home.

And it was everything I asked for. Even the 12 hours I hadto spend in LA were fantastic, thanks to Sheryl MacKay’s cousin Thane Tierney,who met me at LAX wearing a big red maple leaf on his shirt, took me to lunch,then toured me around Santa Monica and rural LA County, all the while entertainingme royally with stories about the music biz. He and his “bride” Carol welcomedme into their home like family (my daughter Mikhala IS sort of related to them…she’s the stepdaughter of another of Thane’s cousins Paula – we are apostmodern family, after all!), before depositing me at the airport for the lastleg home.

As I flew over Rocky Point into Charlottetown, I could seethe patchwork quilt of the Island – looking rather dull in the December rain,but I still choked up. Mike met me at the airport with a great big grin on hisface. We even made it to Saturday afternoon trivia at the Churchill in time forthe second half. For presents, everyone got books from the Bookmark and Tassiesocks. I saw everyone I wanted to see, ate too much food, drank too much wine,went to too many parties, patted my dog Callie and my cat Rosie, and soaked up the Christmas lights and snow and cold…

I didn’t get my white Christmas – but we had snow by BoxingDay – which, even though it wasn’t the huge storm I wanted, made me and mysweetie STOP – pyjamas only, and no one was allowed in or out of the house. Itwas the perfect vacation day.

Leaving home on January 4 was surreal. I could hardlybelieve it was over… and saying good-bye at the airport was hard hard HARD. Butas soon as I started to think about the work that awaited me back in Tassie –the January 7 seminar at the Art School, the ethics application I had to write,the artist interviews I had to set up and prepare for - reality set in, and Iwas okay again. I was okay knowing that everything was just the same as I’dleft it – and it’d still be there when I got back, just like Claire and DouglasPorteous said it would be. I’d seen home through new eyes, which made me loveand appreciate my “existential insideness” even more.

I realized when I arrived back that I’ve come to loveHobart, too – being greeted by Denbeigh’s huge grin and rushed by Maddie… carryingher all the way to the airport carpark in one arm while towing my suitcase withthe other… driving over the Tasman Bridge and seeing Mt. Wellington loom largebehind my house in South Hobart… the view from my bedroom window down to theharbour… my morning walk down to the university and then back up that*&%*$# hill on Lynton Avenue… meeting up with my friends in the Geographytea room… sailing on the ferry over to Bruny Island once again with Pete andAnna, with Flossie and Ollie yapping shrilly in my ears… walking Nebraska Beach…it all brings a sense of familiarity that is comforting.

It’s empathetic insideness I’m feeling. I’m “getting” thisplace. My heart is open to the significance of this place. And it feels justfine.

Bruny Time

2011-01-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of Bruny Island.

Bruny Island Ferry (from the Bruny side)

You drive 35 minutes south of Hobart along the main highway, through the small towns of Kingston, Margate, and Snug to Kettering, then sail for 15 minutes across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny, then drive inland for about 10 minutes. Then you come to a bit of a junction. You can choose to go left – which is north – or straight – which is south. Usually we go north, to Pete and Anna’s “shack” or what we’d call “the cottage” – though, by definition in Tasmania, a shack is where all the stuff-that-gets-worn-out-in-the-house-but-that-is-still-too-good-for-the-tip goes. As a certain young man cheekily asked a certain older man recently, “Is that where your wife sends you?”

Nebraska Beach, near Dennes Point on North Bruny Island

There are all kinds of shacks all over Tasmania – in various states of gentrification or dilapidation or just good plain homeyness. They’re mostly found on or near water, though not all… and they’re mostly where people go to get away from their regular lives. Shack culture is prevalent here. There's a website called islandshacks.com, and a book called Shack Life with some fabulous photos by Matt Newton. Indeed, he describes shacks as “perhaps one of the most endearing symbols of Tasmanian life.”

But that’s not what I want to write about here. Well, I don’t really even want to write much. Mostly I want to show you the pictures.

In late November I got to over to Bruny once again – but this time we headed south.

