WEATHER

A quick note on weather -- as I've mentioned elsewhere it's changeable. On Saturday afternoon I walked the Aboriginal Heritage Trail here, and went from overcast to rain to snow -- astonishing to have snow fall when you can't see your breath! It was actually lovely to see and didn't impede the walking at all.

On Sunday rain arrived. Not that it hasn't been here already, but in force-- I woke about 3:am to it hitting the roof, and it kept up heavy and steady until mid or late afternoon. A wonderful excuse to stay indoors, feed the fire, read, write, think. In the late afternoon I went for a walk, almost no rain falling then, to Watersmeet where the Hugel and Cuvier rivers flow together -- both rivers were running fast and high, gallons of water pouring down, washing around trees at their edges. The noise was loud and wonderful.

My computer was delivered late last night (Monday) and with it a copy of The Mercury -- and I learned that the heavy rain here had been part of a huge storm that swept over large parts of the island, toppling trees and power lines, throwing yachts onshore. Something like 33,000 people without power -- and in Hobart winds got up to 93 km per hour. Or, my note about this is illegible, perhaps it was only 83 ... Hobart has had about 662 mm of rain so far this year -- their mean annual rainfall is 622.4 ...

Yesterday, Monday, sunshine arrived and it's still here today, Tuesday -- so I'll head off on a walk for the afternoon.

INCIDENTAL PLEASURES

1. The smell of roasting chicken -- lovely at the time, but also wonderful and warming when it's still there in the morning on a damp rainy day.

2. Waking with my nose cold as a dog's, but the rest of me warm as toast, and being able to stay wrapped up and warm as long as I please.

3. Living in a technology-free zone. Lack of my computer has licensed me to ignore the other technological issues here -- a digital camera that doesn't work, a new mike that I haven't opened for my iPod. On the other hand I've been grateful for the iPod and its music which keep sme company as I make and eat dinner/supper. Imagine me listening to: Charles Lloyd, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Art Tatum, Helen Humes, Emmy Lou Harris, Oliver Schroer, and staring out at the eucalypts, the cutting grass, the little pademelon as it grows twilight.

4. Hot dish water! I'll face off TS Eliot for the pleasure of plunging my hands in up to the wrists and letting the heat seep through me. Lovely lovely lovely! (Add to the list of things forgotten: gloves ... those fingerless ones would be a good idea.

LAKE ST. CLAIR

It's Saturday, September 26, about 10:15 a.m. as I'm writing this (and happy birthday Peter, whenever you happen to read this!), at a computer that the welcoming staff in the Visitor's Centre have made available to me. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon, courtesy of another Peter, Peter Grant of the Parks Service and the WildCare prize, who drove me up. It was good to travel with someone who could tell me about the countryside and history we drove through, and was willing to back up so I could get a good look at the wombat on the verge-- Vombatus ursinus is its Latin name, and the ursinus is apt; its face was exactly like a teddy bear's. Peter also set himself to splitting wood outside "my" house while Ranger Daniel Ferguson gave me a rapid walking tour. When I had seen round, Peter and I settled to a "cuppa" in the living room and a good talk about nature writing. He read me some of his work, including a lovely little piece about seeing a platypus -- by now, of course, I've forgotten where he was when he say it!

The house I'm in is at least twice the size of the Red Hermitage at St. Peter's, where I've stayed for the SK winter colony a couple of time, and it feels palatial, with lovely large windows that open into forest, in part, and from which I've been watching pademelons graze and flame robins dart about brilliantly. It's chilly here, and rain has fallen most of the time, often heavily, so I'm very grateful for the wood-fired heater and Peter's split wood. It's a pleasure to tend the fire, and a greater pleasure to settle into the comfortable chair facing the windows to alternate between staring out the window and at the page of the book I happen to be reading.

Things I forgot: napkins, butter, salt and pepper ... and my computer! Yes, it's true -- when Peter Grant left I set about to unpacking, and only at the end of that did I realize my computer case was missing. I thought it must be still in the back seat of Peter's car, but learned (eventually) that I'd left it on the floor in the garage at Irene's. To make a long story short, I'll have it on Tuesday morning, when Trevor Norris, the senior person here, returns from a meeting in Hobart. In fact, I'm not missing the machine -- though I indulged in a certain panic till I knew where it was -- I have pen and paper, notebooks, many things to read and a huge area to explore.

