48 loved up hours in Hobart

Hobart is the perfect destination for the romantically inclined. This charming southern gem will delight you with its beauty and history, and many modern hidden treasures.

Not sure where to start? Don’t panic. We’ve got you covered for an unforgettable couple’s getaway that won’t break the bank.

Friday 1pm

You’ve just landed and are keen to get out and explore the city, but you can’t do it on an empty stomach.

Welcome to Hobart

Head straight to the heart of the action at Mures, a Tasmanian institution since 1973. Renowned for their fresh seafood, there’s something for everyone, from traditional fish and chips at Lower Deck to the extravagant indulgence at Pearl + Co.

Friday 2.30pm

Hunger sated — for now — you stroll hand in hand to the surprisingly engaging Mawson’s Hut replica museum and thrill to the fantastic adventures told by an experienced Antarctic explorer.

Your adventurous spirits roused, you decide the only solution is to warm yourselves with spirits of the local variety.

Friday 4pm

With so much fresh local produce you’ll be spoiled for choice, so be ready to eat — and drink. From locally brewed, crisp beers to delicious Tasmanian wine and award-winning whiskey available in a range of distilleries, there’s no shortage of refreshing ways to imbibe during your stay.

It’s a short walk to a world of wonderful whisky at Lark Distillery. Even on a budget, it’s worth a visit to Lark’s Cellar Door to sample the wares and gaze in wonder at the sumptuous libations on offer.

Ready for more? Stroll down to the Telegraph Hotel. This corner venue is notorious for rowdy nights but is lively and pleasant in the late afternoon sunshine. Take advantage of happy hour for $10 steins, $5 shots and $10 cocktails and move on before it becomes too crowded.

Friday night fun — 7pm

Rektango is a weekly musical extravaganza held in the beautiful Salamanca courtyard. Framed by sandstone facades, it’s a stunningly beautiful place to spend a Friday evening.

Rektango – embrace the music

With anything from Latin rhythms to gypsy swing, the music is upbeat and intoxicating and the artistic, community vibe is uniquely Hobart.

Running every Friday night, this free event is not to be missed.

Friday 9pm

Inviting booths line the sandstone walls inside Waterman’s Beer Market. Get cosy and sample the huge range of beers and cheap, tasty pizza. Live music, a great atmosphere and friendly staff will make your night.

Friday 11pm

Head home for an early one, because you’ve got a big day ahead.

Saturday morning vibes — 9am

If the waterfront and Salamanca Place are the heart of Hobart, Elizabeth Street is its soul.

Get up early, don sensible shoes, and head to the bustling North Hobart shopping and restaurant district.

Beauty is everywhere you look in Hobart

Swoon over the gorgeous historic buildings, then visit berta for a hearty breakfast.

The healthy breakfast bowl will cure what ails you and provide you with the necessary fuel for the day ahead.

11am

Walk into town — don’t worry, it’s downhill all the way — and pop into the Salamanca markets. They’re busy, full of tourists, but they have an undeniable charm and are worth a look.

12pm — ferry ride + art!

No visit to Hobart is complete without a trip to MONA! Pre-book to save the hassle and trust that it’s worth paying extra for the return posh pit experience.

Not only will you ride in comfort, but you’ll love the mouth-watering canapés and free-flowing Moo Brew and Moorilla local wine.

Wrought iron artworks on the grounds of MONA

You’ll be there for hours. Delight in the ever-evolving world of art and, once you’ve soaked up all the culture you can handle, chill out on bean bags and savour a refreshing beverage in the beautiful grounds.

There’s something to intrigue you everywhere you look.

Saturday night- 6pm return ferry

Head to your Airbnb, hotel or room, get refreshed and head up to North Hobart for an old fashioned pub crawl.

Saturday 8pm — Elizabeth Street

Tackle a burger or share some snacks (Mexican street corn is a favourite of the locals) and relax in the Americana-style action at The Winston.

Wander down to the intimate surrounds of Raincheck bar, revel in the warmth of the Republic’s large beer garden and finish out the night in one of Hobart’s best kept secrets, Kaiju Can Bar.

Kaiju can bar, Elizabeth Street’s hidden gem

Just two minutes from your hotel, this hole in the wall is home to Hobart’s cheapest drinks and best music.

