Christmas at Corinna, part 2

The West Coast of Tasmania is the wettest part of the country. I’ve heard it rains on average 300 days of the year there, though if it’s like Hobart (it may not be) that might mean anything from drizzle through a light shower to a brief downpour, with only occasional days of steady rain. But on Christmas morning at Corinna we woke to bright sunshine pouring in the windows, the bush outside gleaming and green. After a leisurely and conversational breakfast the four of us were ready for a walk … but a pademelon was once again feeding outside the cottage and watching us so required watching in return. This photo shows its lovely face.

Then we saw she was a female and had a joey feeding nearby. It was curious and restless, grazing for a few moments, suddenly bounding away and leaping back to graze again. A third pademelon appeared—a family. When the young pademelon got tired it disappeared into its mother’s pouch. But then we saw its small head protruding from the pouch, grazing as the mother grazed. Alas, I didn’t get a picture of that!

When our friends camped at Corinna last year they walked the Whyte River trail—a loop that followed the Pieman River to where the Whyte River flowed into it, and then arced back to the retreat. They recommended it and we all set out. It’s timed at an hour, but we knew we’d take longer. We’re not really bushwalkers, but amblers with cameras and binoculars. We like to stop and look at things closely or try to find the birds calling from the treetops.

The walk took us into forest almost immediately, with the river frequently in view through a screen of trees and undergrowth. Overhead foliage was thick, but the sunlight streamed in where it could, reflecting from surfaces of leaves and reeds. 

We heard lots of birdsong, but weren’t able to spy any of the singers in the sparkling foliage. The trees towered above us, some slender, some huge. 

The trail wound among them—we saw myrtle and laurel and sassafras, others we had no names for. Moss covered fallen trunks and roots and sprawled up standing trunks. I saw what looked to me like a giant’s foot—root and trunk cased in moss and other plants. 

Spider webs stretched between trees, and were woven into crannies in bark. Green seed cases stood up like blossoms on the laurel. The day grew warmer, birdsong came and went. At the Whyte River we came to a platform for viewing platypus and/or fishing, but there were no animals and we’re not fishers. The track then started to climb and grew stony. It twisted and rose and required some effort, the sunshine grew brighter as we got higher. Then it leveled off and soon we were back at the cottages.

It was early afternoon and we’d earned our Christmas lunch and the champagne we’d brought to drink with it. But first we had a small exchange of presents—and here’s the gorgeous gift the Harrises received:

Cross stitch by Irene McGuire

Corinna includes a restaurant that offered a special Christmas lunch—and it got a very fine review in the Hobart paper a week or so ago. But we planned from the beginning to self-cater, and packed the car tight with food and wine. Irene even brought her lovely Christmas platter. We set out ham and smoked salmon and rocket salad on it, with bread and condiments on the side, a cork was popped and we settled to serious eating. 

The Christmas lunch

Lunch ended—much later in the afternoon—with stollen from the Bruny Island Cheese Factory and delicious fresh juicy cherries, a standard Christmas food here. We took more wine to the back verandah, where we talked and read till it was time for a late supper of … leftover ham and smoked salmon. More talk as the day darkened, then time to read till our eyes wanted to close … as a wonderful Christmas Day came to a relaxed and quiet close.

Christmas at Corinna, part 1

On Christmas Eve we left Hobart before 9:AM to drive to Corinna, once a thriving gold-mining town on the Pieman River in northwest Tasmania. In its heyday the place boasted two hotels, a post office, and a population of 2500 people. Today it's a ferry crossing, and the Corinna Wilderness Experience, a wonderful certified eco-tourism retreat with both campsites and cottage accommodation.*

We took the long way to Corinna, driving roads that curved and swooped, and stopped at Lake St. Clair to walk the Watersmeet Trail and the Larmair Remener Tabelti. In September and October 2009 I walked those tracks often. The place looked surprisingly different to me now, in summer. I remember it as mostly wet and fairly dark, the mosses and foliage thick.

Myrtles on the Watersmeet Trail

We stopped at the Hungry Wombat Café in Derwent Bridge (I knew they made wonderful soups) for a late lunch, but the place was full and very busy. So we made do with muffins and bottled iced coffees, and a picnic table outside. Then back into the car and onto more twisty narrow roads. We reached the Fatman Barge crossing on the Pieman not long after 6:PM, and summoned the barge from the other side.

Waiting for the barge

It was good to get out of the car and find our neighbouring cottages. All the cottages at Corinna are modeled on the old miners’ houses. A larger building, the visitor centre, contains a small bar, a dining room, and a tiny shop with some souvenirs and a few foodstuffs.