The Park staff, as I mentioned, are welcoming. The evening I arrived they were going into Derwent Bridge to the hotel for dinner, and invited me to join them. I did, and ate a delicious and generous serving of roast of the day: slices of beef served on a bed of mashed potatoes and lots of crunchy vegetables. Good wine, too, of course, and lots of laughing conversation. I met several other folks there and was folded into the talk. On the drive in we saw lots of wallabys and at least one pademelon at the edges of the road or streaking across it; as we left the parking lot to come back to the park the headlights caught an owl sitting on a stump--it stared at us a moment and then took off, large wings lifting it out of the light.

Other sightings here: Bennett's wallaby (maybe only 1 "t" on Bennett's?) -- including one yesterday in the forest that had a baby's head sticking out of her pouch. It looked like a miniature and slightly raw puppy with its large ears twitching; pademelons as I noted above; black currawongs whose call sounds something like an old-fashioned car horn; several honeyeaters (I've left my list at "home" so can't spell them out now); a green parrot that flew suddenly as I walked yesterday, too quickly to be identified.

There's a good library here in the staff office that I have access to, so I'm adding notes to my bird records. I've borrowed Pete Hay's essays for evening reading--a book I've wanted to read for some time.

I can't describe the way the light shifts and changes here, or especially the particular quality of it when the sun comes through--it's so clear and intense that things seem extra real or extra present. And colours glow. The flame robin, for instance, looks to have a neon breast. And the textures of the trees and shrubs also escape me-- I think "conifer" and then discover I'm not looking at needles, but very slender leaves, rosemary-like, some tiny, some large.

SLIPPERY TIME

I’ve just noticed that the dates heading these entries are not the dates when they are written – as I write now it is 10:45 a.m. in Hobart, Tasmania, on Wednesday, September 23, 2009. 14 hours ahead of you readers in Toronto …

HEADING FOR LAKE ST. CLAIR

For the past couple of days I’ve been preoccupied with preparations for my residency at Lake St. Clair. I head there later this morning, courtesy of Peter Grant who will drive me. I’ll be staying in what I’m told is called “the single person’s house” and that I’ll be warm when the wood-fired heater is going. The point is taken—this morning dawned in Hobart with heavy rain, cloud swallowing the Mountain. Perhaps there will be fresh snow in the Park.

But I also know the house contains a washer and dryer, as well as an equipped kitchen, and Kevin and Irene have outfitted me with sleeping bag, wool blanket, sheets, and towels. I’ve gathered what now looks like an enormous mound of groceries, possibly even enough to last the full three weeks I’ve been there. Except for bread and milk, which are available. Or perhaps not … in which case I’ll have to ask the Park staff to shop for me on their occasional runs into a town.

I’ve filled my tote-on-wheels with books, including Margaret Avison’s just-published autobiography that Porcupine’s Quill kindly sent to me this week. It will be lovely to have Margaret’s presence as part of this adventure. I’ve also packed the field guides I have and a book about walking and writing that I found on Irene’s shelf, several collections of poetry—a couple of books on silence and withdrawal … More books than I reckon I can actually read in the three weeks I’ll be there, even if I do nothing else but read.

Of course I want to do other things. Last night I talked to Evie, a young woman who works at Fullers Bookshop, a botanist by training, if I remember correctly. I asked her about buttongrass, a plant I’ve read about, and her face lit up as she told me it was one of her favourite plants. I’ll see it—it turns a wonderful pale gold colour and grows quite tall, spraying out long stalks at the end of which are blossoms. They look like large snow flakes hanging in the air, Evie said. But it’s not easy to walk through, growing in boggy conditions and spreading out as it does. In fact, it’s not really a grass … but now I forget the Latin name she told me. Evie also recommended I spend some time with beautiful snow gums that are on one of the park walks.

Walking is part of my intention for the Park, but also (if the weather permits) I hope to spend time sitting in various places, listening and looking. One of the slides from the tayenebe show, perhaps the opening one from the presentation we saw, shows the backs of a group of women walking across a gold-coloured meadow towards a row of trees at the back. The trees are bare-trunked, with ragged crowns, and behind them is blue sky. That image sat on the screen for quite a long time and I was able to stare at it, wondering what it would be like to walk there, what sounds of wind or birds I might hear. I’ve bought a mic for my iPod—but don’t know how to work it yet. If I can figure it out I’ll be recording the soundscapes where I walk and sit … if not, I’ll have to try and capture them in words.

