Home....

I have made a home in a few cities but there is one that I still call home even though there are no plans to move back there anytime soon.

Hobart is Australia's southern most city, the capital of Tasmania.  It's small but still a city and it is heaven on a warm spring day.

The red ship is the Aurora Australis, the supply ship for Australia's Antarctic ventures, in dock until the ice melts down south and she can head down for the summer.

This is the historic parliament house. It was orginally the Customs House for the new colony of Van Diemen's Land and had rum stored in the cellars. Now it's home to Tasmania's state government  - I spent a lot of hours as a young reporter holding microphones in front of politicians while they gave glib sound bites or tried to. Now some of the politicians are friends or uni colleagues. How did that happen?

Salamanca with its shops, cafes, galleries and Saturday market is my favourite place -  and it's the best place to people watch, graze and laze on the lawns. 

Spring has arrived at this end of the world and with it all my usual promises to grow spring bulbs next year and start eating mounds of fresh vegetables. Holidays are good for self-improvement or thinking about it.

I worry that we still call Hobart home because we haven't put down roots anywhere else but I know a lot of people like us. Tasmanians are a little like homing pigeons. A lot leave and make a life in Australia's bigger cities or head even further afield but they usually come back for regular visits, often at Christmas time when the Sydney Hobart boats are in dock and the waterfront is littered with street performers, lovely food and wine and sometimes sunshine. 

I try to come back a couple of times a year. My husband asked me this time if anything much had changed in Hobart in the months since he'd visited. No was my answer and he's probably just as relieved to hear that as I was to see that it hadn't.

I hope my children have a pull to a place like this one day too.