‘Tasmania is sublime,’ said Mumford.
‘It’s impossibly beautiful,’ said Mieke.
‘Yes. And sublime means more than that.’
Mumford read from a book called Enchantment.
Sublime landscapes are liminal spaces that divorce us from the comfortable everyday and take us to the edge of understanding.
‘Now listen to this.’ She picked up a book called In Tasmania.
Tasmania is a byword for remoteness… it is like outer space on earth and invoked by those at the ‘centre’ to stand for all that is far-flung, strange and unverifiable.
Nicholas Shakespeare, In Tasmania, p7
Tasmania is in myth and in history a secret place.
Shakespeare, p7
In the fierce light of the Tasmanian day, the emptiness of the landscape can sting with a melancholy that is unbearable.
Shakespeare, p9
REFERENCES: May, Katherine (2023), Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age. London: Faber and Faber.
Shakespeare, Nicholas (2005), In Tasmania. London: Penguin Books.
IMAGES: “Mount Anne Circuit: Lake Pedder from Mt Eliza”, David Rauenbusch, Phoenix Creations
“Near Mount Anne” by Wilkography/ Ben Wilkinson via ABC News
“Snow gum, rock, mist” by Ern Mainka via themoutntainjournal.com
“Port Davey Tasmania”, via Tikatravels
The Absent Answer 