Getting ready has also meant shopping: groceries, an extra blank book in case I fill my current one, the mic for my iPod, and various electronic bits: extra camera batteries, rechargeable batteries and charger for the digital camera, and so forth. Yesterday was more or less swallowed by these errands, but in the late afternoon I met Bill Forsyth from WildCare at Fullers café. It was a pleasure to talk with him about WildCare and about places I should visit while I’m here. He is off later this fall to Melaleuca (perhaps that’s spelled correctly …) to monitor the orange-bellied parrots. He said that when you finally get your supplies into the dinghy and head upstream to the old hut where you stay it’s exactly like the African Queen.

I won't have internet access at hand in the park, so this blog may proceed even more slowly than it has been.

TAYENEBE

On Saturday afternoon Irene and I went to the Museum to a talk about tayenebe—the word means “exchange” and is the title of an exhibition “Tasmanian Aboriginal women’s fibre work.” I haven’t yet seen the show other than to glance at a case of baskets as I went into the gallery with the birds, but I did have the chance to page the catalogue at someone’s house. The baskets are beautiful.

The show is a culmination of a much longer project of cultural recovery. Central to the project was a series of workshops held in different locations around the state. At the workshops women gathered plant materials, learning to recognize them, and also wove baskets. Elders were an important part of the project, and the gatherings themselves were crucial. We were welcomed to the talk by an elder, in her own language, much as native people at home welcome an audience to events. I find hearing those languages rooted in particular places very moving—and I’m often struck by the softness of them in contrast to English and other European languages. I feel as if they imply or incorporate listening as well as speaking.

10 or 12 of the women who had participated in the project were at the talk on Saturday. It was lovely to hear their comments and share in their excitement about what they were learning and the work they had done. And to see their shared laughter and pleasure in each other’s company.

To find out more about this wonderful project go to: http://www.tmag.tas.gov.au/tayeneberesources

MORE BIRDS …

If any Tasmanians read this blog and realize I’m wrong in my identifications—perhaps a bird I think I’ve seen would never be found where I found it, for example—I’d be very happy to be corrected. I’d also welcome info on behaviour or any comments that might tell me more about the birds.

Sept. 16: From the desk where I sit to write I saw both male and female blackbirds perched on the back fence. They are so like (North American) robins in shape and behaviour it’s startling. As I stood up to take a look through the binoculars at the male I had the feeling he was looking back at me, his head slightly cocked—and in fact he flew off suddenly when I stepped closer to the window so perhaps he could see me. That bright yellow bill is eye-catching. A second female I saw later, in a branch of a tree, also seemed to be watching me watching her. She looked like a faded N.A. robin, but a bit smaller—dusky brown back and tail, pale rufous breast, and dark stripes on her pale throat.

Yellow wattlebirds were flitting about in the gum tree as usual, filling the morning with their screechy calls. These are one of Tasmania’s 12 endemic birds, striped plumage with yellow belly, a very long tail, and larger than grackles. I forgot to note I got my first good look at one last Sunday (the 13^th) when Irene and I walked to the Hill Street grocery. Its yellow wattles were large and bright, and edged with brilliant red—perhaps breeding colours? They seem quite acrobatic, able to hang from branches and forage upside-down in the trees.

In the afternoon I took myself up to Knocklofty again. Just past the entry to the park I watched a small bird with a longish tail dart into a tree and then to another one. It seemed to have some yellow on it, but I didn’t get a clear look—paging the bird book later I wondered if it might be a yellow-throated honeyeater. I walked as far as the frog dam while birds sang and swooped through the trees, but couldn’t get the glasses on any of them.

While istening to the frogs I heard fast wren-like caroling—and then caught sight of a bird I had very muich wanted to see: the superb fairy-wren, also called the blue fairy-wren (I think). It’s completely gorgeous, with a brilliant, almost electric, turquoise crown, cheek, and upper back. There’s darker blue in its plumage as well. It flies like wrens at home and cocks its long tail way up. I was able to track it back and forth for some time—and then moments after it had disappeared into bushes away from the frog pond I noticed a small brown wren with a buffy chest and belly, white throat and face, and a small reddish area around the eye. I think it might have been a female superb fairy-wren, since it darted about among the reeds for a few moments and then flew to a bush near where the male had vanished. It perched there for some time and I was able to watch it, head back and singing.

