From Islands to the Mountains of the mind

Home: Tullah and Mt Murchison Western Tasmania

Well that’s the journey of the body… the mind is equally similar. There has been an amazing change of gear in lifestyle and purpose. My visit to Flinders Island was primarily to help my friend Marc through the after effects of a major spinal fusion operation. This rendered him unable to drive, lift or do many simple tasks, and then I helped him complete and move into his new home.

Since leaving in March for the island in the heat of summer, the world has gone from warm endless sunny days to the cold short reflective twilight of winter. Luxuriant emerald green and vibrant colours of summer have given way to sombre greys and browned frost nipped khakis of winter rains. The difficulties of summer have fallen like the leaves of the denude apple and silver birch out my window, seeming like a distant bad dream. There has been much time for quiet contemplation in the windswept empty wilds of Flinders Island. An isolated little bay gazed upon by the ancient granite peaks of Killiecrankie insight of the loom of the Craggy Island Light. On a remote island of the coast of a remote island Tasmania, in the southern tip of the habitable world.

Killiecrankie Bay Flinders Island Tasmania

The pervading sea breezes have swept through the streets of the soul a different mood, and a lighter clearer air. A growing depth of inner calm and contentment has permeated my being like the saline wind on those timeless wind-worn shores, and changed its pallet to a slightly different hue. There is a feeling of great inner liberation that my tiny world on that island-in-a-sea-of-storm has allowed an inner calm to grow and dwell. In those quiet moments of reflective solitude, momentarily the world stops and ceases to move, there reigns a moment of complete and timeless bliss. There was no one magic moment but many myriad moments linked now in the mind. They are indeed impossible to captivate or even describe, but moments of increasing realisation that give the perception of a whole.

I am intrigued now to see how these feelings will mellow and mature. It’s wise now to take the time to just carry on with my life here and see what kind of wine from them will be distilled.