We passed all kinds of bays, including Adams Bay and Ford Bay and Little Fancy Bay, which are all part of Great Bay. Out of sight over the hill on the eastern side were Top Slip Point, Trumpeter Bay, Lookout Bay, Variety Bay, and Tarpot Bay. Near Fancy Bay we passed Bruny Island Airport – a tiny airstrip where the rich and famous can fly in. North and South Bruny are joined by a long spit of land that looks narrower on the map than it really is. It’s called The Neck, and it separates Isthmus Bay from Adventure Bay. I longed to be able to see both sides of water from the road, but alas I could not. What I could see was a gorgeous vista – because the tide was out, it was kilometers of flats. There’s a tiny penguin rookery there (for tiny penguins – not that it’s particularly tiny) – next time I hope to see one of the little birds up close…

Bruny is about the size of Singapore, but has a population of 620 instead of 4.5 million. Some of them live in the villages of Alonnah, Lunawanna, or Adventure Bay, where Rob Pennicot’s award-winning Bruny Island Cruises depart from. Although Adventure Bay sounds like a TV show, it was really named after a ship that anchored there – it belonged to Captain Furneaux, one of several European explorers who explored around Bruny, including Captains Flinders, Cook, and Bligh (yes, Captain Bligh of Bounty fame!). First sighted by Abel Tasman in 1642, Bruny was named after Rear Admiral Bruni D’Entrecasteaux who visited in 1792-93.

Adventure Bay

We headed down through Alonnah and Lunawanna, (where we stopped for award-winning meat pies), Little Taylors Bay, Great Taylors Bay, Cloudy Bay Lagoon, and Cloudy Bay toward Cape Bruny Lighthouse in South Bruny National Park, but we stopped when we noticed a sign that dogs weren’t allowed into the park – even in cars. But you know from the map that once you get to the lighthouse there’s nothing between you and Antarctica.

On the way back we stopped at Morella Island Retreat and Hot House Café, where we had a beer in the greenhouse-like restaurant and a fabulous view of The Neck.

Bruny's tourism brochures rave about the “abundant wildlife, beautiful beaches, and stunning scenery… boutique food offerings including cheese, wine, chocolate, fudge, and smoked atlantic salmon… Once you reach the other side, take your watch off and throw your mobile phone out the window… you’re on Bruny Time!”

From what I experienced, I couldn’t agree more… it was a great day and a fabulous weekend. Thanks again to my wonderful hosts… I’m thinking that I could get used to Tasmania’s shack culture and Bruny Time…

Leonard Cohen World Tour 2010

2010-11-17T17:25:00.000-08:00

When it was first announced that Leonard Cohen was coming to Charlottetown to play one night - May 18, 2008 - I didn’t even consider going as I knew I was going to be off-Island. But if I had, I would have been terribly disappointed: the Homburg Theatre at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, which holds 1,102 people, sold out at $72 a pop in a record 52 minutes. To add insult to injury, so many people tried to buy tickets online that they crashed the Confed Centre’s website. It was unheard-of.

I consoled myself with the fact that maybe he’d be playing in Vancouver while I was there, but alas he was not… and I only got to hear the reviews from friends: “a phenomenal concert,” “the best I’ve ever been to,” “the old guy still has it,” “he sang for over three hours without a break,” “his back-up singers and band were fantastic,” “what a professional,” “he’s still got what it takes.” Hmm… Jealous? Yup.

And then there was the Leonard Cohen tribute concert in April in Victoria, organized by my friend Henry Dunsmore because he was one of the many disappointeds who couldn’t get a ticket. It was a memorable night, where so many of Leonard’s songs came alive for me, sung by friends of all ages, with the fabulous house band of Jon Rehder, Remi Arsenault, Reg Ballagh, Michael Mooney, and Peter Bevan-Baker. It was especially wonderful because it was the first time Mike and I sang together in public – me with “Suzanne” and him with “That’s No Way to Say Good-bye,” backing each other up with harmonies. Sigh…

Little did I know then that I’d get my chance to see the real Leonard Cohen only months later. Not in Charlottetown, Halifax, or Vancouver, but in Hobart, Tasmania. It was The Leonard Cohen World Tour 2010.

