Sitting by a roaring fire in a wintry pub in the Central Highlands of Tasmania near where I grew up, I read that Tasmanians liked to call Australia ‘the Island to the North’. Many years later I went back to Tasmania, in early 2019, driving through an island on fire to reach the tiny village where I grew up in the centre of the island, by the shores of Lake St Clair. Now after three more years of bushfires and floods and pandemic, I have been thinking about the island to the North, its tiny neighbours and the vast Pacific Ocean that laps and links them.
The island to the North – a nearby foreign country
As a long-term Tasmanian-in-exile, even if of my own choice, it’s interesting to think about Australia in the 21st century, as someone who hails from another nearby island, looking at its much bigger neighbour as an immigrant.
I travel the back lanes of this strange land, marvelling at the people. They speak a strange language, not all that different to Tasmanian, though I am aware that Tasmania has many languages – as does the island to the North. Deciphering them is the challenge.
We are neighbours but sometimes I wonder if I am behind enemy lines. Is this another case of mainland China and Taiwan, paired but apart? Do we have a one Australia policy or a two Australia policy? Would the island to the North ever invade if it did not like what was happening on the neighbouring island next door?
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| The orange rocks of the Bay of Fires – close to where the island to the North and the island to the South were once joined |
In Australia government can make a difference, but it usually doesn’t. So perhaps fear of invasion is exaggerated.
Nation-building
In the 1950s Tasmania was the home of nation-building. Young talent from
the worlds of construction and electricity moved back and forward
between the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the National Capital Authority and
the Hydro Electricity Commission.
In Tasmania, it was nation-building in a small paradise, in the middle
of a tiny untidy island, an afterthought at the southern end of the
unknown world
Because my family were part of this ancient nation-building project,
I’ve had reason to return to Tasmania. A few years ago driving up to the
Central Highlands of Tasmania, every name and every sign was evocative.
Whether place names – Bradys Lake, Butlers Gorge, Pine Tier Dam – or
object names – penstock, flume, canal, lagoon, it's all loaded with
meaning drawn from a childhood in the wilderness.
'In Tasmania, it was nation-building in a small paradise, in the middle
of a tiny untidy island, an afterthought at the southern end of the
unknown world.'
As we drove along we kept rising steadily – up, up to the Central
Highland, to Bronte Park and Pine Tier Dam. It was hard to imagine that
the road we were on was once just gravel (though there were stretches
which I am convinced were not much improved since the 1950s).
On the way back it started to spit and was getting colder, but it never
got to the snow or serious rain that had threatened, and which we knew
from long experience, was all too possible.
Back in Hobart I felt I had come back from another planet, like some
space and time traveller who’d gone back to the beginning of the
universe. Pine Tier Dam is one of the oldest and earliest of the
post-war dams, and even the concrete looks ancient and the lagoon behind
the dam looked wild in that Tasmanian way – on the edge of the
wilderness in the high heart of Tasmania. Even though I was there in the
1950s, I was too young to be conscious of much, so it’s hard to even
imagine my parent’s life in Bronte Park. It is a world that seems only
loosely connected to this one.
'Back in Hobart I felt I had come back from another planet, like some space and time traveller who’d gone back to the beginning of the universe.'
Pine Tier Dam is actually quite a modest dam but it was opened to
coincide with the Queen’s coronation, so in the larger scheme of things,
it had a significance beyond a tiny village in the bush in the centre
of an island at the Southern end of the earth.
The Big Island
Travelling back to the big island as we approached the nation’s capital,
I could see Lake Eucumbene, one of the great dams of the Snowy
Mountains scheme, another operating monument to that great nation-building era which made Australia what it is. How interesting that only a
few years ago now talk turned once again to the importance of nation
building.
I had travelled between the two islands, I had some idea of where each
fitted in the big picture. I think I was ready to survey the strange
island to our North.
