FOREWORD: At the end of January each year there is a conference at Low Head where 'the locals' gather to talk about their 'placedness', their Tamaresk stories, their imaginings and more still. This kind of conference doesn't happen in many places but in Low Head there is a longish tradition for people in Low Head for their summer break to attend, catch-up and ponder their placedness. To be invited to give a paper and share an imagining is something of an honour but the paper introduced here was an opportunity to both glean and share information that Low Head people had special knowledge of and enthusiasms for.
"Introduction: As any New Tasmanian will tell you, every New Tasmanian needs an induction into being Tasmanian. They need to know about:
- Food – Apples, Lamb, Cheeses, Mutton Birds, Scallops, Trevalla, Abalone, Leatherwood Honey, Pink Eye potatoes and more recently cool climate wines
- Tasmania’s Colonial history – Georgian buildings, convicts, some bushranging, etc.
- Things endemically Tasmanian – Huon Pine and The Piners, Blackwood, Tasmania Devils and the Thylacine
- Tasmanian Hot Issues –Forest debates, The Hydro, Lake Pedder and ‘The Wilderness’.
Up there with all of this is Tasmania’s Aboriginal history, 'The Truganini Story' and Tasmania’s ubiquitous shell necklaces.
This is the kind of crash course that takes place over morning coffee, at barbecues, over dinner tables, at parties, over a drink at exhibition openings, etc. It all comes with ABSOLUTE authority and based on irrefutable evidence. All this is especially important if you have been imported to, among other things, write speeches with cultural messages for politicians and others who are trying to appear‘erudite and informed’.
Somehow the TIP (Tasmanian Induction Process) is more intense than similar inductions seem to be almost anywhere else.
About the first thing a New Tasmanian [or as a Tamaresk resident], or a visitor who feels somewhat obliged to feel connected, needs to do is get some Huon pine. It is that quintessential thing to be sending friends and family back ’home’ to prove that you have indeed moved to, or have been, elsewhere. A little bit of Huon pine carries so many stories. [On the Tamar now it'd probably be wine and once it might have been fine wool]
Very high on the list of must-know-abouts is Tasmanian necklace making. To anyone who has lived in Tasmania for any time, they would know something about shell necklaces, Truganini, her necklaces and other necklace stories. Truganini seems to be the usual starting point.
Almost like ‘white noise,’ apple stories proliferate in Tasmania. Again, anyone who has lived in Tasmania for any time will know someone who was, or is, or whose family is/was involved in 'the apple industry’. Along Tasmania’s highways and back roads apple trees have gone feral. It is not for nothing that Tasmania is known as the Apple Isle... Click here to read the paper
This is the kind of crash course that takes place over morning coffee, at barbecues, over dinner tables, at parties, over a drink at exhibition openings, etc. It all comes with ABSOLUTE authority and based on irrefutable evidence. All this is especially important if you have been imported to, among other things, write speeches with cultural messages for politicians and others who are trying to appear‘erudite and informed’.
Somehow the TIP (Tasmanian Induction Process) is more intense than similar inductions seem to be almost anywhere else.
About the first thing a New Tasmanian [or as a Tamaresk resident], or a visitor who feels somewhat obliged to feel connected, needs to do is get some Huon pine. It is that quintessential thing to be sending friends and family back ’home’ to prove that you have indeed moved to, or have been, elsewhere. A little bit of Huon pine carries so many stories. [On the Tamar now it'd probably be wine and once it might have been fine wool]
Very high on the list of must-know-abouts is Tasmanian necklace making. To anyone who has lived in Tasmania for any time, they would know something about shell necklaces, Truganini, her necklaces and other necklace stories. Truganini seems to be the usual starting point.
Almost like ‘white noise,’ apple stories proliferate in Tasmania. Again, anyone who has lived in Tasmania for any time will know someone who was, or is, or whose family is/was involved in 'the apple industry’. Along Tasmania’s highways and back roads apple trees have gone feral. It is not for nothing that Tasmania is known as the Apple Isle... Click here to read the paper
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