Saturday Morning

Saturday mornings have a particular rhythm in the house on Poets Road. We don’t sleep in and we don’t rush to get up but around 8:00 and before breakfast Irene and I walk downhill to pick up the  newspapers: The Saturday Age and The Weekend Australian. Hobart’s own paper, the Mercury,* has already arrived (as it does every morning) in plenty of time for breakfast.

On a sunny morning like today’s, when we reach the corner of Poets Road just below the house, we see the Tasman Bridge catching the morning light. I noticed the shining bridge for the first time only a week or two ago. On overcast mornings and at other times of day it fades into the conglomeration of houses, trees, and  streets that unfold around and below it.

Tasman Bridge and Hobart from Poets Road

We buy the papers at the West Hobart Express Shop on Hill Street. Express shops are an amalgam of neighbourhood general store and convenience store. 

West Hobart Express Shop

This one includes a full post office that is open every day of the week from 8 to 8—a service I’m delighted to have close at hand. It’s also a drop-off point for dry cleaning, and sells the usual run of convenience store foods and household stuffs, supplemented with some fresh fruits and vegetables. The owners and staff are lovely people so it’s always a pleasure to have an excuse—say the need for Darrell Lea licorice—to drop into the shop. And one day I’m going to try one of those National Pies.

Tasmanian National Pies

Irene and I walk there and back partly along a footpath (not sidewalk) that sits high above the roadway compensating for the slant of the hill. Lavender pushes through a low fence to droop over the walk. At one corner a glossy rosemary hedge clipped into thick tidiness is impossible to resist—we rub a few leaves between our fingers as we pass. 

Summer is in full bloom (in January!) and the gardens broadcast colour and scent—some days roses, others jasmine, still others sweetnesses I can’t name.

  

The cottage-style houses characteristic of West Hobart seem, to Toronto eyes at least, charming but small. But appearances are deceptive. Many of them extend a long way back into lots far deeper than most of Toronto boasts, while those built on the steep hillsides often drop down another storey or two at the back. I couldn’t resist photographing (for obvious reasons) the stained glass in one front door.

The walk home is mostly uphill and so goes a little slower than the walk down. In all we are usually gone for 15-20 minutes, and arrive home to find that Kevin has breakfast ready, cereal bowls on the place mats. Irene sorts the papers and shares them out, the weekend has begun. Coffee, news, reviews, crosswords, desultory conversation—and the view of the Derwent whenever one wants to raise a head—how perfect!  

Saturday papers

Crosswords

*According to Lonely Planet, Tasmanian newspaper readers have a sardonic attitude towards their local papers. The Mercury is nicknamed The Mockery; the Examiner (Launceston’s paper) is The Exaggerator; and the Advocate from Devonport and Burnie is the Aggavate.

Gould's Lagoon

Glover or Gould? I haven’t been able to keep them straight—both painters, both named John, both in Tasmania in the 1830s. But now  I know Gould’s Lagoon was named for John Gould perhaps I’ll get them sorted.

Gould’s Lagoon is a remnant wetland beside the Derwent, about ten miles upriver from Hobart. At one time the lagoon was open to the tidal rise and fall of the river and its water was brackish. A rail line was put in between the lagoon and the river and it has become “a freshwater pocket wetland.”* There’s a short trail around the inner edge of the lagoon, with a short boardwalk leading into a large bird hide where the reeds give way to open water. I visited the lagoon first in 2009, very soon after I arrived in Hobart, and saw my first purple swamphen, chestnut teal, Australasian shoveller, and welcome swallow.

Cormorant tree

Last week we learned that freckled ducks—birds that are only vagrant in Tasmania— were on the lagoon, so Friday morning we drove there before breakfast. The day was sunny and clear and warm. As we got out of the car we saw a eucalyptus at the far edge of the lagoon, laden with cormorants and an egret or two. A couple, armed with binoculars and camera, hoping to flush a snipe, said they’d seen four or five freckled ducks, all males they thought, the breeding season’s bright red band above the bill quite visible. I don’t know if there’s a record of them breeding in Tasmania, but they are one of many species of Australian waterbirds and waders who move widely in response to varying water levels.

Grey teal (with red eye), Australasian shoveller

Purple swamphen

The swampy edges of the lagoon were full of various ducks, including grey teal, a new sighting for me. The air was full of calls none of us could recognize and very still. A break in the reeds revealed a purple swamphen that appeared to be posing for its reflection. As we neared the hide we spied the freckled ducks and saw the aptness of their name—a lovely speckled plumage. The slight tuft or point on their heads made me think of North American ring-necked ducks.

