IN IRELAND, MOST WRITERS FELT that they had to leave and go to England. "Was there ever an Irishman who did not get himself turned into an Englishman as fast as he could?" wrote Henry Craik. So, too, I thought about Tasmania - not to turn into an Englishman, but I would try to get there so that a little history and culture might rub off on me.
Ironically, it was the Irish who helped populate Tasmania, as a great deal of them were shipped out as convicts in the 1800s, even for such small crimes as stealing a loaf of bread.
When the lucky ones were released from prison, they were given large tracts of land to cultivate and their ancestor families to live on, sometimes with huge sheep and cattle stations across the land.
The British writer A.A. Gill recently wrote in the London Sunday Times that he preferred visiting Hobart rather than visiting Rome! He was either being very sincere or has done a good job fooling all of us with his wit. Suddenly I had a large lump in my throat. It was all so long ago, but I remember the place as if it were yesterday. The lump was the sadness and nostalgia for the place I called home.
I was seized by a sudden desire to write a book about the place, but then I remembered how my other books had all started with shitty first drafts, and many re-writes. I have been reading Anne Lamott's wonderfully funny book Bird by Bird about the pain and agony of writing a book, and the shitty first drafts, in which probably only members of my family would be interested, if pushed. But also I wanted to suggest that perhaps if we do up stakes and go to live in another country we might discover a wonderful creative life which we may never have the chance to live if we had stayed at home.
Reading Antonia Fraser's recent book about all the writers that had been interviewed, asking them which books they remembered before the age of ten, or what books were read to them earlier than that, made me realize that I didn't remember reading any books before the age of ten. So I must have been extremely deprived. It made me wonder.
Although most people don't know where it is exactly---the little island below Australia---many famous people have been born there and the celebrated war hero, General Montgomery went to school there. Eileen Joyce, the famous pianist, took London by storm and you can hear her playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto in the background of Noel Coward's film Brief Encounter. Other notable Tasmanians included Errol Flynn, the swashbuckling actor who retired to Jamaica, Merle Oberon the actress, and now of course, Princess Mary, married to the heir of the Danish throne.
There is also the prize-winning novelist who won the Man Booker Prize in 2014, Richard Flanagan who still lives in Hobart. His novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about a Tasmanian prisoner of war who worked on the Burma Road for the Japanese during the last war.
Gill describes the glories of Tasmania, the remoteness, the beauty and of course, the food. The island has always had great natural beauty that many visitors have reported on for the past two centuries. Now, since the arrival of the Internet, the feeling of remoteness must have disappeared.
When I read Gill's article, the lump grew larger. How on earth could anyone understand the charm and loveliness where I grew up, when everyone at that time made fun of the island, except perhaps for my father, who loved the island. He ended up in his last job as the head of the Scenic Preservation Board, similar to the National Trust in England. His name was Michael Sharland.
A keen gardener, Lord Talbot of Malahide commissioned and sponsored the book, The Endemic Flora of Tasmania. He was a close friend of my father and they often worked together. I visited Lord Talbot at his castle just outside Dublin when he was back in Ireland.
My father was also an ornithologist and journalist who wrote a weekly column called Nature Notes, under the pen name of Peregrine for Hobart's newspaper The Mercury, uninterruptedly for over 60 years, which must be some kind of record. He knew the bird call of every bird on the island, including the Lyrebird, known for being the best mimic of any other bird's call, hands down. His books included Stones of a Century, his best seller, which tells of the first old houses built on the island following the tradition of great country houses in England. He refurbished and furnished one of them, which is now a top tourist attraction there, called "Entally." He also led one of the last expeditions to look for the famous now extinct Tasmanian Tiger.
I am tempted to write about my childhood but mine would be the same as all other Tasmanian children, and probably most Australians': trips to the beach, climbing mountains, hikes through the bush, but maybe we did more because Dad was doing research for his books and articles for Nature Notes.
