Lifethrumylense

Hello! Greetings and salutations. It has been almost seven months since I moved to Tasmania. Tassie is beautiful and I’ve met so many nice people. I’ve made one close friend and I have a handful of classmates that are all really lovely. I don’t have any major complaints so I’d say, Tassie is treating me well. Since I moved, there is one question that people ask me consistently. “Do you miss home?” is usually the first thing people ask when I meet them for the first time and I honestly never like answering this question. I feel like everyone is always expecting one answer and then I feel obligated to give a full explanation of why it isn’t as easy as yes or no for me.

Moving has changed my feelings towards Barbados so much. I used to be the least patriotic person ever. I genuinely just wasn’t interested or that invested in celebrating my nationality. I appreciated Barbados and everything that makes it unique but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do any kind of patriotism. Now that I’ve moved so far away to such a large country with a completely different climate and vastly different culture, I have such a greater appreciation for home. I also feel this need to protect my little island home, which is so small and majorly unrepresented. I am the only representation of Barbados that most people I interact will ever see. I guess I decided, not really that consciously, that I needed to be a good ambassador.

While that sounds good, it can be overwhelming sometimes. I love teaching people about Barbados but I also miss just existing as a Bajan. I have to think twice before saying a Bajanism that usually would be understood by anyone I was with. I have to explain so much and little details that I never realized added so much context, go right over my head until I realize whoever I’m talking to is confused. There are also so many things that I experienced in my everyday life that I wouldn’t have thought were so unique until moving here. For example, I can’t drive down the street and see a coconut vendor, I can’t get a coconut snow cone on a warm day and I can’t drive down to town to see the market lights.  

I feel bad saying it sometimes but I genuinely don’t yearn to go back home. I miss my friends and family but it’s not a depressing or heavy feeling. I think most people expect me to say that it is or expect me to not like Tassie because of its major differences but I actually really like it here. I’ve had a wonderful time in all the places I’ve travelled to, no matter how different they were to home. The point of traveling is to experience something new and that’s what I look forward to the most when I travel. I have an appreciation for what I grew up with and home will always be home but I’m an explorer at heart. I love being in new places, learning about unfamiliar cultures and history and meeting nice people from diverse backgrounds. I feel most alive when I’m exploring and that doesn’t mean I don’t love home but my biggest fear is living a mundane life in my youth and no being able to adventure when I’m old.

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Speaking of adventuring, I wanted to share a mini adventure I went on. I took my camera with me but I forgot the battery on the charger before I left home. Very professional of me, I know! In the end I was glad that I didn’t take my camera on this ‘walk’ because it was very strenuous. So, here is a little step-by-by look at my not so little but still pretty little adventure.

I went to Cockle Creek which is the farthest point south that you can drive in Australia. It is a popular whale watching spot as different species of whales migrate through this beach. There used to be whaling stations here but they were shut down, due to the decline in the whale population caused by overfishing. Now, there is a statue of a whale which stands as a reminder of the history of Cockle Creek.

I wasn’t really excited about the walk but I decided to do it anyway and I’m still not sure how to feel about it. It was beautiful but it was an obstacle course and I don’t think I actually finished it or followed the trail correctly.

The trail started out with a pretty clear track and I thought it was going to be sunshine and rainbows for the whole walk. I was wrong, very wrong.

This track was incredibly deceptive. I started the walk traversing through bush and trees then somehow ended up on a beach. This part wasn’t too bad and it was a gorgeous view. Which is also pretty deceiving as Tassie waters are entirely too cold for normal people to swim in. Many Tasmania’s do get in but as I said, us normal folks don’t.

I then came to this stack of rocks which I had to climb through, pretty tentatively I must add. There were some pretty cool animals living in and on the rock. I have no idea what some of them were but I recognized barnacles, mussels, oysters and some pretty small anemones in pools in-between the rocks.

Beyond this path lead to more beach. This stretch was my favourite part, especially, because I was now on stable ground. There was a lone seagull floating near the shore and he was pretty chill, made for a good photo op. I should have appreciated this break a little more because the next part of the walk was more rocks. Not fun at all. I didn’t take any photos in that section because I was trying not to slip and unalive myself but trust it was horrible. In the end, it led us right back around to the stretch of beach we were on before which meant, I didn’t need to risk my life like that in the first place. I said earlier that I wasn’t sure if I actually finished the walk or followed it correctly, because there were a few old rickety signs that lead to nowhere. So, the path was a guessing game the whole time and maybe I didn’t need to shakily traverse through rocks at all. On the bright side, the little patches of beach in-between were beautiful and I enjoyed walking along the shore. That was my silver lining on this horrible walk that I will not be doing again.

Another cool thing that I saw was these shells that lined part of the walk. Some sand is made from crushed shells, so, it’s likely that in the future these shells will make new sand for this beach. It’s pretty amazing to think about the fact that I saw the beginning of this process and in a few years these shells will be fully broken down into sand.

Experiences like this are what I want from life. Minus the fighting for my life on the rocks but exploring is just a bit of me. Depending on the day, I may be a little timider sometimes, which is totally fine. I have many more chances to have new experiences and I’ll be back home soon. Maybe I’ll even move back and some point but for now I like the freedom I have to explore.

Just a girl and her camera