32 posts tagged with tasmania.
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Burning Bright
Tasmanian tigers are extinct. Why do people keep seeing them?+ Maybe because they... aren't extinct? As well as searching for thylacines himself, Forrest Galante has been reviewing sightings of them for years. Tiger sightings have a long history in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland. Could it have been hiding out in New Guinea all along? [more inside]
"Many convicts are untraceable after their sentence expired"
Tasmania’s convict records are part of the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register along with the convicts records for New South Wales and Western Australia. [more inside]
I'm literally speechless
Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart, which made the headlines earlier this year for banning people who “do not identify as ladies” from viewing its “Ladies Lounge” installation, is in the news again. This time it’s because several artworks in the show, which the museum claimed were by Pablo Picasso, are actually fakes. It turns out they were painted by artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, the wife of Mona’s wealthy owner, David Walsh. [more inside]
Winner of the Feline division
The last Sydney to Hobart yacht race participants have arrived safely in Hobart, including Oli the cat. [more inside]
What is a pademelon?
Hobart mum bends down to pick up plush toy, gets a devil of a surprise
Because Australia, that's why
Pygmy possums usually aren’t on the menu for huntsman spiders. But an Australian man from Tasmania has captured the rare moment a huntsman attempted to devour a tiny possum at a lodge in the Mount Field national park, 64 km north-west of Hobart. CW: PICS OF A SPIDER EATING A MAMMAL (Possum-eating spider previously)
"I've just been having fun, posting funny stuff online."
Jiemba Sands is a member of a Tasmanian circus family. He's been uploading videos of his stunts since he was 12, and went viral last year. Now he's gone even viraler with a compilation of his stunts: Twitter | Threadreader
tyger, tyger, burning bright
Some waves are just not meant to be ridden
A slab, in surfer jargon, is a nearly unsurfable wave that occurs when a swell moves abruptly from deep water across a shallow reef or rock. The result is a fast-moving, immensely powerful tube that breaks below sea level, with a lip that's sometimes 10-foot-thick or more. When a swell is big enough, slabs produce waves that defy imagination, beautiful monsters capable of flinging surfers like toy dolls in a hurricane. [more inside]
To the lighthouse!
Do you need to get away from it all? How about spending six months in Australia's southernmost lighthouse, ten kilometres off the southern coast of Tasmania, the country's southernmost state? Maatsuyker Island is looking for its next caretakers - although the light is automatic and no longer needs an actual lighthouse keeper, a pair of volunteers spends six months at a time on the isolated 0.72sq mi island, rising early for weather observations (it rains 250 days of the year), managing the land, and maintaining the lighthouse buildings and grounds. [more inside]
The Destruction of the Kelp
Kelp is a large seaweed that grows in underwater forests along temperate coasts, sustaining many marine species in turn. The Kelp Highway Hypothesis postulates that Pacific Rim kelp forests and the wealth of fish, mammals and birds that they supported sustained maritime hunter-gatherers spreading into the New World 16,000 years ago. Kelp species play an important role in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisines, and fuelled the production of soda ash in the Scottish Highlands and islands until the industry's collapse in the 19th century, which in turn fuelled emigration to North America and beyond. Charles Darwin wrote of the kelp forests of Tierra del Fuego that "if in any country a [terrestrial] forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so many species of animals would perish as would here, from the destruction of the kelp". [more inside]
"A master gambler and his high-stakes museum."
Walsh agreed to pay Boltanski for the right to film his studio, outside Paris, twenty-four hours a day, and to transmit the images live to Walsh, in Tasmania. But the payment was turned into a macabre bet: the agreed fee was to be divided by eight years, and Boltanski was to be paid a monthly stipend, calculated as a proportion of that period, until his death. Should Boltanski, who was sixty-five years old, live longer than eight years, Walsh will end up paying more than the work is worth, and will have lost the bet. But if Boltanski dies within eight years the gambler will have purchased the work at less than its agreed-upon value, and won. "He has assured me that I will die before the eight years is up, because he never loses. He’s probably right," Boltanski told Agence France-Presse in 2009. "I don’t look after myself very well. But I’m going to try to survive." He added, "Anyone who never loses or thinks he never loses must be the Devil."—Tasmanian Devil is the story of David Walsh and his Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, as told by recent Man Booker winner Richard Flanagan.
The Destruction of the Triabunna Mill
In the July issue of The Monthly, John van Tiggelen tells the tale of “The Destruction of the Triabunna Mill and the Fall Of Tasmania's Woodchip Industry,” detailing how “How the end of Gunns cleared a new path for Tasmania.” [more inside]
A New Breed of Bushfire
On January 4th, 2013, in the midst of a national heat wave, Tasmania experienced some of the most extreme weather on record, with Hobart recording a record temperature of 41.8°C in the afternoon. Fires blazed around the state, covering almost 50,000 acres, claiming hundreds of properties, and destroying the town of Dunalley. The Tasman peninsula was cut off by the fires, necessitating a sea rescue of over 2,000 people. An image of a family clinging to a jetty in the water to escape from the fire captured the attention of the world. With the launch of their Australian edition, The Guardian have produced a frightening and fascinating multimedia article exploring the human side of the inferno.