But I did have a grandmother who owned an antique shop, which was full of treasures, in the center of Hobart. As a young girl I loved going there after school, discovering new things that had come in, finding little ornaments, or wonderful pieces of furniture. Most came from Europe, so I had my first taste of the elegant china and crystal objects often from Austria. While watching Downton Abbey I would see some object, either in the kitchen or upstairs that were very similar to things that were in her shop.
She had a back room where we would have cups of tea and sticky buns, between customers, and talk about the new acquisitions. One glorious day, she was called away for an hour or so, and left me in charge of the shop. I was thrilled. Not many pieces had the prices on them, so when I asked what I should quote, she said "everything is two and six." In those days that meant two pounds and six shillings. This became a classic expression in our family, passed down for years, whenever anything to do with a price came up, one of us would always pipe up with "two and six," even after most of us had forgotten where it came from, except me.
Grandmother went alone to England by ship twice, to buy more antiques, and came back with loads of antiques, including six brass warming pans that hang on a wall. These became very rare later on, because the demand for them was intense. Warming pans were filled with hot coals in the old days, and brushed across cold sheets to warm them on winter nights in old England. We also had horse brasses, the little plaques that you find hanging up around pub fireplaces in England, which also became collectors' items. Antiques Road Show would have had a field day. Fortunately I still have some of the originals before they started making fake ones.
My two sets of grandparents were totally different. On Dad's side, they had been professional explorers and surveyors of Tasmania. His great-great grandfather was one of the founders of the Tasmanian Club---I believe his portrait is still up on wall there---so ambition, talent and knowledge ran through the family, originally from an aristocratic family in England.
My paternal grandmother was very strict and easily shockable, from proper table manners---you could be banished from the table---for not using them, to who you worked with and what you did with your time. My maternal grandmother came from a working class town in Yorkshire, and was much more down to earth. After building up some capital from her antique shop, she bought Melrose, a beautiful old house, which is still there, on Hampden Road.
When my parents, who were living in Sydney, decided to move back to Hobart, they moved in with her. The house has 29 rooms and a stable, so there was plenty of room. It is still there, except all the glorious trees have been cut down and the tennis court is now a parking lot. My bedroom is an office.
My father was working on the night shift as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, but he wanted a day job. I had recently wandered from home and had fallen down a storm drain while he was sleeping. Mother was out, and it seems it took five hours to find me. Luckily, there had been no storms or I would have been washed out to sea.
Grandmother began to take in boarders to pay off the huge mortgage, then she bought two more large houses in Hobart and rented them out. She had a sixth sense about investing in real estate. She was a pretty woman, and dressed elegantly. Rumor has it that when she arrived in Hobart the man she was engaged to had married someone else, so she married his brother. She opened a second antique shop and became friends with everybody at Burn's Auction House on Collins Street. They would call her if they had some special shipments so she would have first viewing.
When she was very old, I would sit with her in front of the fire, and she would ask me to open one of her many trunks, then take out a jewelry box or two, full of broaches, rings, necklaces and usually gave me something. It was like being in Aladdin's Cave in her small drawing room. There were trunks of furs, evening dresses, beaded evening bags, all kind of things she had collected. I still have the ermine muff she gave me.
Some nights, in the firelight, we listened to radio serials, her favorite one being the dramatization of Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades. My brother, Roger, loved the popular serial In Search of the Golden Boomerang! There must be hundreds who remember it.
She taught me a dress sense: when to wear long gloves, how to tell real pearls, what to wear when and to what occasion, something that held me in good stead later in life. The trouble is, both grandmothers did too good a job, and I still have to bite my lip when I am sitting with passengers on a ship or at a social function, when they put their elbows on the dinner table, or drink with two hands on a cup. Oh dear! But the worst one is that most North Americans never put their knife and fork together when they have finished eating. I feel sorry for the waiters, who then have to guess if that person has actually finished eating, especially if there is food still on the plate!
So I was ready to join "society" and between the two of them, I had been trained.
