Fieldnotes: Tasmania

CATCHING UP

2010-06-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

What was that resolution I made to add a note to this blog once a week? It's just over a month since my last posting, and in that time I've had lots of reason to think about Tasmania. I met Richard Lemm for coffee when he was in town, and we traded stories about our Tassie experiences and adventures, scheming how to go back there. Kevin and Irene, my Hobart friends and hosts, were in Toronto for 10 days, and I spent the better part of 3 days with Irene, wandering and talking. And I've had letters and emails from several folks--mostly still waiting for answers, I'm afraid. But I've also been preoccupied with the next adventure. Peter and I leave next Monday morning for Seoul, where he will be teaching a summer course at Sookmyung Women's University. We'll be there for a month, and then spend 10 days in Japan on the return trip. I'm going to start a separate blog to capture some of our experiences--if you're curious it's called http://fieldnoteskoreajapan.blogspot.com. I'm also taking my Tasmania notebook with me.

TIME AND PLACE

2010-04-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve just made myself dizzy, trying to sort a very small Tasmanian picture project. (Very small—it involves 12 photos of 800 or so…) While I was resident at Lake St. Clair I decided to photograph Mount Olympus from the viewing platform, on different days and at different times. I wanted to note the changing weather and light. And I actually managed to record the dates and times when I took those photographs in my field notebook.

Consider this project my variation on Monet’s haystacks, if you like. I love the repetitions one finds in visual art and have often wondered how or if such repetition can occur in poetry. How many poems called “Haystacks” could I write before someone muttered: well, she’s run out of ideas, hasn’t she? (I’ve recently completed a short haibun series that partly investigates this question—mapping a repeated winter walk at St. Peter’s Abbey in Saskatchewan—but it remains to be seen if anyone will consider it publishable.)

But back to the pictures. Several weeks ago now I pasted them, in chronological order, into a Japanese accordion-style notebook. It makes me happy to page through it—even if it usually also occasions a sudden longing to be back looking across the lake at the mountain. I hadn’t gotten around to labelling the images with date and time, and it’s that task that made me dizzy. Well, my inability to do so accurately, an inability spawned by what I discovered to be my original inability to in fact keep the pictures in chronological order. In spite of having another set of the images, plus index cards to the photographs that demonstrate their order …

Among other things, I discovered that I’d missed one photograph altogether. Mind you, it was the photo I took the day the cloud cover settled low over Lake St. Clair and erased Mount Olympus altogether—but had I read my notes re time and date carefully I’d have seen that one day there was “no mountain”. And had I written my initial labels with a pencil and not a fountain pen I could have corrected them neatly instead of scratching out wrong times and dates, and hoped that a couple of slight breaks in strict chronological order might have seemed some idiosyncrasy rather than total confusion.

This confusion seems another repetition, I realize—a variation on the off-kilter sense of time and place that seems all too characteristic of me since I’ve come back to Toronto.

THREE MONTHS LATER...

2010-04-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

It's three months since I flew back to Toronto from Tasmania/Australia--three months! How did that happen? It's as if my life divides into before Tasmania and after Tasmania--the before, of course, feels very far away, but in an odd way so does the after. I haven't really found my feet back here yet--and actually I'm not "back here" but in Winnipeg for 10 days to discuss a mutual interview that poet Jan Horner and I are working on for the journal CV2. And where is Tasmania in all this? It floats, a weave of sensations, memories, ideas, conversations, landscapes, food (that flathead, yum!), books, light, faces, waiting for me to hunker down and attend to them.

Back in Toronto I have a lovely, new-to-me, pine desk in my writing room, many thanks to Kelley Aitken, and a sorting table littered with baskets of paper--correspondence, manuscript, print-outs, none to do with Tasmania. But my two post bags and one box of books and papers (shipped sea mail from Hobart) have all arrived, the final one a couple of weeks ago. When I go home I'll work at clearing space for them on that table. Then I'll haul out my file box of 800 or so photographs, and see what emerges. I want to use this blog as a re-entry point to those lovely weeks and months. Perhaps that will ameliorate the odd sensation of being slightly off-balance I feel when memories or images from Tasmania sweep over me.

AIRPORT ENNUI

2010-01-13T17:36:00.001-08:00

Thursday, 14 January 2010. Melbourne Airport.

I’m sitting in the departures lounge at Melbourne Airport, “cushioned” by the white noise of an escalator proceeding steadily downwards. When I checked in this morning, an hour or more ago now, I was told there was a plane delay—I think the plane is late arriving here and so will be late leaving and therefore I will be late arriving in LA,, my re-entry point to North America. Not all bad news however, since they’ve rebooked me on an Air Canada flight direct to Toronto, saving me the LA-Chicago-Toronto legs of the original booking.

It’s the usual odd schmozzle of anxiety and boredom getting into and out of airports and finding flight information and clearing customs and security. Katharine’s Quantas flight is just now backing away from its ramp—about 20 minutes behind schedule. I made it into the departures area in time to see the still-long lineup of passengers waiting to go through the extra security clearance which involved a full search of hand luggage and a body check. I’m not clear on whether this flight will face the same lengthy scrutiny, but it would be odd if it doesn’t.

Yesterday we had a lovely time in Melbourne, even if the morning felt mournful as we had our last breakfast with the McGuires and then trundled out to the Hobart Airport. We were able to get the Best Western Airport Motel shuttle bus from Melbourne to our motel and even check in early—then the shuttle dropped us at Broadmeadows train station and we road the train downtown to Flinders Station, and made our way on foot to the Australian Ballet School. Katharine had arranged for us to have a tour of the school, which shares quarters with the Australian Ballet Company. It’s busy with summer programs at the moment, and the studios were full of dancing young people.

From the school we walked into the CBD and found a good salad lunch at Il Duomo Café in one of the Arcades – than window-shopped and ambled about, eventually ending up in Carleton Gardens where we parked on benches and read our books quietly for awhile. We had to pick up a forgotten camera lens from 55 Webb St., the apartment we had stayed in for our all-too-brief family visit to Melbourne. Then we went to Woolworth’s (a food store here, not a five and dime) for Kath to buy white chocolate timtams and Buderim ginger to take home—poked along Smith, Johnston, and Brunswick Streets until we met poet Andrew Sant for a drink at The Provincial, a nice pub. He suggested supper at a Greek place across the road from it and we shared good Greek tapas, a bottle of retsina, and fine conversation for the next couple of hours until we caught the train back to the station and called the motel shuttle bus to pick us up. The final event of the evening was to repack suitcases for the long ride home … which will commence eventually I suppose. There are alarmingly few people yet disposed about this lounge for a flight that was originally scheduled to leave in half an hour …

END OF THE TRIP

2010-01-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

It's almost a month since I managed to post anything here. The time on the mainland was varied and interesting and I'll try to write about it eventually, but tonight is the end of my time in Hobart. I've got my suitcase more or less packed and ready for the morning. I fly to Melbourne with my daughter Katharine at 8:50 a.m. and we have the day there. We both head to Toronto, but on separate flights on Thursday, Jan. 14th. I'm feeling sad about leaving Tassie--everything about my time here has been wonderful. But it will also be good to have some time to remember and think about it all, instead of just adding more experience to the bounty.

Today we went to Bonorong Wildlife Park and saw, among other things, several Tasmanian devils scampering about their enclosure. They looked quite healthy. There are also Foresters kangaroos there, echidnas, bandicoots, wombats (including a small orphan called Mavis who lives in a plush pouch), emus, and koalas. I have mixed feelings about zoos, but I do enjoy seeing the different animals.

It's very hot here, and dry--there have been a couple of bushfires today, in the Derwent Valley. In Melbourne the temperatures have been in the high 30s, but I hear they've begun to drop. We have a tour of the ballet school there tomorrow, and then the late afternoon for wandering around in the downtown. We're meeting poet Andrew Sant for supper in Fitzroy before heading back to our motel near the airport.

It's my intention to continue with this blog once I'm settled in again in Toronto--using it as a way to remember and reflect on my experiences here. But it may be several days before I get to that.

A GROAN ABOUT THE CANADIAN POST OFFICE AND OTHER STUFF

2009-12-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

Friday, 18 December 2009. Hobart.

In an hour I’ll be on my way to the airport, to catch my flight to Melbourne, and although I’ll be back in Tasmania for four days in January today feels like the end of something. It’s appropriately overcast and drizzly. Yesterday the rain pelted down all day long, putting a halt to my plan to amble about with my camera, photographing the houses here which I find so charming, unexpected views of the Derwent I’ve come to look for on my walks downtown, and St. David’s Park. I also though I’d walk on Knocklofty for an hour or so …

The day was not without accomplishment, however. First thing in the morning I took my books to the post office and two post bags full are now hunkered somewhere in the system—to be literally shipped and make their way across the sea to Canada. 2-3 months is the estimated time it will take them to make the trip.

Let me note here, crankily, that the Canadian Post Office has lived down to its increasingly poor service record. I was unable to insure my books—the only parcels to Canada that can be insured must travel by courier or express post. That’s not an Australian requirement, but a Canadian one. I suppose there was one small blessing in that—the argument I was having with myself about whether to take advantage of a special book and paper rate here (called Print Post and using the aforementioned bags but without insurance) or regular sea mail, boxing the books was settled since no insurance at all was available …

I’ve been more than impressed by the speed and courtesy of the Post Office here in Australia. My friends here receive books mailed from Western Australia in the next morning’s mail, and that arrives usually before 10:a.m.

This morning I made a short walk to the local post office in the Tattersall’s on Hill Street, to mail a few last letters. I took some photographs along the way, roses blooming in front of small (in appearance at least) bungalows painted in soft colours. Often these cottage-seeming houses turn out either to stretch back a long way or, because of the topography here to grow at the back into two- or three-storey buildings.

I’m not taking my computer on my wanderings and so this blog may languish over the next three to four weeks. I know I’ll have access to the internet here and there along the way, but not precisely when. My family are, I believe, somewhere on Fiji by now, putting in the 10 hours they have there before continuing on to Melbourne. They are to arrive at midnight tonight. It will be good to see them all after three months.

