Island Haven

Published in Leatherwood: Tasmania's Journal of Discovery, 1993.

With my family and fianc­é, I left South Africa for Tasmania in 1987. We settled in the environs of Launceston and Hobart. My grandfather joined us from Zimbabwe a few years later.

‘Where did you say you were going – Tunisia?’
‘No, Tasmania.’
‘Tasmania! Oh, that’s north of Kenya isn’t it?’
‘Ummm…no, that’s Tanzania. Tasmania’s that little island at the bottom of Australia.’

It appears that Southern Africans are as abysmally ignorant of the whereabouts of ‘that little island’ as most. But who can blame them? Tasmania is never on the news (a good sign, we thought), and features briefly, if at all, in the compulsory school geography syllabus, as possessing a capital of the odd name ‘Hobart’. Australia is stereotyped: sun, surf and coral reefs, gum trees and red dust, and the Opera House. And Crocodile Dundee. But he did not, if my memory serves me true, makes it quite that far south, and so Tasmania remains an insignificant dot on the map.

But insignificant Tasmania is not, as anyone from this wee corner of the world can tell you. And to set one’s priorities in order, T-shirts sport messages saying: Australia – somewhere off the coast of Tasmania.

Stopped at Harare airport on my flight over, sweating in the heat and perched on the edge of plastic seats, I made the acquaintance of an Australian woman. Upon being told my destination, her response puzzled me exceedingly. Chortling heartily and at great length, she finally drew breath sufficient to utter in tones both pitying and amused, ‘What d’ya wanna go there for?’. The typical mainlander’s reaction to the backwater that is Tasmania. Oh yes, they jibe at less-than-savoury origins and local inbreeding, but still come here for their holidays!

Our first glimpse of hidden treasure was in brochures and magazines sent us in anticipation of emigration. Tasmania, be tempted! Stretches of untouched wilderness beg exploration, speckled with lakes innumerable. Photographs invoke visions of misted mountain pinnacles, wide panoramas contrasting with secluded valleys and tiny villages. It sounds like paradise. Avidly we pore over maps and place names, resonances of England adding to the charm. And think: are our expectations too high? We see Tasmania as, maybe, a means of escape, a small haven, tranquil, clean, spacious, in an all too busy and increasingly violent world. A sanctuary where we might find the peace we seek…

Not to go shopping, and to clutch one’s handbag tightly, and be accosted by barefooted beggars, ‘Madam, ten cents for bread, ten cents for bread’. In South Africa, the poor are poor, inescapably, utterly. There is no dole. There is no Medicare. There is only begging on the streets, and a resorting to crime. And ten cents is a drop in the ocean. The burden of guilt for the white person of conscience, is unremitting.

Leaving the shores of my birth, climbing high in an aeroplane and gazing at green waves scalloped and shining and tear-stained in the sun, I felt a great weight lifting… for a tension underlies the community, a tension perhaps not detectable until one has experienced otherwise. Why, in Tassie, people smile and say, ‘G’day!’. In South Africa, eyes are averted.

Yet, I was apprehensive. Had we idealised Tasmania, to have our dreams smashed upon the ugliness of skyscrapers, the cruel spines of eucalyptus in a desert land? How we longed for beauty, green hills and trees, and peace. Would there be friends, and love?

My heart was bursting painful as we slipped, a glancing shadow, over forested mountains, lush fields and tiny sheep. Rural Tasmania. Winter, and golden willows lined threads of roads, streaks of rivers. Blue skies, and the cotton-wool tufts of clouds that are so Tasmanian. I knew, then, that I was coming home.

The Apple Isle. My first apple was hand-blown glass, pink, tiny, from Salamanca Place. The second, a king-size Jonathan, shined red and green, from a shed near Lilydale. The juice ran over my fingers.

First impressions: vegetables clean and gleaming, an astonishing array of chocolate biscuits in the shopping aisles – biscuits is a misnomer; in our terms they were chocolate bars! Dollars instead of Rands. It was strange to be served by a white person at the petrol station. And everyone was so friendly. ‘G’day, how are you?’ Smiling.

Arrival was in the north, Launceston, and for days, nay, weeks, we gasped at mountain views and goggled at picture postcard scenes of tiny boats and emerald hills unerringly reflected in the silver waters of the Tamar. Gaped at red toadstools in the woods, white spotted. Spiralled up steep roads to catch icy snowflakes falling. A new-found wonderland, and we, eager to explore every inch.