Everyone in the 50s and 60s wanted to leave Tasmania. It was almost like the Grand Tour: you first went to London, then Paris and around Europe, before returning home. Then all the girls married, raised children and the men slowly became domesticated and settled down to a comfortable, if boring life. I don't know if it is still the same.
I couldn't wait to leave. I remember attending a symphony concert one night. Hobart did actually have their own orchestra but they invited guest conductors and guest artists to join them, and I wished I could have a conversation with them---about the composers, the scores, their lives---and I hungered for more knowledge. To go overseas was a dream only achieved by their parents who arranged for their son or daughter to do the tour for year or so.
I still remember with awe when a local violinist, Beryl Kimber, won a scholarship to study in London. The world was at her feet and walking home after her farewell concert I was totally spellbound and amazed by her playing and her future as a world class violinist overseas. She had a brilliant career in London and played at the BBC Proms in her first year.
The thought of all this made me even more anguished and frustrated. In those days it really was true that the grass was greener on the other side of the world. But now with the addition of TV and the Internet you can really live anywhere in the world. However, that dull ache of missed opportunities followed me around for quite some time.The ironic thing was that my father was writing about the Island's glorious natural beauty and the uniqueness of the flora and fauna, when all I wanted was the dirt and soot of London, the theatres, the architecture and all that London had to offer.
Why is it that Australians are still considered friendly but a little backward? The accent! Like a friendly hillbilly from Arkansas, they were usually adorned with a broad-brimmed floppy hat, with corks hanging down from it to scare off the flies. It would be interesting to see if people would regard them differently if they were to speak with a BBC accent. I have experimented with changing my accent many times, to fool people, and I discovered a tremendous reaction, from Brits, especially, when they think you are may be an aristocrat from Westminster. Their whole manner changed when they found out you were Australian! It still applies today.
There is still a feeling of superiority in the UK, whether it be social or business, towards Australians. We are still called "colonials"---even more so than Americans---just because we are a young country and therefore cannot be taken seriously, except by Americans.
Gill's article took me back immediately. Yes, our scallops and oysters are the best in the world; the freshest, too, especially if you buy them off one of the fishing boats in the little old whaling harbor at the end of the day. My mother would send me down with an old white enamel billy, to pick up scallops: one shilling for a billyful. They were on the table in just over an hour. Everyone has a childhood story of these kind of things, but not perhaps one of regret.
The last time I was in Hobart, after burying my Mother, and selling the family house and possessions, I went up to the top of North Hobart which looms over Hobart, looked at the unforgettable view of the town and the harbour, and suddenly had an idea, or epiphany, if you like, of what I was leaving behind. A paradise of sorts, knowing it would be just be a matter of time before this place was discovered and all the plots of land, and houses would rocket up in price, which would then triple when people started getting computers and moved there from the mainland. It was one of those moments that freeze in time and you remember vividly years later.
How do you persuade yourself to leave, especially if you are watching an amazing sunset? I was leaving the next day and I somehow knew it would be a very long time before I came back, if ever.
Most people have stories of family outings or holidays they had in their childhood, but not many readers find them interesting unless they themselves were there. I always smile when I see family shots taken at Lyme Regis or Bexhill on Sea or some place in England where the sand is black or grey or just plain mud, and no sunshine at all. Usually cold and windy; the only people who enjoy it are very young children.
How I wish I could take them to my favorite beach - Seven Mile Beach, a few miles from Hobart, stretching between the deep blue sky and azure sea, with white surf pounding on the sand. Pure white powdery sand for miles, it hurt your eyes to look at it in the blazing sunshine. You were surprised if you found any other person on the beach or in the high sand dunes behind, which we would slide down for hours on end. The Bahamas are a runner-up, so you get the idea.
School days were the most interesting when we had Art and Music. I loved art classes and if someone had told me that I would attend the famous Art Student's League in New York one day, I would not have believed them. My work was mostly landscapes. Like Mount Wellington, the large mountain that stands like a giant protector over Hobart. It was like a person when I was growing up. Many people look out of their windows every morning to look at what "the mountain is doing." It has a blanket of snow, or it has disappeared, in mist, or as on one disastrous morning, it was on fire.
