Seasonally disoriented …

December 21, the solstice, is always an important day for me, sign of the year about to turn—although winter is still only settling in— and make its way slowly away from the short, dark days. The trek towards summer has begun. But this year, and in Tasmania, I find myself already in summer, celebrating the longest and brightest day of the year on December 21. It seems impossible that we are only four days away from Christmas. The gardens and forests are full of blooms, and everywhere I see green growth.

Hobart is cooler than most of Australia. The temperature on the solstice came close to 20 degrees, perfect weather for an outing. We drove to Bruny Island and spent the day exploring its rumpled terrain. We drove through a mix of forest and pastoral lands, past small villages, alongside stretches of beach, up and down mountainy slopes. We chose mostly gravel roads that followed the contours of the land—curving, rolling, rising, sinking—so our passage also reflected those contours. And we stopped often.

One of our first stops was at the Bruny Island Cheesery, where we ordered cheese platters for a picnic lunch. I discovered they also had stollen for sale, so I bought one for our Christmas meal. The factory is set into the woods with a lovely garden in front of it. When I visited it in 2009, I heard and watched two young laughing kookaburras practicing their calls just outside the door to the sales room and café.

Enough said.

I love the way the bark peels away on many eucalyptus.

Bruny Island is almost two separate islands, joined buy a very narrow isthmus known as The Neck. At the Neck there's a penguin rookery. Short-tailed shearwaters also nest there. Both species spend their days at sea, feeding, so one might see penguin footprints in the sand, but no bird. Though the chicks will be deep in the nesting burrows, and silent. 

Although the Neck is narrow, it includes the Big Hummock, a very high stretch of grassed sand with a wooden staircase that leads to a fabulous view of the island and its sea setting. A pair of ravens in conversation with each other perched near the top as we climbed those stairs. A memorial to Truganinni, one of the last Aboriginal women, is by the viewing platform.

The Neck, Bruny Island

View across Adventure Bay

Raven conversation

We ate our lunch at a picnic table beside Adventure Bay, the bay where Captain Cook landed. The cheeses were wonderful, the baguette glorious, and the tiny olives and spiced cherries perfect accompaniments. While we ate we were visited by a superb blue fairy-wren—my favourite Tasmanian bird. (Unless that's the grey fantail...)  Their blue colour is electrically iridescent, and they are not skittish around humans.  

The superb blue fairy-wren

Welcome swallows darted back and forth, and then I spotted several small mottled birds I didn’t recognize feeding in the lawn. Later I was able to identify them as yellow-rumped thornbills—a new species for me.

Yellow-rumped thornbill

We prowled the sunny beach for awhile looking at plants and listening to the sea wash in.

Unknown beach plant

From Adventure Bay we drove through the Mavista Reserve to Cape Bruny and its lighthouse. The old light is no longer in use, but a modern, electronically-managed one is set into the large hill not far from it. Here the sea spread out in a blue distance to become all there was. We were looking south, towards Antarctica. 

Cape Bruny Lighthouse.

Sea from the lighthouse.

On our way down from the lighthouse we were watched by a New Holland Honeyeater-- another new bird for me!

New Holland Honeyeater.

The afternoon was waning and we headed towards the ferry, stopping for wonderful milkshakes on the way. The day had felt timeless, never-ending, and the feeling continued as we rode the ferry to Kettering and took the highway to town. Back in Hobart we added left-over cheeses to our supper and lingered at the dining room table watching the evening come slowly. The sun set a few minutes before 9:PM

The sea's blue distance