THE MIA MIA

2009-12-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

Further to the mia mia that was recently discovered here: it was vandalized badly sometime over last weekend. The notice in the paper mentioned that Parks does not have the resources to adequately monitor or safeguard such a site, which lay just outside a conservation area. It added that the individual(s) who did the trashing must have set out to do so, since the mia mia’s location wasn’t such that you’d stumble over it accidentally while out for a hike. An editorial has been written about the tragic stupidity of such actions; the current government has made no comment on it. I suppose the jury is out on who might be responsible— and may well remain out. “Mere” vandals, racists, or timber industry supporters might all be included in the police line-up, if a line-up were held …

A CORRECTION AND AN ADDITION

2009-12-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

The correction first: I mistranslated the FAW in my post yesterday--the organization is the Fellowship of Australian Writers, not the Federation. Fellowship is a much more accurate term for an organization that is as close-knit and supportive of its members as the Tasmania chapter clearly it. The anthology they have recently published is called A Net of Hands, and last night at The Lark I heard and enjoyed 8 poems from it.

The addition: In my note about the weather possibilities for tomorrow I left out the rather startling one of snow high on Mount Wellington. For those of you at home in Canada snow won't seem at all odd right now, but consider that here we are only days away from the solstice (winter? summer?) and today I'm wandering around in a short-sleeved t-shirt and feeling overdressed.

WEATHER

2009-12-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

The weather here shifts and changes as quickly as the land does. Today has dawned overcast with thick clouds. There’s a brighter spot in them below where the sun sits but no beam of sunlight has broken through. And the forecast is such a mix: possibility of dry thunderstorms, a high of 31 degrees (rising from the morning’s 17), perhaps showers later in the day. It’s an odd situation, since in spite of the water everywhere Tasmania is rarely humid. Tomorrow the predicted high is 16, and there’s to be rain.

Thunderstorms of any kind are unusual here, dry ones even more so, and I imagine some cause for concern. Like the mainland, though perhaps not as extremely as in some areas there, Tasmania is prone to bushfires. The forest here is characterized by a fire ecology—eucalypts not only survive fires in a variety of ways, but some of them depend upon it to grow and/or remain healthy. Plants like buttongrass are so flammable they will burn even in water, and it’s not for nothing that the kerosene plant was so christened. So today also has the highest fire danger status—all burning outside is forbidden and tools that might throw off sparks should not be used. A large water bomber is being tested, and the fire service is on high alert.

In Fiji in the past couple of days a bad cyclone has struck, killing some people and forcing many to evacuate their homes. I wonder if the weather we have here is partly an effect of that. I also wonder if the other Harrises will encounter weather delays on their flights to join me—they have a 10-hour stop-over in Fiji on their way …

TIME FLYING

2009-12-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

In Hobart it’s now 2:p.m., Tuesday, December 15, and the sun is shining brightly. I took my lunch outside to eat and let the heat pour down on me. Sunlight does feel more intense here than at home. I don’t think it’s brighter, but the air is so much clearer than in Toronto that it seems so.

I have roughly 3 more days here. On Friday I fly to Melbourne, and that evening the rest of the family arrive. We’ll settle into a flat there for a few days (while they attempt to get over the flight) before heading along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide where we’ll spend Christmas. Then we drive back to Melbourne on an inland highway and fly to Sydney for New Year’s. Peter and Jessica return to Toronto on Jan. 4, while Katharine and I go to Cairns (the Great Barrier Reef), Atherton (where we’re volunteering in the bat hospital and possibly doing a walk to see nocturnal animals), and then to Hobart for four busy days that will include a Tasman Sea cruise, a walk on the mountain, and various meals and visits. On Jan. 13 we’ll fly to Melbourne and have a tour of the ballet school there. On the 14th we return to Toronto—though on separate flights.

A month from today I’ll be trying to collect myself in Toronto. I suppose there will be an accumulation of papers for me to sort through—though probably nothing to the accumulation from here that will make its stately way by sea and arrive perhaps by mid-March. By then I hope to have cleared space for them, and for the books that will be their travelling companions.

But in the meantime—I’ve been organizing poems and prose bits for a reading that I’ll give later today. I was invited to be part of The Literary Lark, the final Writers’ Centre Lark reading for the year. I’m reading with David Owen, who has just published a nonfiction book on the shark, and with contributors to an anthology of poems published by the local branch of FAW—the Federation of Australian Writers. The flyer announces flamenco guitarist Ralph Forehead as part of the evening, and since the Lark is a distillery, there’ll be Scotch for those who fancy it, as well as beer and wine. I’m pleased to have a chance to read, and look forward to seeing several of the writers I’ve met here. Not so much looking forward to saying good-bye to people, but it is a nice way to end my stay.

I have many moments and events and thoughts I haven’t yet “blogged” … I hope to get to some of them tomorrow and Thursday.

SOME OZZIE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

2009-12-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

“No worries!” Said with a particular lilting intonation it means ‘you’re welcome’. So does “That’s awright then.”

paddock = field, even without a horse in sight; the third meaning in the Shorter Oxford, designated Austr and NZ, so long as it has fencing around it

ute = small truck (sort of analogous to the pickup truck, but with lower or no sides); also utility vehicle; I’ve heard it to applied to cars that can drive hard territory.

dam = an artificial pond to provide water for stock; analogous to dugout on the prairies

bogun = hard to get a handle on this one: a term of condescension, maybe covering the territory from from loudmouth through redneck to white trash …

hoon = usage here generally refers to those who drive too fast and aggressively, especially but not only young men, but in origin the term meant “a procurer of prostitutes”

the mallee = the scrub, the dry bush--characteristic of the state of Victoria. Used in a poem title by Robert Gray. Whereas “mallee root” sometime in the last century was rhyming slang for prostitute, and the Mallee bull is a term of compliment, as in fit as a … presumably because bulls that manage in mallee country are tough and strong (and bullheaded?)

yabbies = small freshwater crayfish, used for bait, but also eaten. Caught by children. Daniel at Lake St Clair mentioned catching yabbies several times.

flathead = a local fish, caught in the estuary; very good eating, though they are worried about the supply this year. Many mentions of catching large quantities of flathead to eat and to freeze in Gwen Harwood’s letters.

mia mia = an Aboriginal bough or bark hut. In the news here at the moment is the discovery of an until-now-unknown mia mia on land that is slated to be logged very soon

fined up = what the weather does in Tassie when the rain stops falling ; no sunshine required

shack = cottage or summer house, not necessarily in need of paint

squiz = an inquisitive or curious look

fossicking = poking about among things on the lookout for something valuable, ferreting about; what Irene and I did at the secondhand bookshops. In origin it meant to search out small quantities of gold usually from abandoned diggings.

bathers, cossi = bathing suit

MACQUARIE ISLAND

2009-12-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

Macquarie Island lies about 1500 km. southeast of Tasmania. It was “discovered” in 1810 by an Australian on the hunt for new sealing grounds, but it first appeared about 600,000 years ago. At 34 km. length, 5 km. width, and 433 m. height at the highest point, it’s not huge—but it is still rising. In the recent past it's experienced a significant earthquake or two. Though Mcquarie is closer to New Zealand than any other land mass, it has been politically part of Tasmania since 1900. In 1978 it became a state reserve and now is a World Heritage Area and an International Biosphere Reserve. The Australian Antarctic Division maintains a research station there, and parks people carry out ongoing projects. Check out a view of the island and the research if you want at http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=7151

No, I haven’t been there. But Macquarie is a presence here in Hobart.

In the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, where I have been (and this posting might duplicate some of my earlier one), the Subantarctic Plant House is modeled on Mcquarie Island. In it, the near shore zone, coastal slopes, rock stacks, mires, herbfields and short grasslands, and feldmark terraces are all replicated by plantings. Weather conditions on the island—its average daily temperature is 4.8 degrees C and it rains pretty much daily—are simulated so as you walk through, cold winds spring up and suddenly lower the temperature, then wet fog or rain spray rolls across the space dampening your face. Sounds of the sea and seabird calls complete the sensory experience. Given the weather conditions I was surprised at the variety and lushness of the plants. A panoramic mural by local artist John Lendis shows the island’s terrain so you can imagine you’re staring across it to the immense ocean.

Macquarie is a breeding island for many seabirds, including four different albatrosses and four penguin species. During the 19th century, as seemed to happen on every island where Europeans stopped, various animals were introduced. (Often the idea behind animal introductions was to establish food stores for sealing, whaling, shipping parties who would stop on long voyages to replenish supplies.) Large feral populations of cats, rabbits, rats, mice, and weka (a flightless rail from New Zealand) developed and these have caused serious damage to both island ecology and seabird habitat. Beginning in the 1970s a feral animal eradication program was undertaken by the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service that successfully got rid of cats and the weka. However, rabbits and rodents are still an enormous problem, and currently a large eradication program aimed at these animals is in the planning stage here.

At the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery there is an excellent exhibition on the Island, a part of the Antarctic Gallery. In it the geology of the island development is very clearly explained, and the plant and animal life is delineated. The history of its exploration is also outlined. More about that in another posting, perhaps, when I find my notes …

HANS HEYSEN

2009-12-08T22:10:00.000-08:00

Before I enjoyed my Bruny Island cheese supper I’d gone to see the Hans Heysen show just opened a week ago at the TMAG. Heysen was born in Germany in 1877, but came to Australia as a child. He went to Europe for 4 years as a young man, studying at various studios in Paris and finally being accepted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He also travelled and painted in Venice and Scotland before coming back to Australia. He lived in South Australia, eventually on a country property, and was perhaps the first painter to take the eucalyptus as his subject. Clearly he loved the trees and the landscape around him.

The area was agricultural and many of his paintings have cattle and/or farm labourers in them. I saw echoes of Millais in some. He was also enthralled by light, and it’s fascinating to see its variety in his canvases, sometimes soft and full of mist, sometimes inflected by bushfires in the distance, sometimes pouring out of the picture into the gallery. The focus on agricultural subjects made me wonder if we have an equivalent painter at home. Kurelek comes to mind for content in a way (more social?), but not style. Do I remember that Carl Dair painted Ontario farm scenes? Need to check this out when I’m back in Toronto.