Sunday 10am

After checking out, pick up your elixir at Pilgrim coffee on Argyle Street and explore the picturesque surrounds of the University Rose Garden. It’s lovely, it’s free and it’s the perfect place to spend the last morning of your romantic getaway.

Sunday 12pm

One of the many great things about Hobart is its size — it’s so small that you can easily enjoy a stroll around town.

Be sure to venture upstairs for an incredible collection of British memorabilia

Marvel at the striking architecture, immerse yourself in its colonial history and share a traditional Sunday lunch in the grand upstairs dining room at one of Australia’s oldest pubs, the Hope & Anchor tavern.

After a weekend of indulging and exploring, you’ll head back to the mainland reluctant but full of love.

The Gatwick Hotel

This morning I read the sad news that St Kilda’s most infamous boarding house, The Gatwick Private Hotel, is likely to be sold off and turned into boutique accommodation.

The Gatwick is an institution. Despite the ongoing and relentless gentrification and slide into sterility that has been the fate of St Kilda for many years, The Gatwick has remained as a bastion of solace and refuge for those in need. Its doors were always open for those who were down on their luck. Many of the residents include the mentally ill, those with substance abuse issues, sex workers, runaways, drifters, and the homeless. For a time, my mother was one of them. She worked there when she lived on the street; she was given a place to stay when she had nothing and developed a strong affection for the owner and her family.

The hotel is notorious for its drug addicted clientele, many with long criminal histories and chequered pasts. The Gatwick is no stranger to violence either, with numerous homicides joining the overdose body count. On average, police and paramedics visit the hotel about 4-5 times a week.

For those with nowhere else to go, though, the Gatwick has been a place to call home. It offered a sense of permanence and stability to many people for whom the ground under their feet was always uncertain. And more than that, it gave them a strong sense of community.

The three-storey art deco style hotel was originally built as a luxury establishment for single men, and was used to house navy personnel between the world wars. It was taken over by Vicky Carbone and her family in the late 1950s and has operated as a boarding house since then. Now run by Rose and Yvette, two of Vicky’s daughters, The Gatwick provides a place of shelter to approximately 90 people at any one time. The residents are also linked to services such as the Salvation Army food van, which provides essential nutritious meals for the residents.

The hotel has been disparaged both privately and publicly over the years, with news outlets such as The Herald Sun running stories declaring it as a “festering flophouse fleapit in Fitzroy St that grows steadily more notorious as the rest of St Kilda grows rapidly more gentrified”. Yuppies want it gone – I lived in St Kilda for years and heard countless conversations from shiny-haired interlopers, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the ‘bums’ congregating out the front. Reviews on the Gatwick Facebook page urge for it to be shut down, pointing to instances of violence, drugs and prostitution.

What’s missing in all the calls for its removal are viable solutions. The owners were only able to take over the hotel through the provision of a $2.5 million dollar low interest loan from the State Government, which was conditional on the Gatwick to continue providing low-cost boarding house style accommodation to tenants who are eligible for public housing. When you shut it down, where do those people go? Rents in Victoria are out of control and there are currently 34,726 people on Victoria’s public housing list, with people waiting approximately 7 years to receive stable accommodation.

The owners of the Gatwick are now retiring after more than five decades of compassionately caring for those on whom society turns its backs. Together with their mother, Vicky, they have provided a safe haven for those in need. My mother always spoke of Vicky fondly. I met Rose and Ettie when I was a kid, and we stayed there for a time when I was 13. We had nowhere else to go and we made the most of it.

Sure, the lobby smelled like booze and cigarettes and the shared bathroom facilities were unappealing, but my mother always impressed upon me the importance of having ‘a roof over your head’.

I remember opening the cabinet above the corner sink and hearing the voices of those in the room below us increase in volume. My brother and I stood there, opening and shutting the doors, hearing the swearing and laughter below rise and fall with the movement and finding a sense of joy in it.

The Gatwick is far from perfect but it has made an indelible mark on St Kilda and all who sail in her.

Bloody Hell, Mary

I’ve been seriously slack this week.

Updating my readers over a virtual cup of coffee is easy – I have been otherwise engaged.