On the way back down I saw yellow wattlebirds again—they have a lovely silhouette when they fly—and also a raven going over very high, calling. Just before the end of the trail out I spied a robin sitting in a tree—but can’t say whether it was a scarlet robin or a flame.

Sept. 20: Irene and I took a 3-hour morning walk in the Hobart Linear Park, from Molle Street to the Cascades Female Convict Factory and back that yielded lots of good bird sightings, as well as tantalizing glimpses of tiny birds vanishing into thick foliage or undergrowth. Blackbirds were plentiful at the beginning. The new sightings came mostly when we were in the forest towards the Cascades end of the trail.

There I saw my first parrot—a swift parrot—high in the trees. It had a red forehead and throat, breast that showed a little yellow before becoming green, and was dark, or perhaps mottled, green on the back. I was looking straight up at it, watching it move in parrot-fashion from branch to branch, and saw the red under its tail.

In the same spot there were yellow wattlebirds and a pair of black-faced cuckoo-shrikes—not actually cuckoos since they don’t lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. In fact they were building a nest in the fork of a branch high overhead, flying back and forth from a stump to the branch. They are a lovely pale grey on the back and head, with black face and throat, and white breast and belly. Long-tails, white underneath, but with black edges. In the shade on the stump the back took on a blue tinge.

Two strong-billed honeyeaters flew among the treetops a little further on. I watched one of them moving somewhat like a brown creeper in the dangling bark of a gum tree. The call was a peep peep peep

Where the trail dropped down closer to the water again a cascade of song yielded a superb fairy-wren, and while we watched it a bird flashed by quite close and landed on the far side of a trunk, then generously fanned its tail wide to identify itself as a grey fantail.

We came back at a quicker pace. I saw a small brown bird with a white belly moving somewhat like a kinglet and about that size. It was pale underneath, with stripes at its throat, had a round black eye and black beak. Perhaps it was an olive whistler.

The final sighting was a pair of native hens, another endemic species, feeding right down by the Rivulet as we neared the Molle Street end of the trail. They have a bright red eye and are surprisingly large.

A-BIRD-IN-THE-HAND

I’ve just discovered this fabulous app, called a-bird-in-the-hand*, available free for now at: http://www.geometry.com.au/index.php/a-bird-in-the-hand. It’s offered by Tasmania parks through the iTunes store – and it’s downloading even as I write. (At least I hope it is… ) It gives images and calls and details about 23 Tasmanian birds, including (I think) most of the endemic species. Since I arrived, I’ve been hearing calls and songs I don’t recognize and asking people what I’m hearing (mostly they don’t know), wondering if that musical thrush-like song is in fact a thrush (it turned out to be a European blackbird, an introduced animal here), or if the frantic speeded up wren-like song might be a wren (it was, but more on that later).

[*Note that if you search bird in hand Tasmania you’ll actually turn up historic photographs of an old hotel … ]

I’m thrilled to have discovered this! It remains to be seen whether my iPod will host it, so that I can in fact carry these birds into the field with me, but maybe I can listen to them on my computer, and that’s better than nothing. Or silence.

While my mind is on birds, as it has frequently been since I began this trip, I’ll list below the birds I’ve actually encountered so far, by date. Let me begin by noting that the pilot of the plane that flew me to LA from Chicago was Captain Brad Heron …

Sept. 10: Melbourne Airport – within the terminal several small birds on the floor revealed themselves to be those international citizens, English or house sparrows

Hobart – Irene walked me to the entrance to Knocklofty Reserve at the end of the street in the evening. The air was full of calls and songs I didn’t recognize. On the way back we sighted a large (grackle-sized more or less) black bird with a grey nape on a lawn, perhaps feeding.

Sept. 11: Mid-morning, after hearing all sorts of songs and calls but sighting nothing I finally got the glasses on a small brownish bird in a tree. It was slightly larger than a sparrow, but sparrow-like in shape—though its black bill had a slight curve to it, was slender perhaps. Pale breast with horizontal stripes though I couldn’t see if they went right across it or not. Wings seemed long, with dark brown tips and what looked like pale stripes across the feathers. It shifted position and its back suddenly glowed greenish, a kind of pale iridescence. Searching the bird book it seemed it might be a shining bronze-cuckoo! Though the bird in the photo didn’t seem to have the correct shape its breast markings were accurate – and the Horsfield’s cuckoo on the preceding page, which had the overall look of what I’d seen is uncommon here.