Later in life Heysen went inland to the Flinders Range and was at first unable to paint what he saw there. The expanse of land without markers, the dryness, the intense range of colours, the flat light, were all challenges. It’s interestingly similar to early painterly reactions to the Canadian prairies, another dry area where reading the distance in conventional ways was difficult or impossible. Heysen changed his palate, developing new colours, and ended by painting stunning images that capture the sharpness and starkness of the region beautifully. Or so I think, never having seen it. The paintings are definitely beautiful.

I liked the show very much, and may go back to see it again. My favourite painting isn’t among either the farming or the Flinders ones, though. It’s a painting of his wife, sitting at a sewing machine, her back to the artist (and the viewer). It’s a summer’s day, or perhaps spring, there are white curtains on the window, and radiant pale brilliant sunlight pours in. The light is so strong that when I came around the corner and saw the painting I stepped back from it to keep from squinting.

MORE CHEESE

2009-12-08T18:58:00.001-08:00

A few entries ago I mentioned the cheese plate we shared, from the Bruny Island Cheese Co. Well, yesterday the McGuires received their December Cheese Club shipment from the Company, so last night we feasted on cheese again. The package of 5 artisanal cheeses also included a container of apple paste and a bottle of wine.

The cheeses have their own names: tom truckle (a truckle is a small whole cheese).a hard cheese in the tradition of the Tomme cheeses from the French Savoie; o.d.o. (standing for one day old and so crumbly), a fresh cheese marinated in olive oil with roasted red pepper, garlic, and herbs; saint, a surface-ripened soft oozy cheese with a white mould; 1792 (the year the French first stopped in Tasmania), another surface-ripened cheese, this time brine washed; and gabriel, also surface-ripened, a delicious runny goat’s cheese. We left the Gabriel and o.d.o. for another evening but devoured large portions of the others on slices of a fresh baguette from Cullen’s, with olives, cherry tomatoes, green grapes and fresh cherries on the side. An unbeatable meal!

Did I mention that earlier that when we stopped at the Cheese Factory and bought the cheese we ate at Dennes Point, I bought a delicious milkshake for Kevin and very good caffe lattes for Irene and me? On a nice day there are tables outside the shop, under the eucalypts, where it would be lovely to sit and eat. The shop also sells T-shirts with a pair of boots on them (the Factory mark), notecards, and some sweets, if I remember correctly.

A SATURDAY URBAN WALKABOUT

2009-12-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, after our usual breakfast with friends at Cullen’s Bakery in Moonah, Irene and I went on a long prowl of shops and galleries in downtown Hobart. We began near the Art School, looking at fine jewellery and some fabulous wooden furniture, and then spending time in Art Mob (www.artmob.com.au), a gallery that specializes in Aboriginal Art. There’s a gorgeous show hanging at the moment, work by Dennis Nona, plus stacks of paintings not hung, and small items like Christmas ornaments and notecards, painted boxes and small trays. I bought a few small gifts, all the while wishing fiercely I had the money for a painting for myself. We had a brief chat with Euan Hills, the director, and he showed us photographs of an astonishing and large bronze canoe by Nona, called Two Brothers, now installed in Saudi Arabia. It would be fun to put that canoe beside Bill Reid’s, installed at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC.

Staying in the Hunter Street area, we went on to the Art School’s gallery to see the show (Silent Witnesses I think it was called—where was my field notebook?) by Frances Watson. The work, several installations, was done to complete her degree and is both brilliant and mordantly funny. She examines the weight of domestic objects within and on lives and families, while at the same time ambling among various conventions of the still life. I liked the show enormously, found it moving and exciting, and was delighted that Frances herself was there so I could tell her so.

Next stop on our ramble was the Carnegie Gallery, to see Light and Shade, featuring the work of Lorraine Biggs and Chantale Delrue. Both these artists make very beautiful images, and it’s also interesting to note the contrasts between them. Delrue is anchored in fine details, using dyes derived from natural materials to make precise images of butterflies and plants, all found on Mount Welllington. Biggs has focused on the hill as a shape, and her paintings explore repetitions of this large landscape form—in all instances depicted so the light emanates from behind the hill with a rich gold tone and the sky is luminous. Both artists address the body—Delrue by creating pieces that use the lungs and the heart as containers of growth (vases for branches and plants), Biggs by the velvety echo of a breast, sometimes nippled, in her hills.

From gallery to market—we strolled through the Salamanca Market, checking out jewellery, lovely scarves, handbags, gorgeous fountain pens, threading our way through the crowd. We stopped at Say Cheese and shared a cheese plate for lunch, stepped into the Handmark Gallery to look at more paintings by Delrue and photos by Christl Berg. Then it was up the Kelly Steps to Hamden Road and Sandy Bay to paw through secondhand books at Rapid Eye and Kookaburra. Irene and I each found irresistible things of course, and with our bags laden, called an end to the walk and went home.

Repetition marked the day—our repeated steps from place to place, the repetitive patterns of aboriginal art, repeated images and objects in the work of the 3 women artists, and then in the plethora of bird books we discovered in the shops. Watson had a quote from Gilles Deleuze written on one of her pieces: “If we die of repletion we are also healed by it.”

A MUCH-NEEDED BREAK FOR PARKS?

2009-12-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Monday, 7 December 2009.

The Mercury’s lead article this morning announces that the state government is about to thaw their freeze on public service hirings and makes specific reference to Parks as an area that needs attention. That’s very good news, if it turns out to be more than a pre-election gambit.

Since shortly after my arrival, I’ve been both impressed by, and concerned about, the parks here. At Lake St Clair, where I lived for three weeks. I was bowled over by the variety and beauty, and by the warmth and generosity of the staff. But I was also startled at how few staff there were, and quickly became aware of how stretched they were, trying to cover the needs of visitors and of park maintenance.

In fact, I was able to lend a small hand to maintenance when I accompanied one of the rangers on a walk, to Shadow Lake and back by Mount Rufus, to post a closed sign on a trail that was temporarily unsafe and inspect the tracks for fallen trees. We found a lot of trees down, sometimes covering the track completely, so walkers had to negotiate their way over, under, and around trunks and branches. We were able to shift some trees, and remove branches, but others had to be left until the ranger could get back up with a chainsaw—and to do that he had to wait until someone could be freed elsewhere and sent in to accompany him.

Eucalypts are called “self-pruning” since some species tend to drop limbs throughout their life, for no apparent reason. They are also often shallowly rooted and blow over or lose large branches in windstorms. Keeping tracks clear of fallen trees is an on-going job, and not limited to wild parks, either. The steps down to the cave on the Bedlam Walls walk just outside Hobart were blocked by a tree earlier this year; the parks people announced at the time that they could not afford to remove the tree and the steps were simply closed. (Though it was possible to negotiate under the railing and down to the steps if you really wanted to get to the cave.)

When we drove to Mount Field Park in October we found a popular trail had been closed for tree removal and wouldn’t open until some time in December. A letter to the paper, in response to the announcement that some special funds had been procured to do that maintenance work, stated the trail had been in serious need of attention for some years.

Tasmania’s parks are a tremendous—I’m trying to avoid the language of investment, without success it seems—resource and asset. Stunningly beautiful, full of birdlife and varied terrain, with a large network of tracks and overnight huts, they are widely used by both residents and visitors. They form an important part of the ecology (human and natural) of this island and deserve to be properly cared for. I’ve yet to meet a Tasmanian who doesn’t value the parks, or a park worker who isn’t dedicated to them. It seems odd that the state government has not been willing to give them the attention and care that they both require and deserve.

BIRDWALK

2009-12-06T02:10:00.000-08:00

It’s 8:45 p.m. here and twilight is settling in. The sky is still bright over the Derwent, but Mount Nelson is dull. It’s been a gorgeous warm and sunny day with no rain though showers were forecast. It’s a week since I’ve attended to this blog. For those who are wondering, the nature writing workshop went well, though we weren’t able to walk in the park.

But this morning the McGuires and I walked in a lovely park, the Waterworks Reserve. We joined a birdwalk led by Don Knowler, who writes the weekly bird column for The Mercury. I’ve been enjoying his column since I arrived—he’s a passionate birder who has lived in England and America as well as here and has a healthy sense of humour that comes through in the writing.

I reckon about 50 people turned up for the walk—not surprising, given the weather and the fact that it was well-publicized. Knowler said his usual crowd was only half a dozen but I find that hard to believe. Birding with a crowd that size is a challenge—especially walking on narrow trails through the woods—but Knowler handled that well by explaining what birds we might expect to see, and telling us stories about his own birding in the Reserve before we set off. He’s an entertaining and knowledgeable a talker about birds, so a wonderful companion on a walk.

The morning was chock full of birdsong—the striaited pardelote was repeating itself as we started off and Knowler pointed out cracks between bricks where they had nests. He also noted a white-eyed heron and a native hen off on the grassy areas. I couldn’t see either of them, but did see the little black cormorant that flew in and perched on a railing. And eventually I got my glasses on the pardelote—my first sighting of one.

The calling continued as we wound through the bush—the shrike-thrush, various cuckoos, currawongs, a bronzewing in the distance, the grey fantail, all gave voice, though I couldn’t see any of them. When we came out of the trees and were standing near the water a sudden racket of ravens and then a pair of kookaburras announced the circling of a white goshawk overhead—a bird I was thrilled to get a clear sighting of and a ringing note to end the walk with.

WEATHER

2009-11-28T14:12:00.001-08:00

Sunday morning here, and the rain continues to fall heavily. Though I can now glimpse the Derwent—earlier it was swallowed by cloud—I can still hear the wind rising to strong gusts. Will the rain ease, as the paper predicted? In a short time I head off to give a workshop on nature writing—in a room in a downtown building. The workshop was to include time in St. David’s Park, both collectively and individually—in fact that wander and sit outdoors was its heart. If this weather keeps up we’ll be fortunate to manage even a stroll in the park.

