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

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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...

This will hurt me...

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