Regional Courtesies

1 When you go to the Salamanca Festival in Hobart remember to take a suitcase of factory-made clothing and household items. The migration of weavers, potters, glassblowers, and carvers down to Tasmania means that the people down there have only craft-made things to wear and to eat with and will kill to get their hands on a factory-made, perfectly symmetrical, cup and saucer. You can do some good deals in polyester clothing — most Tasmanians arc suffering from goats’ wool and shaggy weave clothing. With wine say, ‘I hear you are making a few decent whites now.’ But don’t necessarily order them. Refer to the ‘mainland’ or to ‘the Big Island’, not to ‘Aus­tralia’. Remember to refer to the importance of Island Perspective in Australian writing. Don’t make jokes about i*c**t. Talk about the quality of the light in Hobart.