Veronika Wild

Symbol of hopes dashed - This was once going to be the Capital of Tasmania I had my lunch at Yorktown where the B 741 turns off to go to the Narawntapu National Park. No town exists there now, just a pleasant picnic area and a historic walk, but it was the first settlement in Northern Tasmania and was intended to be the capital. As rivalry between the French and the English intensified and Frenchman Charles Baudin's ships came passing by in the early 1800's, Lord Hobart instructed Lt. Governor King to immediately secure Bass Strait and Northern Tasmania by establishing a settlement there. In 1804 he sent Colonel William Paterson to do the job along with three ships, soldiers and convicts. The first ship, the Buffalo, foundered, losing all the cattle.    Availability of water was its main attraction and the now Lt. Governor Paterson set about establishing barracks, a storeroom, a sturdy gaol, and three rows of cottages. Being a bit of a botanist himself and a friend of Joseph...

On Friday I had an invite to have lunch with Magda at her book signing. Magda Subianski is a very accomplished comedienne probably best known for her role as the long suffering Sharon in the witty Australian  TV show "Kath and Kim." Trust me you don't want to queue jump these people. It reminds me of a Trans Siberian train ticket queue   Yes, well that was me and about two thousand other people. The queues stretched outside the bookshop and down the street. Books may well provide food for thought, but no other sort was likely to be forthcoming. Stress is beginning to show I made some women very cross when I excused myself to look at books on the other side of the queue. I sensed a few people were spoiling for a catfight. Magda herself looked very tired. I imagine she has had to go through the same performance in every little bookshop in the country. She is a real trouper and deserves every cent she makes from the book, but I'm not staying.

I forgot it was Halloween, the only occasion when I finally have the right clothes, the right hair and the right accessories, and I almost missed it. My son did mention that he'd seen a lot of zombies around the town today, but I told him that I see them all the time and that they are mostly harmless unless you pull out their earplugs and shout at them. Wonder what the trick would have been? Luckily I had a stash of sour worms and some chocolate sovereigns left over from a pirate cake, so I never found out. Was that someone starting up a chainsaw though and was that Freddy getting ready to bound in? I tricked or treated my neighbours. They gave me a chocolate first so I put on the costume I wore for Seven Deadly Sins last year - nice to give it another run . What is it that they say. It isn't what a garment costs, but the costs per wear. Only about 39 Halloweens to go. May all your goblins be nice ones.

Some of the impressive mine ruins  at Beaconsfield *Narawntapu is the old new name for the Asbestos Ranges in Tasmania. The name was changed in 1986 because of fears about a possible association with asbestos. There is no asbestos in the Narawntapu National Park although small quantities of this and other minerals were mined nearby. Now this Park is named after the Aboriginal tribe which used to live there.   I was always rather curious about this vast area of apparently undeveloped land  in the heart of northern Tasmania, even more so after flying over it last week, that I came back to have a closer look. Would have done it last week but didn’t have my walking gear with me, so here I was coming back for another shot.  Good thing I waited. I encountered my first snake on this walk- sandals would have been a disaster and I was also caught out after dark, which made me very glad of my son’s second best state of the art headlamp. He doesn’t have as mu...

The Lord vault, largest in the cemetery, designed by Henry Hunter, colonial architect Get ready for some cliches.The views are to die for. The location would make a real estate agent drool and the neighbours are very, very quiet. I am at Hobart's main cemetery set on a little promontory overlooking the water, just a bay or two from the CBD. Begun in 1872, on what was formerly the government farm, it is the final resting place of some 100,000 souls, including some relocated from inner city cemeteries* when these became overcrowded and a health hazard. The blacksmith's shop- last relic from Cornelian Bay's days as the government farm.  It still works too There they lie – the rich and the poor, the brave and cowardly, the paragons of virtue and the scoundrels and thieves, though you wouldn't necessarily know which was which from looking at the headstones. Death claims them all regardless. Even old enemies lie at peace   - Jews and Gentiles, Croats and Se...

Flying (with a little help from Eugene, the senior instructor and owner of the Freedom Flight Flying School) Yep, that’s me flying that plane. This was another Seniors' Week activity and a very popular one at that.  Even the instructor expressed amazement at the number of people signing on for this, sensing a whole new and largely untapped market. While almost everyone enjoys flying, young folk rarely have the leisure or the disposable income to do so and those in their middle years have other, more pressing   issues on their agenda , such as getting established in their careers, paying off their homes , getting their offspring educated or simply putting food on the table, but I do think that there is another factor at work here as well. Google Earth views A bit of drizzle and turbulence While younger generations have grown up with cars and planes as a fait accompli – you take them for granted, use them as you need them, without too much thought about how...