Child of Abbey Road

I bought an i-Pod recently. I've discovered it to be a most useful toy. It's fun to be able to listen to music in the car shuffled, so that you hear songs out of context with each other. Somehow you tend to listen better to each song, hear it fresh and new, and not take it so much for granted as you do when you're listening to it as part of an album. Besides, you get to hear songs you haven't heard in ages, songs from albums that you don't usually think to bung into your stereo, and that can be delightful to the musical senses!

On the flight home from Cairns, as I was gazing down 10,000 metres onto the Queensland hinterland, I had the headphones of my i-Pod firmly entrenched into my ears. Only I didn't shuffle the songs this time, instead I was moved to listen to the Beatles' Abbey Road. As all my close friends would testify I'm a beatlemaniac if ever there was one. The Beatles are in my blood, so much so that I don't really need to listen to them anymore, they've influenced me so much as it is and their music has assimilated fully into my musical senses. Abbey Road however is a special album for me. I find it to be a very emotive and stirring record. In part this is because the Beatles were disbanding and you sense in this quite unified collection a sense of ending, the end of an era. From the opening sounds of "Come Together" - where John Lennon whispers a totally ominous "shoot me..." - to the finale of McCartney's medley, you sense that this is music that whips up the celebratory consciousness of that era and whirlpools it down the drain so that after that there is no more. Abbey Road is the final album the Beatles recorded although Let it Be, recorded some six months earlier, would be released later than Abbey Road, in 1970.

There is another reason as to why Abbey Road moves me so much, and that is it's because I was conceived at the time of the making of this album. I was born in March 1970, around the time Let it Be was released. Yet there's something in the spirit of Abbey Road that makes me feel that while the album symbolised the end of an era, I as a body/being carried the seed to a new start, a new beginning. I had taken the energy of what had gone before me into my new life, and I feel that energy aligned very closely with Abbey Road, moreso than any other music or anything else for that matter. It's as if whatever creative force had woven through the Beatles in the creation of Abbey Road, it was that same force that spun me into this new life.

It makes me wonder as to the power of conception. Was I conceived at just the right time? It is mere accident or was it meant to be that I came out at precisely that time. It tend to feel it's the latter, and certainly astrologers & taroists, numerologists and all forms of spiritualists would agree with that also.

My dad had just turned 40 when I was born. I'll be turning 40 in March next year...

ain't that daintree

Saturday, 27 June

Life becomes complex as you merge into the wet tropical regions of the earth. Ecosystems become more elaborate within the soup of year-round heat and humidity. The fauna becomes even more plentiful. The fish, the birds, the butterflies become even more fantastically exotic and delightful to the human eye.


I saw some lovely tropical fish off Green Island yesterday. There was this blue/purple fish that was just amazing, miraculous in its supernal sheen of striking blue. There were fish with stripes of colour combinations, some even resembling tigers. The beauty of these fish exuded a great innocence. I realised yet again in viewing these fishies that the earth is abundant with life and all of this life is true, is sacred, and that human endeavours are of no greater value, instead they have merely ruined the earth.

Today I stepped out onto the Daintree Forest in tropical Far North Queensland. I say I stepped “onto” it because I didn’t really touch it, I floated above in on a steel air walk and then climbed a up a canopy. The Daintree is the oldest forest on the planet. It and the fauna and ecosystem on it have existed for 150-200 million years, an unfathomable amount of time. The Amazon is a relative child, she is about seven to nine million years old. The sense of sacredness when wondering through this marvellous forest was palpable. You felt the heat, the beauty, the age and the wisdom of the place, which too was undoubtedly sensed by the local indigenous peoples such as the Kuku Yalangi who lived in and with these forests for thousands of years.