Afternoon, walking with Kevin by the quays after lunch we saw a black-faced cormorant and lots of silver gulls with their brilliant scarlet feet and beaks.

Sept. 12: After breakfast I watched flashing wings in the gum tree two yards away. The birds were mostly backlist and fast, darting and chasing. They were in pairs and occasionally in threes, till one was chased away. It’s spring here after all. Lots of screeks, mews, squawks. I finally got a good look at one—dark mottled front, dark tail framed in white, reasonably large. It put its head straight up to call. Then a few minutes later it hopped up a few branches and fed another one—clear courtship behaviour. I couldn’t identify them, but later in the afternoon we went to the museum and looked at the bird display: little wattlebirds! The museum also seemed to confirm the cuckoo.

In the afternoon we walked up Knocklofty and followed the Summit Trail round—were gone roughly three hours, long enough for me to feel sore-footed when we got home. Again I was surrounded by unrecognized calls. Irene wanted me to hear and see a kookaburra—and in fact one flew over and perched in a tree where I got a reasonable look at it, but it didn’t call. It’s HUGE!—and a kingfisher, which I didn’t know before. We saw more little wattlebirds, perhaps some yellow wattlebirds (too fast to be sure), watched some small long-tailed birds flying fairly high in and out of foliage, and heard and then saw forest ravens. Their call is clearly a raven call. They were particularly noticeable in one stretch of the walk and Kevin said we above the tip or dump—so no surprise those opportunists were there.

On the downhill stretch we caught sight of a small flock of birds flying in and out of a clump of low shrubs. They flew very quickly, with something of the flycatcher about their movements, perhaps in pairs. They had white edging to tails and wings it seemed, at any rate they caught the sun and turned translucent. I got a good look at one or two finally—to see a shape and brownish colouration, white streaks on the wings. After some paging back and forth in the bird book I realized they were dusky woodswallows, a very pretty bird.

Sept. 13: We went to Gould’s Lagoon, out of town, after lunch. It’s named for naturalist John Gould and is a smallish wetland. Approaching it I thought there were odd trees growing out of the water, but they were actually clumps of reeds, not yet greened. All sorts of birds were there: chestnut teal, small and elegant, three of them perched on a railing as we arrived and several more in the water; a mallard; Eurasian coots with their bobbing heads and pale beaks; a single Australian shoveller; a pair of kelp gulls; over on the shores away from the walk were several large birds I couldn’t get clear in the binoculars at first—they turned out to be purple swamphens; some welcome swallows were swooping about over the water and then lighting on the large nesting boxes. I might have seen a black duck, not sure—and something pale, like a Cape Barren goose, but again not sure. On the way back to the car we spotted a bird with black and white markings on its head – at home I found it was likely a strong-billed honeyeater.

From the Lagoon we drove a little farther upriver to a spot where there’s road construction, and where we could watch black swans. The wind was up and water rough, but I still got a good look at several—as well as several ducks.

Late in the afternoon in Andrew’s backyard I heard a musical song and asked what it was. People looked around puzzled and then said it was a blackbird—with great scorn. The bird isn’t liked here—it eats fruit for one thing and isn’t native. But it’s a lovely singer.

To be continued …

THE PLETHORA …

It’s almost 5 days exactly since I arrived in Hobart, but I feel as if I’ve packed twice as many days into that time—though writing in this blog clearly hasn’t been part of the teeming activity. The teeming everything! New streets, new skies (the moon waning backwards!—it’s enough to make you dizzy!), new trees, new birds, even the light seems new, falling brilliant on the brightly-coloured shingles of the houses I look down on from various windows.

Going for walks I’m stunned by what grows, the textures and greens creating density, even as the crowns of the trees are often not dense at all but clumps of green interspersed with spaces, reminiscent perhaps of certain cedars or so-called cedars which I seem to remember seeing somewhere … That’s about as precise as I’m able to get. I’m struck dumb, at a loss for words to either name or describe what I’m seeing, don’t even want to reach for words but just gaze about me. My field notebook lies forgotten in my bag till I get back to the house. Only then do I manage to note, from faulty memory in all likelihood, what I’ve seen—the look of birds, the sounds of frogs, a certain indescribable scent in the air.

