I had agreed that I would visit an artist to see whether the
work she is doing might be suitable for the Craft Fair. She lives in Miena which is high up in the
Great Western Tiers on the shores of the Great Lake.
When I spoke to her on Friday, she suggested
I come as soon as possible because they had already had some snow and, as the
winter deepens, it might be hard to get through.
We woke to a beautiful day, bright sunshine and a good
forecast, so we packed a picnic and set off.
There are a couple of ways to get to Miena from Launceston and we chose
the one which might be the safer if the weather changed. We expected to take about two hours. First stop was Poatina for morning tea. Poatina is an old Hydro village built in the
1950’s to accommodate workers building the pipeline from the highland lakes,
down through the Poatina Power Station.
Like all these old villages, it deteriorated until most of it was bought
by a Christian group called Fusion.
The artist has a fantastic house which features beautiful timbers. She paints and has had a lot of success, but is now turning to working with deer antlers, cow horns, mammoth ivory, whalebone and other exotic materials. She was born in Alaska and can access some of her materials there. We were very impressed with the pieces she showed us and her stall should be a big hit, especially with men. I was particularly drawn to a toilet holder made from antlers but I don’t think Marilyn was as enthusiastic.
We woke to a beautiful day, bright sunshine and a good
forecast, so we packed a picnic and set off.
There are a couple of ways to get to Miena from Launceston and we chose
the one which might be the safer if the weather changed. We expected to take about two hours. First stop was Poatina for morning tea. Poatina is an old Hydro village built in the
1950’s to accommodate workers building the pipeline from the highland lakes,
down through the Poatina Power Station.
Like all these old villages, it deteriorated until most of it was bought
by a Christian group called Fusion.
They now have a school and a training centre for at-risk
teenagers. With the help of our Rotary
Club, they have established a Glass Workshop and seem to be having great
success at turning young people around.
It’s a very pretty little village with pretty good infrastructure:
motel, shop, restaurant and cafe, service station, and so on and just an hour
from Launceston. We noticed a house for
sale: typical 50’s brick cottage, 3 bedrooms, 2 air conditioners, big yard -
$162500.
When we climbed up from Poatina we encountered our first
signs of snow but it was quite light and the road had obviously been cleared a
day or two beforehand. It was no problem
for the Territory but I worried about the people in the little Hyundai who were
beetling along ahead of us. It wasn’t
long before we reached Miena where it was still snowing. It was easy enough to drive on the roads
where there had been other vehicles before us, but as we turned into the artist’s
street, the snow was fresh and unsullied and we slipped a bit.
The artist has a fantastic house which features beautiful timbers. She paints and has had a lot of success, but is now turning to working with deer antlers, cow horns, mammoth ivory, whalebone and other exotic materials. She was born in Alaska and can access some of her materials there. We were very impressed with the pieces she showed us and her stall should be a big hit, especially with men. I was particularly drawn to a toilet holder made from antlers but I don’t think Marilyn was as enthusiastic.
We got away as early as we could but the drive back was
uneventful, apart from the sight of a nasty accident – the driver of a souped-up
ute had clearly lost control and ploughed into a guard rail. It’s the first time I’ve had the Territory in
snow and the first time the anti-skid mechanism had kicked-in and it was all
good.
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