We didn’t spot any Cassowaries today. These are birds that are the size of geese, perhaps larger, feature a striking blue neck and an obvious crown, or hood. Numbers of Cassowaries in the rainforest appear to be slowly dwindling given that much of the rainforest has been cleared by white man to make way for sugar cane over the past hundred years or so. We did see crocodiles on the Daintree River, four in total including one baby. One croc actually moved, slivered to its side and back into the water; the riverboat glider told us it was probably getting too warm in the sun and needed to cool down. It’s midwinter here in Far North Qld and at the moment it’s warmer and sunnier than Sydney at the height of summer.


I had great moments of happinesses yesterday, those moments that place you in the present and throw a big grin on you without even realise it, those moments where your body smiles. One of these moments was landing on Green Island in the Great Barrier Reef and walking down the jetty. Walking into island off the jetty and to the left of the ‘welcome’ sign I was instantly struck with delight by this leafy village appearing before me. It reminded me instantly of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Morning Morgantown’. It was villagey and leafy and took me back to a sixties Californian hippie town. All things considered it was still touristy, but it was just so fresh and freeing to be there on such a beautiful day with fresh green leaves and shops built like huts amongst the trees on this island village.

Being on a small island is a freeing experience in itself. I went swimming at the beach a few times. We were given snorkels to use to observe coral and fish but I found my goggles to be just as useful. The water was still and fresh, not cold but not too warm either so it was just perfect for a hot day. And even with all these beaches I still ventured into the village swimming pool a couple of times – it was chlorinated, and cooler – but it was the surrounds too that made me happy. I burst into a wide grin as I was swimming away there at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I had the key to life, this is the life! I felt so lucky and so fortunate to be there at that moment, and nowhere else, even if it was only to be for a short time only, regrettably. There I was, breaststroking in a chlorinated pool on an island paradise, and having one of the happiest feelings of my life.


I bought a cocktail prior to leaving the island. I rarely, if never, drink cocktails but this experience and place warranted it. Green Island was magnificent. If life consisted of paradise beaches and jumping in and out of resort pools then that would do it for me!
I feel almost a bit cheeky leaving my life in Sydney behind, even if it is for a short while, to help myself to a break 3000km away from home. I will have to be back at work in a fortnight and I’m flying home in a few days, on the 1st of July. Away from Sydney, away from home, I can be clear, open, free to do as I please without obligations and responsibilities at home. I’ve been on two tours on two consecutive days and have not spoken to many people. I notice I’m one of the very few people travelling alone, in fact I’ve only noticed one other person on their own yesterday. Today in the tour bus I sat next to the driver because I was on my own. I may be alone, but I’m not lonely, far from it. I’m just playing it by the moment and enjoying what’s in front of me.
Tomorrow I may hit Rustys Markets in downtown Cairns and go for a walk in the Botanical Gardens, and take nearby rainforest walks. There’s an open mic in the city tomorrow night and I’m likely to attend. I hope someone lends me a guitar.

But more importantly I hope that some of the zing of the this tropical place and the beaches and the rainforests lands me like a stone so that I can return home with a bit more poise and focus in my life, and act accordingly with it.

As it’s said, so without, is within.

the dreamtime returns

Tues, 30 June

Early this afternoon, on my way back from Palm Cove on the northern beaches of Cairns, the bus drove past the rainforest sky-shuttle entry. I’d known of the sky shuttle, it’s one of the tourist things that people do here, but I wasn’t interested enough to partake in that. It’s just that next to the skyshuttle sign was an Aboriginal theme park sign, and lo and behold the bus drove on past the entry to this theme park as it turned back onto the highway and made its way south back to central Cairns.

I was a little miffed by this. I hadn’t heard or read of this park at all. No-one had discussed this or offered it up as a possible tour option, although I hadn’t asked for it to be fair. I do wish I had heard about this park as it’s someplace I really would have wanted to go. I love hearing and reading of Aboriginal culture and it would have been great to participate in learning of Aboriginal life in this area of Australia pre-white settlement. I’d love there to be a book on Aboriginal culture, say, whose chapters were separated into various tribes or regions throughout Australia. Each chapter would detail eating, foraging, hunting, artistic and religious beliefs pertaining to each region. It does not have to be especially intricate although I’d like it to be fairly detailed yet enjoyably readable nonetheless. Does such a book exist? I’ll have to research it, I’m sure it does.

