Veronika Wild

There's quite a lot of snow on the mountain this morning and it's a balmy 8°C here. Running a bit late with my post this week, so here is something to ponder in the meantime. Enjoy! There is a peculiar magic to a Tasmanian winter that mainlanders and other visitors never quite understand until they've lived it. Even if you have managed to cram in a trip around the state, taking in its major cities and maybe Cradle Mountain and Strahan, you may have missed some of the best things of all.     It arrives gently — in the blue-grey light that lingers even at noon, in the woodsmoke curling from chimneys up and down the streets of its quaint C19th villages, in the cold that doesn't so much bite as settle. There’s less traffic and there are even fewer tourists.     Into the Woods There's a lovely campaign by Tourism Tasmania right now about Forest Bathing. Here's how it's done. Take yourself down or more likely up to a forest. Mt. Wellington/Kunyani is clos...

Photographing Astronomical features is obviously a highly evolved art It’s 5.10 a.m. Perth time. The first magpie has carolled, a distant rooster crows. Someone sent me a message that the Perseid Meteor Shower is supposed to be visible in the Southern Hemisphere at 5.25 and that it was supposed to be especially spectacular this year. We’d seen it once while overnighting on a racecourse in Cairns and it was the most beautiful sight – showers of falling stars.   I didn’t want the girls to miss it, but after last night’s bonfire with charred marshmallows, I couldn’t wake them, so now I was sitting expectantly in the “dress circle” -that bit of curved retaining wall at the back of the house, looking up at the stars and getting a stiff neck and frozen feet. (It’s better if you can lie on your back, have a blanket and a thermos and maybe a couple of pillows).  Astronomers are a hardy lot. I recall a night with freezing ears watching a friend take photos of Magellani...