Welcome to the world—refusing to fit one’s plans! Perhaps I’ll wear my Corvus corax bracelet, and talk about the raven—as respectfully as I can manage. The day will be whatever it will be—we’ll hunker down into the pleasure of being warm (perhaps) and dry while surrounded by the noise of weather and see what emerges, what that might generate.

ONE TASSIE INITIATION

2009-11-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

I feel I’ve crossed one divide here, as of last Saturday, when we spent a day on Bruny Island. (The specific divide you’ll figure out, I’m sure, as you read.) We caught the 7:30 ferry and our first stop on the island was to look along the beach where the penguins head out to sea every morning at first light. We weren’t there at first light, though, so we all we saw of them were the lines of their footprints on the sand and a few burrows in the dunes. That viewpoint overlooks The Neck, and on the beach on the other side of the road we watched a pair of pied oystercatchers walking and bobbing at the water’s edge.

We hadn’t had breakfast, and were on the lookout for a place to eat. The café at Bruny Island Charters was open, and they had just pulled trays of blueberry muffins out of the oven. We settled ourselves at a table and savoured the muffins (not too sweet, with lots of berries in them, very lightly dusted with icing sugar) and good coffee. The music on the sound system caught my attention, it sounded familiar—and sure enough, when I checked it was Harry Manx!

Once we’d eaten we headed off to the Mavista Nature Walk that runs through a forest of man ferns and other trees that enjoy a certain dampness. The understory seemed open, relatively speaking, more spacious than, say, at Leven Canyon or in the rainforest dell at Lake St Clair. The air was filled with birdsongs, but we caught only a single glimpse of a small brown bird. Eventually black currawongs began to call, several, invisible except for an occasional glimpse of a wing high in the canopy. They kept up for 15 or 20 minutes at least, and we devised various collectives for them: a clamour of currawongs or a call are ones I remember. Irene came up with something much more descriptive but I’ve forgotten it.

As we headed back along the trail to the car Irene asked me to photograph a particularly lovely rectangle of moss with a flourish of leaves lying on it—it looked, as she said, something like a forest gravemarker. As I got my camera out I noticed a thin black critter fingering forward like an inchworm and was about to say “look at that!” when Kevin yelped “There’s a leech!” We looked down and they were on our boots. We scraped them off and continued, stopping every 15 steps (Irene was counting) to scrape yet more off. When we made it back to the parking place I rolled up my pant legs and one dropped off my leg leaving a small bloody mark. Another was clinging to the inside of the fabric and I had to shake it loose before we got into the car. In fact I felt nothing when the leech attached itself, and it left no long-lasting indication of its presence. But next time I’ll tuck my pant legs into my socks.

After the leech adventure we drove to the lighthouse at Cape Bruny. There we paused in the parking lot to eat the next round of muffins. It was very windy and cool. Kevin and I walked up to the light and stared over the island and the sea. In a shed by the lighthouse a starling had a nest in the eaves, with young; I could hear their squeaky twittering. (Non-electronic.) Irene stayed with the car and watched the sparrows and fairy-wrens.

From the lighthouse we headed to the Bruny Island Cheese Factory since we were hungry again. There we bought a lovely cheese platter complete with chunks of a sourdough bread, and some delicious very tiny olives, also a product of the island. While we were waiting for the food to be packaged we heard and then saw a young kookaburra, still a bit fluffy-looking, with an adult. The youngster was working at its call, but not there yet. We took our food off to Denne’s Point, where we hoped we might spot the rare 40 Spotted Pardalote, but no luck. However, eating the cheese and olives and bread by the sea was lovely enough. Then it was back to the ferry and Hobart, tired but happy as they used to say in children’s books.

ALEX MILLER

2009-11-24T01:50:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 17 November.

I’m just home from another wonderful author event at Fullers. Novelist Alex Miller spoke brilliantly about his new book, Lovesong, telling stories that both showed and told us his credentials as a storyteller. From his first sentence I was hooked. He’s as good a teller as any I’ve listened to, and that includes Alice Kane and Joan Bodger. At the end of his telling and reading I had to shake myself free of the story he’d woven of the novel and its genesis.

Miller’s choice to present the novel by telling stories, about himself, about it, about storytelling, was apt, since one of the novel’s concerns is the relationship between a writer and a story, one which he hears and is unable to resist going on to write it. So being taken over by it and then taking it over in turn.

Stories are everywhere around us, in the world, Miller said, we swim in them. They go on all the time. He wrote this particular book, unlike his other novels, entirely to please himself. I was taken over by his talking and wanted to buy every one of his books—but then I have to get them back to Canada. So I’ll do a little searching to see if they are available there before I carry an armload up to the sales desk.

THE BOTANICAL GARDENS

2009-11-24T01:48:00.000-08:00

On Saturday the 14th, after our breakfast gathering at Cullen’s, Irene and I went to the Botanical Gardens, while Kevin headed off to the beer festival. It was an overcast morning initially, but the sun broke through before long. We wandered as we pleased, stopping to look at whatever caught our attention. I was particularly taken with the Subantarctic Plant House, a small building which replicates the landscape and plants of McQuarrie Island; it has diorama-style paintings of sea and sky and birds on its walls, taped sounds of surging waves, winds, and bird calls fill the air, and both wet fog and stiff winds blow through from time to time. The herb garden, the cactus house, the Conservatorium bursting with orchids, hostas, gerbera, and ferns, gave way to the Japanese Garden, where we took our time following paths. We’d bought sandwiches at Cullen’s and ate them there, listening to the birds. (See below for a list of the birds we saw in the gardens.) After lunch we made our way to the Visitors Centre for ice cream and overheard someone asking about the large embroidery of the garden. A few years ago the Hobart Embroiderers’ Guild put together a series of embroidered panels of differing areas of the garden; it’s hanging in the volunteers’ cottage, but unless someone is there it’s kept locked to avoid any damage. Luckily Rebecca Round, a volunteer in the shop, offered to take the questioner over to see it and we asked to tag along. It’s a very lovely work! Then we went to the lily pond with its ducks, and the various Tasmanian, Australian, and New Zealand plant areas, before deciding it was time to head home. We’d spent almost a whole day drifting about with no particular goal, unhurried, soaking up the sun and the plants, a truly lovely time.

Bird list: European goldfinch, Blackbird, English sparrow, Collared dove, Black-faced cuckoo-shrike, Magpie, Masked lapwing, Sulphur-crested cockatoo, Little wattlebird, Silver gull, Pacific black ducks (with young)

MANY EVENTS

2009-11-24T01:45:00.000-08:00

November 15.

Since I got back from the northwest I’ve taken in a rich mix of cultural activities here in Hobart. This may be a small city, but it’s culturally thriving and active. Beginning last Thursday I’ve been to a book launch, an art exhibition, and a talk by an artist.

Late Thursday afternoon I went to the launch of Senator Bob Brown’s Earth. Self-published after being shopped around to various publishers, the book was eloquently and elegantly launched by Pete Hay (poet and author of Van Diemonian Essays). Cassie O’Connor, recently elected as a Green to the State government, orchestrated the event Greens with affection and eloquence. The book’s text is a meditation, in brief but moving statements, about how we’re called to live in relationship with the rest of the planet, while attempting to heal the damage we’ve done to it. Brown’s fine photographs are a fine accompaniment to it, underscoring what’s at stake. It’s a handsomely produced book using an attractive recycled paper.

Senator Bob Brown is the current Parliamentary leader of the Australian Green Party. In 1978 he was made director of the Tasmania Wilderness Society. Trained as a doctor, he became an activist during the campaign against the damming of the Franklin River. He served as an Member of the House of Assembly in Tasmania for 10 years before becoming the first Green Senator in the Federal Government in 1996. He was also the first openly gay member of the Australian Parliament. For more about him see http://bobbrown.greensmps.org.au/about-bob-brown

On Friday afternoon I stopped in at the Carnegie Gallery to see Irene Briant’s Lost, work based on a true story of a woman who was lost in the bush for 9 days in 1908. Briant has covered tea trays with fabric and placed on them, also covered in fabric, both expected and unexpected objects—a tea set and a currawong, for instance. A large handmirror suspended from the ceiling and covered with fabric patterned with leaves and branches on one side, reflected me back to myself lost among those branches and leaves. Many lovely small pieces constructed from combinations of manmade and natural objects made up an assemblage called “Here and There.” I liked the work very much, have not been able to find out much about Briant herself. But the catalogue essay (by Sean Kelly, though not the one in NYC) is available online at http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/briant/lost/essay.htm

At 6:00 that evening at Fullers, we went to an XYZ event, featuring American artist Chris Jordan who spoke about his work, Running the Numbers, and also his most recent project Midway. The Gyre. This last work is very powerful—a series of photographs of albatross carcasses from Midway Island in the Pacific, birds killed by their diet of plastic scooped up from the Ocean. The work is hard to watch, its stunning beauty making it impossible to feel unmoved by the images. You can see for yourself at: http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/240609421/chris-jordan Jordan has made the sequence available for anyone who wants to us it.

A MISCELLANY

2009-11-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

It’s Sunday, November 15 now, and the morning has alternated between misty overcast and sunshine. I’ve been pawing through accumulations of paper and memories, thinking it’s time I packed up some books and shipped them home. Travelling by sea they likely won’t arrive in Toronto before I get back there myself in mid-January.

The pawing has brought various bits and pieces to the surface—like this link that my friend Lorri sent me to an image of the lizard I saw on the Bedlam Walls walk: http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=5297 Check it out.

And here’s a quotation I like, found in one of the appendices of the Baxter book on books. It’s from the preface to R.H. Blyth’s How To Read English Poetry, published by Hokuseido Press (intended for Japanese readers and extremely hard to find), and gives Blyth’s reason for writing the book: “I have an idea that the entrance examination to Heaven is a reading aloud of poetry.” I like this so much I think I’ll add it to the bottom of all my letters.

