Veronika Wild

The convict -built Richmond Bridge dates from 1824 Somewhere in our travels my sister noticed that there was going to be a Village Fair in Richmond, one of Tasmania's oldest towns. Heritage listed Richmond is only twenty four kilometres from Hobart. Its lovely sandstone buildings and convict- built bridge, cobbled streets, maze and model village make it a pleasure to visit at any time, but the old fashioned village fair bustling with visitors, stilt walkers, sweet stalls, craft and garden displays while the band played, added an extra dimension. After sampling fudge and eating hamburgers we wandered around its charming shops and galleries, had  a sinful iced coffee in one of the little cafes and visited a garage sale  and a paddock sale – very similar, but much bigger, and then took a leisurely route back through the Coal Valley Wine district and South Arm. The latter was a bit of an accident as I took a wrong turn at Cambridge (forgot to take my GPS), but it was not with...

This little boy was raising money for the Japanese Earthquake Victims  I know I promised you pictures of Tasmania, but my sister wasn't feeling that well, so we stayed a bit closer to home. It was just as well we didn't go to the East Coast, one of the places where I wanted to go, because it rained so much there (rare!) that there was flash flooding. There were also 120 Kmph winds  and many of the roads were closed. On the first day we did a bit of impromptu blackberrying in the neighbourhood and discovered a fairy forest I had never noticed before. On Friday it was Mona and on Saturday we went to the market and then wandered on around the docks and Battery Point. Two Greek girls inviting us to a festival in North Hobart on Sunday    There was also a bit of Greek dancing on the Parliament House lawns One of the things I like about the docks in Hobart, is that as well as hosting the market, it is still a working port with a lovely mix of history, industry...

Entrance to Mona - still awaiting permission to give you a glimpse of what's inside MONA stands for Museum of Old and New Art and is David Walsh's private collection housed on a little promontory overlooking the Derwent on the former Alcorso Estate. [Claudio Alcorso was an Italian businessman and another of Tasmania's great benefactors from the previous generation who also began one of its first vineyards]. The building constructed on the site of Alcorso's former home, is a lot more interesting than it looked from the highway, with a variety of finishes, levels and labyrinthine spaces  inside. No windows though. It seemed significant to me that after entering at ground level, you proceeded to go down and down, into amorphous dark recesses not unlike entering deep into the unconscious of  another's mind.You do wonder why he kept this or bought that. Sometimes this is explained in the little high tech GPS like gadget that you are given which tells you about the ...

I bought cheap coffee this morning. It doesn’t have much zing. Last week it was no- name shampoo. It won’t be long now. Next week it will be rollies and then I’ll be looking for old newspapers to make a Flinders Street singlet so that I can sleep in bus shelters. I’ve already looked at every other way that I can possibly economise. I even turn off the vampire power users like the standby light on the computer and the TV. If my showers get any shorter, that won’t be a carbon footprint you’ll see, it will just be dirt. One of my nightmares is turning into a bag lady and drinking this stuff makes it feel awfully close. Roll on Payday. Trouble is, by the time I have paid my bills – power, registration, insurance, the last rates instalment and the phone, I’ll be drinking this stuff for the rest of my life.

The funny part is. This is normally a really quiet area - so quiet that there were a couple of times before I got the TV, when I was sure that the whole neighbourhood had been evacuated and no one had told me. It reminded me of that wonderful bit in Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent (Abacus, 1989), a classic if ever there was one, where he describes coming to a small country town “steeped in that kind of dead silence that makes you wonder, if you are of a suitably hysterical nature, if perhaps everyone has been poisoned in the night by a leak of odourless gas…” It was not unlike that time when my children were late for school because we hadn’t heard that daylight saving had started. We didn’t have TV then either because we lived around the back of the mountain from where the TV tower was. The Headmaster didn’t believe us. Not having TV does rather cut you off from the common experience. Last night I happened to watch a bit of “ Talkin’ Bout Your Generation” (you think when you get a ...

Help! Does anyone have any of those oil spill eating bacteria? There's been a natural disaster in my kitchen. A full bottle of Virgin Olive Oil just slipped through my fingers and shattered on the kitchen floor - a virgin no more. You would be amazed how far that stuff spreads! Not to mention the glass. So far I have used up the entire Weekend Australian including the Motoring Supplement and Sports and I haven’t even finished reading it yet.  Still it spreads – under the benches, under the table, along the sink, down to the back door. I won’t have to lubricate anything for ages, except perhaps my knees. I knew I shouldn’t have washed the floor on Sunday. Though the oil has put a nice sheen on the floorboards and really brings up the grain, I'm not sure it's that good for the carpets. Meanwhile some idiot down the back is lopping trees with a positively ear -splitting chainsaw. My ears haven't fully recovered from Friday. I'll bet he's wearing earmuffs. The s...

First it was floods of biblical proportions in Queensland and a Cyclone. Then New Zealand had its massive Earthquake. Now it's Japan with a chart -topping  Earthquake and Tsunami and possible nuclear meltdown. If I was religiously inclined, I’d be maxing out the credit cards and preparing for the ascent into the heavens for the Chosen Ones. I notice that the churches have been remarkably quiet about the situation, but after the Millennium Bug Fiasco and having cried ‘Wolf” a little too often, they are probably not taking any chances this time. Sometimes I wish I was a believer. It would be a great comfort to think that this was part of some grand plan or that there was someone in charge, but since the innocent and devout, the good and the just are being swept away just as surely as the wicked and corrupt, it simply reaffirms my belief that it’s all totally random, that there is no kindly father in heaven or benign all -seeing being.  It’s just the earth giving a shrug and l...