I can’t remember where I first heard that he was coming – but it was pretty soon after I had arrived. I went online to see if I could get tickets, but the cheap ones ($139!) were gone. And as much as I wanted to see this Canadian poetry icon, I couldn’t justify a $194 “good seat” – not on a student’s budget. Pete’s wife Anna suggested I might be able to find a cheaper ticket by checking out the classifieds in the Mercury (the local paper) – but in the end, it was word-of-mouth, the most powerful purveyor of information, that got me there. I happened to mention all this to Ralph Wessman (publisher of Famous Reporter and Walleah Press) and Jane Williams (poet extraordinaire) on the drive to Launceston for the Poetry Festival in early October. From the driver’s seat Ralph piped up that an e-mail had just come around his office that day – apparently someone from Canberra had bought two of the expensive tickets for himself and his partner. When he went home and said, honey, guess where we’re going November 15, she said, honey, I don’t like Leonard Cohen. (I’m thinkin’ that might be grounds for divorce in my house!) So he was trying to sell hers for $150. I said to Ralph: please send me his e-mail address! So on Monday, he did; I fired off an e-mail; and Andrew in Canberra said sure, you can have it… see you on the 15^th. He put the ticket in the mail; I transferred money into his account; the ticket arrived; I showed it off to my fellow students at Tuesday tea and cake time. Then he decided to sell his ticket, too. Turns out he could get to the concert at Hanging Rock (yes, an outdoor concert on Nov. 20 under the stars at the iconic Hanging Rock!) more easily than coming to Tasmania (after all, we ARE an island here!). I sent around an e-mail to the Geography Department saying there was another ticket available, and it went, too.

I knew that Pete and Anna, along with their friends Derek and Jan, had bought their tickets six months ago… so I boldly asked if I could hitch a ride with them. They said sure – so we left Monday after work to drive to the Derwent Entertainment Centre (an arena-type venue that seats 5,000) a short distance outside the city. Anna suggested that we go early to beat the traffic, and have a picnic supper. Of course it was raining, so we sat in lawn chairs underneath an overhang by the utility entrance and had Anna’s marvelous salmon quiche, Jan’s salad made with greens from their garden, Laurie’s chocolate cupcakes (surprise, surprise), and some wine from Stewart’s wine cellar (he told me I could help myself, really!).

When the doors finally opened, the rest of my happy party went in one direction and I went off on my own to find my seat. I felt just like I did boarding the Icelandair flight in New York City to discover that I was in Business Class: my seat was fantastic! I was down on the main floor, seven rows from the front, and right in the middle. I waved to my friends in the nosebleeds… After a while the woman who bought Andrew’s other ticket came along: Anne Hughes. Of course she knew Pete and Anna (after all, this IS an island!). Her musician partner and Pete had collaborated on some music and poetry events in the past. We marveled at our good fortune, and she said she quite enjoyed getting to know our ticket seller. He told her to watch out for the homesick Canadian who would be sitting next to her…

Before settling in to my seat, I wandered around a little, checking out the stage and the merchandise...

When one of the ushers noticed I had purchased some of the merchandise, we struck up a conversation. She told me that a group of 22 teenagers were sitting just behind where we were standing. So, curious as to why such young kids would be there, I went over to talk to them. Apparently they had written a fan letter to Leonard Cohen, telling him that they play some of his songs in their band at school. So Cohen’s manager wrote back from Beverly Hills – and offered them 22 free tickets. Talk about class! The kids, from Eastside Lutheran College (along with a couple of dad chaperones), could hardly sit still – they were THAT excited. They said that “Hallelujah” was their favourite.

So... what can I say? The concert was amazing. Leonard came out in his signature fedora and black suit, and from the moment he opened his mouth to sing “Dance Me to the End of Love,” he had us in his the palm of his hand. His voice is just as deep and gravelly as it ever was, his lyrics as poignant. He plays guitar on several of his songs, and a tiny preprogrammed electric piano on one. (He joked that he doubted that anyone else had that kind of technology…) At the age of 75, he can get down on his knees to sing – and back up again without missing a beat – which he did regularly. It was especially touching when he knelt in front of his guitar/bandurria/laud/archilaud-player, Javier Mas from Spain, or sang with and to his musical collaborator and back-up singer Sharon Robinson (who co-wrote and produced his 2001 album, Ten New Songs), and to Charley and Hattie Webb, his other two singers. (I want to be a back-up singer when I grow up. Although I’ll never be able to do cartwheels in tandem like they do!) He interacted with everyone on stage, and twice introduced – or, rather, paid homage to - each of them with descriptors that only Leonard the Poet could pull out of his black fedora: sublime, impeccable, high priest of precision, shepherd of strings, signature of steady, architect of the arpeggio...

