OVER THE PAST three decades, the green hinterland beyond the population centres of the state has held an increasing allure for those working in the ideas, design, gourmet, boutique, arts, slow, simple, bespoke, specialist, teacher, media, craft, commentator, software, speechwriter, viniculture, luthier, boat-builder and environmental fields. The number of experienced thinkers and doers moving to these wilder spaces has grown into an intriguing migration. From the outside it can be hard to fathom why. What about the distance, the cold, the diminished market, intermittent broadband, lack of collegiate peers, the history of whitewashing Indigenous culture, poor cousin stigma?

For the homesick Tasmanian diaspora this muttonbird-like movement is understandable. For others it often starts with a holiday in Tasmania. Campervan windscreens become a romantic panorama while circumnavigating the island’s coast, or crisscrossing its backcountry, down narrow lanes with side-mirrors brushing unkempt hedgerows left over from a less practical era. The desire deepens from staring agog in real estate windows, making price comparisons between a two bedroom wage-slave terrace under the flight-path, and ridiculously picturesque allotments with lovely stone houses, where chickens, children and dreams hatch and frolic free, down lush green paddocks to the sea.