The awkward relationship between Tasmania and the island to the North is not the only clumsy relationship between islands in this part of the world. The history of the ties between the island to the North and the islands of the Pacific is even more troubled. It’s a tale of disappointments and neglect, misunderstandings and myopia, of big and small stumbling into each other.
When I moved to Sydney from Melbourne over two decades ago, after a
youth growing up in Tasmania, I was impressed because the house next
door had a Tahitian lime tree in the yard. That was my sole connection
to Tahiti. Then by a mixture of chance and choice, in September this
year I found myself travelling to Tahiti and her islands, as greater
Tahiti is described.
 |
| I had to keep reminding myself that the photos I took were not something I had picked up from a post card rack. |
Getting ready to travel there by way of Auckland I checked some Australian equivalents for climate. Tahiti and Cairns were natural matches while Auckland introduced a chill into the air by matching a location slightly north of Melbourne.
