Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania Wauba Debar by Bert Spinks 19 Oct 2020 Some years ago, as I started to try and understand the history of the colonial conflict period, it struck me how significant Aboriginal women were in the stories of the palawa. Sometimes I felt their presence rippling like currents through a se...
Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania Devotion by Bert Spinks 16 Sep 2020 I grew up on a five-acre block in Beaconsfield, a parcel of inherited land that was inconveniently lumpy and swampy, but gave us plenty of space. There, my brother and I began to take our lanky shapes. I have lately wondered if our bodies didn’t grow rangy to accommodate the landscape. Inevitably we were introduced to Aussie Rules; it was a version of footy that fitted our paddocks perfectly. Even when we moved to a house on the edge of suburbia, the first thing we did was test out the backyard for our one-on-one matches. It had a 45-degree slope; it was nevertheless adequate for our needs, given that all we required was room to run and grass on which to hurl each other.
Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania Sassafras flowers by Bert Spinks 16 Sep 2020 This is the sassafras tree in flower. A native to wet forests in south-east Australia, especially in Tasmania, this sassafras is in no way related to the homonymous trees in North America. (How many times in writing a natural history have I had to...
Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania Ask the migrating birds by Bert Spinks 16 Sep 2020 One autumn I went bushwalking with a friend. We had a certain destination in mind but we didn’t quite make it, turned back by scrub and snow. We retreated instead to an old fisherman’s shack – Number 5, if that means anything to you – having...
Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania Exploring the neighbourhood by Bert Spinks 16 Sep 2020 At the time I was quite sure it was the most beautiful place I had ever been. Most of us were housemates, and we’d left our Launceston rental home on a January morning to go and set ourselves up at a scrubby, sandy retreat for a few days. To get to...
Field Guide to Falling in Love in Tasmania On waking up in Ranelagh by Bert Spinks 16 Sep 2020 The country along the Huon River had been known to Europeans for a couple of decades. The French had come up the river under Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. He had assigned the river’s name in honour of the commander of one of his vessels, Huon de...
