Essential English phrases

Hello / how are you. Not a question about the ferry.

Tasmania. Getting the z wrong is the fastest way to announce that you have just arrived.

Everywhere else in Australia. Used constantly and slightly pointedly — 'she's gone to the mainland' covers Melbourne and Darwin equally. You are on an island now and the language reflects it.

The terms Aboriginal Tasmanians use for themselves and their community. The nineteenth-century claim that Tasmania's Aboriginal people were wiped out is false and still repeated; the community is here and its language revival, palawa kani, is why the mountain has two names.

MONA's winter solstice festival — bonfires, red light over the whole city, an ambitious art programme and a nude swim at dawn. It is the two weeks of the year Hobart is fully booked, and it is in the middle of winter for a reason.

The 1,271-metre mountain behind the city, officially dual-named in palawa kani and English. It can snow on the summit in any month of the year, and locals check it the way other cities check the traffic.

Everything across the Derwent — Bellerive, Howrah, Lindisfarne, Rosny. Cheaper, sunnier and reached by the Tasman Bridge or the ferry. Which shore you live on is Hobart's basic social geography.

The Tasman Bridge. A bulk ore carrier struck it in January 1975, dropping two spans and killing twelve people, and the city was cut in half for nearly three years. Everyone over fifty has a story, and the eastern shore's character still traces back to it.

Still a normal primary heat source in Tasmanian houses. It is cheap if you have your own wood and expensive if you do not, and on a still winter night the smoke settles in the valleys. Ask what the heating actually is at every inspection.

The band of westerly winds at this latitude. They arrive at Tasmania's west coast having crossed nothing but ocean since South America, which is why the Cape Grim station measures some of the cleanest air on earth — and why the weather changes every ninety minutes.

A curried scallop pie, the state's genuine culinary signature. Also a pronunciation test: Tasmanians say SKOL-up, most mainlanders say SKAL-up.

The emergency number. Say which service you need; 112 also connects from any mobile.