Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.

Geilston Bay power poles. June 2010.

A short while ago someone asked in the comments to see more of Geilston Bay, here's a start! Here's the view looking south towards the next suburb of Lindisfarne.

Geilston Bay itself is a small suburb of Hobart. Technically, it is located in the City of Clarence located on the Eastern Shore of the Derwent ~~River~~ Estuary. It is a suburb abundant with nature, with many houses built right next to the bushland (hence the impressive amount of dead native animals to be found squished on the highway).

In terms of 'attractions', well, there is the bay itself, with a Boat Club located a couple of hundred metres from our house.

There's the Shag Bay Aboriginal Site, but we're really just talking about piles of discarded mussel shells. I'll be honest and confess an anthropological bias: once you've seen Notre Dame Cathedral, a midden that dates a few hundred years more recent seems a bit humdrum.

There is also a local high school that is on its last legs, Geilston Bay High and a private Christian School. I suspect that the students of that school are in fact vampires because in all honesty, I've never actually seen any children there. Please note that I have lived not two hundred metres from the place for four years now.

To continue the excitement, there are not one but two local shops, not one of which is located on a corner. There is a butcher, a hairdressers, a pizza parlour, a radiator repairer. Sadly, we have no candlestick maker. Lindisfarne Village is 15 minutes walk away, and has the whole supermarket/bakery/French patisserie deal, so we're sorted on that score.

Right behind the Geilston Bay Community Centre (home of the Geilston Bay Playgroup), you'll find the Geilston Bay Tennis Club. These sit right next to the local football/cricket ground, home of the OHA Ships.

Get onto Google Maps, and you'll get the vibe.

Comments

Beth said…

In the dim distant past as an inaugural student of Geilston Bay High (I too am on my last legs...) our parents attempted to find the correct pronunciation of Geilston Bay. Is it a hard 'G' as is gills, or a soft 'G' as in congeals?
Our answer came from Giels in Scotland - a soft 'G'.
I'm sure there's more to be said on the similarity between Geilston and Congeals as concepts.

8 July 2010 at 13:59

Kris McCracken said…

Beth, good to see a GB'er still knocking around!

16 July 2010 at 09:19

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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