In the house it’s the other extreme, books everywhere, the plethora words themselves, too many to take in, far more books than I could read if I did nothing but read for the rest of my natural life. But what a lascivious and dangerous pleasure it is to wander past the various shelves with the perpetual small stack of books in my hand. If I pause for an instant I discover yet another one I’m dying to read—Louise Bogan’s prose, for instance—or Gary Nabhan’s Cross-Pollinations: the marriage of science and poetry—the most recent titles that compelled my hand to reach out.

But I’m trying to rein myself in, for fear I end by starting to read wildly and widely and not finishing a single book—I’m about to start a regimen: each night and each morning I will read one or two or perhaps more letters from A Steady Stream of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood, 1943-1995. Harwood was born in 1920, and in fact lived not far from here. On Sunday I had a peek down a long narrow driveway to the house she lived in. She’s a great letter-writer, open, thoughtful, with a sharp eye (and vocabulary) for detail and a wicked sense of humour. The letters are full of anecdotes that make me laugh out loud. Like this one:

“Just after your card had been put in the box by my trembling eager fingers a letter came from A.D. Hope; I said to myself, I’m not a bit excited, really, but I’ll write & tell Tony—AND FOUND MYSELF TRYING TO INSERT A SHEET OF PAPER IN THE SEWING MACHINE.”

I’ve reached page 80 in this book, with only 400 more pages to go, so I expect I’ll finally finish the letters within the month. That’s not based on any calculation at all—just my sense that they're so irresistably entertaining I’ll keep reading them till I’m done. Of course there's also the volume of her collected poems waiting on the shelf in my bedroom …

MOMENTS IN TRANSIT (SEPT. 12)

A few moments from the long hours have remained vivid in my mind. O’Hare Airport in Chicago was, as ever, congested and busy. I had to make my way from one concourse to another, via an underground passage—a huge dim passage with stairs and escalators and a long neon sculpture consisting of angles and bars overhanging it. They lit up in a pattern of colour changing through the spectrum. It moved in an unpredictable rhythm, darkening now and then, always in the same direction, and I wondered if it was responding to the sounds of people talking or suitcases rolling below it.

I had time at O’Hare to buy a coffee and muffin and found a seat in the crowd. Television screens hung everywhere, but for the most part people were reading or chatting or working on their companion machnines—until the moment when the news broadcast a few sentences from President Obama about the start of the school year. Suddenly almost everyone around me was staring at the screens and listening closely—it was moving to see them galvanized into attention by his voice, and the kind of longing hope on faces.

The airport in LA was surprisingly empty when I clambered off the plane, where I’d been very comfortable in the last seat in the very last row, a blank seat beside me. I prowled along the corridor and back to stretch my legs and check out what was there, looking for a place to have some supper. I settled on a bar, The Karl Strauss Brewery—not that they brewed there, I’m sure—and ordered a Red Trolley Ale which was astonishingly good for an American beer and a Chinese chicken salad, and found myself watching a baseball game on the televisions screens (the inescapable leitmotif of travel these days). LA was playing the D-backs from Arizona who are one of the youngest teams in the league, so I suppose no surprise that many of their players looked to be about 22. Arizona was ahead and outplaying the Dodgers. I remember rooting for the Dodgers several generations ago when I was in grade 8, and our home room teacher in Winnipeg brought a television into the classroom for the World Series …

After writing my blog note from Melbourne I sagged into my seat and finished reading the Michaels book—still time to wait, but the room was filling up with other passengers talking in accented voices and hard to understand. I put on my iPod and played some Charles Lloyd, and realized suddenly that I was very tired—and a long long way from home. So I was very happy to see Irene’s familiar face waiting for me beside the luggage belt when I came down the escalator into arrivals at the Hobart airport.

PAUSE: MELBOURNE AIRPORT, SEPT. 10

Here I sit, computer on my knee, in an empty lounge, waiting for the last leg of my journey, a Virgin Blue flight to Hobart. To my satisfaction I managed to send a few email messages though it took 4 tries to gain access to the airport service. You’d think transcribing credit card details would be straightforward…

I haven’t changed my watch yet but I’m incapable of calculating the number of hours that have passed since I left the house—somehow it’s two days later, Sept. 10, here, and I’m completely confused. Flying west in Canada you fly backwards in time as it gets earlier, but I’ve arrived to find myself flung ahead into the future—Sept. 9 bypassed altogether.

