Tag Archives: Tasmania

Travels Part 3: Helsinki and Home

November 16, 2018 By in Family, Travel Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

Colourful benches in Helsinki FInland

On our penultimate day in Edinburgh, I was woken at 6am by a soft, rustling sound in the hallway. It wasn’t, as I first thought, a wee mouse. It was DorkySon tip-toeing around the flat, gathering his belongings, and starting to pack.

It seemed that he was ready to keep moving.

In the cab to our hotel in Helsinki, we realised that it was DorkySon’s first time in a country where English is not the first language. We were throwing him in at the deep end: Finnish is very pretty and melodic, but the linguistic rhythms are so different to the romance languages we’re familiar with that we found it a real challenge.

Judging by the cab driver’s bemused look, I completely mangled the name of our hotel and the neighbourhood in which it stood. Over the coming days our embarrassment grew further. Even a simple thank you – Kiitos – took many attempts before we mastered it.

We persevered though – all three of us – because there was a lot to say Kiitos for. Continue reading →

Travels Part 1: Hobart to Harris

October 24, 2018 By in Family, Scotland, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

View from Tarbert Isle of Harris

No matter how many times you’ve done it, there’s still something miraculous and disconcerting about strapping yourself into a metal tube and flying across the world.

Airlines go to great lengths to persuade you that it’s a normal and comfortable thing to do. They try their best to make that tube feel like home. Qantas welcome you with a hearty ‘G’day mate!’ and hand out complementary socks with cartoon kangaroos on them. Finnair design their cabin lighting to resemble the aurora borealis, and Loganair provide Harris Tweed headrests and Tunnocks caramel wafers. But when you undertake ten flights in three weeks, from Tasmania to the Outer Hebrides and back again, the resulting sensory overload means there’s no escaping the strangeness of air travel. Continue reading →

Running

February 24, 2018 By in Tasmania Tags: , , , , , , , 17 Comments

alex-gorham-325765-unsplash

It is running season here.

I’m not a matchy-matchy clothes kind of runner. There’s no Lorna Jane activewear lurking in my drawer.

Instead, I wear one of DorkyDad’s old gym vests that I rescued from the op shop pile. There are battered trainers that I should probably get around to replacing, and a pair of shorts that are older than DorkySon. On sunny days, I pull on a cap that was a freebie at a university event. Red on black: Save the Tassie Devil.

I’m not a competitive runner either. Not even with myself. An occasional glance at the default health app on my phone tells me that I run somewhere between three and five kilometres most days. There are routes I know I can do in 15 minutes (ish) when the air is cool and still. But on those syrupy nights when the sun is still bright above the mountain, I know it’ll be more like 20. I don’t measure time or distance any more accurately than that. Continue reading →

November in Tasmania: Spring Turns into Summer

November 29, 2017 By in Family, Tasmania Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Spring in Hobart Tasmania: ladybird on a finger and young boy in water

It was a teasing start to spring in Tasmania, with several weeks that lurched between glorious sunshine one day and snow the next. I got a little over-excited when we finally had a few warm days in a row, and put all our winter clothes away in the cupboard. Goodbye to those puff jackets and Ugg boots for another year, I thought to myself with glee. The next week I was hauling them right back out again.

Now the warm weather has arrived for good though (crosses fingers tightly) we’re taking full advantage of it. Despite applying copious amounts of Factor 50 every time we leave the house, I’ve already had my first sunburn, and DorkySon is taking every opportunity to swim in the river. First time in, he was fully clothed. Second time round he was better prepared, with beach clothes and a bodyboard, but a rogue wave washed a pebble into his ear and the resulting pain cut his adventure short.

No worries: with the official start of summer this Friday, I’m confident there will be more swimming days ahead. Continue reading →

Four Years and Ten Years and Tasmania, Oh My!

September 15, 2017 By in Family, Tasmania Tags: , , , 16 Comments

Yellow blooms

September has long been one of my favourite months, all the more so now I live in a place where it marks the start of spring.

It’s probably the most unsettled time of year here weatherwise. It’s entirely possible to have a 2-degree night immediately followed by an 18-degree morning, and a simple trip to the shops can involve sunshine, rain, hail, snow and then back to sun again. Thank goodness for layered clothing and rainbows.

It’s a colourful time across the city. The brilliant yellow wattle is starting to look a little tired, but there’s pink and white blossom everywhere, and when I walk through our neighbourhood I catch bursts of honeysuckle on the breeze. It’s beautiful.

This September marks two anniversaries for us. Four years in Tasmania, and ten years of marriage. I’m not sure which of those feels more astonishing now, or which was the more surprising decision in the first place. Continue reading →