What need to extol the glories of Tasmania’s wide open spaces? Ice-carved tarns and delicate alpine flowers, a waterfall round every corner. The forests seem incongruous. Slim sky-tall gums, flaking bark, invoking desert scenes, in a green undergrowth of ferns that looks tropical. Erk – those leeches. Of Tasmanian wildlife, I prefer wombats and echidnas.

Used to two seasons, the first spring and autumn have us in photographic frenzies over dancing daffodils and cherry blossom, golden poplars and crimson liquid ambers. And in winter there is the snow, so we build snowmen and eye the ski-slopes. In summer, true, the pools are heated, the sea numerous degrees colder. I have to admit to not venturing in further than my kneecaps.

But the beaches are stunning! Wineglass Bay, Sleepy Bay, Honeymoon Bay and the Friendly Beaches. The Bay of Fires. Such evocative names are but a mean attempt to capture their pristine perfection. Who would bother with Bali or Fiji, when white sands beckon and translucent waves beat turquoise beyond belief upon the shores? All that’s missing is the palm trees. And so empty! In Tasmania, it’s quite possible to have a beach entirely to oneself, even in summer.

Returned from wandering, I sleep peacefully at night. Back in South Africa violence is rife and robbery commonplace. My husband-to-be would disable his car every night to make sure it was there in the morning. Houses have burglar alarms, and watchdogs. Windows, of course, are burglar barred. And despite the bars, we were robbed. Not just TV or hi-fi and purse, but food from the fridge, and clothing, every bit of it. I had only the items I stood up in, and a pile of underwear. It was number three-hundred-and-something for the month, and Grahamstown is a small town. So I slept in fear, waking in darkness, ears straining at the sounds of night, wondering if I would be murdered with a knife.

But in Tasmania, my nerves have ceased to jump at every creak. It is no longer a novel experience to walk the streets without being barked at along the entire route.

We live amidst such beauty here. And if the climate (four seasons in a day) leaves one thinking, is this what they call summer? – fickle weather is part and parcel of the perpetual kaleidoscope of loveliness that is Tasmania. The wild places are untouchable in their majesty, but insubstantial mists belie the cruelty of cold and blizzard, and death is not unknown in the wastes.

The tamed regions have a quieter beauty. Hobart’s waters provide unceasing variety in their different moods: dotted with white sails on a blue day; or steel-grey, windswept and white-capped. These I love: the Derwent a burnished mirror gleaming in the sunrise, Mount Wellington tinged pink at dawn, gossamer clouds softening the stern summit, or silhouetted flat against a purple evening. And Saturday mornings, a stroll through thronging Salamanca Market, fragrance of lavender and hot muffins, a colour cavalcade of glorious silks and heaped up fruits and gleaming woods. Now familiar with the deep grain of sassafras, the scent of huon pine, red-gold myrtle, cheerful stalls still seduce me with their fascinating wares. All locally hand-crafted: Tasmania does not lack for talent, or culture. Strains of harp strings and violin sing in the background.

We are becoming acclimatized: twenty-eight degrees and we swelter in the heat; and a paltry two and a quarter hours on the Midlands Highway now seems interminable. With pride we show off our new home to sundry visitors, whirling them hither and thither, Boat Harbour to Ben Lomond, Mole Creek to Cradle Mountain.

And we think we are becoming quite educated in the manner of Oz-speak. Without thinking we say uni instead of varsity, barbie instead of braai. We understand the meaning of singlet, ute and jumper, though still thinking vest and bakkie and jersey. We no longer get confused with tea and supper, arriving at three-thirty for the former and expecting a full-scale meal for the latter.

The love affair has not ended. No longer dazzled and short of breath at autumn’s glory (though I think spring will never wear off), or those chocolate biscuits; accustomed to living without burglar bars, though we still lock everything up – Tasmania holds yet more treasures. We may complain at the price of pineapples, used to buying them at twenty cents each, but reminders of orchards along the Tamar, and strawberry picking in sunshine, banishes such thoughts, and instead we drool over raspberries bursting with juice and cherries blood-red and polished purple.

Yes, there are blemishes: the isolation, the parochialism, can be depressing, while the expense of travel is exorbitant. Some days, Antarctic winds ripping the skin, we long for those everlasting stifling summers – but it does not tempt us to the mainland. For it is a small price to pay.

Tasmanians all, we have a gem: let’s keep it that way!