I’m not a coffee drinker. I’ve never enjoyed the taste, not just of coffee itself but all coffee-flavoured items. Ice-cream, chocolates, lollies – all of it tastes rancid to me. But the aroma of coffee? That’s a completely different thing. Coffee smells incredible.

Instead, I’ll update you over a Bloody Mary.

The sharpness of the tabasco and the tang of the Worcestershire combined with the smooth, refreshing taste of the vodka is my kind of way to kickstart the day. Not every day unfortunately but it’s a pretty consistent mainstay. Back in the day when my beloved was a barman, I would revel in stumbling downstairs to the kitchen and finding some mixed Bloody Mary ready for me, waiting to ease the pain of the hangover before starting the workday.

My update is short and sweet – my focus has been on applying for my Masters in Media & Communication Studies and applying for other work. My current role is dull and disappointing, and my eyes are constantly searching for the verdant grass, just over yonder. So far, so good, with an interview on the very near horizon.

Onwards and upwards, mes cherries.

At Last

The sun is high in the cerulean sky on a perfect spring day. A light breeze tousles my hair as I settle onto one end of a park bench, making sure I leave plenty of room in case another city worker wants a comfortable place to rest during their lunch break.

It’s well after the lunchtime rush – my penchant for late lunches means that I’m more likely to have the seat to myself, but you can never tell.

Opening my container of salad and adjusting my earbuds in my ears, I glance around the park. Well, ‘park’ is a strong word; Gordon Reserve is a small, triangle piece of land in the CBD of Melbourne, within spitting distance of the Victorian Parliament House.

Many of the seats are taken, and tourists crowd around the Stanford Fountain, snapping away with phones and digital cameras for the perfect shot. They shriek and jump away, laughing, as a sudden gust of wind sprays them with a fine mist from the fountain.

Spearing a piece of cucumber with my fork, I watch as an older man crosses the park, wearing a hat and holding a single red rose. He walks around the fountain, once, twice, his eyes scanning the seated lunch-goers and hurriedly walking figures. Checking his wristwatch, he sighs and approaches my bench. I look away quickly, trying to subtly convey that I wasn’t intrigued by his every movement.

I return to my salad and scroll through my phone, checking out random photos on Instagram before sneaking another look at him at the distracted Don Juan.

He perches on the edge of the seat in his charcoal suit, cutting quite the dashing figure for a man of his age. I notice that his suit is subtly pinstriped and the creases are sharp. He rolls the stem of the rose between his fingers, his eyes moving between the various entrances to the park. I follow his gaze and see office workers, some rushing by, others strolling along, making the most of the gorgeous afternoon.

Sighing, he clears his throat.

I look over at him but he’s not paying any attention to me. I watch as he runs a hand over his forehead, then drags it across his eyes, rubbing them wearily. Checking his watch again, he then turns his stare up at the azure expanse overhead and sighs again, more deeply this time.

Placing his hands on his knees, he slowly rises to his feet. Our eyes meet as he reaches down for his hat. Always quick to blush, my cheeks redden a little as he holds my gaze. I’m relieved when he returns my smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his lips twitching upwards.

“Good afternoon,” he says, as he dons his hat, nodding at me. I smile and nod back, wishing him a good afternoon in return.

He moves away and begins to walk towards the Macarthur Street entrance, but turns back, meeting my eyes. I cock an eyebrow at him quizzically as he lifts the rose and holds it out towards me.

“Here you go, young lady. You should have this.”

Before I can even think to protest or thank him, he hears a voice that makes him stop suddenly.

“Bill, are you giving up on me that easily?”

A graceful older woman stands off to the side from us, a smile playing around her lips. Bill stands up straighter and his face lights up as he takes her in, her smart skirt and blazer combo complementing her slim frame. I watch as Bill moves toward her, holding the rose out for her as he takes her other hand.

“Maggie, I’d thought you’d forgotten me!” he said as they turned and slowly walked away.

“Now, you know better than that…” her voice trailed off as they walked away.

Smiling, I packed up the remnants of my lunch and started back towards work. The strains of Etta James’ At Last swelled as I crossed the road.

White Spaces

While I am not a full-time paid writer, much of my work is dedicated to the written word. I craft copy for our website, blog, and our social media accounts, and I regularly write articles for the weekly news.