Even though they’ve been doing the show for three years, and this is their second time through Australia, the act was fresh and exciting. He even mentioned "Hobart" in one of the songs, so the audience knew that he knew where he was... You could tell that everyone in the band loved being on stage with him, and Leonard’s appreciation for them was obvious. Indeed, an article in one of the papers talked about the family atmosphere he creates, and the mutual respect they each have for the other – Leonard treats them like equals. And it shows.

The first half of the show was great, but it wasn’t until after the intermission that I found myself engaging emotionally. Sure I was excited to be in the presence of a Canadian poetry icon... and to be with other like-minded people so far away from Canada was amazing... But I didn't feel that real connection with the music until after the break. The second half was simply fantastic. Maybe the songs were more upbeat, or maybe they were all really getting into the groove. There wasn’t much banter – and what there was was poetry. Real Leonard Cohen poetry. Spoken by Leonard Cohen. Like the way he did “A Thousand Kisses Deep.” It made me remember kisses. How good they can be.

Sharon Robinson did Boogie Street, with Leonard and the rest of the band doing back-up. Dino Soldo, “the master of breath,” who plays all the wind instruments – and on this song a soulful saxophone that brought much applause - was totally in awe of her performance, pushing back all the accolades to her. And the Webb Sisters did a gorgeous duet in one of the THREE encores. Leonard bounded on the stage at 8:15 p.m., and bounded off at 11:40 (with “Closing Time”), with a 20-minute break in the middle. Stamina or what…

I can’t say that it’s the absolute best concert I ever went to – but then I'm hard-pressed to name the best concert I ever went to. (Maybe Billy Joel when I was 18 and my ex-boyfriend bought me a ticket – one ticket – so I had to go on my own to the Vancouver Coliseum… memories of that experience no doubt mixed up in memories of cruel teenage love gone wrong…) But Leonard Cohen would be a close second for me. I just wish my sweetie, who bought me the ticket for my birthday, had been able to share the magic, too! (I bought him a T-shirt… I know, I know, such a cliché…)

Here’s the set list, courtesy of Maarten Massa...

FIRST SET

Dance Me To The End Of Love

The Future

Ain’t No Cure For Love

Bird On The Wire

Everybody Knows

In My Secret Life

Who By Fire

The Darkness

Chelsea Hotel #2

Waiting For The Miracle

SECOND SET

Anthem

Tower Of Song

Suzanne

Avalanche

A Singer Must Die

Sisters Of Mercy

The Gypsy’s Wife

The Partisan

Boogie Street

Hallelujah

I'm Your Man

A Thousand Kisses Deep (poem)

Take This Waltz

FIRST ENCORE

So Long, Marianne

First We Take Manhattan

FINAL ENCORES

Famous Blue Raincoat

If It Be Your Will

Closing Time

Photo from the souvenir program (Dominique Issermann)

“Manifold Gifts of Place”

2010-11-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

John Cameron is a lovely man. You know it to look at him, you know it when you read his work, you know it to hear him, and you know it to talk to him.

I’d first heard of John when I went to Bruny Island with Pete and Anna, just after I arrived in Tasmania. Pete told the story about their neighbours, John, a retired academic and his artist partner Vicki, who had bought a shack on Bruny just down the road from theirs after visiting them for a few days. It was a story about serendipity – which involved a canoe, a photograph, and a heron that kept moving – which I stored somewhere deep in my memory bank. Later when Pete gave me a copy of a book John edited, called changing places: re-imagining australia, I sort of made the connection with John and Bruny, but not quite. Even after I met John, at Linn Millar’s Friday Forum on “Telling Places in Country,” and we’d had a wonderful conversation about islands and place, it didn’t click. But it was during our conversation that he told me about the essays he’s writing for an American academic journal devoted to phenomenology. His Letters from Far South are imaginative pieces that chronicle his explorations into Goethean science but which are firmly grounded in his and Vicki’s experience of living on Bruny Island. It was in his first letter that I read the story of the canoe and the photograph and the heron that kept moving. And the penny, as they say, dropped.