I’ve been meaning to write something about Australian book launches. They have some formality here, and carry a certain weight. It’s customary to have someone celebrate the book’s arrival by speaking about it at some length—not the publisher, but someone with related expertise or a relationship to the book’s concerns who can “place” and laud it. A historian launched Peter Timms’s book about Hobart, the 30th anniversary issue of Island was launched by a politician who has been a subscriber for the 30 years, and Sarah Day’s lovely collection of poems by a local columnist who counts poetry as necessary reading. I’ve felt a real sense of occasion at all the launches I’ve been to here, in the attention paid to the book and the attentiveness of the audience—as if the appearance of a new book is worth marking in the larger world, not simply time for a party with friends.

I remember when Stan Dragland was poetry editor for M&S at home. His comments, introducing each poet at the season’s launch, demonstrated his passion for poetry and the work at hand. They made that evening a real occasion. Beth Follett of Pedlar Press speaks with the same kind of commitment and passion about her authors’ books at her launches, and I consider myself fortunate to have had Drowning Lessons venture into the world under her banner.

FURTHER BOOKS

2009-11-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

Clive gave me a copy of Along these Lines: from Trowenna to Tasmania, an anthology edited by C.A. Cranston, first published in 2000. The writings in it travel through time and across space, via prose (fiction and nonfiction) and poetry; the gathering itself is put together according to a strategy that both exemplifies and examines narrative, as outlined in the editor’s introduction. Its intention is to offer something of the complex texture of Tasmania. Perhaps it’s analogous to that forest texture that I’m so struck by.

Here’s a fine quote about the experience of being here, from the introduction: “It’s not for nothing that Tasmania gets left off the maps. Its geography insists that there are no seamless narratives here; that it does not share the same narratives as the mainland, that the break in the journey to get here requires a shift in perspective.”

I’ll note also that I’m struck by the title’s echo of Along Prairie Lines, the anthology published by Turnstone Press in 1989 that first focused on the long prairie poem and, I think, (from this distance in time and space) made a case for the long poem (and often long line) as a reflection of the prairie landscape. Cranston comments on the highways and grids that provide ways of arriving and framing both place and writing: “The title Along These Lines signals the structure: an anthology patterned on visible and invisible lines that traverse the city and countryside, both of which have prompted or inspired the lines reproduced here by poets and prose writers.”

Now the more about Birds on Farms, subtitled “A glovebox guide to birds and habitat restoration and management in NW Tasmania”, published in 2005 by the North-West Environment Centre. The book arose from a project, “Restoring birds to Northwest Tasmania for healthy sustainable landscapes”, coordinated by the centre, and including field research on farms across the area to teach bird identification and habitat management. The beginning sections of the book describe the project, which encouraged collaborative and community responses to create larger patches of habitat as well as offering suggestions for combining farm production and bird conservation.

Most of the book consists of the guide to specific birds, Each gets a full page with an illustration and comments on behaviour, foraging habits, breeding, habitat, range and status, as well as a description. At the bottom of each page is a description of the bird’s key habitat. The end material includes lists of resources, programs, and scientific names as well as strategies for monitoring birds on your farm.

The project and book are fine examples of locally-based initiatives that address an environmental situation or concern, and also aim to build community. It must have been exhilarating to be involved with it.

BOOKS ON THE ROAD

2009-11-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

I resolved to travel light on my tour of the north. I packed my computer (not needed) and the bird book and Paul Muldoon’s The End of the Poem for a shared-reading group I’d been invited to join for an evening, plus one book for reading on the road. I can’t read in a moving car, and besides, why would I read when I could be staring out at the ever-changing surround? The book I took for reading was Ashley Hay’s Gum, a copy from the Hobart Library that Irene borrowed for me. There’s a subtitle on the cover, but the barcode is over it, and the titlepage itself says only Gum. The book is about Eucalyptus, the dominant tree here. “Tree” I say, but it exists in hundreds of species, no certain count known even yet. Though DNA research seems to indicate that trees quite various from each other might turn out to be members of the same species.

The book opens with an aboriginal legend about the eucalyptus, and then goes on to track European—and Australian—awareness of them. Hay notes various explorers’ records of them, and the first attempts to collect and classify them. Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain Cook, began collecting, and returned to England with an enormous number of specimens, but never got around to publishing descriptions of them or naming them. The early white inhabitants of the continent found the trees generally too hard to be useful for timber products, and besides they wanted clear land to farm. Forests in North America were also not what settlers wanted, but at least the trees there bore some resemblances to—or in fact were—trees already known in England and on the continent. Eucalypts were regarded as not good for much, and far from beautiful for a long time.

Hay traces the growing knowledge and understanding of the eucalyptus through time, and the slowly changing attitudes towards it, as white Australians grew more attuned to the land here. Though John Glover had painted it accurately very early, in general early painters made the forests here look more like English woods until late in the 19th century. Hay also outlines the 20th century development of the woodchip industry and of forestry, the period in which trees were seen as a useful crop to be harvested, and then the slow growth of conservation ideas that challenged those utilitarian notions. She writes, too, about its relationship to fire.

Her book is very readable in part because of her choice to structure the information around various individuals who were engaged with or by the tree, so the reader gets a series of portraits of people as well as of the trees. She writes clearly and the story is interesting enough that I found myself settling with it compulsively before bed each night on the trip.

Though I only took one book with me, I’ve brought 3 or 4 more home to Hobart. On that first day on the road we stopped at The Shop in the Bush, on the Tasman Highway between St. Helen’s and Scottsdale. The shop bills itself as “Tasmania’s Top Bric-a-Brac Shop” and it does indeed have all sorts of stuff in it, but I only trolled through a few shelves of books. I came away with two finds: a book on books, Australian-born John Baxter’s A Pound of Paper about his adventures as a collector and writer (a good read, I’m half-way through it now) and a lovely little bird book published in 1956, illustrated with watercolour drawings: Some Common Australian Birds by Alan and Shirley Bell. Each bird gets a full page of text (sometimes with generous bottom margin) and a full-page drawing. The very first bird in the book is my companionable Blue Wren (Malurus cyaneus), and here’s a lovely sentence about this tiny creature: “Often one of these atoms of polished elegance, as he hunts the undergrowth and runs down insects, is shepherded by three or four soberly-feathered brown wrens—a concourse of wives, it has been suggested, but more probably the current brood, a family of females and young males.” Atom of polished elegance—very nice!

I also bought a glovebox-sized, spiral-bound handbook of birds on farms, a landcare project more about that later—and Clive bought for me a pamphlet about Highfield House. So the collection grows—

TOURING THE NORTH AND NORTHWEST

2009-11-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

It’s an overcast and slightly rainy morning in Hobart, and I’m trying to sort out the welter and wonders of the past several days. Starting last Friday I was treated to a driving tour of the north and northwest areas of the state—courtesy of Clive and Roz Tilsley. Our drive began by heading to Launceston, via the east coast, not the standard route. The day was brilliantly warm and sunny, like everyone’s dream of summer. It’s hard for me to credit that it’s really November. Christmas flyers arrived in this morning’s paper … but I seem to be floating outside of time with nothing to indicate days of the week or what season it is.

That first day I glimpsed Maria Island, a lovely shape floating between blue sea and blue sky. It’s moving to see the whole shape of a piece of land, as if it can be grasped in its totality. We stopped frequently—at Mayfield Bay Conservation Area for a brief walk along a sandy beach where we saw a 3-arch bridge foundation dated 1854; at the Spiky Bridge, convict-built, from local stone if the surrounding terrain is any indication; alongside Great Oyster Bay overlooking a huge sweep of sea and mountains (Freycinet Peninsula and Park), and the Moulting Lagoon wetland; and at several beaches, any of which could feature in splendid tourism ads, especially under the sunshine and blue sky we enjoyed. I took photographs at every stop and wrote down names of places so I can identify them.

At Swansea we found a takeout lunch, hamburgers that we carried to the beach and ate while perched on large chunks of rock soaking up sun and the noise of the sea. There were brilliant pink and pale yellow flowers growing on the way to the sand and rock. In the slightly dozy aftermath of food and afternoon sun I remember large sweeps of road winding up and down through forests where sun fell between trees, high walls of ferns and trees on one side of the car and a view through trees to country beyond on the other. The forest full of textures so unlike the ones at home, and a blue light in the air.

At one beach Clive spied a black-cockatoo in the distance. We walked towards it as he tried to show me where it was and finally I could see something black in the green of a large tree. When we got a little closer three cockatoos suddenly took wing and I was astonished at their size. They are more fully named Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo, and their outer tail feathers are yellow. Though they were still some distance from us when they flew I could see those yellow tails.

We drove on through St. Helen’s to Pyengana and the cheese store there. It smelled like my great uncle’s farm where I spent summers as a child, and the coffee in the café was delicious. Was it called the Holy Cow Café? Perhaps. I’d stopped writing things down by then, but I did take a photograph. Clive bought a huge cheese which we sampled at dinner that evening—also delicious!

The next morning we set off for Stanley, driving alongside Bass Strait from Penguin west, past wonderful flower plantings by the railway tracks. Another day blazing with sun and light bouncing from the sea. Rich agricultural land rises behind the towns. The soil was sometimes almost black and at others a rich red-black. Bright new green rows of seedlings poked through. The hills looked raked or combed, lines of soil alternating with lines of green.

Before going into Stanley we visited Highfield House—more about that in another post. We checked into the Stanley Hotel, put on our walking shoes, and walked the Nut, a large lava plug that rises behind the town. The trail up is at a killingly steep angle. Clive bounded ahead while Roz and I took our time, stopping every now and then to catch our breath. On the top there’s a trail you can follow around the height, through heathy growth, a walk unlike any I’d done here before.

When we came down from our good walk we went to the pub for a beer before heading to Xander’s restaurant, just up the street, for a lovely view to the west and dinner. I ordered the beef salad for starters—we were in cattle country, after all—and the ravioli main. The salad was thin slices of beef with assorted vegetables, including beets (beetroot here), red onions and rocket, and the ravioli was feta and spinach, served with a pumpkin sauce. Everything was full of flavour. We ate and talked as the sun sank slowly and the hill we could see through the window grew dark.

