Doing the diaspora #1

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I was born and raised in Tasmania, an island at the bottom of the world.

It’s a stunningly beautiful place that’s long spawned distinctive creativity, bold improvisation and inspiring resourcefulness. Most recently, the arrival of the privately-funded Museum of Old + New Art (MONA) – currently hosting Private Archaeology by Belgrade-born New Yorker Marina Abramovic – has drawn wide and deserved attention to Tasmania’s ‘cut through’ potential in the twenty-first century.

Point of departure – the tarmac at Hobart airport
Point of departure – the tarmac at Hobart airport

That future may be alluring – but the backdrop is that Tasmania is also a geographically isolated, sparsely populated, relatively monocultural and persistently economically (and educationally) challenged society. That cluster of push factors meant many of the best and brightest of the people I grew up with didn’t stay in Tasmania, like many before and since.
They went to live and work in other places … seeking out better jobs, more opportunity and vibrant competition, different adventure.

And that was just the start of their stories …

Recently The Mercury newspaper commissioned me to write a series of feature articles for its TasWeekend magazine about some of those offshore Tasmanians.

Here are the opening profiles – Nick Boyd (founder of AidNet, connecting Angola and Melbourne), Frances The (a concert violinist now based in Amsterdam), and Tadhg Muller (a writer now living in London).

For more writing about and by Tasmania’s expats, repats and downhomers, see the bestselling Griffith REVIEW: Tasmania – The Tipping Point?, which I co-edited with Julianne Schultz in 2013. Watch a discussion I anchored at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas with three of the talented contributors to this issue – Favel Parrett, Scott Rankin and Jo Chandler.