The mountain became part of your life. You never forgot it. There it was, rising up behind the city, reminding us that some things never change. Life, birth, death, mortality, it never changed. The zig zag track, which every school kid had to climb, the Fern Tree Valley, the Silver Falls, were etched in every child's heart. The track between Fern Tree and the Springs was a memorable one. Some parts of the track were made from the trunks of fern trees, so it was soft and springy as you walked, almost as if out of a fairy tale. The ferns made a kind of tunnel of green. I do hope it is still there, and I don't want to know if it isn't. Mostly I remember frosty mornings, bitter cold, walking up Davey St to school, looking at the mountain. The exhilarating fresh air was how I imagined Switzerland must be. Mountain air, crisp, cold and invigorating.
The mountain has so many different faces. On the way to the pinnacle you pass through a kind of desolate area. The trees all bent by the wind---the stony view---but then there are the lush parts farther down, and the sparkling waterfalls.
I guess the most vivid thought I have of school was the cold! I was a basketball player, and we would have matches early on Saturday mornings. Some days it was so cold your fingers were stiff, even in gloves; you would have to soak them in warm water before you could hold the ball. Chilblains were the norm. After all, we were the last stop on the map to the Antarctic!
Sometimes we could hear the husky dogs on the ships in the harbor on their way down south. We used to walk down to the docks to see them. But they were on the ships, tucked away somewhere.
The docks were full of ships from overseas. Some were freighters with the name of their country on the stern. I remember the thrill of seeing a new ship from our top floor windows come around Battery Point. One day the Queen Elizabeth appeared and we couldn't believe how huge she was.
This was the original one and it was so exciting to walk down to the pier and watch her berth alongside the other ships. The Hobart harbor is one of the deepest in the world, so large ships could dock alongside the pier. As kids it was about the most exciting thing to do after school, then come home and dream about sailing in one of them one day.
Now that they have cruise ships visiting there, the passengers are taken on shore excursions to Port Arthur, a convict settlement where the buildings are still preserved, or up to the Pinnacle of Mt. Wellington where there is a view on a clear day of almost half the island!
At Melrose out by the stable in the cobbled courtyard, there were three rather large rooms with bathrooms that Grannie rented out. I hated going up there because of two incidents that happened when I was very young. Mrs. Rainbird and her husband who was a driver of a steam roller--- machine that flattened asphalt after it had been laid---lived in the end one. Unfortunately, he was away at work, when his wife started screaming and had an epileptic fit. She fell face down in the open fire, and could not get up. My mother rescued her, but I saw her face and will never forget it.
Then the old man who lived next door, Mr Gray, blew up the gas water tank over the bath one day. We heard a great explosion and he came out with a black face, which terrified us. I hardly ever went out there again except to gather firewood, as our woodshed was across the courtyard from them.
At Christmas we would take punnets of fresh raspberries and cream and sit on the beach after perhaps a barbecue of steaks. Pity Paul Hogan ever did that commercial about "putting another shrimp on the barbie," which lead people to believe we all spoke and lived like that. True, there are some great beer drinkers, but no more than in England, with a pub on every corner. Often driving home, we would pass Mum's favorite field: full of wild daffodils. She used to collect armfuls of them and put them in the back of the car. Even though we took many, the fields were still thick with them.
I remember many picnics, again wonderful views as you eat, the smell of eucalyptus and pine trees, the bird calls, and of course, Dad always had his camera at the ready. We once saw a Lyre bird, a rare sighting, as they are notoriously hard to find in the bush. The bird imitated the small whirring sound of a time setting noise on the camera, then the camera click. This was also filmed by David Attenborough in one of his brilliant Bird Series on BBC television years later.
