One of the biggest challenges about moving away from your normal environment, whether it’s interstate or across the world, is the question “how will we meet new people?”
Humans are a herd animal and so have a real, deep, need for other humans.
While they invariably annoy us immensely, we still need them.
So, that was one of the biggest concerns we had before leaving Sydney and moving to Tasmania.
As someone has said “A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet.” (I say “someone has said” because it’s attributed to a few people, including Will Rogers and W B Yeats as well as that very prolific author, “Anonymous”).
For most people, their children’s school is the most common way to connect with other people.
However, when you are of a more mature persuasion (as we are) that’s usually not an option.
But we’ve found that meeting new people and developing friendships has been very easy.
The more we watch “Back Roads” on ABC TV the more apparent it becomes, that living in a small community has the benefit of being able to connect with people very quickly.
That’s what we’ve found here.
Of course, you need to be willing to get out there, but if you are, we’ve found people to be very welcoming.
Our first call, when we arrived in Tasmania was to the local Rabbi.
While he’s in Launceston he was happy to introduce us to a couple of families in Devonport.
We’ve become quite friendly with both.
We also joined the North West Film Society.
They run a film night once a month and at the end of the year indicated they were looking for new people for the committee.
Seeing it as a way to meet new people, Danita and I put up our hands and were immediately offered the Treasurer position.
We declined that particular role, with me pointing out that, as good practice, executive positions should only be available to people who’ve been committee members for at least a year.
The response to that suggestion was, “it’s not in the constitution”, as so we’ve arrived in the world of organisational politics.
We (Danita and I together) did, however, offer to take on the role of web master.
If you visit their current site (nwfs.org.au) you’ll see that we have a big job ahead of us.
As well as joining the film society we got quite chatty with the owner of the house we rented for a month when we first moved here.
We were getting on swimmingly and he even invited us to a barbecue at his home.
Things were going very well until we pointed out that we didn’t eat meat – haven’t heard from him since (see comment above about being annoying).
Today we went to a fund-raiser for a church which is attended by my optometrist and his wife.
Fortunately, it was at a private home and there were no religious overtones, but we met some lovely and interesting people and we’re looking forward to developing some new connections there.
The house was OK but the garden is amazing and I’m hoping to have a chance to discuss this common interest with our new “friends”.
So all-in-all we’re finding that if you’re getting out, doing things which are of interest, then you’ll also find other people who share those interests and therein are the seeds to new friendships.
Oh, and by the way, here’s a photo of their wine cellar – a real Tasmanian Hobbit hole.