Thoughts & Musings
The Flinders Island Running Festival has been going for ten years. It is held on the last weekend in August and usually coincides with Father’s Day on the Sunday. One of my neighbours jokes that his daughter only comes, at this time of the year, to the Running Festival and not to see him. I however, know this is just plain wrong! That whole family, along with many others, participate in the fun atmosphere of the whole weekend and enjoy Father’s Day.
Image by Tasmania Tuxedo
The first thing you will notice, on Flinders and the Furneaux Group of islands, is the breathtaking scenery. In every direction, what you see is like nothing else in the world.
It’s deeper than quiet beaches and coastlines, mountains and mist. These islands have a rich and dark history, and an intensely passionate community that wants to reckon with its past and build the right future together. No one is here because it is the easiest place to live. Everyone is here because it’s different. When something works on these islands it tends to be small and special. As the rest of the world chases growth, we chase meaning.
The core of our culture is to be true to who we are, to try to live on what we can find or grow on our rich land and in our waters, and to support one another. When a crisis strikes one of us, it strikes all of us. Many of our family businesses have been here for generations, evolving yet never abandoning the spirit of this place. Artists and artisans are here to create and connect.
We have a complex relationship with change because we understand what it can bring. It’s different here and we make different invitations to visitors: for an unforgettable time on Flinders Island, learn to be one of us for a few days, a week, or the rest of your life. Slow down, listen, get lost, and contribute.
Don’t try to change this place. Let this place change you.
The Furneaux Islands Festival celebrates our Aboriginal history, our ancient and modern cultural traditions, our art, and even our complications. Our council and community launched it as a gently provocative and intensely local alternative to Australia Day – the first in the country.
Quiet is a word you will hear a lot on Flinders Island. The Tasmanian story is the quiet pursuit of the extraordinary, and on Flinders, it is aged and distilled: quieter, harder yet more rewarding, more mysterious, more connected, more complicated, more extraordinary.
There are wonderful things about Flinders Island that are not usually shown by the recent promotors who think that putting a drone up and showing our rocky crags or displaying dozens of crayfish ready to be cooked, is what we are all about. I think we are about resilience, about toughness and about respect for the way things work best.
The Flinders Island Running Festival has been going for ten years. It is held on the last weekend in August and usually coincides with Father’s Day on the Sunday. One of my neighbours jokes that his daughter only comes, at this time of the year, to the Running Festival and not to see him. I however, know this is just plain wrong! That whole family, along with many others, participate in the fun atmosphere of the whole weekend and enjoy Father’s Day.
Flinders Island is the largest island in the Furneaux group of islands in the Bass Strait, just off the north east tip of the island of Tasmania. Cape Barren Island, or Truwana, is the second. Both these islands have wetlands of significant international importance and have been declared wild life sanctuaries under the Ramsar Convention
Interview by with Tony Briscoe
Click here to access the interview then go to the 46 minute and 41 second mark.
