Living on an island

A fascinating Radio National panel discussion. Here's some samples to whet your appetite:

I've embraced the whole Hobart thing where here you can have a big house with a garden and a trampoline and a cricket pitch and a vegie patch and look at the mountain and look at the sea and go sailing at the weekend.
. . .
History impinges upon your consciousness here in a way that it doesn't so much in Melbourne or Sydney.
. . .
I find in Hobart I'll sit in a coffee shop and I'll start talking to someone I'm having coffee with but then I'll look behind my shoulder to see who might else be in the coffee shop and to see who might be listening. Now I never do that anywhere else, but in Hobart you're always just watching who's around-
. . .
[W]hat I do notice is that strangers are friendlier to one another. I find it very difficult now when I go to Melbourne or Sydney. I'm walking down Pitt St or Collins St and I nod and say hello to people and they immediately cross to the other side of the road thinking "Who is this loony?", but you get into the habit of it.
. . .
It's the first thing I look at every morning. I get up, I go outside for the newspaper and I look up at the mountain: "What's the mountain doing this morning?" . . . . The mountain is always there and you're always looking at it, and it sort of becomes your guide to what the day is doing.


H/T Kate