By the Lake, Tasmania
Three young filmmakers from Melbourne, Australia were set to make a short film on the serenity of fly fishing, focusing on a man named Phipps who lived on a lake in central Tasmania. Once they met Phipps, however, that all changed. Here is a glimpse into Phipps' beautiful, quiet world. [more inside]
Echidna Party Beach
Scientists on Tasmania's Maria Island caught footage of an echidna playing in the water. Stay spikey, stay cute!
We will decide who comes to fish here, and the circumstances under which they fish
A new, controversial super-trawler, the Dutch-owned FV Margiris, has set sail for Tasmania, off the south-east coast of Australia, to take a haul of jack mackerel and redbait, prompting concerns it is going to decimate several Australian fish stocks as factory fishing has done elsewhere in the world.
Greenpeace claims the industrial super-trawler is part of the European Association of pelagic freezer trawlers (PFA), responsible for "some of the worst fishing excesses on the planet.''
It is scheduled to be roaming between the Tasman Sea and Western Australia this spring. [more inside]
"I want to marry a lighthouse keeper..."
The ObserverTree
On Dec 14, 2011 Miranda Gibson climbed 200ft up a tree in Tasmania. She hasn't yet come down. [more inside]
Exit Through the Tasmanian, Professional Gambler-Funded Museum's Gift Shop
"It was always about the intersection of creativity and chaos." So said Kirsha Kaechele, described at Wikipedia as an "American contemporary art curator, artist, and practitioner of sustainable architecture," of the avant-garde Life is Art Foundation/KKProjects art happening that she carried out via Katrina flooding-devastated homes in the St. Roch area of New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward. These homes now lie in ruins, as they did before. She owes back taxes on the homes, and city has placed tax liens worth $28,000 on two of them. While she can afford the back taxes, she says, the liens are beyond her means. A medicinal marijuana farm created to fund Life is Art failed to make enough money to fund the projects. In any case, she has spent the past five months in Tasmania with her boyfriend, professional gambler and art curator David Walsh, where he has established something called the Museum of New and Old Art. (Pause.) I believe that connects all the most relevant dots as succinctly as possible. [more inside]
Post-SOTU Palate Cleanser
But it's all uphill, isn't it?
Topher wants to know why Melbourne's water supply system doesn't include a gravity-fed pipeline from Tasmania.
Hang on!
Bass Strait is the stretch of water separating Tasmania from the Australian mainland. It's a treacherous stretch of water, about 240km wide.
These two guys just kite-surfed across it in 12 hours. (Pre-crossing forum discussion.)
The Lords of Cardboard
A novel in twelve fish.
Gould's Book of Fish (full contents of Chapter One) by Tasmanian author/historian/Rhodes Scholar Richard Flanagan is a critically lauded 2002 novel that is the most interesting and accomplished work of fiction I've read in years. Set in the 19th century on a penal colony off the coast of Tasmania, the book is narrated by William Buelow Gould, a convict, charlatan, and possible madman.
Here is an audio interview with Flanagan; here's an audio clip of the author reading from his book. (.ra files)
Yes, the book is a few years old, but it somehow passed under my radar; and, anyway, a good book is timeless.
(Picking up the piscine gauntlet thrown down by Plutor.)
A Lost Marsupial
"The onslaught of destruction wrought upon the thylacine by the early settlers of Tasmania came about largely as a result of fear, ignorance, and misunderstanding." An extinct carnivorous marsupial.
Tasmanian Tiger Extinct or Not
The Tasmanian Tiger or thylacine [Thylacinus cynocephalus], a marsupial, was thought to have become extinct when the last known animal died in captivity from exposure in 1936. There have been numerous alleged sightings since. A German tourist supposedly photographed one recently (free reg.). Now there's a reward out for producing a live specimen but with prohibitive conditions requiring a permit that won't be issued. The thylacine cloning project has just been abandoned because the pup (from 1866) was kept in alcohol and not formalin - degrading the DNA.
Water,water,everywhere
The big bird race. Will they survive the long-lines?
Will I get a return on my investment?
Not the first use of the technology but a worthy effort.
State Library of Tasmania: Image Library
State Library of Tasmania, Heritage Collection Image Library.
The Thylacine Museum
The Thylacine Museum is a true labour of love. Everything you could possibly want to know about the thylacine (AKA "Tasmanian tiger" or "Tasmanian wolf"). Able to open its mouth incredibly wide, sit upright on its hind legs like a kangaroo, and a foremost example of convergent evolution (extremely similar to placental mammals like wolves, yet marsupial), the thylacine was a fascinating animal. Hunted to extinction in less than a hundred years (or not), a cloning project is underway to try and resurrect it. This site has everything: videos, Java-riffic skull diagrams, pictures of mummified thylacines who died over 4,000 years ago, and pictures of Benjamin, the last captive thylacine who died in 1936.
A safe getaway
A safe getaway If the excrement REALLY hits the oscillator
What's your thoughts on a safe haven??
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