There were also the fishing trips, usually on a very small boat. Then someone would clean the fish, a fire would be lit on the beach at sunset, followed by another memorable meal which I still can taste. The warmth of the fire, after the sun goes down, and the conversations were unique in that Dad would always have some fact or story about the place where we were. The fishing was only part of it.
So A.A. Gill is correct in describing all this, as well as adding the news about the great new Museum, MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, built by local David Walsh, that has finally brought Hobart some recognition.
Here are two extracts from my father's books. From Oddity and Elegance:
True, this island which has been likened to a pendant hanging from the necklace of continental Australia, is by no means an Eden with a pleasant garden about it. Nor is it a paradise where the sun casts its favors perpetually. There is much land yet to settle and mountains to tame. The south-western region is as primitive as ever it was, and the western country little better. The eastern half has yet to be filled. There are still gaps waiting for towns and industries.
But it is just this contrast- the elementary wildness of mountain and gully, the unbridged rivers and tangled scrubs, alongside the homely pattern of farms and old estates, stately parish churches and quaint little villages- that makes Tasmania what it is -- a land of oddity and elegance. There is a distinctive flavor about it that carries the hallmark of Tasmania exclusively.
From Stones of a Century:
There is no ignominy in living in a State which is much like a museum of history and architecture. There is evidence in fact that those outside rather envy us because of this. They say we are more "history minded" than the people in other States and exhibit a special interest in our historic relics, which is probably true, because Tasmania has a warm, and personal kind of history- one that is associated closely with our own families whose roots go well back down the years. More than a century has passed and we have not forgotten the names of the designers and builders of many pleasing fabrics that grace the land nor the people who first lived in them, for the reason that these were often intimately related to us.
Fine and spacious old houses, although economically unworkable owing to the completely changed labor situation. Some have been converted into flats and guest houses, institutions and hostels: Others are occupied by shepherds or stockmen quite unable to stay the decay and deterioration that goes on around them, so the houses crack and crumble, the outbuildings are undermined by vagrant water and fall in heavy winds, and soon there is a ruin where once noble house stood.
My father would have been very pleased to know that our old ancestral home, Woodbridge, has now been restored and is has been awarded for being one of The Small Leading Hotels of the World!
There is even a Sharland suite, and the new owners have invited me to stay.
My mother worked all through the war for the Red Cross. She organized knitting groups, who knitted socks and singlets for the troops on machines; she distributed books for the wounded men in hospital in Hobart and after I had left Tasmania, she took a job as Supervisor for the whole State of the Northern Territory, from Alice Springs to Darwin. She and Dad would drive the only road between those two outback towns, usually with no other cars or trucks for days. The stories she had of visiting the sick in those outback farms and arriving in Darwin hot and tired. There were no cell phones back then; they were on their own, if the car broke down.
When I was twelve years old, our piano teacher took a group of us from school, to see the film Song To Remember which is about the life story of the composer Chopin. Jose Iturbi played the music, Cornel Wilde played Chopin and Merle Oberon played George Sand. I can truly say that film changed my life.
It affected me so much that it propelled me to learn most of the music played in the film, to practice eight hours a day for years, to dream of falling in love with Chopin. In fact I used to pray he would come and visit me in my room: that's how mentally deranged you can get after eight hours at the piano practicing his Polonaise. My music teacher was delighted. I was determined to play that piece at the end of the year school concert in the Hobart Town Hall. I wonder how many people are inspired by one single film when they are young? I was totally changed and I couldn't wait to get to Europe and find out more about his affair with Aurore Dudevant, who called herself George Sand.
I read all the biographies about him, studied his music, practiced, and practiced again. It took months to master the Polonaise and my brother nearly went crazy listening to the piano. My grandmother had shipped home one of her auction finds, a concert grand piano, that came from Paris. Subsequently it travelled around the world. First to me in Canada, then to London.
