Provocateur…

January 25, 2020

Once upon a different place in time, the town of Triabunna lived and breathed an industry that clear-felled our native forests. The highways would thrum from before dawn till dusk with semi-trailers and B-doubles bringing their loads of huge specimens to be processed into woodchips and shipped to Japan and the island became split apart by those who supported the industry and those who wanted are more sustainable future. Aggression ran high in many towns across the state. In fact, the creation of the world’s first environmental political party began in Tasmania at this time and the Greens were born.

Japanese ships would arrive and pump their bilge into our bays and from them, we acquired unwanted marine pests like sea stars, weed and a voracious sea urchin. And yet the government paid no attention because the woodchips floated Tasmania.

But then a hole exploded in the market and places like Brazil began to market trees far more cheaply to the pulp industry and Tasmania’s market collapsed.

Voter Backlash…

April 21, 2017

This is my bay.

It also belongs to many other people – the people of Tasmania. These are State waters, a beautiful sea that has provided occupation, recreation and ambience for many lifetimes of both indigenous people and newcomers.

When I talk of occupation, I talk of professions. I talk of fishermen – generations who have caught wild fish for a living. I had an uncle who was a professional fisherman. He would take his boat out and fish between the continental shelf and the shore of Tasmania, catching all manner of fish for the markets. But he fished sustainably and treated the ocean and what lived in it with respect, knowing that to over-fish would be cutting his nose to spite his face.

Today, a young family friend is also a professional fisherman, but thanks to climate change and an ecology altering by the day, his catch is sporadic and difficult.

Times have changed…

Solitary Confinement…

December 3, 2016

Sometimes life is for escaping from.

Sometimes it’s for escaping to.

Today was the latter…

Very early this morning, the men decided to go fishing and being totally uninterested in the hunter-gatherer thing, I asked if they could drop me at Maria Island.

A Time of Firsts…

October 31, 2016

Earlier this year, I was heavily involved in a protest against salmon farming.

The group to which I belonged was endeavouring to stop a private company and the Liberal Government of Tasmania from placing 28 high density pens off a the popular east coast.

Because of private commitments, I had to leave the organisational wing of the group but not before I and many others had been subjected to attacks on social media by our detractors.

I had cause to reflect that whilst they hit us round the head with so-called scientific evidence that all was clean and green (to be refuted tonight by the ABC Four Corners programme 8.30PM Australian Eastern Summertime and refuted numerous times over by leading newspapers like The Australian), there were those of us who merely want to keep the east coast as it is. Currently, apart from low key shellfish farms, it is an uncluttered pathway to a stupendous island which is designated world heritage…

Surf’s Up…

January 31, 2015

What does one do in January, albeit the end of the month, and one’s eyes are tired from writing and the weather is disastrous, cold and so very NOT summer?

One hops in the car and heads up the coast to wave-watch…

Groundhog Day…

November 22, 2014

Being An Average Day in the Life of a Writer

(Not including domestic dramas or farm!)

Beautiful day…

January 22, 2013

Wake up and get straight into swimsuit. Sky is pale blue, maybe smoke haze from Victoria.

Down to the beach to favourite pozzie in front of pine trees. Smells resinous in the warmth.

In water by 10AM. Glorious. Walk through waist deep shallows in boat channel, moving out of way of incomers and outgoers. Then just dive in and swim a few lengths between the marker poles. Float on back like a star. Hair drifting out, rocking with the odd tiny wave, can hear the odd tic-tic-tic sound of ‘under the sea’.

Tag: east coast of Tasmania