The Australian Aboriginies are said to have inhabited this continent for over 40,000 years. White man’s colonisation commenced some 220 years ago, accounting for the most recent half-a-percent time span of human habitation of Australia. And look where it’s brought us! Cairns is packed to the palm trees with tourists, of all nationalities, and non-north Queenslander Australians – myself included – make up a fair whack of the mix. Look at us, the buildings, the structures, the land clearings, the theme parks that encourage and promote “conservation”, the horrible cheap textiles we wear, mobile phones, wireless internet connections & portable laptops. The list goes on.

The price for this growth in modern conveniences has come at enormous cost, to the people who had to build it or be removed from it, and to the environment. Cheap energy in the form of crude oil is the modern slave that allows anyone who’s reading this to afford a car and a computer and a mobile phone. But prior to that – to the early 20th century - Westernisation and colonisation was built fundamentally on slavery, convictism (a penal form of slavery), forced removal of people from their homes as in Africa, and the butchering and brutality bestowed on indigenous peoples of Australia and North America. This of course is only part of it, only a snapshot.

Aboriginal cultures varied throughout the land and undoubtedly some tribes were happier and freer than others. Aboriginies in various parts of Australia did partake in burn-offs, as we still do today (check the sugar cane country), and who are responsible for some element of environmental deterioration. But of course, white man with their white bread, their grog and infectious diseases, took up the environmental degradation raft and rowed it exponentially fast upstream so that even the salmon were choking behind them, unable to keep pace with this onslaught. Species become extinct world-wide. Weather extremes and drought becomes more commonplace. The combined human culture of a magnificent land is forcibly replaced, and by what? A culture that prides itself on modern conveniences and whose people wear yucky t-shirts that contrast garishly to the natural surrounds. We visit sacred beautiful places on bus tours, take photos on our didji cameras, and walk away – me included. None of us would know how to live off the land to save our lives.

All civilisations that we know of that have existed in the past, Western, Eastern and South American, have all come to pass. Cultures such as the American Indian and Australian Aboriginal have too come to pass as a pervasive way of life for these people and these lands, but these cultures had their way of life forcibly removed from them. The civilisations on the other hand, have died from their own hand due to some form of unsustainability, ie, imperialism, population (food & drought issues), war, greed, and merely the general cycle of things. Our civilisation, the current worldly civilisation that has now enveloped the entire world, looks like it shall pass too. It’s difficult to imagine one’s own way of life coming to an end, but if it happened to many civilisations and cultures before us, then why not ours? As it stands our civilisations hangs on the most precarious thread, far more so than the rest who have gone before us, because we’re relying on cheap energy to fuel our way of life and way of food distribution, and all the while we degradate the earth and her climate with our waste and our pollution and consumption so that we’re becoming more the steaming soup bowl swatted with floating flies rather than the beautiful planet we see from photographs taken from outer space.

So then, in the ultimate scheme of things, the civilisation that brought us to the present moment doesn’t account for much time at all. The Daintree rainforest north of Cairns is 150 million years old. The planet has survived longer than us. The 200 plus years that has seen the decimation of Aboriginal and American Indian cultures, as two examples, and all of the combined awesome knowledge of the land they lived on – every tree, every creature, every shrub, every survival tactic – has eroded irrevocably and never to return as an ongoing, central way of life while this civilisation goes on cogging its rusty old wheels with its electronic conveniences and wilful ways. In the ultimate scheme of things, perhaps how that was just meant to be, the Western Civilisation was to round up the planet and destroy it in its entirety so that out of the ashes the phoenix will rise again; a bird content on living for the planet, for each other as man and woman, for life and love, and it will be a dawning of oneness, not division.