Content creation is, as always, king.

Sometimes it flows so easily that it feels as though it is coming unbidden, rushing through one’s veins, words forcing their way out, tumbling over themselves in their rush to be written down, typed out, made flesh.

Other days, it is a struggle just to form a coherent sentence, let alone write one that pops off the page. Those are the times I try to take a step back and focus on My Other Work. You know, the boring stuff. Dealing with anything remotely marketing-related, sending out promotional materials, doing a social media audit…anything that allows me to tune out. Generally, I end up finding this kind of work so inexorably dull that the next time that I’m able to sit down at my computer to write, it comes with ease.

But when it doesn’t? I find that making a start is the best way to go. All that blank space can be intimidating, so just banging out a few sentences can make all the difference.

In fact, I dislike the vast expanse of white space so intensely that I’ve started figured out a good way to trick myself into not being intimidated. I open a draft Outlook email, complete with signature and company social media links at the bottom, and write in the body of the email before copying and pasting the text in Word. It’s illusionary, but it works for me.

Message to my girl

Day Eight: Reinvent the letter format

Dear Seven-Year-Old Skye,

Take a deep breath, kid. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

You’re in Grade 1 now and you’re already on to your fourth school. I know this school doesn’t seem too bad; you’ve already got some friends here and you’re settling in well.

You always do.

You even had an actual birthday party and were allowed to invite five friends. Your mother may have arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the gender ratio of the invitees, with four boys and only one girl invited, but she didn’t say anything. She just bundled you all into the car and drove you to the Pancake Parlour, her cigarette smoke curling out of the driver’s seat window and into the opened windows in the back as you all played and giggled, your ginger curls bouncing as you turned to take in the view of your friends. She watched you steadily in the rearview mirror as she turned up the music to drown out the shrieking laughter.

It was a fun day, wasn’t it? You’ll remember every detail, over 20 years later. The crystalline blue sky was a perfect backdrop to the day – your Mum seemed ok, you got to celebrate your birthday, you even got some presents. You felt like you belonged.

Hey, kid? Don’t get too settled. You’ve got another 12 primary schools to go to before your Mum will let you stay put for a while. Don’t even think about the high school years.

The carousel is about to go into overdrive. It’s time for you to assume a crash-position and just ride out the next few years.

Sometimes you’ll come home from school and the books will be packed, boxes will be strewn across the living room and Mum will have that look in her eyes. She’ll tell you that you’re all moving away, and sometimes you will. Sometimes you’ll pack up the car and move to a new house, start a new school. Sometimes she’ll work through the mania and tire of it after a few weeks or a few days and you’ll tentatively relax back into the same old routine, feeling safe that you can stay. But until then, you need to be prepared.

You’ll want to cry and protest and demand to stay. Half the time your remonstrations will be ignored, but the other half? That will be used as ammunition.

She’ll ask why you want to stay here, why you care about this town, and you will be so desperate that you’ll tell the truth. You will cite your desire to stay and finish school like all the other kids. You will say that you like it here. When the panic rises up inside you, you’ll break and say that you want to stay because you have friends here and they care about you. Don’t do it.

Never say that.

She will seize upon it and use this to her advantage. Her blue gaze will meet yours and the corners of her mouth will curl up as she accosts you with a pitiful smile, her eyes burning. “They’re not your friends, Skye,” she’ll say as she stands a little straighter, her voice sharp and full of vitriol.

Looking across at your brother, they will share a knowing look and his complicity will goad her on.

“None of them are your friends. Can’t you see that?” The edge will slip from her voice and will be replaced by a cloying sweetness. Try not to crack. No matter what you do, do not take the bait and do not let that tenderness get to you.

“You’re just a joke to them, Skye, they all make fun of you. They are not your friends. They don’t care about you.”

Don’t listen. Find a way to shut it out, to shut it off, to build a wall. Do not engage. Build up your reserves of strength and learn to ignore her when she’s like this. Don’t look to your brother; you’re not a team. You are an obstacle to him being able to move, to change, to hide from whatever problems have been created at this school, in this town.

