Forty South Tasmania Magazine - Issue 104

In this issue

When Don Defenderfer heads into the Tasmanian bush, he finds calmness and connection. When he writes about it for Forty South, I find calmness and connection. His piece in this issue (p8), entitled simply wukalina, is as beautiful as anything I have ever read about this land.
Back in less-calming urban areas, life in Tasmanian was very different just 30 years ago, and especially for school-leavers. Life in Tasmania in the early 1990s was about “fierce working class pride, kids leaving school after Grade 10 without anybody batting an eyelid, wealth and poverty rubbing shoulders, and people dying early after living tough lives”. They are the words of one of those school-leavers, one who “like many of my generation … left Tasmania for the fabled mainland”. Dr Samara McPhedran has achieved much since joining that exodus, but as she explains in this absorbing piece, something of the essence of Tasmania has travelled with her (p16).