Veronika Wild

The landscape in the folds beneath the Plateau is very different to that of Poatina  Day 1 My friend doesn’t drive, making it difficult for her to get to many parts of Tasmania, so I thought while we were in this area I should try to take her to Liffey Falls. I should point out that at the same time as I broke my arm, she had broken her leg and was still having physio and I wasn’t too sprightly myself. Ever since my stint in hospital I would start out enthusiastically enough, and then quite suddenly run out of steam. We pulled into the lower Campground and set off on the three -hour walk from the bottom of the hill to the base of the falls. The walk was pretty enough – it was a veritable fern garden through light rainforest with myrtle and sassafrass  trees and the river beside us on and off, but it was all uphill. By the time we got to the little bridge which marks the junction between the track which comes down from the top, and this one, I had to sit down and rest. D...

Coming down from the Central Plateau Meanwhile, back in Tasmania, I was invited to an art exhibition at Poatina, perched halfway up the mountain, between the the Highlands and the plains. Poatina is another former Hydro -Electric village – yes, they are all over Tasmania – it’s what we do best.  Like many such villages it carries an Aboriginal name. This one means cave or rocky overhang. Poatina (pop. 118 in 2021) was where my father worked on construction in the late 1950’s and came home to Launceston only every 3 weeks or so. I had never really seen Poatina in daylight. Now I could see modest pale brick houses clustered around a central service area with a general store, a gift shop, a thrift shop, a tearoom, a petrol station and the little Tree Gallery tucked up in a corner of the shopping centre. Around the perimeter were community gardens, a golf club and a swimming pool. In its heyday it also boasted a cinema and school, but I didn't see either of those.  What a drea...

The Tree of Life - an old lime tree in the Town Square in Haiterbach The last few days were spent in a flurry of visiting and cake eating as I said fond farewells to many of my relatives. Once again, I will miss having so many people around to whom I have some kind of connection, although I was also missing my own little family back home. When I’m in Australia I miss these people and these landscapes. That’s one of the problems of belonging to two cultures – one you are born into and another one in which you grow up. I feel certain that sometime in the future, science will discover that far from children being resilient and easily transplantable, sudden translocation and migration leaves a lasting trauma, especially if done in difficult circumstances. I can tell you it's how you become a nomad, never quite at home in either. It does make you realise however, that culture is not a fixed and absolute thing and that other countries have found other ways to solve universal human ...

  It was well and truly autumn when I got back from my latest trip. While I was recovering and with only a few days to go before my departure, we visited more relatives – both living and no longer with us, a gallery and at least one more castle. Despite all those cakes, big meals with lots of potatoes and spätzle, and all the chocolate we got at the Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory, I still managed to lose weight in Germany. I attribute this at least in part to the fact that that rarely a day went by without some kind of walk. Getting ready for a Warmer Future One of our early walks was to my cousin’s old “School’ that is, the Braike Campus of the University of Nürtingen und Gaislingen‘s School of Economy and the Environment , where students were experimenting with sustainable landscape design and climate change resilient plants. As part of their practical work for degrees in Landscape Architecture they had created a pleasant park with sections devoted to plants that thrive with ...