After seeing the film I was overjoyed when I went home to discover our piano was a Pleyel, the piano that Chopin preferred. In the film there are scenes that take place in Pleyel's music shop in Paris, and the wonderful classic scene when Chopin is seen asking Pleyel to arrange a debut concert for him. Instead, Pleyel dismisses Chopin as an unknown and untalented, when Franz Liszt starts playing the A Flat Polonaise in the next room. Chopin hears him and goes to join him; sitting together, they play back to back, playing two pianos side by side, and Liszt suddenly realizes he is playing Chopin's music and the rest is history, as they say.
The movie is dated now with a rather corny script, but the actual story of his life is true so it is still worth seeking it out. The sets, costumes and music are beautifully done. It awakened in me the determination to work, seek out everything to do with his music, and has continued to inspire me for the rest of my life.
A fellow Australian, part Polish, Alan Kogosowski, has to be one of the world's top Chopinists, but because he would never agree to have an agent, he now gives master classes in Melbourne after a glittering career, for a time, overseas. Do go to the website www.kogosowski.com. He wrote and finished Chopin's unfinished Third Piano Concerto, adding the third movement, playing the debut performance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
When Dad drove me to the airport he thought I would be returning in 12 months, but I had other ideas. We walked up to the plane---no security of course---and said goodbye at the plane's flight steps. I caught a glimpse of the wild daffodils in a field, as we circled around before climbing into the sky. Hello Melbourne, where I was about to board the S.S. Oronsay to sail to England. I won a piano scholarship and unbeknownst to me, my parents had arranged for me to study at the Guildhall School in London for one year.
Unfortunately, just as my father was retiring years later, a real tragedy happened in Tasmania when a group of entrepreneurs suddenly began buying up land and forests, only to destroy them and start logging the timber and completely stripping landscapes of topsoil and the wonderful flora and fauna of the beautiful fern valleys and trees unique to Tasmania. It is still going on and world heritage sites once again have been threatened and legislation changed to allow even more land and forests to be cleared.
Some trees are centuries old, and the bird life is precious. This is a huge conservation issue and one that is tremendously urgent. Naturalists and ornithologists are up in arms and fighting the government all the way up to the present Prime Minister. If only something could be done before all the nature reserves are gone. My father spent his whole life writing about the incredible beauty of the Island, which is about to become a money spinner for developers.
Very recently this tragedy has begun again the destruction of primeval rainforest that has been evolving for millennia or from wet eucalypt forests, some of which contain the mighty Eucalyptus regnans. These aptly-named kings of trees are the tallest hardwood trees and flowering plants on Earth; some are more than 20 metres in girth and 90 metres tall. The forests are being destroyed in Tasmania, in spite of widespread community opposition and increasing international concern.
Clear felling, as the name suggests, first involves the complete felling of a forest with chainsaws. Then the whole area is torched, the firing started by helicopters dropping incendiary devices made of jellied petroleum, commonly known as napalm. The resulting fire is of such ferocity it produces mushroom clouds visible from considerable distances. In consequence, every autumn, the island's otherwise most beautiful season, china-blue skies are frequently nicotine-scummed, an inescapable reminder that clear felling means the total destruction of ancient and unique forests. At its worst, the smoke from these burn-offs has led to the closure of schools, highways and tourist destinations.
I heard that in the Styx Valley, in the south-west, the world's last great unprotected stands of old-growth Eucalyptus regnans are being reduced to piles of smoldering ash. Over 85% of Tasmania's old-growth regnans forests are gone, and it is estimated that fewer than 13,000 hectares of these extraordinary trees remain in their old-growth form. Almost half of them are to be clearfelled. Most will end up as paper in Japan.
In logging coupes around Tasmania, exotic rainforest trees such as myrtle, sassafras, leatherwood and celery-top pine - extraordinary, exquisite trees, many centuries old, some of which are found nowhere else - are often just left on the ground and burnt.
As I am writing this at the beginning of 2016 there is further breaking news that the government is lifting more barriers to logging and allowing further destruction. Sad news indeed. Since then we heard of the dreadful bush fires of January 2016.