So when I heard that John was slated to speak at Friday Forum on October 29, I knew I had to spend some time with his letters, to get to know more about this man and his story. It was the most enjoyable reading about place and attachment to place that I’ve done to date. If all my background theoretical reading could be like that, this PhD business will be a breeze. (But I already know it’s not!)

John is a storyteller and a scientist, a poet and a philosopher… a keen observer of his surroundings using all his senses, including the sixth one which science doesn’t usually allow a place for. Formerly a senior lecturer in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney, he taught place theory grounded in experiential learning and field trips, and founded a series of five national "Sense of Place” colloquia (which, unfortunately, are no longer running). I urge you to check out his letters - elegant in style and generous in spirit.

Letter from Far South: the story of how a canoe and a photograph and a heron allowed him and Vicki to make Bruny Island their permanent residence;

The house on Bruny Island (photo by Jenny Scott)

Second Letter from Far South: “seeing with the heart” the geomorphology of Bruny’s Blackstone Bay;

Third Letter from Far South: Inhabiting Intercultural History: how, in a manner bordering on the surreal, they acquired "Blackstone," a beautiful and historically significant piece of prime waterfront land adjacent to theirs when it was meant to be sold for big bucks at auction; on it they had discovered a sod hut dating back to 1829 when George Augustus Robinson was beginning his “Friendly Mission” on Bruny Island;

Fourth Letter from Far South: how they’ve learned to reduce their ecological footprint without falling victim to what environmental critics call the “mentality of lack” – eloquently described through the learning curve they undertook when they decided to generate their own electricity; and

Fifth Letter from Far South: A Question of Action: The Grasstree Story: what they’ve learned about the fragilities of life and the complexities of ecological systems through applying Goethean science to the grasstrees on their land, some of which are dying.

John’s talk on Friday, then, was entitled “The Manifold Gifts of Place: Stories from Blackstone, Bruny Island.” With Vicki’s photographs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures playing out on the screen over his shoulder, he talked about the abundant gifts he’s received since moving to Bruny – starting with what the heron gave them: life on Bruny itself, as well as the gift of attentiveness. (But he admitted, like most of us, he often needs to remind himself to put down his pen and pay attention.)

“The gift of Bruny is a daily reminder of a way of being,” he said. “We are learning to live within our ecological means. The more I accept these gifts and the limitations that come with them, the more I accept the sense of abundance in life.”

Basing his talk on gift theory as presented in Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage Books, 1999), John said that to receive these gifts is not a passive act; it must be reciprocated, or passed on, because the gift that does not move loses its property. Each time a gift is passed on, it increases in value: physical, social (creating community and connectivity), and spiritual. It becomes, then, a “labour of gratitude.” He said that the sense of indebtedness is part of the labour of gratitude, as is the need to communicate what they have experienced through their creative work: John’s writing, which helps him to make sense of their life on Bruny, and has become an integral part of his life there; Vicki’s sculptures, paintings, photography and illustrated poetry which are a direct response to Blackstone's natural environment and the traumatic post-colonial history of Bruny; their petition to the Tasmanian Heritage Council to protect the remains of Robinson’s sod hut; and their involvement in the Bruny Island community. Indeed, one of their acts has been to regenerate their 55 acres of degraded paddocks by replanting it with thousands of trees with the aim of creating sanctuary for wildlife. He said, “When we first came, there was a feeling of melancholy that permeated the land, through the story of Robinson and Truganini, and the loss of habitat for the animals [through land clearance and sheep grazing]. Aboriginal friends have told us that the land here is quieter now.”

He ended with the thought that "gift exchange with place is a wonderful way to bring practical expression to philosophical ideas such as the need to develop reciprocity with the more-than-human world.”