Islands are easily overlooked – Tasmania is an island that
periodically disappears off maps, sometimes there, sometimes not, at the
edge of consciousness, at the end of space. Yet Tasmania has had an
uneven history in the consciousness of its northern neighbours, both near
and very far. There are no southern neighbours, just penguins and
scientific observation posts.
The distant South land has
often been seen as a place of refuge, far from the historical blunders,
codified observances and ossified practices of ageing empires, where a
prosperous, democratic land could thrive, free from these old ways. This
was the case with Australia in the 19th Century but later became more
so with Tasmania in the 20th, as a place even further South and even
more distant from the centres of world power. This is expessed most
recently in the view of Tasmania as a place of clean air and water, free
from pollution – pristine and pure.
'Islands are easily overlooked – Tasmania is an island that
periodically disappears off maps, sometimes there, sometimes not, at the
edge of consciousness, at the end of space.'
At the end of the 1950s, when On the Beach,
a movie about the last days of the world following a nuclear disaster,
was being filmed in Melbourne, one of the lead actors, Ava Gardner,
purportedly commented that Melbourne was the perfect place to make a
film about the end of the world. Even though this subsequently turned
out the be journalistic invention – part of a grand and long-established
Australian tradition even more prevalant today and, incidentally, a
very practical way of dealing with a shortage of gripping news – it
entered popular mythology. On the Beach was about a Northern
hemisphere destroyed, with the South lingering on, as the last place to
succumb. In that film it meant Melbourne, probably because Hobart didn’t
figure. Melbourne was as South as it got then.
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| A sudden gust of wind stirs the evening air near Constitution Dock, Hobart |
Nowadays
such a movie, if it was ever to be made again would probably be set in
Hobart. Then a character could truly say that Hobart is the perfect
place to make a movie about the end of the world. When I watch the giant
trawlers berthed at Constitution Dock I have to agree – it feels as
though Tasmania is the last stop before the Antarctic.
The big smoke
Growing up looking northwards there was always the big smoke of
Melbourne and the jumping off point for the Tasmanian diaspora. Just as
over many different decades and for many different reasons Australia
sent hundreds of its most talented overseas, so Tasmanians migrated to
the island to the North where some stayed and some went on further.
'Moving from Tasmania to the mainland was a form of island-hopping, to get you in practice for the long haul to the corresponding tiny island off the European coast on the other side of the world – hemisphere-hopping from one island and one era to another.'
At one point I worked in a
section of the Commonwealth Public Service in Canberra that consisted
almost exclusively of former Tasmanians. Perhaps it was one of the
selection criteria for appointment there – maybe after years of
questionable investment in the island Tasmanians just brought a lot of
ICT skills.
Moving from Tasmania to the mainland was a form of island-hopping, to get you in practice for the long haul to the corresponding tiny island off the European coast on the other side of the world – hemisphere-hopping from one island and one era to another.
The island to the North – turning the map upside down
I was at school in the era of the Vietnam War. Our geography teacher taught us about the Australian fear of the Yellow Peril, ready to pour down from Asia and inundate the almost empty island to the South. Of course we were in Tasmania so there was little chance they’d get anywhere near us. It wasn’t a case of the World War 2 Brisbane Line, the point short of which it was considered Australia could be abandoned to the Japanese invaders if they came. It was more like the Melbourne Line.
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| The Bay of Fires - these rocks were once part of the land bridge that connected Tasmania with the island to the North |
Our teacher would turn the map upside down to make the point that we were conditioned to see Asia above Australia, implying that gravity was a factor in human migration patterns, sadly confusing our geography with our physics. It didn’t seem to provoke so much anxiety when it became a case of people pouring up from Asia.
Maybe we should try the same exercise to see if it
would change our fear of maritime arrivals – instead of imagining people
on boats coasting down towards land on an easy tide we might think of
them rowing tediously uphill in creaking, rusting vessels.
I think turning the map on its head is well worth doing – it could give a
whole new emphasis to the relationship between Tasmania and Australia.
Instead of Tasmania being a remote afterthought hanging below Australia,
it would sit above the island continent, an island of welcome presaging
a larger island below it – the Great South Land.
