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West Coast Tassie: Strahan - Go West: Now, I don’t know about you…but I have never been a day-at-the-beach kind of gal. I need a really good book and a significant amount of shade if I am going to spend any time at the beach. I get sunburnt wayyy too easily, get sand in my sunscreen, complain about it heaps and am not the most confident swimmer to be mucking about in the water. I also like weather. Real weather, that blows and rains and changes from day to day, hour to hour. It’s not for me, a patchless blue...

Well, phewee...where have the last few months gone? As I sit here to write this, we are just over a week away from Christmas 2021. The sun has finally found it’s way down here to Tasmania and we have had our first few days and weeks of steady heat. With the long, mild, moist spring drawing out, the garden is a riot of growth and LL’s garden is certainly looking glorious, if a little dishevelled. It is almost impossible to keep up with the chores out there at the best of times, let alone with all the exciting things that have been going on behind the scenes at LL HQ.

Made On-Site

At Lake Leather we have been making handmade leather goods on-site in Australia for some time. We produce a wide range of goods, from belts to bags and a bit of everything in between. In this article we are going to meet our makers and have a look around our Tasmanian workshops.

Spring is in the air, and we here at Lake Leather are full of excitement and getting our heads down preparing for the coming spring/summer (SS) season. As the traditional season of renewal and rebirth, it feels very fitting that we are all feeling excited about the future, with some big and little changes in the pipeline for the next few months and the coming year.

This is the second half of an account written by my great-great grandfather, Thomas Stephens, about his experience riding from Devonport to Circular Head in north west Tasmania in 1858. His ride was on behalf of the Tasmanian government with respect to the establishment of educational facilities for Tasmanian settlers and their families. I have shared this with you as I was delighted by my connection with this man. I found his writing to be very warm and accessible, even 160 years later. His account of his experiences, so far removed from ours today, riding through the virgin forest of Tasmania on his trusty steed – named Brian – is so animated, so fascinating and really brings to life a period that is hard to feel much connection with today.

Thomas was an Oxford-educated academic, who set out alone (apart from his trusty steed Brian) on an arduous, multi-day ride through tough bush on barely marked tracks. References to Kentish’s track refer to the track cut in 1841 by surveyor Nathaniel Lipscomb Kentish, who was commissioned to survey the virgin northwest corner of Tasmania, and discovered the Kentish Plains, which were named for him. Cutting his way through rough country, swimming rivers, avoiding bushfires, while cheerfully describing the events he and Brian encountered and the characters he met along the way. I am filled with admiration for the tenacity, the strength and the fortitude of these pioneers who tamed the beautiful island we live on today. This account of part of the history of Tasmania was written some years (maybe 30) after his journey.