Partway through the talk, I wrote the word “grace” in the margin of my notebook. This fits John to a “t.” His writing made me think of some of my friends who try to live lightly on the earth; indeed, on Friday afternoon, before the talk, I’d sent links to John’s letters to some of them, hoping that their gift might provide some kind of affirmation that what they’re doing is a good thing – just in case they ever need it. And it makes me aware – before “mental turbulence” takes over – of the gift I’ve been given: to be here on this beautiful island, to be learning new things and to be making new friends. I realize that I am privileged at this stage of my life, just as John and Vicki are, to be in a position that many can never be, for whatever reason (quite often financial!). And that is to do what you love, and follow where your heart takes you.


John Cameron (left) with Peter McQuillan (Geography professor whose office is just down the hall from mine)

A few words about Goethean science, based on an article of John’s called "Place, Goethe and Phenomenology: A Theoretic Journey." He wrote this in response to a conversation he had with phenomenology guru David Seamon (who created and maintains the American academic journal where John’s essays can be found). In encouraging John to recognize the enormous value of the experiential teaching practices he had developed and to go even deeper into phenomenological enquiries with his students, he suggested looking at Goethe’s precepts, which followed “an intuitive approach” to wholeness rather than an intellectual approach “in which natural phenomena are explained through generalization and abstraction by underlying mathematical laws” (181).

Goethe suggested different stages, beginning with active looking at an object, then visualizing “what has been observed in as much detail as possible entirely in the imagination”; and, in so doing, developing an “exact sensorial imagination.”

John then explored the concepts with two people who were theorists and practitioners of Goethean science: Henri Bortoft (his book is The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Towards a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature (NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1996)) and Isis Brook (her 1998 paper is entitled “Goethean science as a way to read landscape” in Landscape Research, 23(1)).

Henri Bortoft described the first two of Goethe’s stages as visualizing a phenomenon using the “space behind the eye,” then moving down the body to the chest to visualize it from “the heart space.” Between his work, and that of Isis Brooks, the four stages are as follows: 1) to observe an object carefully and draw it in detail by looking at it directly and then from memory; 2) to experience “exact sensorial imagination,” where you perceive “the time-life of the phenomenon, seeing it as a being with a past and a future and imagining, visualizing what these are” (185). 3) to “draw out the gesture” or “impulse” of the object, by drawing or describing it over and over again (you can also use a creative medium such as clay or sculpture or poetry, which certainly caught my attention); which will then allow the object to “reveal its essential nature” (this part takes lots of practice!); and 4) “intuiting the responsibility that accompanies coming to know another being from the inside” (188) and passing it on to others in the best way you know how.

In the paper John describes clearly his own first attempts at getting to know a place, in this instance, a granite tor on the Cornish coast of England. And he says that his letters are further attempts at developing what Goethe called bildung, “the schooling of intuitive faculties in the practitioner, which enables greater sensitivity and more holistic awareness of the natural world” (Fifth Letter).

The practice reminds me of a writing exercise I did once with Nova Scotia nature poet Harry Thurston at the Tatamagouche Centre years ago. He asked us to sit with an object in nature, to observe it and to draw it, then to describe it in words using freefall writing or a list – whatever we were comfortable with. Then he asked us to become it, to write its life force, again using freefall. Then finally we were to infuse meaning into it and to shape it into a poem. I’ve included it below.

All this is making me wonder about islands: is it possible to understand that “intangible” of islands - what makes islands special and so attractive to so many people – islandness, if you will - through this process? I’ll let you know...

Willow

Your roots go deep, but not deep enough to reach the river

where I see you splayed slippery on the bank’s muddy edge,

branches a crazy quilt weave of limbs, leaf tips trailing like

a child’s fingers over the side of a boat or a woman washing

her hair.

Instead you’re here in this barren field, yellowy leaves with

spotted underbellies tired in sun that etches fissures into your

bark, skin a crusty scab.

Blink, I look again. Your knots wink as finger-thin branches

beckon me in.

Drawn to your shade, I nestle in the whale’s-eye hollow at

your base, welcome your cool canopy, live branches like

the ribs of an umbrella overhead, dead ones stiff as Medusa’s

snakes turned to stone.

My skin wakens to the crunch of your fallen leaves, urged to

life with air currents that play me along. Veined leaves tributaried

as the insides of my eyelids, I fill my hands with them and

slide them down, down, between my fingers, my tongue, leave

traces of my oils, close my eyes and see me growing into you

on your riverbank, your leaf whisper later the only sound I hear.