'Maybe we should try the same exercise to see if it
would change our fear of maritime arrivals – instead of imagining people
on boats coasting down towards land on an easy tide we might think of
them rowing tediously uphill in creaking, rusting vessels.'
When I went to see an exhibition of maps at the National
Library of Australia in Canberra I was taken by how for centuries the
Western, Southern and Northern coats of Australia were meticulously
detailed. However until the Eastern coast was mapped by Cook, Australia
seemed to hang off Papua New Guinea, like a dangling protruberance, just
another part of the undercarriage of Asia.
Tasmania was once better mapped than the whole Eastern seaboard of
Australia. The island to the North was merely a much larger offshoot of
Papua New Guinea. Gadigal seafarers collected clams in the quiet bays of
Sydney Harbour and the whole looming alien invasion was just a distant
twist in a curving universe.
In a parallel perspective a book review in the Sydney Morning Herald of Where song began
by Tim Low, noted 'There is no compelling geographic reason why north should
be at the top of a world map – nor Europe in the centre.'
The island to the North – the islands to the North-East
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 many 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, many years later, by a mixture of chance and choice, I found myself travelling to Tahiti and her islands, as greater
Tahiti is described.
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| 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.
This was all fine. I like Melbourne and in my previous and final job I travelled regularly to Cairns so knew what that felt like. The range of weather to be expected made packing more complex but not unduly so.
I was more interested in Auckland. In fact I was going to Tahiti because
I liked the idea of going, for the first time, to New Zealand. New
Zealand strikes me as like Tasmania – only more so.
I had travelled across the Pacific via Hawaii when I flew to Canada many
years before but I had only once travelled into the Pacific. One year,
just before Christmas with the cyclone season impending, a UNESCO
meeting on the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural
Heritage was organised in Fiji. Fiji was not Paris so interest from our
senior executive was low but it was felt Australia needed to be
represented, so as I was responsible for Australia’s interest, from the
perspective of arts and culture, in the Convention for the Protection of
the Intangible Cultural Heritage, it was decided that I would go.
Endless blue of sky and ocean
I hadn’t been back since then. I still remembered the endless blue of
the sky and the ocean, with the occasional tiny island or atoll below,
white sand surrounded by a ring of milky green water and then the
endless Pacific rolling away forever.
The Pacific is a hot spot of cultural diversity, yet few Australians are
aware of what’s on their doorstep and in their backyard. We’re much more
focused on the bright lights of Europe and the United States – the
Pacific is mainly a place to visit resorts. I couldn’t really complain.
This time I was checking out a resort as well.
Once I started to focus on the trip I looked for maps. Tahiti is right
in the middle of the Pacific, almost half way between Australian and
Latin America. In my atlas it kept turning up on the edges of maps of
other places. It was hard to pin down. What was clear was that it was a
lot further than my previous trip to Fiji. Beyond Tahiti there is only
Pitcairn Island, where the Bounty mutineers holed up, and then Easter
Island, on the edge of another continent.
Vast and tiny at the same time
French Polynesia is vast and tiny at the same time. According to its
Wikipedia entry ‘It is composed of 118 geographically dispersed islands
and atolls stretching over an expanse of more than 2,000 kilometres … in
the South Pacific Ocean, yet its total land area is only 4,167 square
kilometres.’
'The
ancient Polynesians traversed these vast waters travelling across huge
distances to reach the next tiny island. They were excellent navigators
unintimidated by space. Now they only have to navigate the treacherous
shoals of international politics and the relationship with their Pacific
neighbours such as New Zealand and Australia.'
The
region is striking because physically it goes both out and up. These
tiny islands can often be barely above sea level, low atolls with some
sand and vegetation managing to cling on. They can also be massive
rearing mountains that rise out of the sea sharply and go straight up,
covered in deep green vegetation.
