Friday, June 25, 2010

Tasmania

It's possible my current love of the Weekend Island - AKA Karragarra - comes from the fact that I grew up on an island - a much bigger one, but an island nonetheless.

My hometown is Hobart, Tasmania. The island of Tasmania is Australia's smallest state and Australia is the world's biggest island country, incidentally.

Technically, I grew up on an island off an island.

I left home at 17 to live in my mother's homeland of Scotland, then moved back to Tassie for a year when I was 22 - six years ago.

That was when I also bought my first-ever house, in the now-gentrified Hobart suburb of New Town. It cost me $210,000. It had three bedrooms, a bunch of ramshackle outhouses and no heating. It was more than 100 years old and had seen very little improvement in that time.

Basically, it needed a lot of work.

I was earning a pittance in my first job out of university. Needless to say, I lived in the worst of the three bedrooms and rented out the better two.

These are the photos I have of the house. It's definitely cute, but I'm glad I sold it a few years later to buy into the house that Dan and I now share (aka House Number 1).

Forster St 1
From the street.

Forster St 2
That's me! I look so young and cranky and thin...

Forster St 3
That bar heater was the only heat in the house, until I eventually installed a tiny wood heater.

Forster St 4
The kitchen, my favourite room.

Forster St 5

After a year living in this desperately cold cottage, my flatmate Briohny - who answered an ad in the paper, moved in to that house and remains one of my dearest friends - and I decided we really couldn't call Tasmania home after all. It was too small, too cold, too stifling.

I found tenants for the house, we packed up Briohny's little hatchback with our possessions and then we drove north. We took a ferry to the mainland of Australia, drove for four days up the East Coast and ended up in the hippy-haven of Byron Bay.

Eventually, Briohny headed back to her home-state of South Australia and I wound up heading further north to Queensland, where I live to this day with the man I met just afterwards.

I have never lived in Tasmania since, probably never will again. I seldom even visit it, even though my family still call it home.

These days, I'm happy to be here among the palm trees of Queensland, although Dan and I will be going back to Tassie for a week over Summer. Bizarrely, my Mother bought land on Bruny Island - off Tasmania's coast - about five years ago.

We'll be spending Christmas on an island off an island off an island.

7 comments:

  1. ha! still haven't been to tassie though I yearn to.
    Like new banner hehe

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  2. have i ever told you that i was obsessed with australia when i was younger? i was on this random children's tv show when i was a kid, and i once got a piece of fan mail from a girl who lived in australia, and i thought it was the coolest thing ever! i wrote her back with a million questions, and i did so much research... i soaked up in any info i could about australia and vowed that one day i would visit. i still haven't, but i want to desperately. i remembered this today because i always thought tasmania was the coolest name for a state. ;)

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  3. so good to see you at my blog...going to spend some time reading your posts in the near future. love it that you write!! my fave kind of blog!

    -carrie

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  4. adore how photos/polaroids displayed by the fireplace~

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  5. That's a tiny heater for Tassie! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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  6. Thanks for the comment on my blog! Seriously... try OAMC! It isn't as bad as it seems. The first time is a bit of a challenge just because you're trying to figure it all out. but I think it's going to be so much easier from here on out.

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  7. Oh my god, you must have been so COLD!! No wonder you weren't very happy there. Hard to be cheeerful when you're frozen to the core!

    Poppy xox

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