Freckled duck, male

We settled to watch the goings-on—Eurasian coots splashing, shovellers dabbling, white-faced herons swooping to the shore, egrets lifting from the tree to land on reedy hummocks at the other edge of the lagoon. A swamp harrier circled overhead and sent masked lapwings screaming and flying. When we turned to look back at the shore we glimpsed the neon green of musk lorikeets feeding in the trees.

White-faced heron

Great egret and little pied cormorant

An hour or more went by and hunger prodded us towards leaving. Just then a pair of Australian pelicans flew across the pond, circled back and landed. So we stayed for another while to watch them.

Australian pelicans

But to get back to Mr. Gould—John Gould (1804-1881), son of a gardener at Lyme Regis, became a zoologist and the man who produced many nineteenth-century ornithological books, including The Birds of Australia (in seven volumes). Gould planned the books and made the rough initial sketches, but for the most part the finished plates were done by other artists, including his wife Elizabeth, and Edward Lear, who were better artists than he was.   

John and Elizabeth Gould were in Australia between 1838 and 1840, collecting material on birds. Though he travelled to some areas on the mainland, Elizabeth spent most of the time in Tasmania—or Van Diemen’s Land as it then was—where she gave birth to her fifth child, christened Franklin after Sir John Franklin, then lieutenant-governor of Tasmania.

*from a very good outdoor education program guide to the lagoon. If you want to know more about the lagoon and the marine life here you can find it at: http://www.derwentestuary.org.au/assets/Wetland_discovery_trail.pdf

A Visit to New Norfolk

A week or so ago we drove north from Hobart following the road that follows the River Derwent to New Norfolk. Though it’s undoubtedly changed over the years, that road is the first built in Tasmania. It was constructed by one Denis McCarty, “ex-convict, constable, farmer and grazier, roadmaker” according to E.T. Emmett in his charming Tasmania by Road and Track, published in the 1950s.

Our first stop was at Pulpit Rock Lookout (thank you Lonely Planet for pointing us to it). Kevin had seen the sign to the narrow sandy road but had never driven it—and you wouldn’t want to drive it in wet weather. The road--if you can call it a road--is steep as well as narrow, with hairpin turns, but in fine weather it’s worth the occasional breathless moment for the stunning views up and down river.

The Derwent from Pulpit Rock

New Norfolk from Pulpit Rock

Tasmania’s convict past made New Norfolk. In the early 1800s small grants of land in the Derwent Valley were given to convicts who had served out their sentences on Norfolk Island. They named the district, and eventually the town, New Norfolk. In the 1820s, Willow Court (named for a willow planted by Lady Franklin) was built outside the town to house invalid convicts. Through the 19^th century New Norfolk’s convict origins made it, to Hobartian eyes, part of the “Van Diemonian lower orders” (James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land*).

The convict hospital, which eventually became a state mental hospital and functioned as such until 2000, is in the process of being restored, with the buildings put to new uses. The Willow Court Historic Site now includes a hostel, a café, and some shops, among them an extensive antiques place.  

We had a fine lunch at the Patchwork Café. It has garden as well as indoor seating. We opted to stay indoors, in spite of the sunshine, where we were surrounded by quilts made by local quilters. You can buy batches of patches as well as notecards and some cookbooks, at the café. And of course food. They serve a variety of ‘toasties’—mine was chicken, avocado and brie—salads, and fine coffees, iced chocolate, luscious-looking desserts.  

The antiques shop sprawls throughout the old nurses’ quarters—in a series of rooms full of furniture and housewares, books and videotapes, jewellery, knick-knacks, and oddments. Like the hairdryer that Kevin, mistaking it for a lamp, wondered who on earth would want. Some of the old cupboards or wardrobes were huge, demanding high-ceilinged rooms. The oldest things I saw were a pair of large and heavy wooden doors labeled ‘Tasmanian prison doors’.

Hair dryer masquerading as lamp--or vice-versa

Tasmanian prison doors

In a couple of rooms enlarged photographs of the nursing staff are mounted on the walls—the building acknowledging its history.

Don't you wish you could hear their stories?

New Norfolk has not always prospered. Tasmania’s complicated relationship with its convict past has hung over it, and that reputation was not enhanced by the years when it was known as the town where the lunatic asylum was. Fairly recently it has begun re-inventing itself as a centre for antiques. In addition to the shop at Willow Court, there are a large number of dealers downtown.