One of "our" cottages

We settled into our respective cottages quickly, and met for drinks (it was long past wine o'clock!) in one. On our way back to the other for dinner we say a small pademelon grazing beside the cottage--apparently unfazed by our presence--so we stood on the verandah and watched it. Then another appeared from behind the cottage and we watched the two for some time before going in for dinner: a delicious onion tart we bought at Hill Street Grocery in Hobart. 

December in the southern hemisphere offers long, light-filled days and evenings. We sat over our meal, and then over conversation and more wine till twilight settled. It was hard to believe it was Christmas Eve, but not at all hard to believe that we’d stumbled into some version of Paradise. 

*(If you want to know more about the Corinna Wilderness Experience check out their detailed website at: http://www.corinna.com.au) 

Dicksonia antarctica

Facing south from Tasmania, say at the mouth of the River Derwent, or from the outlook at The Neck on Bruny Island, I’m looking towards Antarctica, a place that hardly seemed real to me before coming here. This year the hundredth anniversary of Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914 was widely celebrated in Hobart. Mawson and his party spent two years on the icy continent, initiating Australian involvement with the place.

Both Australian and French Antarctic research stations are supplied from Hobart, and tours to Antarctica often dock here. At the moment the Australian research icebreaker and supply ship, Aurora Australis is sailing to the rescue of a Russian research and tour boat that became locked in ice on its way there. Yesterday a  Chinese ice-breaker itself became stuck in an attempt to break through to the Russian ship.

But the Antarctic is present here in other ways too. Dicksonia antarctica is the largest of three species of tree ferns found in Australia. Antarctica here refers to the southern polar region where the fern grows. Dicksonia honours James Dickson (1738-1822), a Scottish nurseryman who ran a business in Covent Gardens. He was one of the original members of the British Linnean Society, and a frequenter of Joseph Banks’s library and collections.

Tree ferns are one of the most spectacular plants I’ve encountered in Tasmania. D. Antarctica, the only one I know for sure I’ve seen, grows up to 15 metres in height, spreads a canopy up to 6 metres wide, and looks to have a trunk. The trunk is really the stem, where older fronds have dried and fallen away. These ferns grow 3.5 to 5 cm per year and take about 20 years before they produce spores.

I first encountered tree ferns when I was here in 2009, and heard them called man ferns because of their size. They have a remarkable presence. Other common names are Australian tree fern, Tasmanian tree fern, hardy tree fern, soft tree fern, woolly tree fern. I encountered them again on Christmas Eve, when we stopped for a short walk to Nelson Falls on our drive to Corinna. (For more about Nelson Falls see http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/?base=1568)

Tree fern on the walk to Nelson Falls

In poet Gwen Harwood’s letters she describes man ferns lining the streets of Hobart when the king and queen came to visit. In later letters she notes their decline in the forest on Mount Wellington. These spectacular giant ferns have long been in demand for landscape gardens in Europe and North America. They are keystone species in wet forests, and have been sold by lumber companies clear-cutting in rainforest and old growth tracts. 

Tree ferns growing in the rainforest along the Pieman River

Tree ferns flanking cottages at Corinna Wilderness Resort

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

ARRIVAL

Poets Road, West Hobart. I look down and across the city. Bright-roofed houses on tree-lined streets fall towards the Derwent River, or rise towards Mount Nelson. The Derwent is very wide here, and Hobart welcomes large cruise ships from time to time, ships that dwarf most of the buildings in the city. The sky is high and wide, and the light that falls on the city changes throughout the day. When I was here in 2009 I spent a lot of time staring at this view. Seeing it again makes me happy.   

We have supper, chattering with our friends, and watch the view changing as the light shifts towards evening. A small cloud blows in with a wave of rain and then is gone, leaving a rainbow—then a double rainbow! I feel welcomed back.

A double rainbow welcome

The Derwent River under cloud

 After eating we go for a brief walk. I can’t tell what time it is. The days at home now are dark before 5:00. Here it’s nearly 7:PM and the light is still clear and bright. In the garden shrubs are blooming and buds forming. Poets Road rises steeply from the east towards Knocklofty Ridge, an outcrop of Mount Wellington. We follow the street west to its end at the entrance to Knocklofty Reserve. The park gives access to the network of trails that vein the mountain. I remember trying to find out where the name “Knocklofty” came from, with no success. I’m struck by how green and flowering the forest is. A eucalypt shedding bark looks like it has opened its arms to us. It’s very good to be back here!

  

Buds on New Zealand Christmas bush

Entrance to Knocklofty Reserve

Blooming forest

Eucalyptus

Transitting, December 9-11, 2013… a fugue

16.12.2013.  On Monday, 9 December, we flew from Toronto to Hobart, a journey that took roughly 34 hours door-to-door, and involved three different planes. Time lost its usual shape and flow, and we lost a day, arriving Wednesday, 11 December, without having passed through Tuesday. When I think about the trip it seems like a long darkened corridor, filled with various anxieties, indistinguishable voices, vague shapes of people dozing and walking, movie scenes, more food than necessary, and a continual white noise—a surreal passage.   