Maybe..

So yes, the dreamtime shall return…

However, Jesus won’t!

Landing in Cairns

Thursday, 25 June

I landed in Cairns this morning; the flight from Sydney took three hours. It felt good taking off from the cold dawn tarmac, to watch the city submerge into playbox houses beneath me as we zoomed far away and into the cloudy altitudes where no-one and almost nothing exists, barring the promise of heaven in the form of mystical cotton-balls in the sky.

And where mortgages and property values hang as utterly meaningless and frankly absurd concepts..

As we descended into Cairns I noticed how different the landscape underneath me appeared. There were swirly rivulets and rivers that no doubt carry crocodiles and other tropical delights. On the ground I realised how majestic the area around Cairns is, the city being surrounded by mountains and tree-covered peaks. Sometimes these peaks were covered with clouds, though in this latitude they resembled heat-packs in the sky moreso than mere clouds. Cairns in the dead of winter is about the same as an average Sydney summer’s day. It’s warm to hot and muggy, but with a coolish breeze near the coast that renders the temperature to be mild at times. The nearby Atherton tablelands rise to over 3,000ft and they do cool down during the winter, particularly at nights.

I settled into my digs and did some nearby grocery shopping. I was expecting a string of hip cafes but instead there were the supermarkets, bottle shop, a few non-descript clothes and CD shops, and a few food outlets including Subway, all enclosed within your standard Aussie suburban mall really, no different to say, the mall in Glenorchy, Tasmania, situated down on the cold end of the country.

Later I took a walk around the groves surrounding this property where I’m staying. I don’t know why but tropical fauna isn’t as invigorating as temperate or cool-climate fauna. Perhaps the heat and humidity sever the refreshing effect of the foliage to some degree. Either way it’s great to see plants, trees and fauna grow so readily as they do in the tropics. This place is full of palm trees too, as is to be expected.

I decided today would be the day that I just hung around the town. I went for a long walk up and down the Cairns esplanade. Again, it’s not so different to the esplanade in Melbourne’s St Kilda, or Brighton Le Sands in Sydney for that matter. You really can’t help but notice that you’re in a vastly different place out here. There are mountains on either side of the esplanade that jut out from the heads in each horizon. You feel that enclosed zingy sense of being in the tropics. Most of all, and it’s almost a dissapointment, there’s no stirling bright blue beach in Cairns; what is all up and down the esplanade are mud flats. Mud flats, with a few attempts by trees to grow before they become flooded by heavy rains, and birds such as ibises nibbling on what they can gather from there. The mud flats aren’t ugly, but they ain’t pretty either. Tomorrow I’ll be going to the Great Barrier Reef where the water is expected to be a lot clearer!

I have tours booked for some of the days. Sunday and Tuesday I plan to be a bit more local – and this may include a bus trip to the beaches north of the city – and also visit the city markets, the botanic gardens and do some tropical rainforest walks. On Sunday too I plan to go to the markets in the morning, and in the evening attend an open mike night. At this stage however I’m content to relax and stay indoors a bit, particularly at night. I’m enjoying the feeling of sorting out my brain and my head and whatever feelings of dissatisfaction I’ve been dealing with at home.

The answer to my spiritual problems??? Get on with it. Do it. Unhappy about something? Take action. Leaving Sydney is pointless almost, and besides, the people I care for and love are all there. That’s why travel’s never been a huge imperative for me, even though I do make a good traveller and I enjoy it. I love being in new places and finding my way around them and experiencing the sights and smells and weather and feels of the new place. But there tends to be a form of ephemerality to travel. It’s like great music if you’re a musician. It can be loved, glorified and revelled in, but it can’t be sustained. Without fail there’s always “myself” to fall back on. That’s why, I realise, I need to deal with myself on a practical level. Sometimes this needs to be done within one’s own doorstep, within one’s own shoes, wherever they may or may not trod.