We walked the main streets and peered in windows, discovered a notice about tree martins nesting in the roof of a shop on the main street, and saw one fly in and out. We gave in to the temptation to prowl through The Drill Hall Emporium. It specializes in French antiques and household items, including a couple of cabinets of curiosities and the handsomest linen aprons I’ve ever seen. I especially like this kind of browsing where the distance I have to travel home means I’m not tempted to buy. Though I did think for a moment that a linen apron wouldn't take too much room in a suitcase.

Or I’m mostly not tempted to buy. On the main street in New Norfolk is a shop called Flywheel, a ‘vintage office, stationery & letterpress studio’, states their card. The interior is crowded but elegant in spite of it. A display of notebooks and cards around a vintage typewriter sets the tone.

Irene and I spent a lot of time looking at cards, posters, giftwrap, notebooks, pens, pencils, superb leather school bags, and drawers of metal type. And we spent a bit of cash, too. I left with a handful of notecards and a box of coloured pencils tucked into a small brown-paper shopping bag. 

Done for the day, we were ready to head home. On the road back we shot past a cherry orchard, then doubled-back. 

We bought a kilo of cherries and cherry ice cream cones, made to order by a lovely woman wearing a cherry apron, in a machine that mashed the fruit into delicious Valhalla vanilla ice cream.

We’re not allowed to eat ice cream—or anything drippy—in the car (not a bad rule), so we stood beside it, soaking up the sunshine and blue sky, watching cars negotiate around each other in a steady stream. It seemed everyone on the road that afternoon was ready for cherries and ice cream.

*Boyce’s book (published by Black Inc, 2009) is a superb and superbly readable history of both convict and settler presence in Tasmania.  

Connecting the blogs

For any readers who are interested, in an earlier blog I've written about my first stay in Tasmania during 2009 and 2010, as well as some notes from December 2013. You'll find those observations at fieldnotestasmania.blogspot.com

Hobart Town

Hobart, on the estuary of the River Derwent, is the capital city of Tasmania. It’s also the second-oldest city in Australia, established as a penal colony in 1804, when the initial settlement at Risdon Cove on the east bank was abandoned because of uncertain water supply. The Derwent, a deep river, rises from Lake St. Clair in the northwest and empties into the Great Southern Ocean at Storm Bay, some 17 kilometres south of Hobart.

The city now extends along both banks and across the lower reaches of Mount Wellington, known locally as The Mountain. The Mountain is a presence and a reference point. It rises 4,170 feet and when Charles Darwin stopped here in 1836 he made a laborious walk to its top. Today a tightly winding and wooded road leads up to an ABC transmission tower and a viewing platform that looks down on the city and off to the farther edges of the island.

Hobart and beyond from Mount Wellington

Hobart’s current population is somewhat over 200,000 and its commercial downtown is compact. The CBD, according to some people, is one block square, but in fact there’s interesting shopping beyond that block. And there’s more than shopping in, or within easy walking of, that block—the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), the harbour area, and the Salamanca Market for instance, about which I will write in other posts.

I am staying in West Hobart with my friends the McGuires, who live on Poets Road. Poets Road ends a block west of the house at Knocklofty Reserve, a ridge of The Mountain with walking trails connecting to walks on the Mountain itself.

The house is built on the side of a steep hill and has a remarkable view looking southeast, away from the mountain, to the Derwent and Mount Nelson. On December 11, the day I arrived back in Hobart, a double rainbow arced up from the city and over the river like a welcome sign.  

Traffic on the river is varied and interesting—yachts and cruise ships, barges with material for the zincworks, sometimes Antarctic research vessels that are also icebreakers, an occasional seaplane. As last year ended we were on the watch for the arrival of the yachts in the Sydney to Hobart race. Only a few days ago we again watched a procession of them—the larger ones—heading down river, back to their original ports or on to other races.

A fleet of maxi-racers saying downriver

I spend a lot of time with the view—it’s one of the great pleasures of being here. I like the houses with their brightly coloured roofs, the way they dip up and down along their hillsides. Many of them have solar panels. Though the sun comes and goes here, when it shines it’s brilliant and the air is astonishingly clear.

The Derwent is wide as well as deep. Its surface captures the light and changes in colour with the time of day and the weather. At dawn on an overcast morning, when it shines like dull silver, it's especially beautiful--a fine river for dreaming on.