Plus ça change ...
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", often loosely translated as as "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is attributed to the French diarist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Although he did become editor of the Le Figaro, this epigram seems to be his most famous utterance and it certainly rang true for us as we waited in Brisbane for the Tasmanian borders to open. A year after our adventure down the Huon Valley began in August 2020 and we were once again on tenterhooks. After a snap lockdown was called in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago, Tasmania’s borders slammed shut and put our scheme to spend a couple of weeks on the farm in jeopardy. To make matters worse, the rapid spread of the delta variant in NSW meant the complete shelving of our plan to drive down with our new Ford Wildtrak ute, which we bought specially for use on the farm. We anxiously scrutinised the daily updates on the travel restrictions, willing the borders to open, allowing us (Pepper included) to fly down to Hobart. Not even the daily weather updates reporting heavy morning frosts with temperatures as low as -5C dampened our enthusiasm.
Yesterday, a week after the lockdown in Brisbane ended and on the second day of no reported community transmission of coronavirus in Queensland, Tasmanian borders opened to travellers from Brisbane. We managed to secure flights for us all early next week, so we look forward to experiencing the Huon in the depth of winter once more!
To add to the anticipation, our 16 bare-rooted apple and pear trees are ready to be picked up and we will be populating the orchard as soon as we get to the farm. In addition, we also have 5 bare-rooted claret ash trees waiting for us. We are going to plant the ash trees along our eastern border fence where they will provide beautiful winter colour, as well as shelter from the spring winds.
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