The surreal quality established itself almost instantly, at Pierson Airport. We entered the Air Canada departure lounge to find, not a waiting room, but a low-lighted restaurant with iPads mounted on the tables and a very few chairs crammed in around its edges. At those tables people studied, napped, ate, chatted, stared into space.

 Our San Francisco flight was announced delayed, then on time with a gate change. We joined the wave of people gathering possessions and heading as directed towards the new gate, only to come to a set of large—and locked—glass doors. Like sheep we stood, shifting from foot to foot, exchanging glances without speaking. The wait stretched to 10 minutes and general restlessness moved towards panic when boarding for the flight was announced. The doors finally swung open and we raced to the gate. The plane was an hour late taking off.

And it arrived in San Francisco late—our Sydney flight on the verge of leaving. Eight people were hoping to catch that plane. The chief stewardess and then the pilot came on the intercom as we taxied to the gate and asked passengers please to stay seated while the Sydney-bound folks got off. To my surprise people made way for us as we hauled carryon luggage down the aisle and into the terminal, where a young man led us at a jog along corridors, up and down stairs, to the plane.

We scrambled on, breathless, found our seats—but not a trace of space for hand luggage. Finally things were stowed in three different places, and we squeezed into the middle two seats in a bank of four. And there we sat while the crew bustled about closing bins, settling people, answering questions… and still we sat. The pilot announced he was waiting for an electronic visa clearance “for a very small person.” Some minutes later it arrived, the plane backed up, then stopped. After several more minutes the intercom crackled and the pilot spoke again: a passenger was unable to make the flight, we would return to the gate for her to deplane. Then her suitcase was located and unloaded. We took off two hours late.

After hours and hours of drifting in and out of sleep we arrived in Sydney to clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, a long low bank of cumulous clouds piled up along a horizon, and the airport jammed with flights. We were unloaded in a bay and bused to the terminal to clear quarantine and customs along with thousands of other travellers. By then we weren’t in a rush, we’d long ago missed our flight to Hobart. Rebooked via Melbourne, we had time to stroll about the airport enjoying its  brightness and lack of crowds. 

Sydney Airport, beside our departure lounge

We landed in a wet and cloudy Melbourne and had time to wander, finding a terrific latte at Hut and Villa. Melbourne prides itself on its changeable weather, and sure enough the sky cleared and sun shone as we were boarding the plane. Then rain fell as the luggage was loaded. Not long into the air the clouds thinned and I could watch the sea below.

Melbourne airport

Rain again, and airport luggage carrier

On this final leg of the flight I watched shadows of clouds moving across the sea below us, and then across Tasmania, seeing its patchwork of fields and hills and forests flow beneath me. Then a rainbow blurred the view—a sign we were nearing Hobart, the city of rainbows. We flew in across the bluest water and lovely curve of beach, bright in sunlight.

Nearing the end of the rainbow ...

Approach to the airport

Heading Back

An overcast day in Toronto—we woke to a thin layer of snow. CBC insisted the day would be “mostly sunny” but not a ray of sunshine has broken through the clouds. The wind is busy, a little fretful, but not really thrashing about. It’s mild, the snow is melting so walking is sloppy. Here's what it looks like. 

I slurped through the wet snow  earlier when I took two small boxes of books and an envelope of papers to the post office—material I want to have in Hobart. (Don’t ask what it cost!)

 

I ought to have shipped things two or three weeks ago, but the trip became doubtful about then—first through Air Canada rescheduling our flights so Peter and I were on separate planes, and missing connections. He spent more hours than is reasonable over days getting that straightened out. Why is nothing simple or straightforward?

Then there was the question of my visa. Yes, Canadians need a visa to go to Australia. And because I’m going to be there for longer than 3 months I could not apply online. It finally arrived on Thursday afternoon—just after we had had an unresolved conversation about whether Peter would go ahead without me, if it came to that. So—things weren’t shipped and things weren’t packed. The past three days have been a little frantic.

But now I’m packed, except for this computer. Butterflies are flocking in my stomach, I’m so excited about this return. The morning email brought me an invitation from the Tasmanian Writers Centre to read at their year-end event at The Lark on Dec. 18^th. Peter and I will be in Adelaide from the 16-19, so I can’t take part. I’m sorry because I read at the year-end in 2009, not long before I left. It would be symmetrical to reading at it again. The invitation has made me feel even happier about the trip—I feel so welcomed and I’m not even there yet!

We leave for the airport in half an hour. I’m grateful we’re not flying east or south—where weather is cancelling flights. I hope we might be blessed with smooth sailing and no delays.