One of the challenges you’re faced with when you relocate, whether to a new city, state or country, is how to develop a new circle of friends.

We’ve met one lady whose husband had a fall which caused brain damage.

While he’s still able to do most things for himself, she’s become a full-time carer.

She’s now decided to move back to Sydney because she has no support network here which she can call on.

It’s very sad as she and her husband love Tasmania but she”s finding it too hard.

So, coming up to 10 months since we moved here, how have we managed?

I’m happy to say that we have been blessed in terms of the people we’ve connected with.

My first stop was to get in touch with the local rabbi, who’s based in Launceston, a town a hundred kilometers from where we are.

He introduced us to a few of the Jewish people in the area and we’ve made some great friends, and met a few rather odd people in the process.

We also joined the local film society and the committee.

Through that we’ve met a couple of people we feel there could be the potential for a deeper relationship than seeing each other at teh movies once a month.

So, when you’ve found someone you’d like to connect with what do you do?

Our approach is the invite them to our house for dinner.

So this week we had our first victim, ummm sorry, connection.

One of the ladies from the film society came around and we found we do have a lot in common.

The situation did have a bit of a first date feel to it (not that I can really remember first dates as it’s been lots of years since I had one of those).

We were all a bit tentative and the conversation seemed to taper off at a few points but after a while we found some common interests and felt comfortable with each other.

Naturally, food is always a good one to talk to strangers about, the weather is boring and politics, religion and sex are clearly very risky territory when starting out.

It was helped a bit when I asked her, during the dinner invitation, if she had any dietary requirements.

Her response was “I only eat real food”.

That was a great start as we feel the same.

The other topic that resonated for us was dogs.

Sancho, our dog, could smell her dogs and so he was very attached to her.

Of course that was a good ice-breaker as well.

In addition to that we discussed the possibility of her house-sitting for us, giving us an opportunity to have some weekends doing more extensive exploring.

And so, out of a pleasant evening together we’ve connected with another person on this island who we feel we could build a long term friendship with.

That’s a very exciting prospect.