And the further adventures of the tour will have to wait for another posting.

BEDLAM WALLS WALK

2009-11-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I went on a walk at Bedlam Walls with Susanna van Essen. She drove us to the east side of the Derwent and north to a trail that runs along Geilstone Bay and then along the Derwent to Shag Bay. On the drive I caught sight of a white-faced heron fishing. The trail is a soft track, not stony like most of what I’ve walked here, and follows the shore quite closely, so you can look out at the water—and across to the Oil Depot and the Zinc Factory, which are not exactly scenic highlights.

The path takes you past a stairway that leads down the face of the cliff into some caves which were used by Aborigines for a long time. The entrance to the stairs is blocked by a fallen tree that the Parks Dept. has announced it can’t afford to move, but the stairs themselves are in good shape, and it’s easy to slide under the railing at the top and get onto them if you want to see the caves. The caves themselves aren’t deep. They contain—or did—middens that yielded mussel and oyster shells when excavated.

The interpretive signs along the trail and at the site have been scrawled over and badly scratched—I assume Parks also can’t afford to clean or replace them—so it’s not possible to read them completely. However, one interesting fact I could make out was that it was unusual to find middens with evidence of only two foodstuffs in them. It seems no one really knows why the remains are so limited—the ease of harvesting the shellfish there is one possibility.

The stairway down to the caves and the walk about it are lined by large and very beautiful sheoaks, members of the Casuarinaceae. They have leaves that look like long needles (“fused to slender, erect branchlets, arranged in whorls” it says on the Tree-Flip chart). Their colour has a hint of blue in the green, perhaps, and their foliage is unlike any tree at home. Perhaps it’s their shape or something delicate about the foliage, but they make a mournful note at this place, very near the site at which an Aboriginal band hunting kangaroos was mistaken by whites for attackers and massacred.

Susanna and I went on to the near side of Shag Bay. On the way I nearly stepped on a small lizard, a lovely grey colour with whitish diamond-shaped markings. It matched the weathered sticks it stood on, and so stayed still for me to photograph it. Susanna thought it was called a dragon of some sort. I hope to be able to identify it eventually. We perched on some rocks near the water and opened the thermoses. The shore on the other side went up steeply, a rock face with trees on top, their canopy ragged and open.

After our breeak we went back to the car, and drove to see the remnants of the barque Otago, at Otago Bay. That ship was the first that Joseph Conrad captained. How it ended up here, or just what happened to it, I don’t know. The wreck looks as if there were two ships—two largish chunks of broken ribs lie at the shore. Or perhaps it was double-hulled.

DAFFY DUCKS

2009-11-01T21:05:00.000-08:00

Further to the black swans, I didn’t note that Liz and I caught sight of an oddly-shaped bird on the river that we couldn’t see clearly because it was backlit and not close to shore. Larger than most ducks, and with a long low silhouette, its head seemed to be pulled into its back. Its profile didn’t resemble any bird I could think of. Paging through the bird books a few days ago I came across the Musk Duck (Biziura lobata) and suspect that’s what we were watching swim quite swiftly downriver. Watts mentions Musk ducks can be seen on the Derwent at Bridgewater, which was more or less where we were, and that they frequently sit low in the water.

Later that Sunday Irene and Kevin drove me to Kingston, on the Derwent some distance south of Hobart, where there’s a beautiful beach. We followed the road that hugs the coast, a wonderful road to drive if you like driving since it’s an (often tight) succession of bends and curves and hills. If you’re inclined to car-sickness, however, it wouldn’t be such fun. I found myself thinking as we swooped and shifted directions that the drive might be the closest I’d ever get to experiencing the fractal nature of coastlines.

Stretches of that road afford lovely views of the river growing wider and wider, as well as hills on the far side; at other times you see houses set in fine gardens. The weather had grown overcast since the morning with rain threatening and occasionally falling. When we reached Kingston we stopped at a park alongside a small river to see the ducks. Gulls perched on the fence and a crowd of mallards was hunkered down on the grass—though I had trouble deciding if in fact some of them were mallards. Several had white or beige heads and white scattered through their plumage—perhaps good examples of what at home we call “daffy ducks,” mallard-domestic duck crosses.

Mixed in with the mallards were some further anomalies: several lovely ducks with plumage much like the mallard female’s, but they had a dark eye-stripe with paler stripes above and below it. Checking the bird books at home we realized we’d seen Black ducks. And a smaller duck with an elegant profile, richly brown head, and grey body with speckles on its chest turned out to be an Australian wood duck.

From the park we made our way along the beach road. It had started to rain and the gorgeous stretch of sand was empty except for a few gulls. Waves were rolling in. Out the other window of the car we could see lovely seafront houses in pretty yards—perfect places for a beach holiday, though perhaps slightly out of season would be the best time to be there. To get back to Hobart we drove the highway—much faster, but not nearly as interesting or pretty.

THE BLACK SWAN

2009-10-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

On Sunday morning Liz McQuilkin collected me and we drove up the Derwent River to Bridgewater to see the black swans. Liz is working on a poem about the black swan, part of her ekphrastic responsibilities for the reading at the Salamanca Gallery in December, and wanted to see actual birds as well as the painted one(s).

It was a gorgeous morning, sunny, and we had no trouble finding the swans. Mostly they were floating serenely towards the middle of the river, which is very wide, but we were able to find a few near shore where grass or reeds grew out into the water. In fact, we spied two elegant swan heads in the reeds not far from where we stood, presumably sitting on nests.

We watched a family of 6 fluffy grey cygnets and two parents feeding and drifting for quite a while. The adults are smaller than swans in Canada, and perhaps a little more delicate. They have a lovely curve to their necks and the feathers towards their tail seem to stick up like a series of ruffles. Black swans moult following breeding—and can’t fly for about a month—so I thought the ruffle effect might be because of the moulting. But the drawing in Simpson and Day shows the ruffle, so I guess it’s simply how their plumage sits. The backs of both the adults appeared to be more or less bare.

The young ones were fun to watch and very sweet. As the parents bent those elegant necks into the water and fed, the cygnets clustered about them, dipping their bills, perhaps scooping up food, paddling back and forth around the adults. Then they began to tip themselves up, heads under water and little blunt tails to the sky, like dabbling ducks, as they discovered things to eat.

We then drove a road that follows the river, stopping by a railway station (no trains running at the moment, Liz thought, and no passenger traffic here in any case) and were able to see a larger group of swans further from the bank, some in pairs, feeding, some just a gaggle, to adopt terminology from a cousin. While we were there a very large bird flew over and I was able to get it in my binoculars—a white-bellied sea eagle, not in full adult plumage yet.

An additional pleasure of the morning was the near-stillness of the river. Clouds and patches of blue sky were reflected in it, and occasionally the swans themselves, the double curve of their necks quite beautiful and a little surreal.

Black swans are native to Australia, but not found anywhere in Europe. In fact, they were long a metaphor there for something that didn’t exist. In current online economic conversations there are references to black swans in connection with the events of the last year. The term was defined in the Huffington Post (without citation) as “high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realm of normal expectations.” So the metaphor hasn’t entirely collapsed, in spite of its inaccuracy.

I first encountered black swans about 30 years ago now, at the Kortwright Waterfowl Centre near Toronto. We were driving home after an early morning foray to the Mennonite Central Committee’s fair and quilt show in New Hamburg and stopped in to see the birds and found black swans.

OBSERVATORY OPEN NIGHT

2009-10-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

I’m so far behind with this blog I may never get caught up! Time flies when you’re having fun. And, when you’re writing. I’ve been working on a short essay, hoping to get it into shape to submit to the CBC contest, since they’ll take online entries. That’s used up my writing focus for the past several days.

But I don’t want to let the blog dribble into nothing. So I’ll just plunge in and write about last Saturday’s open night at the Canopis Observatory here in Hobart. It was a Galileo night. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s discoveries, and I suppose almost the beginnings of astronomy as we know it. Certainly what he say when he held that telescope to his eye completely altered the European understanding if the Earth and its relationship to the rest of the heavens.

Galileo’s text was called Sidereus Nuncius or Starry Messenger—a lovely title for a deep change in perception and understanding.

The Observatory is small, and its own telescopes are not the kind you can look through to see the stars. They operate digitally, collecting data and feeding it back to computers I think. The larger one was shown to us, its mirrors and the track that light takes through them pointed out. Outside the observatory buildings several amateur astronomers and sky-watchers had set up their own telescopes and were offering views of the moon (somewhat less than half-full) and of Jupiter. To see the moon’s surface clearly the scope was aimed at what the man called the terminator—that’s the line where the bright side meets the dark. The surface looked a pale grey and was as pock-marked as you’d expect. Why am I always so startled and thrilled when things turn out to look like their photographs? Jupiter was a little blurry—I found myself wondering if that was because of the speed at which it turns, but more likely it was distance and/or slight cloud. It was indeed striped with colours, a couple of dark bands interspersed with pale yellows, sandstone-like. There were four moons visible, three in a line to the right of the planet, and one to the left. Apparently Jupiter has over 50 moons, though some of them are only the size of small rocks.

The Observatory is involved in interesting and important international research projects. We heard a presentation on it, principally on the search for new planets or exo-planets. (I meant to look that term up, but haven’t.) Three methods of discovering planets exist: the Doppler Wobble (best name!), transit, and microlensing. The last, microlensing, is the method of the Canopus project. It involves, if I understood correctly, the recording and measuring of light emitted by a star from directly behind another star. The position is important because the light bends around either side of the front star, an d creates a curve. If there’s a spike in the curve the light has been interrupted and a planet is the interruption.

Apparently this method is the one most likely to yield planets or systems of planets that are most like our own Solar System. It reveals planets that are 1-10 times the mass of Earth and a half to three times our Sun-Earth distance from their own star/sun. Quite a few planets have been found that fit within these numbers, though the research is relatively new.

The event was a slightly dizzying combination of facts and numbers and diagrams which provided interesting if sometimes hard to follow information, and the astonishing experience of staring at the grey surface of the moon and the round colours of Jupiter trailing its moons as tiny dots of light.

