I have put my diary notes of September 2021 and October 2021 together in one document because for three quarters of both months we were in Tasmania. We werent on holiday however, we were refreshing a house. So most of what I have jotted down is benign and boring. Tasmania is in many ways the introverted and insulated little sibling of the mainland states and territories. It is a mixture of looking after itself: advertising strongly for local content and products and encouraging local labour to help the local farmers out for harvest season (as opposed to the mainland producers complaing they need the cheap labour of overseas pickers), and the forgotten demographic in big business (the regional television stations mixing up local advertisements with adverts from outback Northern Territory (an ad for sheep dip comes to mind!)). The locals however are generally friendly, not that we had the opprtunity to mix with many of them. Talking to strangers was kept at a minimum, mainly because we spent most of the time working in the one spot. We did eventually get back to Mackay in Central Queensland but the cruising season was, for all intents and purposes, over. It was time to head south. Aboard Sengo September October is 6.3 meg.

I