That First Breath of Air
Oct 25You’ve just visited Beijing or Melbourne or London or Paris. It’s been wonderful but as your flight home nears its end, you see the long stretch of sand at Seven Mile Beach from the air, and you begin anticipating something.
The aeroplane door opens, you make your way to the door and you step out into air you can almost taste.
“Even when the wind is howling and it’s raining sideways I love it,” one of you said.
Another of you went further, saying “If the airport expands and they build a proper bridge from planes to the building I’d miss going down those silly stairs.”
Like almost every other Hobart ritual, it’s a mixture of the beautiful and the gritty, the sublime and the imperfect.
Our fresh air and natural environment were things you universally valued. Yet you expressed some scepticism about our “clean and green” image. Cape Grim has the cleanest air in the world but, among cities, Hobart isn’t in the top ten.
“Let me tell you, when you’re walking down Macquarie Street in the middle of the day it’s the farthest thing from clean and green,” one of you said.
Another of you commented on the Hobart rivulet. “The fresh water – It’s why Hobart is where it is. But then we built tanneries and breweries all the way along it.” There are plenty of environmental contradictions, in the defining industries of our past and present.
Clean air and water matter to you, no matter where you fit on any ideological spectrum. You think it’s a part of what makes Hobart Hobart, and you want to do more — as citizens. Many of you want to start by reducing vehicle emissions in Hobart, even to reduce the number of cars on the road.
It isn’t an unachievable goal. Like everything else, it just requires some personal sacrifice, some smart regulations, and some risk taking.
Many of your Hobart rituals involved nature: the water, the mountain, a walk somewhere mysterious and all yours. Even those involving cars have a natural element, like driving up the mountain on a cold day, picking up a bunch of snow, and building a snowman on your car — only to have him melt and crumble on the way down.
October 26, 2017 at 11:13 am
SandieSo true. Everyone I know talks about this. If we lost it, we lose everything.
We climb actual rocks a five minute walk from our home in South Hobart. Five minutes later, we’re at a patio having a beer.
October 31, 2017 at 9:17 am
JulieI am a regular visitor to Hobart. Recently as I approached the Tasman Bridge from the south the view of the mountain and the river changed my whole attitude to the day – I became energised. I made an unplanned trip to the top of the mountain – what I saw on that sunny morning was the best view in the world!
November 06, 2017 at 10:54 pm
LindsayI can remember arriving in Hobart for the first time and writing to friends that I could almost taste the clean air. But we should enable some laws to test vehicles for their emissions. Sometimes you get up behind an old bus or lorry belching black smoke as it struggles up the Southern Outlet and our clean air seems under direct threat. This should be The City with Clean Air….
November 10, 2017 at 12:50 pm
DaveThe fresh mountain air is the reason I moved here. I have lived and worked in many areas of Australia and the world and Tasmania has by far the cleanest air per capita. That first breath of fresh cool air in the morning when I step outside really wakes me up and lets me know that I live in the best place on earth (besides the wilds of Canada). And the smell is absolutely amazing, it has a calming and relaxing effect.
November 23, 2017 at 10:33 am
MaryI love that nature can be glimpsed from almost any point in the city, even if you are in the middle of the CBD. It gives the city a unique sense of sitting in place framed by mountain, hill, river.