Ferals - there we were, once again under the Examiner's whip, all sorts of nastiness happening, ethereal albatrosses in the dusk, Stygianlike murkitude, NEaster blasting in, Turneresque cloud up near the Hippolytes yesterday evening. I look up and see big buzzy insect - no real feel for size or geometry but perhaps an inch at least in bodylength, flapping busily 2 miles out to sea. Must have done the full circle of the low pressure system or somehow got carried out to sea much earlier and getting a ride more or less towards Tasman Island. Hope it made it - otherwise a long cold flight to nowhere.
Dolphins - hundreds of them - some big and slow moving, a slow rolling glide, others frisky tails lapping and jumping all around Berri. I often wonder f they are really playing or just carrying on trying to say - Go Away, this is MY bit of ocean.
Coastlines - seen a few in the last umpteen thousand miles and Tasmania is up there with absolutely the most spectacular. Sir John Franklin, ex Governor of Tasmania, not long before he died up in the NW Passage in about 1850, named some islands in Peel Sound the Tasmanian Islands. Immediately obvious why when you see them - a poignant link to the mind of a ghost we were conscious of all the time up there.
If anyone's interested, we were interviewed on the ABC at 0635 this morning, 9th March. [Berri ground control note: the podcast will be here once it is uploaded. Likely overnight]