The ancient Polynesians
traversed these vast waters travelling across huge distances to reach
the next tiny island. They were excellent navigators unintimidated by
space. Now they only have to navigate the treacherous shoals of
international politics and the relationship with their Pacific
neighbours such as New Zealand and Australia.
Flying to Tahiti from Australia is an easy choice. The only airline that
flies into Tahiti from Australia is Air Tahiti Nui and that starts as a
code-shared Qantas flight to Auckland where you board the real thing.
Air Tahiti Nui flies from Australia (welll, Auckland) three times a
week, once a day. This means an early morning shuttle from Sydney.
Today was already yesterday
Despite all the photos and brochures and maps I kept finding it hard to
grasp that I was actually going to Tahiti or what it would be like when I
was there. Travelling to Tahiti is distinctive because you cross the
International Dateline, so on this trip what was today was already
yesterday. You travel into the future ahead of you but also into the
past through a quirky rule of time. On the leg to Tahiti I had two
Wednesdays in one week.
Arrival was late at night, never a good thing. Luckily it was warm. I
had a bath on my first night, in the resort in Papeete – the first stage
of Tahiti and its endless water.
'I have a relaxation tape which features the sound of the ocean and I
realised this was the sound I had woken up to. The morning slid softly
along from there. I successfully used my high school French to get a jug
of milk for tea. After that, anything was possible.'
Once
transferred by the regular ferry to Moorea, neighbouring island of
Tahiti and our main destination, I woke up early thinking I'd left a
light on but it was the sun coming up over the breakers. I thought of
the words from an old ad from my youth ‘mmmm, Tahiti would be nice.’
Moorea Island is the inspiration for Bali Hai in James A Mitchener’s
Tales of the South Pacific, which was the source for the musical South
Pacific. It’s only 11 miles from Tahiti over the Sea of the Moon.
I have a relaxation tape which features the sound of the ocean and I
realised this was the sound I had woken up to. The morning slid softly
along from there. I successfully used my high school French to get a jug
of milk for tea. After that, anything was possible.
I was pleased that this trip was not like an arduous European trip but,
strangely, we ended up in Europe after all – in part, anyway. The food
was a mixture of French and Tahitian but I was told that Chinese was
popular. Many of the processed goods in the supermarkets were French and
the baguettes were ubiquitous – unfortunately they were also not very
good. Unquestionably it was le pays de fruit – fresh fruit was
everywhere.
Like being on a film set
When I visited Paris and New York many decades ago it was a bit like
being on a film set. It was the same in Tahiti. It's all artifice and
marketing until you bang your head against the edges of the set. I had
to keep reminding myself that the photos I took – which kept turning out
like marketing brochures – were really photos I took, of places I had
been and not something I had picked up from a post card rack.
On Moorea a half day tour of the island was really made memorable by our
guide. He was a retired fire dancer who had married a Russian performer
he had met on tour in China and they lived on Moorea with their son.
When not having to speak English, he spoke Spanish, Tahitian, French and
some Russian. In some ways he reminded me of the guides on the Bay of
Fires walk in Northern Tasmania. Artists work as taxi drivers – or tour
guides.
He took us to an ancient group of marae, sacred and ceremonial precincts surrounded by low stone walls, and showed us a hedge planted beside the marae which used to be a source of tattoo ink. Now the ink, like that in his tattoos, came from China.
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| Plant once used for tattoo ink - now the ink, including those on the tatoos of our guide, comes from China |
The local economy seems to float on a mix of tourism, pineapples,
coconuts and pearls. There are pearls of every colour, size, shape and
price available everywhere. Buying pearls is remarkably similar to
buying houses. There is a huge variation in price and it’s a range of
factors, in may ways intangible, that make the difference. With pearls
its shape, size and surface – how large, how round, how smooth or
pitted.
Everything is relative, though. A local taxi driver said she would like
to visit Australia but she was afraid of snakes. I told her I had
probably seen four in sixty years in Australia. This is the problem with
'paradise'. There are no snakes in Polynesia which means that people
there are not culturally inoculated to them. There are no snakes in
paradise.