Many hours on planes and in airports, but only a few irritations. The public showers listed on the Melbourne (or Melbun, as they say here) website appear no longer to exist, likely swallowed by an airport renovation (is there a worldwide move to renovate airports?) according to the Virgin Blue service desk. I made do with washing my face and neck and partly changing clothes in a washroom. The zipper on my computer bag will no longer close. I took a brief look in a luggage shop here and found a lovely one for $AUS 587… My new tote-on-wheels handle jams and has to be jimmied shut. At least my suitcase arrived.

The best part of the flight was earlier today, when I woke finally and settled into reading Anne Michaels’s The Winter Vault. I’ve been completely sunk into it, uncertain much of the time where I was—Egypt, eastern Ontario, in a darkened plane cabin en route to Tasmania, or somewhere else altogether.

D-DAY

for departure, or I suppose it could be F, for fly … It’s 9:a.m., and my suitcase is packed, my carry-on as well, swelling with coat, shawl, and change of clothing, extra books, my cameras (yes, plural, I’m taking Peter’s digital one as well). In a little red blanket-cloth pouch with a black bear’s claw appliquéd on it I’ve got my passport, ticket, and new iPod – the pouch hangs round my neck where I can get at it easily. That is, if it isn’t trapped in the over-the-shoulder straps of my purse and my computer bag …

The day here has begun overcast and still. A flurry of esxcited voices and cars around 8:30 marked kids going back to school for the first day. Traffic will be heavier on the roads to the airport than it has been.

Things I haven’t done: figured out how to change the time on the watch that Peter gave me, or how to silence the two-beep note it utters at every hour; finished my letter to Jan Horner; mailed a couple of packages, cleaned the bathroom sink…

On the other hand I’ve loaded CDs, including several episodes of the Dead Dog Café into my computer and transferred them to the iPod for company on the long flight from LA to Melbourne—18 hours the ticket says. I’ve not tried to calculate the number of hours overall that I’ll be in transit, in that odd between space of airports and planes, with little scenery to beguile the eye. But it is astonishing that I can get to the other side of the world within a couple of days—this is a big planet! And though airplanes are not cozy or comfortable, they’re Class A accommodation compared to the ships the convicts and settlers sailed on a couple of centuries ago.

I think things are in as good order as possible. I’ve confirmed my flights, but the computer would not issue me boarding passes. Instead I got a confirmation notice stating in bold type that “local authorities at one of the airports in your itinerary require that you obtain your boarding pass at the airport.” Which airport I wonder? I’ll be in several: Toronto, Chicago, LA, Melbourne, before I reach Hobart. What questions or doubts about me do these local authorities have? I’ll find out in a couple of hours.

GETTING READY

It occurred to me as I typed that heading that likely it’s wise to get ready before you get started … However, I’ve clearly precluded that possibility for this blog.

It never crossed my mind when I began thinking about this trip to Tasmania that somehow getting ready would come to involve (more or less fruitless) attempts to get my whole life in order before I began to pack my bags—books weeded, papers filed or recycled, that box that’s been at the back of the cupboard for uncountable years opened and sorted … well, you get the idea. Now, some three days from departure, I’ve given up the notion of leaving tidy rooms and bare surfaces and labeled files and have narrowed my gaze to the things heaped on the spare room bed—the things I “might” decide to pack.

Oh, I’ve still got several lists of things to do, including half a dozen letters I’d like to write before I leave—a couple of people I’d like to see—some phone calls to make and of course the neverending errands. Vitamins – I need a bottle of vitamins. What about cartridges for my fountain pen? And the black jeans I’ve been promising myself to buy for the past month? Well, as Irene McGuire, my friend and hostess in Tasmania recently pointed out, there are shops in Hobart, lots of them, so perhaps I can let go of the errands and enjoy the gorgeous summer afternoon that has fallen on Toronto. It’s ripe with the whine of cicadas, occasionally rife with the explosive fly-overs of the airshow.

I might take my egg salad sandwich out to the old school desk that sits on the front porch to eat, and watch the light dappling the street as I listen for goldfinches. They are thick in this neighbourhood right now, rising in startled clouds from the cosmos in people’s gardens as I walk along the streets. I hear their sweet call that sounds to me something like “tea-cup, tea-cup” all over.

Getting started

I've decided to set up a blog to track my explorations and experiences in Tasmania. I fly to Hobart on September 8, and will be there until the new year. I'll be keeping field notes, and will derive the blog from them. I hope to track my own learning of the place, and through the blog my friends can peer over my shoulder and share my discoveries.