Remember that when it comes down to choosing between working through a problem or packing up the car and heading for the highway, he and Mum are in this together and they’re always living with one foot out the door.

And remember this, kid. Your friendships will be the most important relationships you will ever have. Trust your judgement. Your friends will become your family and you will share a love with them that is safe and true.

Stay strong.

Love,

Skye from the world of tomorrow

Perception

No matter how self-aware we are, we can never really see ourselves clearly.

Despite how well you think you know yourself or how mindful you try to be of your behaviour, your words, and even your thoughts, there is always an unknowable well within us. Our abilities to be perceptive and observant fail in the face of trying to view ourselves objectively.

We can be surrounded by friends and loved ones, who openly admire and compliment us, but it’s self-doubt that often speaks the loudest. When you’re plagued by fear and insecurity, it’s all too easy to forget that you’re do have a plethora of talents or that you are working hard to achieve your goals. All you hear is the self-doubt and you focus on all the ways in which you have failed or aren’t ‘good enough’.

Bonnie’s post made me think about the fact that even if you’re rocking a healthy sense of self, it’s difficult to really see the positive impact you can have on others and the joy that you can bring to their lives in the smallest of ways. It can be quite a process to think positively, to be mindful of your thoughts and deeds, and even then it’s so easy to slip. We’re human; part of that is being vulnerable to our own insecurities and doubts.

Another beautiful part about being human, though, is our ability to try. When it gets hard, we fight. We try, and we improve, and we dig in our heels, we narrow our eyes and straighten our spines.

That’s what I try to remember when looking at my reflection – or at my behaviour – causes me grief. Knowing that you do your best to support and care for the people in your life, and that you always try to improve can sometimes be enough to get you through the darkest hours.

Write on

My writing habits are undisciplined and erratic; sometimes I won’t leave home without a notebook in my bag to ensure that I’ve got somewhere to jot down thoughts and ideas. Sometimes I find myself forming ideas, getting lost in thought and tangled up in plot, only to fail to commit it to paper and watch it drift away, ephemeral and of no consequence.

I wrote a piece for Day Six last week and was convinced that I’d posted it, but it’s nowhere, lost to time. My lack of discipline bites me in the arse, once again.

I have a desk set up in the spare room of our rental property that should, in theory, be ideal for writing but it just doesn’t work for me. Distractions in the form of notebooks, old diaries, half-forgotten photographs are all within easy reach, just begging me to leaf through them and lose myself in a rabbit-hole of memory.

The room heats up quickly; the harsh Australian sun takes no prisoners and the electric fan brings little relief, moving the hot air around, turning my sharpness into relaxed, languid movements until I stand and drift away from the desk.

Lately, I’ve been writing at work. I left my last job in August and started here a week later and quickly realised it is far less challenging. No matter how many projects I create for myself or how much extra work I take on, I still find myself with unfamiliar downtime during the work day. The lack of pressure is strange and somewhat unnerving, but I am making the most of it by writing and crafting when I can.

My day is filled with editing copy, altering images and creating content for our news stories, our social media accounts and website. My life is filled with words and I find the time to dive into writing whenever I can. Most of my writing is done on my fourth-hand laptop, sitting at the kitchen table as the late afternoon sun dapples the courtyard, the cat lazily blinking at me as my fingers fly over the keys.

I need the discipline of writing regularly to keep me on track, to feel the rhythm of the words along with the beating of my heart.

Tattoo you

I've deleted enough tweets to know that I should never get a tattoo.

— Abby Heugel (@AbbyHasIssues) August 25, 2014

I always swore that I would never get any tattoos.

My mother had four tattoos, one on each forearm and one on each of her upper arms. She got them all at the age of 14, when she was living on the streets, and knew that it made her look tough. And if not tough, then at least rough.

This was 1970 in Australia – this was long before the prevalence of ink caused them to be de rigueur as they are today. Back then, the social mores of the day meant that tattoos were a sure signifier that you were part of a certain underclass of society and were seen on sailors, criminals and knockabouts. They were certainly not commonly seen on women.

An exception to this was Melbourne woman Bev Nicholas, who became known as Cindy Ray, Australia’s original tattooed lady. Bev’s life changed at the age of 19 when, as a single mum in need of work, she answered a newspaper ad for a job as a photographer’s model.