I’ve only been here for 10 hours, and it does feel like I’ve been here much longer yes, but the sense I have from being in the tropics is not an all too comfortable one. I feel much more settled and stable in the temperate zones. The feeling you get in the tropics is a sort of “pinched” vibe, where you sense that the headiness of the environment is trying to squeeze you out of there. The noticeably-angled palm trees lining the esplanade are their way of warning me to watch out for the elements here. The weather is volatile here in FNQ. I’m here during the quiet period but coming into October onward and the heavy rains and winds come lashing down. Hot, steamy, and stormy! Those mountains surrounding Cairns look like they’re in control and have authority to unleash whatever extremity they like on the local and visiting populace down at ground zero.

But for the meantime I have some tropical exploration to do! Cairns, and Far North Queensland!

hunters hill & woolwich

today i met up with sarah at a park in woolwich for a historical walk around the hunters hill area. hunter's hill and woolwich are situated on a peninsula that juts off gladesville just over the bridge from drummoyne when driving in from balmain or rozelle. neither of us have ventured into the area much at all during our lives so it was of great surprise and delight to us to discover and walk through this historic area. there were spectacular water views, tree lined streets and frontage of houses that sprouted liberal and varied amounts of wonderful foliage. the houses themselves were amazing, there were sandstone cottages (hunters hill is known for its sandstone), beautiful weatherboard cottages and loving restored federation homes. the area felt genteel and safe and unlike many other blue-ribbon areas it didn't have a narcy edge to it. we felt comfortable walking the streets of this fine area that - whilst being close to the inner & northern western suburbs, the north shore, and the city and eastern suburbs - felt like a little getaway for us, a holiday in our own city.

i love beautiful areas, moreso than ever. i'd love to live somewhere really splendid. perhaps hunters hill is it but where does the money come from? sometimes, in observing the way some people live, i do happen to think it grows on trees, only that a select few know where to find or cultivate these magic trees. money will buy a beautiful sweet little home, yes. i'd love that. with a piano, yeah, a beautiful piano. and trees goddamn, trees and wonderful foliage that glistens in the afternoon sunlight.

way over yonder, yeah, that's where i'm bound...

shurrup Suit!!!

You know, sometimes I do have this fantasy of the world blowing up and our civilisation collapsing along with it, to see the whole structure and edifice coming down like fluff cards, bringing down volumes of dust and rubble that'll see the end of us all.

Many are predicting that this will happen one way or the other, and not before too long too.

I mean, I love life. I love nature, trees, walks in the park. I love the people I love, I love acoustic guitars made of beautiful wood, I love ukuleles, I love garden-fresh salads....

it's just that...I'm continually dismayed at civilisation's drawing card - money - and the power and sway it has on people, along with the bondage, burden, sacrifice and humiliation it inflicts upon the majority of the world's people and their lives, particularly us lot in the west.

How capricious is investment. Investing in property for fuck's sake, or the friggin' share market. The non-Westerners (and Easterners) had it right by living off and from the land. All this hype about where to put your money. It's incredulous, but if you've read Ancient History - ie, Greece & Rome particularly - you realise that nothing changes. Societies are built around greed and avarice that are essentially of no real value to the individual human being.

On the TV tonight: a major bank is caught having extravagant parties for its top performing lenders hosted at tropical Hamilton Island where $400000 was spent. Well this sort of thing has been happening since time began. You make shitloads of money and you treat yourself lavishly as the majority of the population are paying you in "interest"; interest that builds up in the scores and often hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 30-year period, merely for the privilege of owning your own home. For that money, in Sydney now, you can actually purchase a studio apartment with shared loo and spend your entire life paying it off! And then some.

I'm wary of real-estate agents & car-dealers, basically anyone who deals in big money. I don't like their drive and focus on something that is, well, lacking in any real soul. This includes professional investors. It's all about getting, getting getting. What about being thankful and grateful for what we've got, which is so much??? What about a bit more simplicity, and a lot more community, more connection that is true and not tied to stocks and money and mortgage rates.

