The sense of smell has an unrivalled power to evoke memory, and whenever I catch the hint of woodsmoke on an icy breeze in the hour before dusk, I am instantly back in Hobart.
Like many of my generation, as a young adult in the mid-1990s, I left Tasmania for the fabled mainland. I fled to find work rather than sit on the dole at a time of soaring youth unemployment, to be surrounded by strangers rather than to always run into people I knew, and most of all to banish the crippling, ever-present sense that, by virtue of geography, life was passing me by.
In my youthful mind, a life lived in the isolated little island could only be half-lived. Better to be in the big smoke, the bright lights, the rush and press and always present-ness of humanity, the never-ceasing currents of a place connected to the rest of the world. So I got on a plane with a one way ticket that cost three times the amount of a return trip today, and thought of it as escaping.
As I chased the world outside, Tasmania built for itself a mythical place in the Australian consciousness. At lunch with colleagues one day, it comes starkly home to me that the mythology is built almost entirely on the state’s harsh but distant convict past and savvy marketing that has sold wild places and organic produce to the world. When it comes to recent social history and how that shaped people, wider awareness seems to begin and end with a sense of the place being green and the people friendly.
Over our meal, I share stories with another Tasmanian who joined the exodus of the young and idealistic. To us, fierce working class pride, kids leaving school after Grade 10 without anybody batting an eyelid, wealth and poverty rubbing shoulders, and people dying early after living tough lives, are normal memories of the world around us. They were things that simply occurred, with little notice and even less fanfare.
She muses about the school dentist – because the state wanted a generation who didn’t have dentures by the time they were 21 – puffing on a cigarette as he checked her teeth. In turn, I offer recollections of the goitre checks that were still happening in primary schools because diets remained so sketchy.
Our colleagues look on in mingled horror and disbelief, as if we are talking about the 1890s not the 1980s.
We talk about the violent political protests that unknowingly set Tasmania on its path to reliance on tourism, and the loss of blue collar industries along with the desperation and social disintegration that were the consequence of that upheaval. Old loggers probably never dreamed of becoming baristas for Asian tourists, we say with short, grim nods. We remember the shadows cast by long-term unemployment, welfare dependence and suicide, and contemplate how strange it is that there are now well-meaning social programs for everything – an entire industry of caring. We recall stoic acceptance that life is unfair so you just have to make the best of what you’ve got.
Our experiences are, we agree, memories that we wouldn’t change for the world. They are why we are who we are. We laugh as we reminisce, with an ability to find black humour about the bitterness of life that is in itself so very Tasmanian.
“Do you ever think about moving back?” I finally ask.
“All the time,” she shrugs, “but I can’t afford the housing there.”
I nod.
. . .
In brief visits, I have returned to the places I loved without knowing it when I took them for granted, only to learn the unavoidable lesson: when we go back home, it is no longer there.
I wander into tiny shops and look for the strange folk who used to linger, delightfully unkempt bush-dwellers who lived through bartering and discreet exchanges of their green-thumbed efforts in return for cash, but they have been replaced by self-consciously alternative “artisans”. I engage them in conversation and find that many have moved down from the mainland. They seem to be deliberately cultivating what they think is the image of a Tasmanian, playing a part that makes a mockery of people I knew. I contemplate whether they would ever have lived in a rough camp for months and chained themselves to bulldozers, and decide that they would more likely have chained themselves to brand new phones in million dollar homes, to post angry tweets.
I go to the lookouts, the leafy hideaways, the beaches where I used to find solitude, and am surrounded by groups of happy tourists loudly exclaiming over the pristine quaintness of it all. I take off my boots so that I can feel sand clumping between my toes and wade into the icy water for no other reason than to feel it slowly chilling me. Then I realise, from the bemused looks I am getting, that the people around me have no idea why that is so necessary.
I dawdle along the rows at Salamanca on a Saturday morning, my fingers running over the soft, pleasing curves of expensive turned wood as light sparkles off delicate silver jewellery that I could order online, if I wanted. Despite the abundance of beauty around me, the oddly homogenous and carefully curated stalls pale in my mind to piles of tattered and obscure books, second-hand clothes, indescribable oddities of taxidermy and imagination, strange creations of crystal and clay and stone, and scented oil that smelled of burning leaves. The treasure trove of things that you had to be there to find, and could find nowhere else because they could never have existed elsewhere.
I walk slowly around the centre of Hobart after dark, wanting to recapture the sense of enjoyable melancholy that comes from misty street lights and the silence of closed shop fronts as infrequent cars hiss by on a rain-burnished street. Cafes and restaurants bustle and the flow of traffic barely ebbs. I catch snatches of conversation that have the same tones and cadences that I would hear anywhere. The flat, measured drawl, the elongation of vowels that saw Tasmanians labelled as slow, has all but vanished.
By almost every objective measure, life in Tasmania has improved since the years when I wandered, wanting more. Even the intractable problems – unemployment, substance abuse, housing – are mainstream concerns rather than being spoken of only by do-gooders using hushed tones. The politics are sedate and spin-doctored.
Yet the intangibles, so readily dismissed with a polite shake of the head about how backwards and cut-off the state used to be, are as much about loss as they are of “progress”. The things I wanted so much in my youth in Hobart now thrive – but I am no longer looking for them. Instead, I want the unaffected eccentricity, the magnificent isolation and grimly determined self-reliance it breeds, the rawness and brutality that always simmered just below the surface of incredible beauty. I want the true uniqueness of Tasmania, with all its imperfections and contradictions.
I often find myself speculating whether the gypsy-like life I have lived since leaving is because there is something about Tasmania that was etched into my soul early on, a phantom trace that leaves me always searching for a remnant, a lingering vestige, a faint resemblance of what is gone. Wherever I am, as the light fades on a winter’s afternoon, I long for the smell of woodsmoke on cold air.
Dr Samara McPhedran left Tasmania to seek her fortune. The excitement of that soon waning, she has instead collected degrees, careers and assorted arcane knowledge. Once upon a time, she wanted to be a journalist, a lawyer, or a Greens politician. Now, she writes for love not money, enjoys a good legal argument, and meddles in politics with healthy nihilism and her eyes open.