The job was to work for photographer Harry Bartram, who convinced Bev that a life of fame and fortune awaited her if she would be tattooed. Bev didn’t waste time; despite nobody in her family or close group of friends having tattoos, she got four tattoos the first night and was soon described as the “classy lassie with the tattooed chassis”. Bev travelled the country and took part in sideshow tours, showing off her ink.

The fortune didn’t eventuate but she became incredibly well known. Not just for her numerous tattoos, but also for her skills. Bev married Danny Robinson, the man who tattooed her, and ended up learning the trade herself. She still tattoos one day a week in Williamstown in Australia, and is known all over the world.

One thing I find particularly striking about Bev is her reluctance to ever wear short sleeved shirts in order to avoid judgement. My mother was the same; although she had far less ink to show off, she’d been raised to view tattoos as unsightly and knew that it denoted the life she’d lived as a teenager and in her early adult years. She was always keenly aware of the looks she’d receive off the other mothers at school pick-ups if she ever wore anything that left her arms visible.

Bev apparently always wore long-sleeved shirts no matter what the weather as she wanted to avoid upsetting her daughters – some of her daughter’s friends had been banned from associating with their family due to Bev’s ink. It’s incredibly sad but not at all surprising that this kind of judgement occurred. You only have to read the comment section on any mainstream article about the ‘attractiveness’ of tattoos to see how deeply those judgements still run.

Some tattoo art is absolutely stunning – the intricate detail, the gorgeous colours, the unique designs. Some of it is hideous. The only thing that matters is that it’s someone’s choice to mark their body, to go from a ‘cleanskin’ to someone with tattoos. Whether their work is something incredibly meaningful or something, it shouldn’t matter to you. Nor should how they’ll look when they’re older.

My mother cared so much that she tried to have them removed. In the 80s, she had skin grafts taken from the soft, delicate skin of her inner thighs to cover up the forearm tattoos and the doctor botched the job so badly that it looked as though she’d been burnt. I remember stroking her arms when I was a child, running my finger over the different textures, the skin looking as though he’d just haphazardly slapped it on top.

When I got older, I asked her why she did it, why didn’t she just leave them? She just looked at me for a while, and then said softly, “I just didn’t want to make things even harder on you kids.”

So whenever people cast unnecessary judgement for the choices people make in choosing to get their skin inked, I think of my mum. She removed hers for nothing; the judgement was there no matter what, she was different, she was gay, she was wild and infinitely untameable. I loved the ones that remained – the 1970s green ink and old school designs, one side emblazoned with the word ‘Mum’ and the other with the word ‘Nick’, her older brother.

She always told me to never get tattoos, and definitely never on my forearms.

I currently have two tattoos, both on my forearms. Both remind me of her and I’m glad that I get to see them every day.

Don’t Try

unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.

The words ‘Don’t Try’ are emblazoned across Charles Bukowski’s tombstone.

These words have inspired numerous essays, tattoos and arguments. I have a t-shirt with Buk’s face and the words ‘Don’t Try’ in classic typewriter font below his image. This shirt has elicited many strange looks and questions: what does it mean? Don’t try what, exactly? Most people assume it’s some sort of nihilistic message or mistakenly think that Bukowski was the poster child for apathy.

Some find it insulting; we all struggle to write sometimes, or battle to shape the words on the page to match our vision. That’s part of the process, and that is not what this quote is about. I was told once that this idea is offensive to people who draft and edit and polish a piece into perfection.

My personal belief is that you know if you are meant to write. You can’t help it, you can’t fight it. You might lack discipline, or you might not be in the right headspace to let the words out, but if you are meant to write then they will come. They will flow out of you and you will be compelled to do it, on some level.

It doesn’t mean that it’s easy, it doesn’t mean that it’s not work. Ask any writer who earns their living through words – it is not always simple. What matters is the need, and the act of writing. The ritual of putting pen to paper, or watching as your fingers fly over the keyboard, determined to fill up the white space.

Write. Write because you need to, because without it you are like a dam about to burst.

Write because giving shape to words is your way of moulding, perfecting, creating.

Write because it is a fire inside you, ready to scorch your fingers if you don’t let the words out.

unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.