BOOKS I READ AT LAKE ST CLAIR

2009-10-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

One of the great pleasures of time away from the regular daily routines is time to read, and while I was at Lake St Clair I indulged myself pretty thoroughly --

Van Diemonian Essays, by Pete Hay (a wonderful selection of essays on Tasmania and arguments for local identity)

The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image, by Jeffrey C. Robinson

A Book of Silence, by Sara Maitland

Nameless Earth, by Robert Gray (gorgeous poems)

I am here and not not-there, by Margaret Avison (autobiography, engrossing)

who wants to create australia? by Martin Harrison (intelligent and compelling essays on poetry)

The River Wife, by Heather Rose

Cross-pollinations, by Gary Paul Nabhan

I also spent a fair bit of time paging through the staff library in the Visitor Centre, learning specifics about birds in particular, but also glancing at material on trees and geology. And then there were the papers stacked up for starting the fire--they included a few review sections from The Australian, so I had a good time browsing those before I burned them.

BACK IN HOBART --ISLAND LAUNCH

2009-10-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday, 15 October here in Hobart, and about 12:30 p.m. I've just posted the material that I wrote while I was at Lake St Clair but didn't post there. I've been back here long enough to be unpacked and semi-sorted out.

Last night was the launch of the issue of Island magazine with my essay in it, at the Republic bar in a lovely large upstairs room. There was a good crowd of people there for it, and I finally got to meet Gina Mercer, the editor, with whom I've been emailing and Chris Gallagher from the Tasmanian Writers Centre. I had been invited to read briefly from the essay following the announcement of the winners of the Gwen Harwood poetry prize and a lovely speech about Island and the occasion of its 30th anniversary. I was a little anxious, and also a bit disoriented at being surrounded by so many people after my time in the woods but it went well and it was a real pleasure to put faces to names and to meet some others too.

SOME INFO ABOUT WHERE I AM .. OR WAS

2009-10-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

October 3, 2009

My little writer’s residence is at Cynthia Bay on Lake St Clair, the southern end of the Cradle Moutain-Lake St Clair National Park, which contains the popular Overland Track walking trail.

In 1982 roughly 20% of Tasmania (and isn’t that figure amazing?) was declared the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. (The World Heritage Convention was established in 1972 by UNESCO to promote the protection and celebration of the Earth’s natural and cultural heritage.) A site must meet at least one of four natural and/or six cultural criteria to be designated WHA—and the Tassie area met all natural criteria for inclusion, as well as three of the six cultural criteria.

Lake St Clair sits in a basin that was created by glaciers over the last two million (!) years. It is, at 167 metres, the deepest lake in Australia and home to some rare ancient shrimp. It’s also the headwaters of the Derwent, the river that flows through Hobart. The Visitors Centre, which is scant minutes away from my house, is a handsome building that won an award. It’s full of displays and information about the park, tempting cards and books (including some great activity books for kids), and clothing for those who find themselves here without enough layers. The Park staff, though surprisingly few in number, are knowledgeable and very helpful.

Cynthia Bay marks the southern end of the Overland Track. Its other end is at Cradle Mountain. That track is 80 km of alpine walking, and takes about six days. From Lake St Clair you can take several short walks and some longer ones through this changeable forest.

If I stand on the viewing platform beside the Bay, which I do usually once a day, I’m looking more or less north and can see Mount Olympus as well as several other mountains. (The Greek gods have made their mark on the land here—Cynthia’s another, an alternate name for Selene, the moon goddess.) I’m photographing Mount Olympus in different weathers and at different times—some days it’s barely visible.

Aboriginal people called Lake St Clair Leeawuleena, which means Sleeping Water. The local people were the Larrairremener, a band of the Big River Nation, the last few members of which were deported to Flinders Island in 1832. I don’t know if there are Aboriginal stories associated with this lake, but there is a short walking trail, the Larrairremener tabelti, that memorializes their presence here through four noticeboards along the walk. Behind one of the signs there’s a tremendously tall eucalypt, with red on its otherwise pale huge trunk. I don’t know what kind it is and the first couple of times I walked past it I thought it was dead. But it’s not-- it’s just so tall I hadn’t managed to look high enough to see that it had branches with leaves! Something about that tree itself evokes the people who once dwelt here.

In the Visitors Centre there’s a fibrework made by three Aboriginal artists (one of them Lola Greeno who was part of the tayenebe project), in 2000, from materials gathered here. It’s woven from buttongrass, cutting grass, and spreading rope-rush, and also incorporates moss, currawong and ground parrot feathers, possum fur, and snakeskin.

BACKSTORY

2009-10-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2009

Again I find myself staring out the window at this forest, wondering where I am—it all seems strange and unbelievable, that I should be in Tasmania, on the other side of the world from Canada, from Toronto—

If I backtrack to the beginning of this adventure I’d have to say it started in a bookstore—Writers & Co on Yonge Street in Toronto, to be exact. I remember my first visit there and my half-disbelief at discovering what was on the shelves: poetry, essays, literary criticism, fiction, every kind of book I loved. After much browsing and arguing with myself I gathered an armload—spending more money at once than I ever had on books—and left, feeling giddy.

Of course I was drawn back—it was irresistible—and slowly I got to know the owner, Irene McGuire. I’d go there when I was tired and needed time out. Every visit I’d spend at least an hour looking through the new books and then comb the shelves. I’d always discover something I didn’t know about and had to have. An added pleasure was the conversation that wound through the browsing. Irene and I became friends, In 1993 when A Possible Landscape was published, Irene invited me to launch it at the Writers & Co.

Not long afterwards I dropped into the store early one morning—a book I’d ordered had arrived—and told Irene I’d decided to leave my job at the University of Toronto Library. I wanted more time to write and was both gleeful and terrified. Irene looked at me and said: “Would you like to work here on Mondays?” That offer felt like a sign from the gods—my decision was right. And yes, I did want to work there on Mondays.

But what does any of this have to do with Tasmania, you’re asking, perhaps yawning slightly, distracted by the wind blowing outside or the mutter of traffic along your street … Well, in the late 1990s Irene gave up the store and moved to Hobart, her husband’s home town. Our friendship continued by letter, and through their intermittent visits to North America. I never imagined going to Tasmania—it was simply too far away and too expensive. Then, in 2005 my second book was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Someone asked what I’d do if I won and I heard myself say “I’ll go to Tasmania to visit Irene!” I won the Award …

But there’s another twist.to my arriving here— Through Irene I’d learned of the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Contest. For some years I’d been working on an essay about Toronto’s Don River. The contest prize—a trip to Tasmania with a two-week residency in a national park seemed reason enough to finish that essay. But I’m a slow and somewhat reluctant writer and I missed the 2007 deadline. The essay languished until last February. Since I’d decided 2009 was my year to get to Tassie—and if I won the contest I could extend my stay—I settled to the writing. To my great surprise and shrieking delight my essay was awarded the Prize—

And the rest, as they say, is history. I’m really here in this glorious forest. And it’s not just a naturalist’s imagined place, backdrop for a painting of an exotic bird or flower, but actual. Not magic, but material, specific, full of particulars, even if I can’t sort them into familiarity.

Except perhaps for the currawong, with it’s swooping flight, large presence, and bright yellow eye examining me closely.

THE SUPERB FAIRY-WREN (Malurus cyaneus)

2009-10-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2009

ON the kitchen wall of this house where I’m living someone has pasted a picture of the Superb Fairy-Wren—the paper bird more than five times the size of the actual bird—though perhaps not five times the size of that actual bird’s real presence. (Search the wren at www.ozanimals.com to see it for yourself.) I think of it as the guardian of the house, and of me its inhabitant, the long, nearly-upright tail shedding blessings over me as I sit beneath it to eat. In fact, I’m coming to think the Superb Fairy-Wren is one of the resident spirits of Tasmania itself, or at any rate of the small parts of it I’ve been exploring.

Through Peter Grant’s blog*where he writes affectionately about its bubbly personality and behaviour, I met it before I arrived here. When I read what Peter had to say about it I could hardly wait to see this tiny wren with the brilliant turquoise cap, cheek, and collar, but wondered how likely that was to happen.

Wrens at home are shy and secretive, scolding from tangles of shrubs and underbrush as you walk past, darting rapidly from twig to twig behind leaves when you try to see them. And their plumage—perhaps they are the original ‘lbb’s (little brown birds) or ‘lbj’s (little brown jobs) of birdwatcher parlance. In my experience their chatter and furiously rapid singing, and/or the glimpse of a long cocked tail, identify them far more often than a good look at the whole bird. So my sighting a Superb Fairy-Wren at the Frog Dam on Knocklofty within the first few days I was here was an unexpected pleasure. (And by the way, I can now say definitely that the brownish wren I saw there was the female.)

Fairy-wren sightings have continued, threading through my days here in the park. Shortly after I arrived a pair flitted about in the back yard of this little house, and they’ve been visible just outside my windows every day—a zip of vivid blue crosses the yard, or a piece of the faded duff on the ground suddenly stirs revealing a long tail. Several times a male has perched like a glittering blue jewel on the moss-covered stump barely 4 feet from where I’m reading. Often three or four of them together bob about the yard. And it’s not just this yard they fill with their presence—such tiny mites to take command of the eye as they do: I’ve seen them on the beach at Platypus Bay, by the viewing platform that looks to Mount Olympus, and at various times on the forest walks I’ve taken. These wrens are less secretive and hidden than those at home; often they stand still on the ground or perch on branch or stump for several seconds. Every time I see them they make me smile.

I’ve trolled through the various bird books in the staff library here and discovered they have many common names: Blue Wren, Superb Blue Wren, Jenny Wren, Superb Warbler, Bluecap, Blue Bonnet, Cocktail. They are one of several species of blue wrens (though the only one found in Tasmania), all part of the fairy-wren group. Most of them have some blue plumage and they include: the Turquoise Fairy-Wren, the Blue-breasted, the Lavender-flanked, the Splendid, and the Lovely—words do fail sometimes.