We all have to make the effort and focus on it to make it work, to link the neurons as it were.

It's harder living in the big city than say, living in a hip town or community where these values are often nourished and given credence in people's habits and lifestyles.

Just look at it all. Structures. Western civilisation. Potentially dangerous climate change. Droughts. Resource/energy depletion. World gaps between the starving and the affluent.

May you live in interesting times.

Indeed.

dump city

I don't know what came over me. Perhaps I was persuaded by a cast of thousands. More likely I was distracted and needed something to focus on.

So I went to an apartment display and put a holding deposit on an apartment that I've since reneged on and will be receiving my deposit back.

The apartment is in a near-new complex in St Peters, just off the Princes Highway, although this particular apartment faced the main road. It didn't have a shared wall off the living area, and combined with it being in a noisy area, I felt that a good thing if I want to play piano or guitar and sing without fear of disturbing neighbours. It was actually a fine apartment in its own right, and attractively priced.

But amongst many other things, do I want to be 40, 45, 50, and be singing to a wall while I pay off interest to a bank to be breathing in noxious fumes from the ground below and all of the nearby industrial crap of Alexandria???

To hell, No!

My God, what a nightmare I almost bought myself into...

And thankfully all my solicitor wanted for his services was to buy him a case of Belgian beer. He invited me to a tasting yesterday which was quite fun, and not the sort of thing I'd be doing unless I was invited to do so.

On the day of inspection - there were a few apartments available in the complex - I took a walk around the area. I crossed the highway and walked around the Alexandria/western side of the highway. I walked down this little street and along a fence that seemed to have rubble and nothing over its other side. What disturbed me as I turned a corner was a mound, up to about 10 feet tall, that I saw over the fence. It was covered in some light grass and spinifex. That which disturbed me was this, that the vibe or quality of the spinifex was outer-worldly, almost evil, and definitely toxic. It was not healthy at all. As I continued walking I came to an entry gate with a sign saying Alexandria Landfill. Oh.

Granted the apartment is walking distance from Enmore, and then Newtown. So what. I don't think I can even handle Newtown anymore unless it's the northern end. I need trees and greenery, and fresh air.

As for St Peters, yes there are some acceptable and even pleasant pockets of old single and double storey terraces strewn around the suburb. But even to this day, the suburb has a definable "beaten-down" feel. Some of it is downright evil. Two blocks down from where the apartments are is Mary Street where there is St Peters rehearsal studios. That is the most evil, horrible place I've ever been to. I used to rehearse with bands there occasionally and the area around the car-park is frightening. I don't know why. I'm not usually uber-sensitive to vibes but you do feel it around there. I've had three bits of bad luck in that studio and never wish to go back there again.

And there it is, up the road from the apartments as you approach Enmore is what is now Sydney Park. It's a relatively new park, it's what's used to be the brickworks where my father worked. The two long chimneys remain as landmarks. There's barely any fauna or flora in that park because I suspect not much can actually grow there. And I remind myself of a song I wrote some 14 years, 'Alexandria' where the words are, to begin with:

Alexandria
dump city
gasp a dose of the factory zoning pity
warehouse cubby-hole, mooncrater road
please just get me outta this dirt.

The roads have since been worked on and improved but really, the whole place is just fucking awful.

Sometimes I do things perversely to give myself a shock, so that the electric currents jolt me into a state of what I really want.

The entire south inner-west is OUT!!! The northern inner-west and west however is way more acceptable to me. Ideally Randwick is the optimal suburb but it comes at an optimal price.

For the moment I'll chill on it and maybe take another small holiday before going back to work. But what's still bothering me is that I remain haunted by the vibe of Alexandria and St Peters. I visited many haunted places in Tasmania but because the surrounds were so beautiful, the negativity was negated to a large degree. The aforementioned suburbs are really - to a large extent - just bog awful.

