I'm from Brisbane, and I live in Sydney but of all the Australian state capitals I think Hobart might be my favourite: the steep hills dotted with sweet timber houses, Mt Wellington looming large over the city, the seemingly infinite amount of water all around... There's amazing food, Antarctic icebreakers moored in the harbour, dusty op-shops bursting with treasures, and gardens barely able to contain their abundance of flowers and fruit. It's home to both an internationally acclaimed art museum, described by its founder as a "subversive adult Disneyland" and a CWA (Country Women's Association) shop selling a vast range of locally-made knits, jams and preserves. And then there are my friends, who I visited this weekend. Though the excuse for the trip was to visit the recently-opened MONA (sadly the CWA shop was shut!) no shiny new art museum stocked with thought-provoking pieces - however impressive - can compete with the pleasure of spending time with them, their delightful daughters, and the girls' various pets (three chickens, two cats, two guinea pigs and too many guppies to count). On an appropriately grey and blustery Saturday morning, we went for a long walk on the beach at Storm Bay, collecting shells and entertaining elaborate fantasies of houses on nearby Betsey Island (alas 15,000 pairs of penguins have beaten us to it - the island is their breeding ground and so is, appropriately, a nature reserve).
On the way back, we detoured to pick apricots in the backyard of some friends of theirs. The tree was so laden with fruit that the branches were literally dragging on the ground. In no time we'd filled a huge bucket (and eaten more than a few while picking) without looking like we'd even made a dent.
So while Sunday was a day of jam and chutney making, Saturday night was all about pie. Soft orange pillows of fruit wrapped in buttery pastry, served up before bed time with some cream freshly whipped by the industrial grade Kitchen Aid mixer snapped up for a bargain at a garage sale on the way home. Only in Hobart.
