While I was in Hobart for the funeral, I decided to get out and about in the couple of spare hours I had after the wake before the sun went down, and, again, the following morning, before I needed to head to the airport to catch my first of two flights for the day. Hobart is not so easy to get to from Canberra, having to catch connecting flights in either Sydney or Melbourne. It's a four-hour minimum trip. Not something you can do in one day really.
Anyway, I may have mentioned that is our plan to leave Canberra and move south to Tasmania - Hobart to be exact - within the next five years. We most certainly have to be there by 2013, when we have Romily booked into Year 5 of school.
Downtown Hobart
Carl has lived in Hobart before, during a two-year posting with the Army. I've not lived there, but I feel drawn to the place and every time I visit, which is usually once a year. I feel like I'm coming home.
Added attractions are that my parents are retiring to an island paradise south of Hobart in the next two years, my good friend Kate lives there, and my brothers and their families are regular visitors. Surprisingly, quite a few of Carl's oldest friends are also from Tasmania, and are frequent visitors, particularly around the holiday season when they're catching up with family.
But they're only secondary reasons, the primary being that Hobart is a place of natural beauty, history and charm - everything Canberra is not. The pace is also a lot slower than anywhere else in Australia. I am tired. Tired of working so hard, every week, year after year. I have another 30 or so years of work ahead of me, and I don't know if I can handle the constant pressure. I do know that I am a much happier person when I don't have such a burden on my shoulders. Tassie offers a kind of sanctuary in that it has really been left behind by the 'rat race'. Don't get me wrong, people work hard in Tassie, but it's just a different kind of work. It's also far removed from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, and the further you are away from the power centres, the less you feel like a mouse trapped in a wheel going nowhere.
Property prices are lower than any other capital city. What we own here in Canberra could buy us a large house on a large block overlooking the river or the ocean in Hobart. It's also the only place in Australia where you can go from the snowfields to the beach within 30 minutes. The outdoor lifestyle is hard to beat. Hobart has some of the longest days in Australia, and is the second driest capital, so while it's chillingly cold in winter, the days are clear and pristine. It really is like a piece of heaven on earth. We are both very fixed on living there. The sooner the better in my book, but we really have to wait until we have baby #2. Then I can start looking for a job down there. We need Carl to be able to slot back into work really easily, and that just can't be done in Hobart. So it'll be a couple of years before we can make the move. It feels sometimes like we'll never get there, but every so often we manage a visit.
So, getting out and about after the funeral was a way not only to reacquaint myself with Hobart, but I also used it as an opportunity to get a better idea of where we (I) might like to live. Here are some photos I snapped as the sun went down.
This could possibly be my dream house, but perhaps I've been reading Pride and Prejudice too often!
This is its view:
Look how clear the water is in the harbour...
This is one of the main buildings at Romily's future school -
The Friends' School. The school has strong social values and is very community focused, which we really like about it. It also offers the International Baccalaureate as an alternative to the Tasmanian Certificate of Education. I had a lovely walk through the grounds before the children started arriving for school.
I left Hobart exhausted - emotionally drained from the funeral and tired from flying - but not with a heavy heart. We'll be back for another visit in around five weeks, for our summer holiday. I can't wait.
As part of this journey, Romily and I have been making up some crazy exclamations to use instead of naughty words! One of our favourite expressions is 'crazy coconuts!' I use this a lot and I think it's pretty harmless. It's become part of our family vernacular, and I think it's the perfect expression to use about the crazy coconuts weather we've been having in Canberra lately.
Lots of storms, rainbows, electrical storms, huge cloudstacks building almost every afternoon. We've had hot days and cold days. It's even been snowing up in the mountains just south of Canberra. All this in mid-spring!
Cold, rainy days have meant the kids and I have spent quite a few of them inside. What better to do on a rainy day than bake? Romily has been helping me use up our overripe bananas and we've made some delicious batches of muffins (secret ingredient is a small tub of Vaalia toddlers yoghurt) as well as a couple of more-ish banana chocolate cakes. The recipe is so easy and obviously foolproof, since I've managed to make it twice and been very happy with the results. I went off-road (or is that off-recipe?) and added some cream cheese icing. Delicious. If you want the recipe, get yourself a copy of the Homemade recipe book that I posted about here. You can order a PDF or hard copy. The PDF is only AUD$8 and the hard copy $15 + P&H. It's the best cookbook - all of the recipes are easy and most of them were contributed by busy mums so they're good for all the family.
