It is official. A winter down under is warmer than a summer up above. Greetings from sunny Australia where the chief and I are here for matters ‘clannish’.
This is their Scotland Week, when tartan-clad Aussies celebrate Celtic roots. Stone the crows, kilts are swinging and bagpipes are wailing. We attend a Highland Games in Sydney. There are talks on Highland heritage and the water of life flows.
Now we are in Tasmania and the links to home are also highly visible: the Scots Church, Stewart’s Bay, Cameron Creek, the River Clyde, the suburb of Glenorchy and several whisky distilleries… Here and there are other reminders: mist-cloaked mountains, a herd of Galloway Belties grazing in a field and a ‘Mackers’ (a McDonald’s takeaway) doing brisk business on the highway.
Tasie, as the locals call it, has a particularly Scottish feel. A purple-topped jacaranda tree may not pass muster at home, but rhodies and fir trees certainly will. We also see gorse. Masses of it, introduced as an ornamental shrub and now considered a dangerous weed on the island.
Importantly we stay at a beaut hotel with serious clan connections. In 1831 the Paisley-born Alexander McGregor sailed from Leith to Hobart with his family. He learned the shipbuilding trade and ended up owning the largest fleet south of the equator. McGregor’s famous red-iron vessels would carry whale oil, timber and wool. A Hobart-built ‘Blue Gum’ clipper would be the envy of the world. ‘Lenna’ was the grand honey-stoned house he built overlooking Hobart harbour. It is the one we are now billeted in.
Of course, not every Scot landing here had such an illustrious career. For this was a convict island and pickpockets and murderers came unceremoniously ashore. They had crossed the sea to serve their sentence in a far-off land. Thousands of Scottish men, women and children were transported here.
It was a Scotsman, a west coaster, who tried to turn Australia into a proper country rather than a prison camp. Lachlan Macquarie is called the father of Australia and in the late eighteenth century he set about improving the colony’s infrastructure. As Governor of New South Wales Macquarie planned towns and erected buildings. He improved the police service, set up a banking system, and got to grips with problems of illiteracy and drunkenness.
Fair dinkum, mate… We’ve seen a lot of Scotland down under – and we now look to find more of the Aussie. I want to photograph kangaroos and koalas and to catch sight of another local inhabitant, although this is a creature probably best seen at a distance. The dog-like Tasmanian Devil looks sweetly furry, but it has the strongest bite for its size of any land mammal predator.
Talking of dogs, I miss the MacNaughties. But they are not home alone and miserable. They are probably tramping the hills as I speak. And we will have much to tell them when we return from our travels…
