A peculiar quirk we have helps us achieve our goals. A blessing and curse, this quirk drives us relentlessly, never letting up until we’ve achieved our objective. Even when building Banyandah all those years ago, it’s what got us up from the dinner table every night, and sent us, not to the tellie, but outdoors whatever the weather to bend cold steel and plane wood.
Last year in Macquarie Harbour we met Trevor Norton, skipper of the charter yacht Stormbreaker, and a brilliant cartographer. He loaned us three charts he’d drawn showing the harbour’s many hideaways and noting numerous features in artistic ink. In nearly landlocked Farm Cove, where Sarah Island convicts had grown pumpkins and onions more than a century ago, his artwork shows a dashed line sweeping inland towards a series of concentric contours and next to it a note: Route to Mount Sorell – 15 hrs. Succinct, almost alluding to a stroll up the highest peak of Tasmania’s south-western range that dominates every viewpoint along Macquarie’s twenty mile length.
