Veronika Wild

I really just liked the name of this one in South Hobart, though it does have good posters inside No, there’s nothing wrong with the washing machine, cross your fingers and praise the deity -   I just thought these were rather nice. I am working on something positive at the moment, but it's taking a bit longer than it should, so I am just putting these in to keep you visually amused. I was going to take my sister on a special laundry tour of Hobart, but after the Rivulet excursion I thought she would be less than excited. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Once upon a time doing the washing was a social event as women gathered around the village pump or stream. They still do it in places like Bali and rural Nepal.  These places just embody elements of that community spirit. This is where you find out what’s going on in the neighbourhood and possibly meet some of the neighbours at a time when they aren’t too busy to have a leisurely chat. It beats watching the dryer...

Public Meeting in the Town Hall. I didn't know this was the Town Hall. Thought it was further down where they had the Dinosaurs, the Xavier Rudd Concert and flower shows. It's really rather lovely.  I went to a Public Meeting in the Town Hall yesterday to hear why we need water meters at a cost of $45 million, not to mention the $700,000 spent to tell us why we need them, the cost of consultants reports and the estimated $40 million spent on the billing system and the untold administrative costs to read them and collect our money. Mike Paine CEO of the newly formed Southern Water Corporation, was at great pains to point out how much fairer and more equitable it was all going to be, that the rates were going up 12% and that the law prevented them from charging flat dwellers separately, carefully avoiding the elephant -in -the -room question, why on earth are we doing this at all? Sure the old system had some anomalies such as little old ladies on pensions paying on the ...

The Channel, or more properly, the D' Entrecasteaux Channel, is a lovely region about 40 Km south east of Hobart. You can get there much faster by taking the Southern Outlet but you miss the beautiful cliff top views of the Derwent that you get by taking the old windy road through Taroona, past the Shot Tower and over Bonnet Hill.  The other way to get there if you have time and don't have a tight budget, is by taking the Peppermint Bay Ferry from Elizabeth Pier. Slower still and with unlimited waterviews. Peppermint Bay Ferry at rest in Woodbridge Even by road there are excellent waterviews most of the way and you see rustic little places like Margate, Snug and Kettering which all have excellent seafood. Not that I am much of a fan, but others positively rave about it and I did like the chips. Kettering has a delightful harbour where many small craft lie at anchor and it is also where you catch the ferry to Bruny Island. Bruny Island is an interesting place to spend a da...

Abandon hope ye who enter here  I thought my sister might enjoy looking at Hobart from a different perspective, so after dragging her through the back streets past a couple of my favourite shops, we descended down into the Hobart Rivulet. I think of it as the sewers of Paris without the rats. Most people never get to see this part of Hobart and I suspect that my sister now wishes she were among them.  The Rivulet has a long history, having been the site of much industrial activity, providing both water and  power to drive mills and machinery, not to mention being the main sewer and the source of typhoid for much its early life, before being largely paved over and cleaned up. This is what the Hobart Officer of Health had to say about it in 1879  The interesting thing about Hobart is that its history is so plainly visible wherever you go. First seaport and convict outstation, then the transition to self -supporting colony and exporter of primary produce t...