Generally, however, the fact there is no income tax and such a high
consumption tax partially explains why Tahiti is so expensive. It’s also
because so much has to be brought in. You are living off the land, it’s
just that it’s land somewhere else in the world, mainly in France but
in its other overseas territories as well, such as Martinique where the
rhum agricole comes from.
For the first few days of the visit I was reading newspapers from the plane. Maybe if the news is old enough it can't hurt you – or didn't even really happen. At breakfast they had rolled sheets of paper with news highlights from each country. I thought ‘if it's news from Australia, it can't be good news’ so I didn't bother and concentrated on the fruit. Then there was the Internet and television. When I connected to wi-fi I was intrigued to see that the business network of the resort was called 'Mana', spirit in Polynesian.
The weather had been a bit patchy. Apart from the kayaks I hadn’t been
too involved in the water activity. I think that humans successfully
emerged from the oceans a long time ago and it’s best to stay as far
away as possible. For a few days the weather was wet and windy with a
heavy swell. At night it was like sleeping in a washing machine or a
laundromat.
Late in my stay I learned two phrases in Tahitian (not Polynesian, there
are three or so Polynesian languages of which Tahitian is just one).
The first, ‘Mauruuru’, means ‘thank you’ and the second, which was
harder to master is ‘Ia Ora Na’, which means ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’
Everyone speaks French and many speak quite a bit of English but the
language of choice of locals is Tahitian.
'People
often used to joke that going to New Zealand is like travelling back to the
1950s and I’m sure that’s true in some respects, but in other ways it’s
like travelling to a country Australia might like to be sometime in the
future.'
On the way back to Australia I thought
'Sydney is two hours slower than us and Tahiti is two hours faster.’
Then, suddenly I was in Sydney, loaded up with Tahitian vanilla and duty
free liquor waiting to catch the train back to what passes for normal
in this abnormal world.
Tahiti was fascinating and Auckland was
an unexpected surprise. I knew it would be good and I’ve always wanted
to go there but it really impressed me beyond what I expected. People
often used to joke that going to New Zealand is like travelling back to the
1950s and I’m sure that’s true in some respects, but in other ways it’s
like travelling to a country Australia might like to be sometime in the
future. Tahiti just made me realise how badly Australia deals with both
the Pacific and its own issues because it’s much better to grandstand
somewhere else than to do the hard work in our own backyard.
It’s not known widely enough but at the point that Australia finally ceased to be a rabble of competing colonies and instead became a nation comprising a rabble of competing states and territories, New Zealand was almost there at the party.
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| Travelling eastwards from the Bay of Fires in Tasmania would lead you directly to New Zealand |
In 1912, when Walter Burley Griffin was designing Canberra, it still seemed possible that New Zealand might join the new Federation. Reflecting this Griffin envisaged a series of eight major avenues spreading out from Capital Hill, each named after a State capital, the capital of the Northern Territory and the capital of New Zealand.
Tasmania has also always been an afterthought for the island to the
North. Despite its abundance of natural assets and its pristine
environment, it still languishes as a second-rate citizen. The point is
that these distinctive features are much more appropriately aligned with
New Zealand than they have ever been with Australia.
Lots of mountains, clean water, high quality untainted produce, dramatic
landscapes and acres of ocean all mark this island as suitable for New
Zealandership. It’s a partnership waiting to happen.
Australia can be left to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic as it
plies the seas trying to find a safe place where it belongs in the
contemporary world of renewable energy, the modern knowledge economy,
with its clean and clever industries of the future, cultural diversity
and the innovation this engenders.
It's clear that the future for Tasmania lies with New Zealand, the
islands to the East rather than the island to the North. In a form of
Federation in reverse, Tasmania should loose the shackles that bind it
to Australia and join its neighbouring islands to make New Zealand three
islands instead of two – the North Island, the South Island and the
West Island. New Tazealand forever.