Tonight I'm playing bass with some friends at Kellys in Newtown. And suddenly the thought of going to Newtown makes me want to gag. It'll pass though, and it'll be fine. Newtown's ok - but I do know its history.

If I'm going to spend huge amounts of money on property - and you do need huge amounts to buy in Sydney - then I'd prefer to buy somewhere with foliage, clean air, space, and a garden to grow things. This reads, out of Sydney. So for now, forget it!

My priority now is to get that haunted, industrial feeling out of me, uggh!

And take another breather somewhere!

port arthur...

Port Arthur in Tasmania is an amazing place. A 90 minute drive out of Hobart, Port Arthur is blessed with a stunning natural harbour and lush green vista of rolling hills. It is also home to a penal colony that flourished in the 19th century and today there is a historical site that is maintained by tourist dollars.

The tourist site is fabulous. The site is open from 8:30am in the morning up until about 9:30pm at night, when the last ghost tour ends. We got there in the early afternoon and stayed for the ghost tour in the evening under full moon.

There's an eerie vibe when walking through Port Arthur. It feels pregnant with the pain of anguish, yet there is a tranquility that calms this to some degree. You can almost hear the moans and screams of generations past as you wander through the remains of the penitentiary, the asylum, or the dark cells where some patients or convicts were locked away in total darkness for days on end.

As I see it, the entire system of convicts sent to Australia was a thinly veiled disguise for slavery, for using uber-cheap labour to build this country. In America this work was done by Africans forced from their land. English industrialism during the 18th century produced a band of ultra-wealthy capitalists whilst most of the population, driven to the cities to work, became impoverished. These people were often forced to steal and so for stealing a loaf of bread you were sent to "New South Wales", or Van Dieman's Land as Tasmania was then known. All in all it was an ingenious albeit diabolical excuse for slavery, for cheap labour.

The ghost tour was brilliant with many delightful and eerie anecdotes told by our tour guide. That the place is haunted is beyond question, you only have to go into the underground operating room to almost sense the blood seeping from the walls...

The Broad Arrow cafe was probably the most chilling spot we visited in Port Arthur. This was the scene of a mad gunman's massacre that killed 35 people in April 1996. There is a memorial to the spot, and only the shell of the cafe remains. We walked into the centre of the cafe's shell and we both felt this pressurised, claustrophobic sensation that made us want to walk back out in a hurry. Apparently there were T-shirts available prior to the massacre available that said "I survived Port Arthur", and these were discarded from sale after the tragic event in 1996.

And here we are. Visitors from all over Australia and the world, going on tours, seeing exhibitions, going on the harbour cruise, wearing all manner of cheap colourful clothing made by underpaid workers from all around the globe, carrying our mobile phones and checking our gmails and facebooks, inspecting and learning about what happened on this beautiful port some 140-190 years ago. What on earth would the convicts have thought of all this? It would have been utterly inconceivable to them. Yet they would take heart that people would be coming and paying homage and respect to the hard and treacherous lives they had to endure and live through.

Tasmania is full of heartbreak. We went into the State Gallery in central Hobart to shelter from a severe rainstorm and found ourselves discovering the story of Aboriginal displacement and genocide during the 19th century. No full-blooded Aboriginies survived the "bounty hunt" of the 1840's. You can feel this soft blanket of sadness throughout the land, a land that is just stunning in its beauty yet languid in its soft velvet grief.

There was another bounty-hunt in the 1880's, that of the Thylacine aka Tasmanian Tiger. Footage of this magnificent creature from London & Hobart zoos is televised continously at this museum. The tiger resembles a canine/feline cross and it has stripes only towards its lower back. The thaylacine became extinct on the Australian mainland some 5,000 years ago and now she appears to be extinct indefinitely.

Our journey to Tasmania was a magnificent, eye-opening and educational experience and I just had the best time and a big part of me wishes that life stayed the way it was whilst in Tassie.