The books have told me that Fairy-Wrens are one of four groups of Australian wrens, all feeding on or near to the ground. According to Simpson & Day, they “are part of the ancient Australo-Papuan bird group, which evolved locally and spread throughout Australia” and definitely not related to the Old World thrushes, warblers, and flycatchers. I’m ashamed to say my knowledge of bird family connections and binomials is poor and so I don’t know if that means they also have no direct connection to North American wrens. If not, it’s interesting but perhaps not surprising that a bird so similar in both shape and some behaviours should emerge here—and no surprise at all that it would be deemed a wren by anyone from Great Britain.

Fairy-Wrens are social, living in groups within a territory. As far as I can make out there will be a breeding pair in the group and some non-breeding birds of both sexes, as well as juveniles. This explains why I’ve frequently seen three or four wrens amicably together—those two females darting after a male along the beach at Platypus Bay were not necessarily in ardent competition for his attention after all. They build domed nests close to the ground. It’s possible the nonbreeding adults help raise the young, as do crows, but I don’t know this to be true. The Superb Wren’s nest has a side-opening, like the North American Ovenbird’s, but is not actually situated on the ground.

I’ve learned that Superb Fairy-Wrens engage in a distraction display if a nest is threatened. Again from Simpson & Day: “the bird scuttles away in a rodent-like manner, the ‘rodent-run’ display.” (The female Superb has also been described as “mouse-brown” … ) Perhaps one evening I’ll muck around at the edge of the yard where the thickety bushes are growing, where I frequently see the wrens, and see if I can occasion that ‘rodent-run’— Or, perhaps I’ll leave them in peace and hope only that I’m watching if some other creature gives cause for the alarm.

*Peter Grant is one of the founders of the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. He’s deeply interested in nature writing and is currently working on a book on walking. You can check out his blog at http://auntyscuttle.blogspot.com. Among other things he has posted an essay on nature writing that’s well worth reading.

TECHNOLOGY -- AND WEATHER

2009-10-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Today -- Monday, October 12 -- is my last full day here at Lake St Clair. It's overcast and chilly, though the sun scraped through for a few moments earlier. I'm not complaining; we've had several warm sunny days in a row. Russell, sitting beside me in the office just remarked, after glancing out the window, that the rain's about to arrive! I'll head back to the little house and hunker by the fire with my book, Margaret Avison's autobiography, just published by Porcupine's Quill.

About the technology, I have some small accomplishments to claim. I now have bird-in-the-hand available on my iPod, and can report that the lovely resonant calls I've been hearing just off the walk to Watersmeet (and near its beginning) are the shrike-thrush. I've seen the bird itself, right outside the little house several days ago, but didn't hear it sing. It's fun to press the sound icon and hear the calls, several of which are familiar to me now. Well, maybe I mean recognizable rather than familiar since much about this place is definitely still unknown and seems to change from day to day -- even that trail to Watersmeet. It develops new curves or slopes, I swear, from one day to the next!.

And the other accomplishment is, I've figured out how to use the little microphone with my iPod so I've been taping ... hmmm ... recording sounds along walks and outside my house. The mic is slightly larger than a large eraser, but of course meant to capture, not erase, and it seems surprisingly sensitive for something so small. I've listened to some of what I've recorded on my computer and was happy to discover that it records bird songs as well as the somewhat relentless tramp of my feet. I hope to learn how to clip out parts of these recordings so I can include some of the birdcalls in the blog eventually.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH IRENE AND KEVIN

2009-10-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

On Sunday -- last weekend, whatever the date was -- my friends from Hobart, Irene and Kevin McGuire drove up to see me and my retreat. And, incidentally, bring me additional food supplies. (They also brought me hat and scarf and gloves, which I've been happy to have.) They arrived about 10:30 and I took them immediately to see my little house. They were as startled at its commodiousness as I was when I arrived--and the washing machine whirring away as we walked in was further testament to the more or less all mod cons that I'm enjoying here.

Oh it's true, the fire had gone out--my fire-setting skills turn out to be intermittent. But it's also true that the season has been so wet and cold that all the really dry wood for the park and campsite has been used, so what we're burning now is not completely cured and takes more ooomph to get going. Kevin decided I needed some smaller pieces of wood and immediately set to creating them, with the fairly dull axe that resides in the woodbox. Before long he had enough stacked up to last beyond my stay, I suspect.

We got the car to a spot behind my house--not easy for me to guide him, I'm so poorly oriented to the connections between buildings, paths, roads, etc., but we found the spot eventually. It took only a few minutes for the three of us to get the supplies into the house and put away, with talk going on the whole time. And then we headed out to walk, so I could show them "my" park ...

We followed the track to Watersmeet, which I walk often. It's the shortest walk here and winds through varied forest to where the Hugel and Cuvier Rivers flow together in a torrent. From there we went into a stretch of rainforest, where the myrtles are old and tall and moss-encrusted, and sun gets through in small increments, making the mosses gleam. It's very cool and lovely, but not quiet, since the river runs right beside the path. We crossed the river on the track to Shadow Lake and walked up it for a few minutes to get the full effect of being surrounded by trees and moss--and then retraced our steps. There's a point on that track just before you get back to the bridge where I get lost, every time, and find myself suddenly facing a huge fallen tree with no further path. Sure enough, it happened again and we had to backtrack to get on the path.

Back across the Hugel we followed the Larrairremener tabelti back to where it joins the main Watersmeet track again. It winds up to some distance above the river, though you can still hear it, into much drier forest. And it was warm! We could hear birds but saw very few. A small skink of some sort sat in an opening in a rotting stump--a kind of metallic blue in colour--looking back at us as we looked at it. (Yesterday I took a look in a book about skinks here and I should have photographed it, because I couldn't begin to pick out which one it might have been.) Just before rejoining the other tracks the Larrairremener one goes through a stretch of buttongrass plain. I keep hoping to spy a ground parrot there, but so far no luck. We'd stopped to look at lichen-encrusted stones all along the way. Irene has a sharp eye for details, and saw all kinds of patterns. Many different lichens can grow on a single rock, and some of them seem to develop a border of dark green around their edges, creating continent-like patches. Kevin was good at seeing different countries in them.

When we got back to the house it was early afternoon and we were hungry. We drove out to Derwent Bridge, thinking we might get lunch at the hotel, but it was too late. So we went to the Hungry Wombat Cafe instead. I had a huge cauldron of pumpkin soup, Irene had a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, and Kevin had a burger--all good.

After lunch we drove to Pumphouse Point, taking the Hydro road which seems to be basically sand, and is full of potholes. Good that Kevin's had all his driving experience--he got us through them handily. Soon after we took that road we stopped beside a large wombat rooting away on the verge. It didn't seem bothered by us. Its head was larger and less teddy-bear-like than the young one I saw on the drive here with Peter Grant. At the Point we got out and walked out the quay to the Pumphouse itself, no longer functioning. It's a very lovely building. But as we walked a growing crowd of small gnat-like insects began to surround us, getting all over and behind glasses, clinging to jackets and hats, and finally we turned and ran back. Once we were a certain distance from the water they vanished.

And it was time to head back to Lake St Clair -- and for the McGuires to hit the highway home again, perhaps to reach Hobart before dark. Irene assured me she was going to sleep in the car.

I got the fire going and settled into my solitary evening rituals of reading and watching the birds out the window. The time had shifted to Daylight Savings that day, so the light lasts longer and various birds are active till it's quite close to dark here.

QUESTIONS I'VE ASKED AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER

2009-10-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

Do currawongs mob hawks and owls?
What is mallee?
Will I ever see a platypus?
Where is the big for garbage?
Are dusky robins seen in this area?
How will I get back to Hobart? When?
Are rhododendron and waratah related?
What happened to my memorystick?
Does it really rain on one end of my roof and not the other?
What are the implications of "sclerophyll"? Do I know how to spell that correctly?
Will I see an echidna?
What are the crescent honeyeaters after when they scramble up the trunks of the little eucalyptus outside my window?
Will I ever get my bird notes caught up?
How do you clean gaiters?
Will I be able to find a copy of Pete Hay's Vandiemonian Essays to buy?
Why can't I find bird-in-the-hand in my iPod?
Why have all three of my ballpoint pens gone dry at the same time?
Do thornbills ever slow down enough to be seen clearly?
What's the name of that ..... ?
Etc.

GLITCHES

2009-10-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

It's been several days since I"ve posted anything here. Since my own computer arrived I've written up some blog postings at "home", intending to upload them via my memory stick. This morning I discover that the memory stick is not working -- maybe it doesn't like the weather, or ... ?? So those posts will have to wait until I'm back in Hobart.

In the meantime, life has been full and busy. I've spent a day on the trails with one of the rangers -- more about that in another posting -- that was wonderful and exhausting. My friends from Hobart, Kevin and Irene McGuire came up for a day visit on Sunday when the weather was gorgeous and sunny. We talked and walked around, had a late lunch at the Hungry Wombat Cafe in Derwent Bridge (very delicious soups there, if you're in the neighbourhood) and then drove to Pumphouse Point, a very early Hydro Station. The old pumphouse and is dated 1940. It's a gorgeous building and so is another one, beautifully proportioned with lovely art deco motifs here and there. I believe there's a plan underway to convert them to accommodation -- a very fine idea. On the road in we passed lots of common heath in bloom, and one adult wombat rooting in the undergrowth right beside the road. It let us get a good look at it before trundling off into the undergrowth. At the pumphouse we were swarmed my very tiny insects of some sort, all around our faces and heads, clinging to jackets and hats. They finally drove us back to the car.

This morning I watched what I took to be a young Bennett's wallaby browse on the bushes at the back of the yard. It also appeared to me watching me for awhile, and then moved on. A few moments ago snow was falling into the parking lot, now the sun is gleaming--but the clouds are about to erase it once again.

I'm reading a very very interesting collection of essays on Australian poetry by Martin Harrison-- who wants to create australia? A book I found on Irene's shelves, but that I hope to own myself eventually.

WEATHER

2009-09-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

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 …

2009-09-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T04:30:00.000-07:00

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 …

2009-09-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-09-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

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.