See also
‘We live in troubled times – but then can anyone ever say that they lived in times that weren’t troubled? For most of my life Australia has suffered mediocre politicians and politics – with the odd brief exceptions – and it seems our current times are no different. Australia has never really managed to realise its potential. As a nation it seems to be two different countries going in opposite directions – one into the future and the other into the past. It looks as though we’ll be mired in this latest stretch of mediocrity for some time and the only consolation will be creativity, gardening and humour’, Beyond a joke – surviving troubled times.
Holed up in the mountains
‘In a time of pandemic, if you can't
be on a small island off another island, then being holed up in the
mountains might just be the next best thing. While there are some daily
things I miss - coffee sitting down in cafes, a quite drink or meal out –
in many ways life in lockdown is not all that different to how I lived
before. Perhaps I need to take a closer look at what I really miss’, Holed up in the mountains.
‘A few weeks back I returned from a two and a half week regional road trip through Victoria to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. When we left, people were being encouraged to visit fire-ravaged regional centres to help boost local economies. By the time we were on the way back everyone was being urged to stay home to help reduce the spread of pestilence. We had heard about hoarding and food shortages and we had seen the empty shelves, usually filled with toilet paper, everywhere we passed. As we headed home, I pondered exactly how long we could survive on what was already in our pantry – how many meals we were already sitting on as a result of routine shopping before that time of hoarding and excess,’ Raiding the pantry
Noise-cancelling the modern world
Australia - 7-day weather forecast
‘A distraction from the heat, fire, and smoke that have become the new normal in Australia, Internet memes track the ongoing failure of our mediocre political masters. After a Christmas of bushfires, everything is black, particularly the humour’, Australia - 7-day weather forecast.
Feast of Stephen revisited
‘As Christmas seems to be speeding towards us once again – with all the hope it holds out for the survival of the embattled retail sector, it got me thinking. In ‘Good King Wencelaus’, that carol from my distant childhood, there is an intriguing line, ‘good King Wencelaus looked out, on the Feast of Stephen’. I thought, what is this feast, which happens to bear my name? When exactly is it? Well…it is Boxing Day. Now I do realise it, I am determined to celebrate it in the style it deserves’, Feast of Stephen.
Adjusting to reality #1 – peaks, troughs and snouts
‘It seems government allows just enough time to forget what it has done before it begins to repeat it. It would be easy to go along with popular prejudice and believe that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Unfortunately both are efficient and also hopeless in their own way. At least we get to vote about the broad outline of what the public sector does – and laugh at it. With the private sector, all we get is to laugh at it. Or cry’, Adjusting to reality #1 – peaks, troughs and snouts.
Internet memes – swirling around the virtual universe
‘Internet memes seem to appear and disappear on the web, digital visitors swirling around the virtual universe. Where they come from or who created them is hard to tell. There are no secrets or possessions on the Internet. Seeing some of these memes got me thinking. I thought perhaps I could produce my own memes and have some fun. Perhaps it’s the new future for the arts – social media postcards – but with humour and creativity’, Internet memes – swirling around the virtual universe.
Bring back the Romans
Wide brown landing
‘Some days you realise suddenly that Canberra was deliberately located in the mountains. Perhaps it was fear of Russian invasion - imperial rather than communist. Perhaps it was to avoid overlap with the two warring imperial powers of the time - NSW and Victoria. Whatever the reason, Canberra sits well up on the top of Australia, on the long road up to the Snowy Mountains, where Australia finally reaches its peak. I've made two unsuccessful attempts to see the National Arboretum, finding the gates locked and no way in. Yesterday on a cold Canberra day I finally found it open, thanks to Canberra's annual festival of flowers, Floriade. I'd finally made a successful landing at the Arboretum. I was very impressed’, Wide brown landing.
Cures for the common cold
'Even in the heart of the modern world, down in the deep streets of contemporary urban life, folk medicine is still strong. Have you noticed when you mention you have a cold, how everyone within listening distance starts to list off the various fool-proof remedies which are certain to cure you, or at the very least make you feel human again', Cures for the common cold.
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