A Shack By Any Other Name

[Nothing beats the glowing heat of wood burning!]

Where you stay for a weekend away depends very much on where you live. I don’t mean which geographic area you visit, but what you call your temporary abode.

In much of mainland Australia it’s called a holiday house, a holiday home, or perhaps a weekender. Sometimes Aboriginal names, such as gunyah, mia-mia or humpy might be used, or even the PNG-derived term donga.

In New Zealand you get away to a bach, a crib or even a whare (pronounced “forry” – a Maori word for hut). In Scotland a humble hut is a bothy, a more palatial get-away is a lodge. But in Tasmania, no matter how grand or humble, it’s always just a shack.

Whatever you call it, there’s something pared down and simple about life at the shack. It seems to be about getting reconnected with each other and with the environment. Obviously it’s a tradition that spreads far beyond our shores.

In Scandanavia there is a long tradition of what they call friluftsliv (translated roughly as “open-air life”). Many seaside, lakeside, forest and mountain areas are set up for this friluftsliv. To help foster a love of all things outdoors, cabins or shacks can be built on some public land. However they may only be used in holiday periods, not as permanent residences.

In the case of Norway, the whole outdoor tradition, with its emphasis on being in touch with the grandeur of its landscapes, has been crucial in shaping Norwegian national identity. In that vein I wonder: is it a stretch to say that shack life is part of the Tasmanian identity?

Not that you have to own a shack. Most of us have managed to borrow or rent one at some stage. That very fact – the quasi-socialist redistribution of shack property – feels like part of the deal.

There also seem to be unwritten customary laws about what a shack does or doesn’t have. Few have dishwashers or phones, but most have lumpy lounges and beds. The pots and pans must come without matching lids. In fact matching anythings, whether cutlery, crockery or bed linen, is the exception rather than the rule.

If the shack has a television it’s usually the sort that has a coat hanger for an aerial, and requires more skill to tune than most mere mortals have. I recall one particularly apt piece of “percussive maintenance” I tried on an ancient set while introducing my children to the delights of Jacques Tati. While we could hardly see the picture, we managed to hear the wonderfully strange soundtrack of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday between my thumping and tweaking of the television.

A recent shack stay on Bruny Island brought back many such memories, and generated more than the usual level shack envy in Lynne and me. We went as far as pricing a shack near the one we were staying in. That a one bedroom shack near Dennes Point could have a $350 000 price tag set our dreams on their ear. Working until we’re 95 just to pay off a part-time play-house seems a little excessive.

Somewhat sobered, we sat back in front of the glowing wood heater in the borrowed shack, thinking of all the things that appealed to us about shack life. The simplified life seemed to be at the heart of it. Even standing at the sink and washing up by hand seems to simplify life, perhaps by slowing everything down. But that particular stay was also highlighted by the wood heater, and that gave me a sudden brainwave.

Some years back we had all but pensioned off our wood heater in favour of the “simple, clean, no-fuss” heat pump (a.k.a. a reverse cycle air conditioner). I didn’t miss the hard graft of gathering, chopping and carting wood. But oh how we missed the loving glow of wood burning!

So to our new house. It too had a heat pump in the main living area (yes … “simple, clean, no-fuss” etc!). But the other half of the house used to be an artist’s studio, which we turned into a study/library/sewing/writing and guest sleeping area. It was a creative use of a large space, but during the cold months it was not very inviting.

Two problems – no shack, and a cold half-house – seemed to point to one lovely solution. Put in a wood heater! And then the brain wave. Why not call the old studio our shack? When we want that simplified life, and that warm glow of burning wood, we simply retreat to “the shack”! We leave the phone, close the door to the main part of the house, and we’re in the shack. No travel time, no ferries, and so far not even a television.

And the best part? The Scotsman in me loves the fact that we’ve saved $348 000 by adding a fire to what we already had, and calling it our shack!

A Bruny Reunion

[pic: looking across the D'Entrecasteaux Channel from North Bruny Island]

[some thoughts on our experience of islands, and particularly Tasmania's Bruny Island]

Why do islands grip our hearts so? Peninsulas and promontories are all very well; seaside towns and mountain villages can be a delight. But there is something uniquely seductive about islands.

Island-dwelling novelist David Guterson, famous for Snow Falling on Cedars, offers this explanation.

Islands fill mainlanders with an unabashed yearning for a life simpler than the one they endure, a pared-down life in which all that is elemental - sea, wind, sun, love, the last light of day, the sand beneath fingernails - is brought to the fore-front of existence.

It was more than 30 years ago that our family first visited Bruny Island, across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel south of Hobart. The long, twin landmasses are joined at the Neck, a sand isthmus, but the twins are far from identical. South Bruny is the wild sylvan sister; North Bruny the conservative bucholic brother. The south has high, wet, wooded hills – almost mountains – running down to dramatic capes, strands and headlands. The north is drier, more cleared, laconic like a farmer.

That’s only on the surface, because both Brunies can sneak up on you, each in her or his own way. The north can turn dramatic, like a farmer who fits all the stereotypes but then takes to reading poetry and preparing fillet mignon to perfection in a romantic candle-lit dinner. And the south can be gentle and sweet, bursting with wildflowers, and weather that is full of sweetness and light.

To my initial untrained eye, Bruny’s lack of remoteness – the island can be seen from many of Hobart’s suburbs – lessened its appeal. Back then I was besotted with the grand, remote wilderness places of Tasmania. They were Bach’s B Minor Mass. Bruny aseemed more a snatch from a Bach cantata.

But then Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring fits that category, and how many compositions can match the sublime perfection of that diminutive masterpiece? To return to Bruny is to discover again a down-home, “she’ll-do” shackiness cheek by jowl with the wild. As if to reinforce that one morning our dog walk turns to dolphin spotting as a pod of dolphins sports and cavorts at one end of Nebraska Beach. And another night a curious eatern quoll peers in the deck door.

The weather too is wild. A westerly gale hauls a load of clouds that bounce off the higher mountains to the west. This creates mountain waves, alternating bands of clear sky and cloud. The air thrums deeply. I can’t determine whether it is a frequency created by the abrasion of wind on earth or the beating of waves on the shore.

On one early visit, in the late 1980s, we stayed with friends who had borrowed a shack at Dennes Point, near the northern tip of Bruny. There are shacks and there are shacks. This peculiarly Tasmanian name for a holiday house can apply to anything from a humpy to a seaside mansion. This shack was much nearer to the former than the latter. The ceilings were sagging and stained with possum piss from the resident screeching marsupials. Stealthy legged and noisy winged wildlife also had free rein through the house, most annoyingly in the form of squadrons of mosquitoes. The beds were lumpy and in a dubious hygienic state.

Four adults and 6 children spent two hilarious nights in the shack. That at least is how we came to see it in retrospect. At the time it was a case of roll over; swat; get up; hunt mosquitoes; change a nappy; hush a child; listen to our friends’ children scream; listen to our children scream; scream a bit ourselves; and finally laugh and get up at first light.

Apart from retrospective humour, the shack bequeathed one other long-lasting treasure. From somewhere in my febrile, sleep-deprived mind, a children’s story was hatched. It was inspired by the squalid, wildlife-invaded building. That and the brand name of the shack’s toilet: Armitage Shanks. Somehow a story featuring a huntsman spider who could read and speak was formed.

20 something years later, I confess with some chagrin, the story is still not finished. But getting back to Bruny, the scene of its conception, has inspired me to post the so-far-completed chapters on this blog. Who knows, it may inspire me to finish the story. Perhaps that mosquito at 3am this morning was a sign.