One Year in Tassie

So, here we are, we’ve almost been in Tasmania for a year. It’s been an interesting experience for us all so far. It’s funny how we are getting used to things: for instance the fantastic view from our house. It becomes normal, and you really have to pinch yourself sometimes how fortunate we are to have this. Only after having been away for a while do you really notice it.


One of the things that our house lacks is a place to park the cars. We are currently using our neighbour’s vacant land, but she will be building there in the next year, so we’ll need something for ourselves. This has been quite a saga, and expensive already. We’ve gone through three different solutions and engineer’s designs that had to be abandoned because of different reasons. The first one was too expensive, the next one probably required too much (hard, bluestone) rock breaking close to the house’s foundation, and with the last one we couldn’t meet the slope requirements to clear the council’s sewer that runs through our land. The final solution now will be quite simple (and hopefully not too expensive) but requires a three-point turn when entering or leaving the parking area. We’ve already cleared a few trees and quite a bit of bush around the house, and being non-gardeners, we’ve been amazed by how quickly areas get overgrown…


Living in a bushy environment means there are lots of insects and bigger creatures around: heaps of lizards, possums and even a wallabie (a small kangaroo). But it’s some insects that cause us some bother at times because they come into the house: we’ve had big spiders (Bernt had to come home from work a few weeks ago because there was huge one in Annabelle’s bedroom…), some scorpions, ants and these funny (harmless) worm-like creatures that curl up when they’re threatened. Doris doesn’t like any of them, and especially with young Annabelle we have to make sure we keep them outside…


Understandable we were feeling a bit isolated initially, not knowing many people, and having no family here. Luckily we’ve got wonderful neighbours: Nino and Carmelina next door, who’ve almost become surrogate grandparents, and Benn and Michele up the hill behind us. Benn and Michele recently retired and are traveling the world for a year and they have leased there home to Erica and Stuart, and their 3 year-old son Joe who is great friends with Christopher. We’ve become quite close to them.
Then we’ve gotten to know a few parents through Christopher’s school Possums, and interestingly mostly people that came from interstate also.

One of the things that appealed to us about Hobart was the clean air. And it definitely is: in summertime… But many people in Tasmania have woodheaters, so when the weather is a bit cooler they get lit in late afternoon, early evening. So there can be quite a haze of pollution over the city and even around our area.
Because our house got quite cold in wintertime too, we installed electrical heaters in all the rooms, in addition to the (LP-gas) heater in the lounge room.


That brings us to the infamous Tassie weather. We’d heard many comments about how cold it gets here, but especially Bernt wasn’t worried about that: it gets much colder in Holland. However it has been an eye opener. It does get quite cold, WINDY and wet (the coldest days would be between 2 degrees at night to 6 degrees during the day), but the worst is that that the houses, including ours, aren’t really built that well. Single-pane windows, gaps around the doors and little insulation mean that the houses aren’t very energy-efficient, so expensive to heat and drafty as well. We are pretty sure that that was a big factor in Annabelle’s string of colds… We did the basic things to insulate, but it would require major work to make the house ‘green’.


So overall we have enjoyed the first year here in Tasmania, but… we’ll probably sell the house and move back to Melbourne in 2008. Yip, the adventure will most likely come to an end! Doris felt quite isolated during her time in Tassie, even with going to work and having interactions with so many people every day. It’s the spiritual-healing-metaphysical type of conversations and friendships that Doris misses the most and we feel we have more of that in Melbourne. Doris has also learned that she really doesn’t like the cold, especially when it’s coupled with gale force winds, she misses her family too much (it’s bad enough being away from one set of family, let alone two), and we are missing the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Melbourne. We are also finding that life here really isn’t that different from living in Melbourne, and we really haven’t taken that much advantage of the natural beauty of Tasmania. Bernt will miss his regular runs along the beach, but he’ll get over that! (or he’ll just have to find a place to live near the beach in Melbourne, which is going to be expensive … but not impossible).